I had always figured thatcheatingon my partner was sort of impossible since weopened our relationship.
Flirting (for us) fine, porn (for us) fine.
But now we did the thing we didnt used to do.
“I wondered what it was about this incident that made it cheating rather than, say, breaking a rule.“The Fall of Man,1616. Artist Hendrik Goltzius.
And we told each other all about it.
Sex, before we went open, had in some ways become a site of tension.
So Id never even thought aboutcheatingbecause by definition, surely, it didnt exist.
Well, because I sort of had cheated on him.
And Id sort of known I was doing it too.
Not cheating, but a sexy betrayal, perhaps?
I didnt necessarily derive pleasure from that fact.
Instead, and perhaps this is just as bad, I just didnt think about him.
I was havinggreat sexwith someone I was really into.
See, in our open relationship we have onerule: No sleeping with someone else in our bed.
We tried it once at the very beginning.
And so we stopped doing that, my partner totally obliging without a second of resistance.
Then four years passed.
But never in our bed.
This was your rule!
my partner rightly said after I told him about the guy Id brought back to our place.
Perhaps Id told him way too casually, sort of off the cuff.
In my defenseand as I reminded my partnerwe had been talking recently about perhaps changing our bedroom rule.
Its all just quite a lot of admin, really.
My partner explained that just because wed floated a change, I wasnt free to act on it.
In monogamy the protective choice is to not sleep with anyone else.
Our one protection, our control rule, was about not sleeping with others in our bed.
He told me he felt Id prioritized my libido over his feelings.
I told him I felt sorry.
That I felt guilty, which didnt really help.
And I told him I understood, but I felt surprised that he had used the termcheating.
And I think its actually the same across all relationships, monogamous, anarchic, open, whatever.
Cheating is when we cheat people out of somethingout of choice, agency, knowledge.
In honesty, I knew my partner and I would be okay.
I dont wish for moral or ethical perfection from my partner, and he doesnt wish it from me.
For us, our bedroom remains sacredor perhaps its our agreement thats sacred, whatever that may be.
