This came in my DMs yesterday and I believe the question is sincere. This person gave me permission to answer on main bc I’m guessing a lot of people also may not understand open relationships.
So settle in, this is gonna be a long one.

Let me start by saying, I am absolutely 100% still madly in love with my husband. I would take a bullet for him. He’s my best friend (I always hated when people said this until I understood) and he makes me smile when I think about him.

To understand my point of view we need to go back a thousand years or so. The institute of marriage and the idea of monogamy are social constructs designed to subjugate women, both are founded in misogyny.

In the Bible men had multiple wives and in the early days of the church priests could marry. Even in recent times women who had sex before marriage are considered sluts but men are encouraged to sow their oats. Throughout history a woman’s reputation could be destroyed by a rumor

But a man who had taken many women was a gentleman. In almost all religions in the past and still many today, women are expected to be subservient to their husbands. In the US women have only had the right to vote for 100 years.

The church, and society learned early on that if you can control a persons most basic functions you can control them. Therefore controlling sex was imperative to the overall strength of church (and the states) power over its members.

So teaching your people that sex is sinful, marriage is one man, one woman and ostracizing those who don’t adhere gives those who do adhere righteousness in their adherence to the state/church rules. But this only ever really applied to women (and gays)

Gays until very recently in the US were considered mentally ill. Until 20 years ago we could be thrown in jail for having sex, chemically castrated, and still in many parts of the world put to death, simply for being gay. Therefore we exist outside society.

By coming out, exposing ourselves as gay and living our truth we are already subversive to the norms. Since we are already outside the norm we have no obligation to live by the norms. We can literally make up our own rules.

Some still adhere to societal norms and want monogamy, kids, white picket fence etc, and that’s perfectly acceptable. However, many of us feel no pressure to accept societal norms, and that is also ok. I know monogamists, polyamorists, triads, quads etc and they are all awesome

So, for us, we have found that sex and love are completely separate. We have both had “boy crushes” where we have a boy who we are basically dating, we both have all the extramarital sex we desire and we are both still madly in love with each other.

At the end of the day, there is no one in the world I would rather snuggle up with at night. We both actually sleep better at night with the other next to us. We are the first person the other calls with good news and we rely on each other to make each other’s life better.

We (gays) invented gay marriage, we can also invent what it means to each of us without a need to adhere to the tenets of straight marriage.