QI’m a 27-year-old man in a two-year relationship with a 26-year-old woman. My last partner cheated and lied and did some unforgivable things. I wasn’t blameless—I stayed with her long after I realized it wasn’t working—but our relationship did unearth a kink. After I found out about her cheating, I got extremely turned on thinking about it. I never told her.
First things first: Polyamorous relationships and open relationships are two different things. Some poly relationships are open, but many poly relationships are closed—that is, three people (or more) are involved with each other exclusively, i.e., no randoms, no romancing potential fourths, fifths, or sixths. The reverse is also true: Not all open relationships are poly. Two people in an open relationship may allow fucking around with other people with the understanding that there will be no dating or—God forbid—falling in love with anyone else.
AMaybe it’s not a control issue, AT. Maybe oral doesn’t do it for you—it can’t get you up and over them thar hills—because . . . oral doesn’t do it for you. If it were your girlfriend who had difficulty climaxing from oral alone—let’s say she required a vibrator to get her over them thar hills—the standard-issue, sex-positive, lady-empowering advice would be to accept that it’s just the way her pussy works. I would order you to incorporate the vibrator into oral and/or vaginal sex and not stress out about it. And if you were putting pressure on your girlfriend—if you were making it clear to her that this “inability” to climax from your oral skills alone bothered you, if you were having a sad each time she “failed” to climax during oral—I would slap you around for being an insecure prick.
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