confusedqueer Wrote:maybe i am old fashioned. In all honesty i would like this sort of thing to work.
But how do i get past the jealousy? I just don't if i can. I notice there are alot of 'couples' on grindr in my area - how do they make it work??
I didn't really answer this part earlier, just glazed over it. Sorry.
I guess some guys can't make it work. It does have something to do with the kind of a person you are, and how you go about being in a relationship. But I don't think it's impossible either. You can at least try, if that's what you want.
In any case, the fact that he's overseas, and that it will most likely be a one-timer with no strings attached, should make it easier. You will never see the guy and your partner is still with you at the end of the day.
Think of it this way: when you're in a relationship, do you not find other guys attractive? Of course you still do. We all do. That drive and pull towards men does not disappear when you settle down with a guy. He does too, and this is just following through on those attractions that are there anyway. But when you both care about each other and the relationship, then what you have with each other is not jeopardized by an attraction felt towards another man, or even sex outside the relationship.
Reality is, none of us is that unique or attractive as to be the only one his partner will want to have sex with. Not even in the monoandrous (the correct term here is
monoandrous not
monogamous, since we're dealing with men, not females) relationships, this isn't so. Monoandry means both partners have agreed not to act on those attractions, but they still feel it nevertheless. It all adds up to the same thing in the end. I can live with it because of that (I have my own limits, though, after crossing which the relationship will lose its meaning and sense to me).
However, if your whole definition of relationship/love and/or its meaning is based on that principle of both partners giving up acting on their attractions to other men -- if that is inalienable from the concept of the relationship/love itself -- then it is more difficult to accept violations of that. I'm more laid-back about it because I know human nature, and the physical reality of being a man very well. But, like I said,
it is about at what point does the relationship lose its meaning when a/both partner(s) sees other guys.
Relationship is about two people making a life together. It is not about three or four or 23 people making a shared life with one another. I.e. one can have sex with that many guys, but they don't belong in the relationship, and when it stops being so, that's when it's not working.
So, at one point or another there will come a limit which you can't cross and still call it a relationship. (Open relationship does not mean your partner will get a free pass to sleep with whomever he wants).
You have to figure it out where that limit is for you to understand what you can live with and what you can't. And some of the things you won't know until you experience them. And it could be different with different guys. Maybe one guy you can live with in an open relationship, but with another one you can't. There is no right or wrong, other than what's right or wrong to you personally. And your partner.