What About Love?

by Jenny Block

Open relationships are about setting up the kinds of boundaries that 1) make you feel comfortable and 2) are workable. Because, what’s the point if all you’re doing is setting yourself up for failure? If a couple sets the rules, follows them, and is honest about whether or not those rules are working for them, they can have a reasonable expectation of success.

But there’s another key to open relationships – flexibility. And without that, you are much less likely to make any kind of relationship work, let alone an open one. In my open marriage, it’s all about communication and renegotiation. We had an “Only Out of Town” rule and a “No Love” rule (after our first girlfriend) for the first few years. They worked splendidly – until I met Jemma, my now girlfriend of a year and nine months.

When I met her, I never imagined we’d be more than friends. So when it seemed to be turning into something else, I went to my husband and asked him what he’d think of Jemma being my girlfriend. Luckily, he was delighted. Despite it breaking the rules, he had seen our friendship develop and adored both her and who I was when I was with her. That is, less needy and more calm. (More about that next week.)

The first rule (the out of town one) was, naturally, much easier to consider ditching. The second one, well, not so much. Wouldn’t that be going against everything we talked about in deciding to open our relationship? Sex is just sex. Love is a different story. The only people we love romantically (my husband and I, that is) are each other. That’s why we’re married in the first place. You can’t love two people in that way at the same time. Right?

For us it turns out, quite the opposite is true. Although sex can be just sex. It doesn’t have to be, even when it comes to relationships outside of our marriage. Love begets love. It doesn’t cancel out that which came before it because love, contrary to popular belief, is not a limited commodity.