The Tricky Thing About Open Relationships Isn’t Really The Sex

Here’s the thing about navigating an open relationship.… What works sexually may not work emotionally…

By Paul Gallant

Gay men have been coupling up with each other for centuries, though until the liberation movement of the late 1960s, it was a tricky business and usually required the invention of elaborate backstories about the high cost of living and too-busy-to-settle-down single men being forced to share housekeeping responsibilities.

There were, of course, forerunners: gay activist James Egan and partner John Norris Nesbit got together in 1948 and stayed together until their deaths in 2000; they fought a landmark case at the Supreme Court of Canada (one that predated the court cases that legalized same-gender marriage) that, in 1995, resulted in protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation being covered by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

Egan and Nesbit were together for 52 years, and monogamous for more than 20 of those years. Yes, they ended up having an open relationship. How do I know their sexual arrangements? It’s in Egan’s 1998 book, Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence: My Life as a Canadian Gay Activist. “Although I don’t think either one of us had more than four or five subsequent extracurricular experiences, it was clearly understood that these would only take place where there was no threat to our relationship,” Egan recalled. “There never was. I can say that over the years, like any couple, Jack and I have had arguments and disagreements, but never over a third person.”

Studies suggest that gay couples are more likely to be consensually non-monogamous – that is, to be in open relationships – than their straight counterparts. This supposed propensity to promiscuity was one of the arguments used against legalizing same-gender marriage: gay men couldn’t keep it in their pants long enough to form relationships that were up to straight standards. Lots of arguments have been about why gay relationships are more likely to be open: men are hornier than women; gay couples are less likely to have children and so have more spare time for sexual adventures and less pressure to provide a stable home environment for kids; being of the same gender, gay couples are more realistic and compassionate about sexual desire beyond the limits of couplehood, etc. 

But what I’ve been thinking about lately is how the nature of open relationships has changed across the generations across the generations but how – even though trends are changing – gay non-monogamy, at its core, still has emotional issues.

When I’ve talked to gay couples whose relationships started before, say, 1990, there is a real consistency to the stories. Two men fell in love and were monogamous for a time: three years, five years, maybe 10 years. (Egan and Nesbit, together 20 years before opening things up, were either very much in love or had amazing self-control comparatively.) After deciding to open the relationship, many couples of this generation often have a period of “playing together,” bringing in thirds or attending sex parties together – and I do know gay couples who have continued this way for decades. More often, though, “playing together” ends and each half of the couple independently pursues his own sexual interests.

Many men from this “liberation era,” most of whom are now over 65 and have been in relationships for 30 or 40 years, didn’t come out until later in life. Even after coming out, having grown up in an exceedingly homophobic world, many of them seemed to have developed a knack for discretion about sex. This discretion can carry over into their relationships. Many long-term liberation-era couples I know don’t talk about their independent sexual adventures to their partner. Some even go as far as presenting themselves as always being monogamous, even among people who have witnessed events that suggest otherwise. Gentlemen’s agreements abound. There’s a sense that being too blatant would hurt their partner’s feelings or perhaps trigger competitiveness. Or maybe, for someone raised at a time when gay people were demonized and gay sex was evil, there’s a sense of shame about fucking around that pollutes even the most intimate bonds. The AIDS crisis that this generation lived through also probably played a part in making monogamy – or at least the appearance of monogamy – a valorous goal. Having sex with multiple people was a risk to you and your partner that was fraught and perhaps even villainous. Not something you boast about.

Cut to gay men under 40, men who came of age when the death sentence of HIV/AIDS had been tamed by treatment and PrEP. Cut to gay men whose dating life has been driven by hookup apps. In the pre-internet world, men getting to know each other might discover each other’s sexual proclivities only over time – it could be embarrassing to describe a fetish to someone you’ve just met. It could take several years for a couple’s sex life to rank up, then a few years before they are ready to try something new. But with online dating and hookup culture, we can know all of someone’s sexual interests, even fetishes, before we send the first message. Key sexual information is revealed upfront, not discovered over time. In fact, we fully expect that someone should have fully and honestly filled out all the form fields, unlocked the photos of all the essential body parts, before we send that first message.

So if you love group sex and so does the guy you’ve just started dating – and you know this because it was in his profile – why would you wait three, five or 10 years before doing that together? Sluttiness does not necessarily emerge through stages, as a couple craves novelty, but can be the spark that ignites and solidifies a relationship in the first place. Our era’s avalanche of pornography – remember that it was expensive and often hard to get until the late 1990s – gives gay men lots of ideas of what a great sex life looks like (hint: it involves lots of having sex in lots of positions with lots of different people). 

Today’s way of doing things seems much more pragmatic and honest than earlier versions of open relationships. But even a couple that has a deeply shared sense of what a mutual recreational sex life looks like still has real emotions. And jealousy, envy, betrayal and frustration can haunt the most adventurous sexual athletes. There are so many ways to have an open relationship, so many details to negotiate. What works sexually may not work emotionally. A recent post on the Askgaybros subreddit is a perfect example: “We had threesomes and group sex together and I was okay with it and even found it quite hot to watch him with someone else,” writes a 23-year-old. “After about six months together he told me he wanted to explore on his own…. Long story short, I hate it and I’m miserable. We don’t live together so I’m constantly monitoring him on Grindr and checking his Snapchat score. Every time I see him online and can kinda guess he’s had a hookup I feel my stomach sink and my face goes red and I’m miserable for the rest of the day.”

Even those of us who can easily detach emotions from our sex lives might find that our partner’s sexual behaviour, when it’s going in a different direction from our own, causes inconvenience and triggers insecurities. Done carelessly, it can raise larger questions about how much our partner respects us, desires us, understands us and wants to protect us. Sure, honesty and communication can go a long way in taking the edge off. But not always. While sometimes sex is just meaningless fun, other times it’s an expression of who we are, what we care about, what our values are. Sex can, without us realizing, reveal what we think of our partner, for the better and for the worse.

PAUL GALLANT is a Toronto-based writer and editor who writes about travel, innovation, city building, social issues (particularly LGBT issues) and business for a variety of national and international publications. He’s done time as lead editor at the loop magazine in Vancouver as well as Xtra and fab in Toronto. His debut novel, Still More Stubborn Stars, published by Acorn Press, is out now.