Open Relationship: Is It for You?

“It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, but I just want to feel a little more liberated,” he said.

Have you had the same sentence being said to you before? It doesn’t matter if it comes from his or her mouth, it’s just the same for both sex. He or she still wants to be with you but at the same time wants to be free from any commitments of a normal intimate relationship. We called this an “Open Relationship”, which specifies a relationship between two people, and these two people or either one of them is free to have other partners. Similarly, a married couple that made this kind of agreement is having an open marriage.

An open relationship, whether it be for a married or unmarried couples can also be referred to as having a polyamorous relationship, because an “open relationship” is terminologically synonym to “polyamory”. However, these two terms can be distinguished from one another as for the term “polyamory” has been up leveled and described as an extension of a relationship by allowing bonds to form of which may be sexual or otherwise and it’s in for long duration of time. An open relationship, if one were to comprehend it thoroughly, usually refers to the sexual aspect of a non-closed relationship. Some people who are involved in open relationships may have a mutual agreement on permission of sex outside of the primary relationship, however there should be no feel of “love” involved. So, this kind of relationship is open but not polyamorous.

If we were to think it through in all kinds of virtuous aspect, perhaps it would be time and the dynamic nature of human being and thoughts were to be blame. People of the new world, highly educated and independent young people with curious thoughts and way of thinking have been experimenting with their own life, inclusive of their love life. Open relationship is not anymore a taboo in our world today. It is seen, however subjectively according to individuals as a test of the strength of a bond in a relationship.

Would you (or your heart) accept it as that? That is a highly subjective question that maybe you yourself are the only who can answer it. There are, of course always the “common” rules of a relationship but this new ideology has brought these rules and guideline to a different level. People start believing in being able to love more than one person. It is not wrong to have the sort of believe and maybe we are capable of doing so for love comes in many different degrees and forms. However, putting it into practice is another part of the story. People have actually started to practice loving multiple people at one time openly and using discreet methods to do it.

What happens to the fidelity concept? We might want to ponder as to why a person would want to be in a relationship and being serious at the same, but simultaneously also desire to have an “open relationship”. It may sound a little, if not much of fickleness associated with the whole thing. Perhaps some would call it a commitment phobic but too much avoidance will eventually kill a relationship and create a gap between two people. Occasional intimate relationship with another party besides your partner is something casual for an open relationship and may have little impact on the level of intimacy of the primary relationship but frequent activity, may find even the most tolerant partner to feel even a little nudge of jealousy, unhappy and displaced roaming over. It is human nature, and it is hard to fight the nature of how things are and should be.

This is all the same; eminently depend on a string of related factors, regardless if the relationship you create is “open” or “close”. This is the part where all your beliefs, thoughts and opinion of things and how things are and should be play a bigger part. Whether it is on the issue of morality, relationship and sexual ethics, personal preferences and mostly, your tolerance for obscurity and uncertainty, you are the one who decide things through. You should give a thought to being honest and fair to yourself and to your partner.