Blogging today about relationships seems so over done and dull, but it's not exactly conventional relationships I'm musing on. I very recently entered a relationship with someone, obviously. Now this person is absolutely brilliant, very smart, very funny and completely out of my league, but we have quite a connection. That's important to note once I get to the response I've gotten from being in this relationship.
So this guy is a sweetheart really. Absolutely perfect even with his imperfections. I met him overseas and since then we have Skyped, texted and called each other frequently. I ended up getting propositioned and agreed. So that's the beginning of the complexities of our relationship, long distance. Personally, it doesn't bother me at all. Physical desire is one thing, but to lust after someone's mind and soul is quite another. For me, attraction usually involves those latter elements, I don't really focus on the physical until much later.
Obviously I was overjoyed at being paired with someone so brilliant and above me, I was smiling for days. However, there's a bit of a twist. You see, this relationship involves another lovely woman, who was once this guy's girlfriend. An open relationship it is. That sounds kind of bizarre, but he was open and honest about their "friends with benefits" partnership and frankly, I have no reason not to believe him. He asked me if that was okay, with the possibility of other women being involved, and after quite a few drinks I agreed.
There are benefits to this sort of relationship, no matter what people generally believe. There is honesty, affection and tolerance, which is very important. I think the biggest aspect is compromise though. I can compromise on this because I do feel quite guilty about being here while he's over there. Most importantly though, the other woman or possibly, women, are people who can offer things I can't and maybe it's the distraction I'm after. I like a certain amount of distance to be honest, I can't reveal everything about myself except to the closest of friends, maybe they can. It also disguises a lot of my imperfections for the foreseeable future. Not that I'm lying to him, but I'm never completely myself around people I fancy a lot, it gets too personal that way. I can't do that.
I have had to deal with a wide variety of reactions to my relationship though, mostly negative ones. I can understand people who think it's quite wrong for one person to have another and myself to be faithful, but those people are dead wrong. We're both faithful and I'm not a complete idiot. If I can deal with it, other people can suck it up. The worst response though were people who assume you have to be physically near someone to be in a relationship. I think some people need to control themselves, I just do not care that much for physicality anyway. Besides, I'm not expecting a long-term romance or something life-changing to occur, but I will settle with what I'm offered. People like to feel wanted sometimes.
Basically the sum of all this is just to say open relationships can work (I hope so anyway) and aren't all bad. Would I prefer not to be in one? Yes, but we all have to make sacrifices. I never thought I would be a part of one, I'm much too shy to do these sorts of things, so I'm not going to go out and find somebody else on the side, I couldn't do that, but I have only a few problems with someone that does. Not that I'll tell him that, he's happy and he's lovely and the most important thing, he actually fancies me too. That's different and because of that, the other details I can ignore.
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