I am gay and in love. I’ve been in a non-traditional monogamous relationship for the last three years. We’ve had a few threesomes during our time we’ve been together, and we have attended a few sex parties. Recently, we had to spend time in different places and experienced things with other guys separately. Now we are back in the same place and redesigning the terms of our relationship. I am wondering if it’s justifiable to have sex with other people just to satisfy certain aspects of our desires that are not currently fulfilled within the relationship? Or is that the easy way out? Are we escaping a duty to adapt ourselves sexually to each other more fully in the hopes of achieving perfect sexual satisfaction together? Or should we assume that we are never going to fulfill each other completely and it’s natural to look for other people to fill certain gaps?
Binging On Your Show
P.S. I’m a new listener and reader from Lisbon! English is not my first language. Thank you for your work!
If you and your boyfriend wanna have sex with other people and you’re in agreement about it —and you’ve had an open and honest conversation about rules, limits, boundaries, and safety — you don’t have to come up with a justification for opening your relationship (or keeping it open). “This is what we both want,” is all the justification you need.
With that said…
While allowing your partner to explore kinks you don’t share is one reason many couples open their relationships — sometimes just a crack — stepping outside your sexual comfort zones for each other is a good idea. But if neither of you is ever willing to give something your partner wants to explore a try, BOYS, you may wind up missing out on sex acts and/or kinks you might discover you enjoy if you’d only given them a try. (There are two kinds of guys you meet at big gay kink events: the guys who were tying themselves up when they were twelve and the guys who — after meeting as adults — fell in love with those guys.)
Additionally, sexual exploration with/for a partner can benefit and improve your emotional connection. Being GGG (“good, giving, and game for anything — within reason”) was some advice I pulled out of my ass, but Dr. Amy Muise at York University actually studied people who were “motivated to meet a romantic partner’s sexual needs.” And what Dr. Muise found was that people who explored their romantic partners’ sexual interests and kinks reported high levels of relationship satisfaction and strength as a result of those explorations, i.e., getting kinky together brought them closer together. (You can read Dr. Muise’s paper on what she dubbed “communal sexual motivation” here. But be sure to clock the title of her paper.)
So, I would advise you to give the things your partner wants to try a shot, BOYS, and I would advise your partner to do the same for you — barring, of course, anything either of you finds disgusting, appalling, or triggering. If you’re into feet and he’s not, he should be able to let you go to town on his feet. If he’s into fisting and you’re not, allowing him to explore fisting (and maybe fisting only) outside your relationship may be the better option. No one should do anything in the bedroom or darkroom or dungeon or wherever that they don’t wanna do — of course — but there’s a difference between “this is something sexual that turns me off and I don’t wanna do” and “this is something sexual that wasn’t my idea but I might be willing to try.”
Don’t think of it as adapting to each other — and don’t think of it as an obligation to do anything and everything your partner wants — but rather as a willingness to explore and grow together sexually.
P.S. You describe your relationship as monogamous, BOYS, but it sounds like it’s been open pretty much the entire time you’ve been together. Sticking with what works is always a good idea.
