--- I wrote this when I was 25 and started my original blog ---
Basically I am horrible with emotions and feelings. I barely understand my own let alone someone else’s. Friendship, fun, and sex on the other hand I know and am damn good at. That isn’t even the main reason, like so many of you, I love the thrill of meeting someone new. I love making new connections and those first few honeymoon weeks of hot naughty flirting. The difference with me choosing non-monogamy is, unlike so many others out there, I am wholeheartedly opposed to cheating.
Now I am not saying that I do not believe in monogamy, because I do, just not for me personally. Nor am I saying that I completely disregard other people’s feelings because to me being non-monogamous is actually taking my significant other’s feelings even more into account. I want them to be as happy as they can be. If that means someone else can do that for them for a night or little flirting throughout the week I want them to. It might twist my stomach, grind my gears, cause lava to build in my body but I try my damndest to put my feelings aside and put theirs above mine. To me that is love. If I love them and trust them they will come back to me and, in turn, do the same for me.
When it comes to monogamy I have been lucky to have the best example right in front of me my entire life. My parents have been happily and monogamously married for thirty-one years. They drive each other nuts at times but at the end of the night they are truly happy to be lying next to one another at the end of the day. With every up and down they made it through the barrel holding hands and smiles on their face. I honestly do not know exactly how they do it, but in my twenty-five years never once has my faith in their bond been teetered. They stuck together through raising two rambunctious children who constantly butted heads, school tests and projects, sporting events, business setbacks, and successes. They are without a doubt first best friends then lovers, and believe me they are definitely still loving on each other.
I myself have held a monogamous relationship for a year and a half with my highschool sweetheart. But it was no easy path getting there. Even as a young adolescent I never had a major desire for a relationship. All I knew there could be was monogamy and I was having too much fun being a little flirt. He and I were best friends ever since the eighth grade and ever since the eighth grade he was in love with me. It took me all the way until midway through our junior year to say those three little words and agree to be in a monogamous relationship with him. For the next year and a half we were in a fully committed relationship with no cheating and no major fights if you can believe it. I broke it off when we headed off to different colleges in different states. Well, it wasn’t so much of a break up as it was an unofficial recategorizing to “open relationship”. When we were at school and apart from one another we never really talked, emailed, or texted, but when we got together we were together like no time had passed. I always wanted to hear about all the other girls he was having naughty fun with, him not so much, actually at all. He resisted telling me if he had met a girl at college for months and wanted to know no such information from me.
As weird as this might sound to most people it worked for us, and it did until it didn’t around Christmas of our senior year. That was when I realized I loved him and would always love him, but I was no longer in love with him, nor was I in love with our sexlife.
For seven years I considered myself single, including the “open relationship” time in college. I had fun, I was free, I found myself and what I liked. My first year of college being “single” I practically took a sabbatical from sex (until I saw my ex again). I took the time to just find me and enjoy life on my very own for the first time. After that I began my exploration. No one to worry about but myself, no one to check in with, no fights, no jealousy, no drama, it was honestly some of the best times of my life. I discovered the strength to say “no” when I wasn’t interested in a guy and “yes” when I was instead of acting quoy and playing games, like girls are almost trained to do. I learned to go after what I wanted only when I really wanted it and be satisfied and secure with being alone when there was no one I desired. The best part, I discovered what turns me on and that when it comes to intimacy if I wasn’t happy I could not make the other person happy. I found confidence, courage, and self-worth.
Then the time came that I never thought could or would come. I found someone I actually wanted to be with. Someone I fell in love with because he did not make me choose. I did not have to pick between my freedom and him. He happily gave me both without hesitation. We both had our cake and got to eat it too. As fun as that sounds it does not come without a price. I am still able to spread my wings, flirt and be naughty --- greatly encouraged by him --- but there are rules to protect the feelings of each person involved. Believe me even being in an open relationship jealousy still rears its green face. We keep the line of communication wide open. We constantly talk, work, and change the parameters of our relationship even when we don’t intend to.
It works for us. We do consider ourselves in a fully open relationship but joke that we are in the most monogamous open relationship possible. The more freedom you have the less you care about it. Daddy has always joked calling me a little kitten; the more he lets me go, the more I want to come back to him.