08-18-2004, 03:37 PM
Quote:Originally posted by kakomu
I don't get why you have a wife if you have to go to other sources for the bare necessities of a healthy relationship (sex).
That's just the thing... the bare necessities of our relationship don't revolve around sex. It was after the two of us spent a week together with nothing more than a hug that we realized that our relationship was something pretty special.
Both of us had a fair number of sexual partners before we met each other. I think this helped to reduce the importance of sex for both of us. In fact, some of the most amazing sex I ever had was with a woman that I can't stand to be around... I'd go into more detail with this but there is a lot more to that particular story that I should save for another thread.
I also agree with Ka-Talliya. Having an open marriage isn't a solution for mis-matched libidos. If that's the only difference between two people then there are a number of things that can be done for both parties to even that.
The difference in our libidos is just one part of things. Another part is the whole ownership issue. Reb and I are people together in a partnership. Neither one of us owns the other. We don't feel that by restricting ourselves to only having sex with each other actually adds anything to our relationship.
Oh yeah... while I'm thinking about it... why was one woman vetoed? It was after I had one encounter with her and it turns out that she ran around spreading all sorts of crazy rumours after the fact. I was very upset with her after that and as soon as Reb found out about the rumours she put down the veto to make sure there was no second encounter. That woman was a poor choice on my part and ended up being pretty annoying for a little while. That just taught me to be a bit more careful with future selections.
Back to reasons why we have an open marriage.
One of the biggest reasons that I haven't mentioned yet is that neither Reb nor myself could come up with a good reason to have an exclusive relationship. The first concern would be STDs but we make sure to practice safe sex so we're not too concerned about that. We might end up with someone going "Fatal Attraction" on one of us but we're pretty careful with who we play with now and we make sure to let any new potential partner know that we're commited to our relationship.
A very common question is "what if you find someone that you love more?" and that is a very good question. This has been a major issue with a few other open marriages that I know. It's very easy to get carried away with a new romance. The spark and excitement of getting to know someone new is hard to match. If we find that one of us is getting romantically attached to a new lover then we close things up for a while and make sure that we spend time remembering what it was to get to know each other.
I'm just now realizing how hard it is to write this stuff out while watching Dora with my daughter. I'll come back and clear any of this up for people who are interested later.
Gullible isn't in the dictionary.