All they gave me were two years of free marriage

I am 31 years old, I have been in a relationship for 12 years. My boyfriend and I met immediately after graduating from high school, and it was immediately crazy love: we lived a lot of adventures together, we built each other, we grew up… We were very fusional, then more independent.

Obviously, we have encountered some difficulties over the years, and while we have persevered and managed to overcome them, one of them was particularly challenging.

Flirt and desires for seduction

Two years ago I found out my boyfriend was flirting with a girl. He made me angry, he made me very anxious, yet I felt both relieved and guilty. Why I’ve also flirted with other people: I’ve always had a need to seduce. To reassure me, but also because I like the game of seduction, it amuses me. It was pleasant, it flattered my ego, I had a light moment. And at the same time, I always felt a little guilty…

These innocent games of seduction, on his part as well as mine, had never led to anything concrete. However, I saw them as a dysfunction in our relationship, but after a good crisis, I realized that I was more upset and saddened by the fact that we didn’t say things to each other than by these acts themselves. Mass, it was mostly the lie that bothered me.

I secretly envied free couples

I had already heard of free couples, i.e. non-exclusive. I secretly envied those people who had the right to go elsewhere without consequences for their relationship, even if they told me so it would never fit the way mine works. Without being particularly jealous, my partner and I had a very fusional relationship, we weren’t very independent of each other… Having other sexual partners didn’t seem very feasible.

More pragmatically, I hadn’t i have no idea how we could handle this kind of relationship, it seemed to me very complicated. And most importantly, I thought my boyfriend would be completely opposed.

We began to consider the question

I was wrong : I finally realized my lover would be open to discussion. So, I brought up the subject and we talked about our needs, our differences, our frustrations – and after nearly 10 years of being in a relationship, having known next to nothing in love and sexual matters before meeting, we had built up a lot! Differences in libido, routine, need to seduce, desire to experiment…

For my part, I can fantasize about looks that are very different from my boyfriend’s or practices that he doesn’t like. I wanted other bodies and other ways of doing things. AND then, after 10 years, it is difficult to renew : I had the impression that we always did the same thing in bed. Our report was satisfactory, but lacked a little spice, a little novelty. Sometimes it’s hard to maintain your libido under these conditions.

Express all of this open up our relationship and give us the possibility of having other sexual partners (but not in love), it seemed to us an interesting solution.

Our first steps in the open relationship

We were (and are!) still very much in love, so our main fear in making this decision was that one of us would find something better elsewhere and leave the other. So we have set some rules : no romantic relationships, only sex, not our friends, always protect us, keep us updated… We have evolved a lot as we go along, according to our feelings and our difficulties. Why yes, there were.

Opening up your couple and allowing yourself to meet new people means taking the risk of getting carried away and falling in love. Also, we both faced what is called the new relational energy : this euphoria we feel at the beginning of a new relationship, when hormones get a little carried away, when we lack discernment, when we find it hard to channel our enthusiasm.

It doesn’t mean that we fall in love and that we’ll leave everything for it, but for us it was painful to see the other feel these butterflies in his belly.

“We have learned to live with our expectations and our fears”

At first we searched a lot. We wanted many things, but weren’t sure what would hinder or hurt the other. For example, after my first date, I came home and went to bed next to my lover.

It was strange, I didn’t know how to behave; I was in a bubble, it was a bit difficult to detach myself from what I had just experienced. I thought my boyfriend would have wanted to sleep peacefully when he actually needed me to be physically close to him, to hug him, to reassure him. He resented my distance when I thought it was the best way to handle it afterwards.

We both had very different fears. For my part, I was afraid of seeing my boyfriend fall in love with another, become attached to the point that he no longer cared. He has reassured me a lot on this point, but I have strong insecurities, even though I’m working on it. Now I know how to tell her when things aren’t right and why, I tell her what I need to be reassured.

For his part, he was afraid that I would have more fun with another, that I would not be sexually up to it. While what I feel with him is incomparable, in my opinion love makes sex fundamentally different. We’ve talked a lot, about these expectations and fears, and we learned how to do it!

Learning free relationship and communication

There were jealousies, imbalances, but despite the doubts, the fear of getting lost or the difficulty in expressing what we felt, we always tried to communicate a lot and to be honest.

Jealousy, fear, sadness, anger: all these emotions express a need. to understand each other, we tried to translate these emotions to express their true meaning. It could be the need to be reassured, the need to take time for both of you, the need to slow down a bit, the need to better understand what the other was looking for or experiencing…

It’s not always easy: sometimes the emotion is so strong that it’s difficult to dig into it, to talk about it calmly. In these cases I prefer to experience my emotions and tell each other that we will talk about it with a clear mind if we are unable to have a serene discussion right away. Sometimes we don’t want to go back or we can’t find the right words…

There is no miraculous solution, it is not easy to communicate when these are topics that touch our hearts! We just did our best to keep that in mind the original goal was to feel more accomplished.

What this free report gave us

Since then the rules have evolved considerably: we tell ourselves much less about what each of us experiences on our side (it is our secret garden, and talking about it causes us more jealousy than positive), we take no one home (at the beginning I gave in on this point and felt very bad knowing that another girl had been in my bed), we are also a little more flexible, less in control than at the beginning.

This open relationship has brought us a lot. After two years of doing this, we have found a balance that suits us well. We each have someone we see regularly (once every 15 days or so) and we don’t consider ourselves to be in a polyamorous relationship, although we are both very close to these people. If we feel like it, we can also look elsewhere, but this is not the current dynamic.

For my part, I was able to experience many things sexually, get to know other bodies, other ways of making love and seeing relationships. I have regained a strong libido, I am confident in myself and I love being able to seduce when I feel like it. AND i love my boyfriend more than everbecause we communicate better, because I am aware that I love him very much, because he allows us to have all these experiences.

The results are very positive, I wouldn’t go back for the world! We have learned to communicate differently and understand each other better than ever. I don’t know if we’ll remain a free couple for life: maybe we’ll go back to being exclusive (I doubt it), maybe at some point we’ll switch to polyamory, or another type of relationship… Anyway, I have faith in the future, because this relationship has given us self-confidence!

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