Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Open Relationships and Love

Love Destiny asks...

What I want to know is can two people who are together and in an open relationship REALLY love each other? Are they as in love and comitted as monogomous people? Or are they just really close friends with benefits?

Most of the answers I saw were hateful or ignorant…

“no”

“there are all sorts of neurotic love relationships”

If people in a relationship decide that at least one of them is available for some additional form of relationship or sex with someone else because that is what best meets their needs why is that neurotic?

“i think when your truely in love, theres only one person you WANT to be with”

Monogamy isn’t what works for everybody. In fact, it appears to work for only a minority of people.

“No they are not. Someone who is not willing to give you the full attention you deserve can not possibly be truly in love. A person who needs the attention of others in a relationship is just plain too selfish to actually feel love for someone else.”

Where does this come from? It is arbitrary.

At least there was some more friendly responses.

some couples choose to have open relationships who have been together 20, 30 years etc… they cant bare to seperate but no longer have a healthy sex life with each other so they have an open relationship

That is one situation. There are also people who do have a healthy sex life with each other, and they decide to have an open relationship.

jryanwinterhaven wrote a long comment…

Contrary to the opinion of most of the commenter’s here who clearly have had little or no exposure to people who are in open relationships the answer is,Yes, people who are in open relationships can love each other and do. There are all kinds of open relationships out there that have different rules just as monogamous relationship have rules to guide them.

Thank you.

Of those in “Open Relationships,” those who describe themselves as Polyamorous, as I do, means that they have a emotionally loving relationship with more than one partner. A subset of this is Polyfidelity (as I consider myself) that has made a long-term loving commitment amongst their partners (something akin to a marriage – though not in the same manner as our culture would see it). Love and commitment is essential to this type of Open relationship”. With others it may or may not rise to the level of love, but there is a relationship that is somewhere on the scale between friends and loves.

It is always good to see people stand up to ignorance and hate and give a thorough explanation. Not only do many of the people in open relationships love each other, in some cases the love some people have for each other is one of the reasons why their relationship is open in the first place. Chew on that.

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