Good advice for any couple in an open relationship
Good advice for anyone, period.
Calling Paul Harvey…
Wrong:
I say the more openness the better. Unless you’re a can of Skoal, in which case I recommend remaining sealed to preserve freshness.
I encourage you 100% to get married. Life is too short to not do whatever the hell you want to all the time. Certainly nobody on this board is able to diagnose your relationships/emotions, and since you at no point asked them to, shouldn’t.
I’m interested in your sex situation, much like I am with everybody’s. Is it going to be open to the point of oh and was he good? or open to the point of oh and can I come along?
That’s a terrible day to have a wedding.
Anyone else surprised the OP has been here since 2008? After reading the OP I was sure it would have a join date of Dec 2010.
Well, compared to the rest of this plan it’s quite sensible. When I saw the thread title I assumed this would be about health insurance or wanting a next-of-kin it’s next to impossible for estranged relatives to challenge.
To the OP: I wish you the best of luck, but with all due respect this sounds like a sitcom plot or an SNL sketch.
I’m (surprised? annoyed? rolling my eyes?) at all of the people who are appalled at this. Hasn’t the right to express your sexuality however you want to been an ongoing theme for the past 30 or more years? Sex is an integral part of marriage, but it ain’t the only reason for it.
Now, if the OP had said that her marriage was going to be celibate, I might question why she was getting married, but that has nothing to do with how open the marriage is, or the prevailing sexuality of either partner.
If you haven’t been in an open relationship, or known someone well who has, you probably don’t understand the dynamics and factors at all. My first marriage was semi-open (no full-penetration sex, but some actions that fall under the more liberal concepts of sex)*. My second marriage isn’t open, but that it because it’s not something that works for me (or my husband, for that matter), not because it simply can’t work.
I would much rather see a couple in an open relationship than someone having an affair.
I don’t have much more advice to offer than what has already been said, except that it is very important that you start with and maintain good emotional and relationship health, even more so than most couples. It’s easy to use your other relationships to escape problems in your primary relationship, but that’s not good for anyone involved.
*and no, we didn’t get divorced because of that, we got divorced because he was a jerk
Keep the lines of communication open between the two of you, since you seem to be the primary parties in the relationship. If anything changes, don’t let it fester: tell each other.
I find myself agreeing with this. I know the Biblical POV is kinda weird to insert here, but you leave your families and cleave unto each other. What happens between the two (or more!) of you is your business, not your families.
I really agree with this: it’s a horrible day to have a wedding. Not only is there nothing open, but people will resent being pulled from their turkey and football. Plus who gets married on a Thursday? I’d advise finding another day.
Good luck, best wishes, and COMMUNICATE! And that condom thing? Yeah. Not an option. Protect your heart and your body.
For as much as Dopers might like to cheapen marriage by adding homosexuals, they sure do take it awfully seriously, don’t they?
More serious than the 50% divorce rate amongst straighties warrants, in any damn event.
Did Hal just whoosh you or did you just make a joke of your own? I can never tell…
Maybe it’s just me, but I assumed the OP’s “Ask me anything!” implied that she’d be around to provide some responses. So far we just have lots of folks questioning her motivation, and asking legitimate, reasonable questions, with nary a return visit.
This smells like bad cheese to me.
I suspect that divorce rate includes marriages between individuals who open their marriage up to others, so don’t trip on your way up to that horse.
And I suspect .5% had agreed upon infidelity in advance.
Friends of ours are in a gay/straight marriage, but I don’t think it’s open. What she likes to say is “you be married your way, and we’ll be married our way.”
On the other hand I was seated at a wedding at a table with a couple in an open marriage. She told the rest of us all about it. A few drinks later she was away from the table and he said “we call it an open marriage but really, she sleeps at her girlfriend’s house four nights a week and I’m really lonely.”
As long as the two people in the marriage are absolutely clear with eachother about what the expectations are, who am I to say?
Best wishes.
@ OP - great for you for right now. As quickly as you two decided that this was the right thing for you right now…I’d be willing to bet that it will end in the same fashion at some point in the next few years.
Huh? 
- Actually, the divorce rate is falling.
- The 50% number is overly simplistic.
- One need not treat marriage as a necessarily life-long commitment in order to treat it as a serious commitment. Just because a marriage ends, doesn’t mean it “failed.”
I don’t know! I took him seriously that Thanksgiving is a bad day for a wedding. My intentions were good, though!
You’ve been here for 11 years and you’re surprised by the reactions? I could have scripted this thread and the responses (I’m just waiting for Diogenes to show up). For all the talk about how clearly liberal and left-leaning the Dope is, posters here are extremely conservative when it comes to anybody making choices outside the mainstream of public opinion.
To the OP, good luck. I sincerely hope this works out well for you and you and your husband both find what you’re looking for in this relationship.
Personally, the open marriage is far less of a red flag to me than the “he’s mostly gay, and I’m mostly straight”. That, to me, is a recipe for unhappiness. The OP may have rationalized how they will have a perfect loving marriage apart from the sex issue, but I think she’s talking herself into a situation where she isn’t going to get her needs met and where both of them are going to be trying to force something that isn’t compatible with who they are.
IMO, they should continue to be friends, maybe friends with occasional benefits, but each should look for a long-term partner elsewhere. I think marriage is going to poison what they have, not make it stronger.
I’m not entirely certain that gay-gay love is substantively different from gay-straight love, aside from the sex scene (though I’m a loser with no real perspective), a scene perhaps compensated by the openness scene.
Anyway, she gets bonus points for originality. Let’s not discourage innovation.