Proposing an Open Relationship Is Not Cheating
Proposing an open relationship to your partner is not cheating. You may be upset about it. It may not be what you want, and you'd be perfectly within your right to break up with them and find someone else who can give you monogamy. But your partner has objectively not cheated, if they are just opening a conversation with you about proposing a change to your relationship, and they haven't actually done anything with anyone else.
“I know you want kids, and I’ve just realised that I might not.”
“I know you want monogamy, and I’ve just realised that I might not.”
What’s the difference between those two situations? One of them is viewed as cheating, when it shouldn’t be.
We live in this delusion that if you're in a monogamous relationship that you'll never be attracted to anyone again, or never fantasise about anyone else ever again. And there's a very, very big difference between thinking about something and actualizing something. If you consider your partner's thoughts to be cheating and not just their actions, I'm sorry you're setting yourself up for failure in your relationships.
People are allowed to change in relationships, and that may mean that they're changing to a different direction from you, but they are objectively allowed to do that. You cannot reasonably expect your partner to be the same person they were 5, 10 or 20 years ago. Unfortunately, sometimes that means you need to break up, but that doesn't mean that your partner cheated.
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