Choosing Me: Honesty, Open Relating and the Promise I Keep to Myself

The truth is, one of the biggest reasons I chose open relating was because infidelity was so present in my early years of relating.

I was someone who was keen and open to sharing, even from the very beginning. With my first boyfriend and my best friend, I was open to sharing love, because I simply loved to share love. I never really subscribed to the usual monogamous conditioning, even from an early age.

But as I moved into my later teens, I kept meeting the same contradiction. The boys I was with were possessive of me, and yet they still cheated and went behind my back. I would find out later, and I was always so curious about why. Why hide it, when we could have just talked about it beforehand and set it up together? But that wasn't the norm for anyone else around me.

It wasn't the connection itself that broke me each time. It was the hiding, the discovering, and the slow realisation that the person I trusted had chosen secrecy over honesty with me. It was devastating, and it happened often enough that I began to wonder whether this was simply what loving someone meant.

Becoming my own partner

In my early twenties, I made a decision that changed the course of my life. I decided to be my own partner.

I chose to create a solid primary relationship with myself, emotionally bonded, resourced and held from within, and to keep my other connections to sex and casual relating. I wasn't closing my heart. I was building a home inside myself that no one else could leave or betray.

This was before I even knew the words polyamory or open relating. I didn't have the language yet, only a deep sense that there had to be another way of loving. It was from here that I began to educate myself, and slowly found words for something I had already started living.

This was so incredibly beneficial for my relationship with myself. I learnt what I want and how to go after it. I learnt my limits and my nos, and how to honour them without needing anyone else's permission. I learnt to be good to my word, especially the words I speak to myself. And slowly, that built something I had never had in relationship before, a deep sense of trust and solidness in me.

I am so proud of the 20-year-old who decided to do this. She knew she deserved a relationship where her trust was safe, and she began by becoming that relationship herself.

When it happened again

Years on, I am me. I am solid. I go after what I want, I know my limits and my nos, and I'm good to my word.

I didn't expect to experience cheating again. Somewhere in me, I believed open relating was the way past it. If there's freedom to connect with others, and honesty is built into the foundation, why would anyone need to hide?

I was wrong. It still happens.

Open relationships are built on agreements, often very clear and carefully held ones, and those agreements can still be broken. A connection can still be hidden, a line can still be crossed in secret, and the truth can still arrive after the fact. And when it does, it lands in the same old place in the heart. It is still betrayal, and it is still devastating.

I can understand why it happened, and I hold compassion, and still a lot of love, for my ex. Humans are complex, and fear and desire can lead us to places we didn't intend to go. But understanding isn't the same as allowing.

Honesty is the foundation

For me, honesty and transparency are an absolute must in open relating. They aren't a nice extra or something to work towards over time. They are the very ground that open relating stands on. Without them, openness becomes a cover for the very thing it was meant to move beyond.

This is not something I waver on.

And so, even though I was absolutely heartbroken, I left.

I still chose me

What I keep coming back to is this. I kept my word to myself, even when it was tested with someone I deeply loved. The young woman who promised herself, all those years ago, that her trust would be safe with her, was met by the woman I am now, and I didn't abandon her.

Leaving didn't feel strong in the moment. It felt like grief, like walking away from something I had hoped for with my whole heart. But underneath the heartbreak, there was something steady, a quiet knowing that I can trust myself, because when it truly mattered, I chose me.

I have me.

I always have.

And I know that, in the long term, that is what matters most.

If you're navigating betrayal, in a monogamous or open relationship, I hope you know that your relationship with yourself is the one place you can always come home to, and that keeping your word to yourself, even through heartbreak, is its own kind of love. Warm regards, Narla.