How open can an open relationship be?

Guess there will come a time when I have to write about this.

I might not have mentioned this but I am in an open relationship. And by that I mean I have been kind of seeing someone, it’s not a committed relationship or anything, but we have agreed that we are open to each other seeing other people.

D was the trigger that caused my ex and I to break up. Me and my ex were not in a good place already, so I can’t say it’s all because of D, but he was the trigger. I’m not proud of it, as I probably have mentioned, but it happened. He’s also not living in the same city as I am. To be completely honest I don’t see much future with him, but it is fun hanging out with him (or it was). When I met him he was completely up in the air – no money, couldn’t stay in a job for long enough, day-dreamed a lot, and sometimes even a bit delusional. For quite some time I was convinced that he had a histrionic personality disorder. But he’s also fun and pretty creative (see I’m a sucker for the creative type). He’s overly flirtatious, so much that he’d probably flirt with a fruit fly that happened to be passing by. But he is manipulative. I’ve always known that, but somehow I still fell for it. It’s probably why I’m doubting myself so much now with M.

I went through the exact same stage when I first started going out with him – the addiction, the withdrawal, the dreaminess. Even with all the flaws I saw, I did see them but I chose to ignore. There were always dramas with him, things get blown out of proportion, I was guilt-tripped into doing things that I didn’t want to do. And it always gets worse when I try to fight back. I don’t know what got into me but it was as if I was obsessed. Kind of like how I am now, with M, except that I think M is genuinely a nice person.

Having said that, the times with D was still mostly good. I cut him off for a while after the breakup, because I just could not deal with the guilt myself. But after some time I wanted to apologise to him because I felt like it was unfair to him that I cut him off like that, so I did. And we started texting again, and I flew over a couple of times to see him.

Still, as I said, I never saw a future with D. It’s just good fun, and he is fine to keep this open (in fact he was in an open relationship when he met me), so everything seems ok on the surface.

Except when I tell him about my dates. I thought it’s important to be open an honest about everything, so I’d tell him when I’m going on dates, how they went (briefly) without giving too much details. He always seems happy for me at first, but then he would start saying things that would annoy the hell out of me, like mentioning my ex and how we broke up, and saying that he doesn’t want to be treated the same way, and all that. So he’s been trying to guilt-trip me again, maybe. But now that we’re not even in the same city, I am a bit better at not giving in, so I fight back, and we end up fighting, and sometimes he’d budge.

This is now giving me more stress than I wanted, and I am not sure if it’s sustainable. Perhaps he’s jealous, which is to be expected in an open relationship, but that doesn’t mean that he can be vindictive and say things that he knows would hurt me. Oh and one very important thing, in bed I always feel like I am a bit forced to do something I don’t want. It’s not like rape or anything but I felt like I was always giving in, and that doesn’t feel good, even though the sex itself was good. I was not in control of my own body (and not as a fun thing on purpose). After I saw him the last time, I was actually a bit relieved that there were no plans to meet again. I think it’s largely because of that.

I did tell M about D, and he’s cool with it. But myself, I wonder if I’m still fine with this person. I’m worried the same thing would happen with M, and I wonder if I’m this horrible parasitic person who’s jumping from host to host. Maybe that’s why I was having those bad dreams.