My ex-fiancé and I were engaged for three years. We are both bisexual and at one time we were best friends. We started out with an understanding that we could discretely see other people to meet our same-sex needs. I was fine with her flirting with other women and even sleeping with them. We looked at porn together commenting on the hotter people. Things seemed to be fine. She had a GLBT classified paper in her apartment that she had been scanning. After a bit I picked up the paper to casually look at the men's section. When she saw me reading that she got upset. She told me to put it down. I don't take being ordered around very well so I kept on reading. Things blew up into a big argument and she asked me to leave. This is just one of the spats that we had but it seems like it was the beginning of the end for our relationship. Is this type of jealousy just a bisexual thing or does it happen to GLT folks as well?
Just a personal opinion, but I don't believe any type of relationship has a monopoly on jealousy or is spared from it. People are vulnerable in a relationship; open relationships must accept also being open to potential bouts of jealousy, despite agreed-upon parameters...The heart is not the head, one can rationalize such relationships, but it's much harder to control the feelings that go along with them.
Ha. I don't take being ordered around either. Hence, I've always been single. Sounded like there was a real double-standard there. Maybe you're better off for not being in that relationship. It goes right back to the typical bisexual double standard about men and women, especially in how the genders view the entitlement of the other gender to have those sexual experiences.
I feel the need to point out that there is a BIG difference between "discrete" and reading the personal ads in front of her. I see that as more of a disrespect issue than a jealousy issue. Jealousy happens everywhere, to people of all orientations. It's not even remotely a bi thing or a striaght thing or a gay thing.
Jealousy is by no means limited to same-sex relationships. But keep in mind, it is very, very difficult for any couple to make an open relationship work. It requires a tremendous amount of trust, and complete comfort and confidence in yourself to let your partner have sex with someone else. Additionally, there's a very real possibility for one of you to have one of these "sex-only" hookups turn into real feelings. That's one of the reasons that therapist and sex counselor Joe Kort generally does not recommend open relationships unless and until a couple has been together, stable and monogamous for 3 years or more, and even then, only with very clearly defined rules and boundaries.
