"Opening Up" A Relationship Doesn't Work, Try This Method Instead

[joreth]

I want to respond to everyone who ever utters the phrase "open our relationship" with the following:

Stop saying that phrase. Every time you want to say that, replace it with "deconstruct our relationship and reconstruct it as a new, open relationship". And then start *seeing* your relationship as a brand new relationship that is open, not an existing relationship that is identical in every way to the old one except now you can talk to or fuck other people.

Because you are not "opening up". You have to rebuild your relationship from the ground up, with new paradigms and new assumptions and new expectations.  Your new partners are not entering an existing relationship, even if they date both of you. They are constructing WITH YOU a whole new set of structures.

You are not adding on a rumpus room to an existing house that doesn't change anything about the rest of the house and where you can conveniently close the door when you want to pretend that it doesn't exist.

You are building a whole new building complex with multiple structures that interact with each other and share infrastructure while maintaining separate other elements that all add up to one beautiful complex of dwellings that each inhabitant ought to have, not just a say in designing, but the *final* say in designing the part in which they inhabit over anyone who lives in other parts.

So stop saying you want to "open up your relationship". You're not "opening up". You need to "deconstruct" your relationship, and rebuild something totally new that might have some similar elements, like all houses have plumbing, or whatever, but it's still a new relationship with new assumptions and expectations and totally different property lines.

Don't say you are "opening up", say you are "deconstructing" your relationship and constructing new ones.

I think if we all start using this language instead, it will really hammer the point home and make everyone think about what they're doing in a different way, which will hopefully lead to more intentional, more compassionate, and less fearful relationship practices.

You can't "protect" your "existing relationship" if that relationship is already gone because you're deconstructing it to build something totally new. Raze it to the ground, like any construction project requires you to remove what's there before you start building something new.

And, like any good construction project, you start with the foundation that will properly support the rest of the structures. Don't build something on top of a foundation that wasn't intended for this type of building in the first place.

(For more on this subject, click on the tags below, especially for unicorn hunting and couple privilege)

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Here via a friend who shared in chat. I like this viewpoint, and the partner I'm now living with and I intentionally built our relationship with the expectation that monogamy isn't a reasonable expectation for either of us. Our foundation, which works for us so far: we have each other's backs. If either of us wants out or a change, it's time to rebuild (either together or separately).

I am very wary of twosomes who want to enter into a relationship with a third party as a monolith. Are they not even separate people?

Do you think rebuilding should happen every time you (individually or together) start seeing a new person?

[joreth]

The "rebuilding" isn't to incorporate a new person, it's to create a new relationship where new relationships can happen. Technically, every major change to a relationship *is* a "rebuilding" - when someone gets a new job that changes their income level, their schedule, or their location, the relationship gets rebuilt; when there is a baby, the relationship gets rebuilt; when there is a major move where jobs and friendships and communities have to be found again, the relationship gets rebuilt.

So, technically, any time someone who has partners finds other partners, each existing relationship will be affected, so you could say that is "rebuilding" each new relationship.

But none of that is the same thing as what I'm talking about.

If a couple "rebuilds" to incorporate a third, then A) yes that would require rebuilding if they then add a fourth; and B) that's exactly the opposite of what I'm suggesting. I'm basically suggesting that they *decouple* or *disentangle* themselves from their "couplehood" and start a brand new relationship that is not couple-centric in the first place.

If two people can build a partnership between them that is not couple-centric, that doesn't place a priority on their couplehood, that isn't trying to patchwork on new paradigms to an old, incompatible structure but instead is built from the ground up with the new paradigm *as* the new structure, then they don't need to demolish and rebuild every time there is a new partner because the structure that they built isn't number-of-partner-contingent. Does that make sense? That new structure is *already accommodating* of new relationships because that was the whole point to the redesign in the first place.

The point is not to go from a couple to a triad, the point is to go from a couple to two independent people in a partnership who are free to build other relationships with other people. So you don't dismantle and deconstruct a couple in order to build a triad, which would require you to dismantle and deconstruct the triad in order to build a quad, you dismantle and deconstruct the couple in order to clear the lot to make room for a multi-dwelling complex with room to grow and change over time.

You make two independent dwellings (people) that work in a cooperative system that leaves room for additional dwellings of as-yet unknown shape and size. Those other dwellings don't get built until the people who are going to live in them show up to design them for themselves. So you set about installing the infrastructure that can handle adding new dwellings in the future even though you don't know what those dwellings are going to be just yet.

If you can do that, then you don't have to bulldoze each and every time someone wants to build a new dwelling on your property with you. You only have to do a little accommodation in the places where that new dwelling will intersect with the existing dwellings, because the foundation and infrastructure is already there.

The problem with monogamous couples trying to "open up" is that they don't have this foundation or infrastructure. They're just trying to tack on an extra room (that they've designed) onto their existing house and to fit someone into it who had little to no say in the design of that room.

That's why I want them to stop looking at it as "opening up". They're not "opening up" their existing home to squeeze someone new into it. They need to build a whole new property that can allow for additional inhabitants without knowing who they are or what they want yet. They have to tear down their existing monogamous structure and put in a polyamorous foundation that can accommodate change and other people's input.

If they do that, then they don't have to start from scratch each and every time someone gets a new partner. If they do try to start from scratch with each new partner, that suggests that they didn't really start from scratch the first time, they just took the old model and made it one room bigger, just as if they would have tacked on the extra room to the old building only they're pretending it's not exactly the same because they built this one fresh with that extra room.

If it's the same house but with one extra room, it doesn't matter how recently they built it. It's the same problem. It's the act of dismantling all their previous structures and building something new intended to handle change and additions that I'm trying to get at here.