This page is sub-titled "How to Ruin a Seven-Year Relationship with One Sentence." The only thing that can really be said about the way I opened my current relationship is that I didn't know any other way to do it. I knew a few people in open relationships, but theirs had been open from the beginning, so I had no one to get advice from when I decided I couldn't live with monogamy any more. I'd never seen all the poly resources available on the Web that advise talking it through, and going very slowly. So I did it the only way I knew how.

I suppose you need a little background to get the entire picture. Fidelity has never been one of my virtues, but I ended up settling down with my SO in a relationship where monogamy was expected. I thought it was something I was ready for, and that I could handle it. After all, I was way past the age when most of my peers had settled down, and monogamy was the norm.

My SO and I started drifting apart about five years into the relationship. He traveled a lot due to his job, I got a job working the graveyard shift, and most weeks we only saw each other in passing, unless our days off coincided. We stopped communicating, other than about routine household things. Then I got a real day job, and we spent more time together, but we still didn't communicate. We kept drifting.

Over the years, I toyed with having a casual fling every now and then. I didn't, for a variety of reasons. Then I really got restless. I made a new friend that I was attracted to, and he was willing to have a quick fling. But we couldn't seem to work the timing out. My SO, who rarely went a week without being out of town, stopped travelling. And of course I didn't want to get caught. Eventually my SO went out of town again. But the affair didn't happen. The friend changed his mind.

So there I was, ready to have an affair, hoping it would make the restlessness go away for a while, and I didn't have anyone to have an affair with. A few weeks passed, and I tried to carefully bring up the subject of opening our relationship with my SO. I didn't make any progress as I tiptoed around what I really wanted to say. Finally, I just said it. "I've been thinking about having an affair."

His reply? "Thinking about it isn't the same as doing it." We went over this a few times before I realized that I have neither the tact or patience necessary to be a diplomat. I explained to him that when I said I was thinking about having an affair, I meant I had actually planned one. That one didn't work out, but eventually I was going to have one, and if he wanted to leave before it did it, I'd understand.

Everyone I know seems to think that I never thought about the consequences. I did. I thought about it thoroughly before I did it. I expected him to leave, and I really wouldn't have held it against him if he left. I changed all the rules without consulting him, and the only option I left him if he didn't like it was to walk away. I did still love him and didn't want to hurt him, which I was sure my confession of wanting someone else in my life would. But I knew if things stayed the same, I was going to walk away, because it wasn't what I needed to be happy.

A couple of stressful weeks followed while he tried to decide if it was something he could live with. I'd come home every evening expecting to find my possessions piled on the front porch. We didn't talk much during that time. At one point, he asked me, "What do we do now?" Every time I've heard someone on a television show ask that, I've known the answer. This time I didn't. I didn't even know how to feel.

He decided he could live with an open relationship. I didn't really expect that, even knowing what a great guy he is. So we made a few rules and tried to pick up the pieces. It wasn't easy at first. They say it's almost impossible to open an existing relationship and not have the relationship end. But slowly we've put everything back together. And I really think our relationship is better now. We communicate in a way that we hadn't since we first got together, and we can easily discuss things that are bothering us, which I don't think either one of us did before. Maybe we're kidding ourselves, and it won't last, but it's been a couple years now, and we're still doing fine.

The most important things I learned from all this is that communication is the most important thing in a healthy relationship. If I'd been able to communicate about what I felt and what I wanted a few years ago, I wouldn't have done things the way I did. Would I do it the same way? If I knew then what I know now, no, I'd try things a little differently. But if that didn't work, I would do whatever it took. Because, as much as I love my SO, his happiness shouldn't come at the cost of mine. And he agrees.

Almost three years later...

My SO of ten years came to me last month and told me he was no longer happy in our relationship. He didn't think the problems were fixable, and he wanted to end it before we were both miserable, and started hating each other. I'm still not sure what caused the problems that he saw as un-fixable. I know the open relationship played a big part, but I also think that we had a severe communication problem that we weren't aware of. Between the two, there was no hope of the relationship surviving, and it's kind of surprising that it managed to last as long as it did.

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