I wrote a post about having a good dating state of mind a few years back. And about the importance of having confidence and being a whole person to be attractive to a potential mate. I may even have written the phrase “fake it till you make it” a time or two in blogs past. Now these elements are incredibly important to being a whole person, and dating in general, but there may be a place where this doesn’t work out so well. And that is when men/women who are not quite sure what they want approach someone who is currently in an open relationship.
I have non monogamous / living together on all my online profiles. The hope from this is that guys will message me if they are OK with that. Of course I get a tonne of guys who just want to sleep with me, because they assume that’s what I am looking for. But I also get a few little gems who are trying to convince themselves that non monogamy is just what they need, and in turn try to convince me that they are OK with everything involved. But after a first meeting or a few message back and forth, the truth is, they want something much different, and rarely is it an ethical non monogamous relationship.
Over the last 6 or so years, two guys spring to mind that fall in to this category. They both said they were confident guys, who actually liked the fact that I have a long term boyfriend as that took the pressure off of them. And that they were bachelors by choice, and they could handle the situation. They bragged about how easy going they were, that they were not needy at all, and admired that trait in me. Here’s the rub though, their actions displayed the exact opposite behavior. The two guys very quickly fell for me. They would ask me repeatedly if they could be my boyfriend and kept saying that they wished I was single. Or they would sneak into the conversation a jab or two at my partners expense, you know, things like, they would never let me go out on my own like this, displaying traits of possessiveness or jealousy. And that one time when the guy asked me outright just how stable my primary relationship was.
Now I could infer that they just wanted to get into my pants, by any means necessary, and lied about being OK with me being open. But it really seems more than that. These guys actually seemed to fall for me, which was odd as I didn’t sleep with either of them. And for whatever their reasons they were not comfortable that I was not theirs even with full disclosure on my end. I don’t know how I could be any clearer, and I even shared with them my blog.
These men were extremely attracted to my confidence and my independence. And those are traits I found exciting in them. So the let down, when in fact they were merely projecting made me not even want to entertain a friendship. There is no harm in just stating that you find open relationships intriguing and you would like to try. Even asking if I am OK with that, and that you may not like it at all because you truly have have no idea if that is for you or not are all normal. Hell, I started writing this blog because I wasn’t sure that I wanted an open relationship myself, or if I just wanted E. But choose honesty, rather than boasting and then falling short. If you don’t yet have confidence or know what you want, please choose to be honest.