I Yearn for a Soulmate. So Why Do I Also Want to Open My Relationship?

In a society that puts profit before people, it’s hard not to feel broken-hearted. Landlords split friends, nuclear families isolate parents, bosses burn out workers. But fear not – Red Flags is here to tend to your troubled hearts. 

In Novara Media’s anti-capitalist anti-advice column, resident therapist Sophie K Rosa marries their ongoing training in psychoanalysis with ideas from their book, Radical Intimacy, to respond to your questions. Unlike other agony aunts, Sophie doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but they could help you unlock new ways of thinking. 

To submit a dilemma to Sophie, please fill out this form.

I’m in a stable, monogamous relationship, but I yearn for an open one. This longing might serve as an excuse for me to engage in sexual and emotional connections with others. I don’t feel guilty about it, because I believe people have the right to explore all possibilities in relationships. If my partner can’t accept it, I simply won’t tell him. I don’t know if this is toxic.

My heart struggles between the idea of polyamory and the mindset of monogamy. I can also become very obsessed and dependent in my relationships with others, losing myself. It seems a part of me still yearns for the ultimate, singular love. Yet I live in a society where it seems many people are experimenting with polyamory and open relationships, and I agree that love shouldn’t be confined to any single form.

My heart is torn. I’m unsure what true love really is now, uncertain about my relationship with my partner. I can’t understand why I can love him while doing these things with other people.

– An Unscratched Itch

I am interested in your idea of longing as an “excuse”. I can’t quite make sense of it – can you, I wonder? You write that you yearn for an open relationship, and that this is why you are having relationships your partner doesn’t know about, and likely wouldn’t accept. I can see how you have formulated your longing as an excuse – but do you really buy it? It seems to me that, whether you were intrigued by the notion of agreed-upon non-monogamy or not, you might be pursuing these relationships without your partner’s knowledge. Does your unfulfilled yearning for an open relationship make your behaviour feel more acceptable, somehow?

You “don’t know if this is toxic”. The word “toxic” gives me pause, in part because of its proliferation in online therapy speak. Something toxic is poisonous; it can contaminate, even destroy. The way the term is employed in social media discourse about relationships is often black-and-white; human errors of judgement, moral lapses, ordinary-but-difficult reactions, are piled into the category of toxic. Sometimes, this toxic waste is the real, imperfect stuff of relationships. There is no knowing whether what you are doing is “toxic” – but I would ask you, how does it feel? And how do you think it might feel to your partner, should they find out?

What does seem certain is that you are experiencing immense internal conflict. Some people might be more tuned in to it, or articulate it more, or suffer more as a result – but we all want opposing things; we all experience opposing feelings. You want an open relationship and a monogamous one. You want your partner and don’t want him. You love your partner, yet act in ways that seem unloving. In a certain way, all this might be considered rather normal – some of psychoanalysis’s most helpful ideas, in my opinion, are that we are divided subjects, ultimately confused about what we want, with no real essence other than that which we create. What to do with that in mind?

It might be worth examining why you feel no guilt about the relationships you explore without your partner’s knowledge. You write that you feel no guilt because you believe it is your right, but I do wonder how far this conviction takes you. If you really believed that people ought to be able to do whatever they please in their relationships, why did you (presumably) agree to monogamy? Or a committed relationship of any kind? Your absence of guilt could mean many things.

I am also curious about your enjoyment, where you might be seeking it and why. Is there something you are seeking in these other people that you would rather experience outside of your partnership than cultivate within it? Or things that your partner cannot offer you? I am also wondering about the role of transgression. It is worth noting that even if your relationship were open, it would likely be subject to an agreement about limits. Might you be drawn to supersede that agreement, too? Would transgression be enjoyable if it were not private?

I get the sense that your question might be less about (non-)monogamy than it seems – but I’ll spend a moment on that topic regardless. Your “heart is torn” over this matter. Would it help to consider that many people’s might be? I don’t say this to minimise your pain, but to situate it in the context of other people’s psyches. Certainly, people experience such conflict in vastly different ways – for some, psychic defences might render it essentially indiscernible. You seem to be playing it out in real time.

Perhaps more important than a binary decision between polyamory or monogamy might be the question of how you want to relate to others. It seems that autonomy is important to you, but in this instance, it might be at the expense of honesty and your partner’s feelings. If your partner “can’t accept” this kind of involvement with others, I would imagine he would feel hurt to know you have been pursuing it regardless. Do you plan on telling him the truth?

I agree with you, to an extent, that “people have the right to explore all possibilities in relationships”, but when enjoyment comes at someone else’s expense, I think we have reason to pause. Our lives are bound up with others, and in a close relationship, we generally hold some power to impact another’s experiences for better and for worse. Only you can decide what meaning to make of your actions, and only you can decide what you might value, going forward.