Open Up

I am a jealous human. I think everyone is. Sometimes you'll hear women say "I never get jealous" and it's the emotional equivalent of saying "I love giving blowjobs" because guess what? Everyone gets jealous, and no one LOVES giving blowjobs, and I really hate women who do that because they're just trying to get attention. Be honest. Hello, my name is Gemma Daniels and I get jealous a lot and I'm not a big fan of giving blowjobs. See? Painless. So when I've contemplated open relationships I've always felt a little on the fence about there. There are, in my humble opinion, two types of open relationships: the one where it's just about sex, and the one where you're supposed to feel feelings for your multiple partners.

When you're just sleeping with other people, what I've found works best is a don't ask, don't tell policy. When I had this it was an open relationship, and we were both very physical creatures, so we agreed that we could both sleep with other people. It was really just sex. I was lucky enough to be with a partner who not only understood my need for it, but worked the same way as well. At times I felt guilty because I knew that I was taking advantage of this policy a little more than he was. I think the open line of communication has to come in as soon as feelings start to bubble up, and what happened to me was that I kept my mouth shut until I had basically already fallen in love with someone else. That's the risk you take with open relationships, and although I really hurt someone we were able to smooth things out and we're still friends today.

The other option is to be emotionally committed to multiple people at once. I have not had an experience like this yet, but what I hear from my friends is that it's much less complicated than mainstream media often portrays it. There's this stigma that people in open relationships are only giving half of themselves to each partner, or that feelings are stronger for one or the other. What I've heard from people's personal experiences is that it is possible to be in love with multiple people at once. My friend Abby is married to a man named Thomas. Abby has a boyfriend. Thomas has a girlfriend. On occasion they engage in group sex. On occasion it's just Abby, Thomas, and his girlfriend. But for the most part it's Abby and Thomas, and then they see their other partners on the side. Because they all know each other and are comfortable with each other, Abby and Thomas are happily married and the whole dynamic works pretty well. That being said, it takes a rare breed of person to be able to do that. I get way too possessive to ever allow my significant other to have another girlfriend.

xx,

Gemma