"My partner and I are both AFAB nonbinary queers in our mid-30s and have been together a long time. We don't believe lifelong monogamy is realistic. We even started our relationship practicing ethical non-monogamy, then defaulted to monogamy for many years. We now have two very young children and are planning a third in the near future. Between parenting and a longstanding libido mismatch, our sex life has been hard for years."
"Over the past several months, my partner has asked about opening our relationship again. I've tried to engage, while also feeling that this stage of life might be the worst possible time to experiment with our relationship structure. Recently, after a long conversation about opening up, including explicit discussion about consent and buy-in, my partner told me they had already joined a dating app and had been messaging people for about a week."
"I don't want to postpone this forever, but I also can't imagine having the emotional capacity to navigate it anytime soon. In the context of non-monogamy, does joining a dating app before mutual agreement count as harmless exploration, or is that already crossing a line? I want to be GGG and sex-positive, but also scared to make our relationship worse in an already stressful time, and right now I'm struggling to see how to balance those things."
Both partners are AFAB nonbinary queers in their mid-30s who have been together a long time and previously practiced ethical non-monogamy before years of monogamy. They have two very young children and are planning a third, and one partner is a bit over one year postpartum. Parenting responsibilities and a longstanding libido mismatch have made sex infrequent and logistically difficult. One partner recently asked to reopen the relationship and later joined a dating app and messaged people during conversations about opening. The couple is grappling with timing, consent, mutual buy-in, and whether such app use crosses a boundary.
Read at Portland Mercury
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