I first met The Therapist towards the end of 2004. He had just moved back from Paris, and was depressed at the dating scene here. He was looking for someone to spend the rest of his life with. The Therapist was not my type at all. Overly muscular, wore fake contact lenses, more concerned with his looks than anything else, very self-centered, shaved his chest (and other things). He was also a therapist, and I’ve had issues with therapists my whole life. On top of that, he was half Spanish and didn’t think very highly of anyone that was fully Lebanese. You know the type.
We started hanging out because he was very depressed and needed a friend. But soon I began to fall for him. Well, not for him, but for what he was looking for. He wanted to build a relationship, find someone to grow old with, have someone there at all times. I liked that. He also made me laugh, and so I fell for him.
We dated for a bit less than 3 years. It was rocky at times, but overall it was very good. He told me he loved me after a few months. I told him I loved him shortly after. After a year of dating, we both got tested and stopped using condoms, at his request. He was extremely possessive, extremely jealous, and sent me a bouquet of flowers on a weekly basis at the office, always with a cute message attached. He kept telling me how I was the most important thing in his life and that he was so happy that we were together. He saw a future in us, and that reassured me.
In 2007, we broke up, for reasons which I can’t remember. That’s when things went downhill. I started noticing things that were weird. It didn’t take long for me to find out that, for the greater part of our relationship, The Therapist had been dating 3 other men. And by dating, I mean had full-fledged relationships with them. That’s right. The Therapist had 4 boyfriends at the same time. Well, technically, he had three, and he was fucking around with a fourth one.
He had developed little tricks to manage all of us. For example, he had the same nickname for all of us, so he wouldn’t mess up. He would type the same message and send it to all of us. Those weekly flowers…everyone got a bouquet.
Suffice it to say, The Therapist was a real fuck-up (and yes, he’s still a practicing therapist).
***
I’ve always thought that monogamy was the ultimate thing to aim for in life. Find your one partner, settle in with them, have endless sex, and be happy.
The Therapist made me re-question all of that. After months of depression, I decided to rethink what I had grown to believe in terms of love, relationships, and cheating. And I came to many conclusions.
Most importantly: everybody cheats.
Sooner or later, it will happen. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the person cheating on you doesn’t love you. Temptation is all around us, and to pretend like we’re too good to give in to it is arrogant and a complete lie. The truth is that we can feel horny sometime, or find someone really hot, or be mad at our partner, or in the mood to try something new. And it’s not all bad if we go for it. It really isn’t.
To talk about open relationships requires an entire post (which I’ll probably write one day), but the idea is that maybe we are not meant to be sexually monogamous. As long as it’s safe, why should it bother you that I sucked off another guy. It says nothing about the way I feel about you, my love for you, or my satisfaction with our sex life. What it means is that I was in a specific situation where sex was an option, and I went for it.
The issue with The Therapist though, I later realized, was not that he was sleeping around. That would have hurt, but not nearly as much. The issue was that he was not emotionally monogamous. That’s where the pain comes from. The fact that the I-Love-Yous, the flowers, the cute nicknames were not mine exclusively. They were shared, making them lose their significance, making them non-genuine.
And hence, my new stand: Monogamy in its current form is overrated. It needs to evolve into something that allows for emotional commitment, without physical or sexual commitment. We need to take our cocks less seriously, and our hearts more seriously. Everyone will be happier that way.
***
I hooked up with a really hot guy last week. We met on Grindr and, after a couple of days of flirting, he invited me over to his place for what was clearly going to be sex. From the pictures, I could see he was totally my type: perfect body, beautiful smile, lots of tattoos, the right amount of muscle. HAWT! He gave me directions to his place, then gave me his phone number.
Him: Here’s my number, but you can’t call it.
Me: ?
H: I have a bf
M: So I can’t call you tonight even if I get lost.
H: Tonight you can call. He’s out of the country.
M: OK. I’ll call when I’m near your house.
We ended up having great sex, then I came back home, deleted his number, and slept.
ohmyhappiness 
rola
November 14, 2012
Reads well love. iv often thought of these things too. i agree with a good deal of it but why is ok to share your body and sex with others and not emotions. why is one more valuable than the other. who says you can shut one off and not the other. same way you can find someone else “HAWT” you can find someone else who understand you and you click with. why draw the line at feelings and not the body?
I think the reason is possession. Not jealousy, but possession. Once we start looking at partners like individual people who existed before us and shall continue to after us and not treat them as possessions, and we learn to drop that “mine” feeling, the rules of the relationship game will differ, and we’ll all have much freer and more satisfactory relationships.
This would obviously be very difficult to do… history and every audio-visual and textual content ever has only thrown monogamy our way. its the only thing we know how to do which is why we do it. even though it has been a blatant failure of a method it is the easier way out. because finding a middle, or customizing the format of your relationship, actually means you and ur partner have to reflect on yourselves and your hangups, work though them and find a comfortable place for both. that requires loads of effort. so lets just say no to everyone and anything else. it really is much easier (fuck ups, heartache, and heartbreak included).
ohmyhappiness
November 14, 2012
You’re completely right, but I think that requires a maturity level that I am still very far away from. I still hold emotions at a higher level than sex, mostly because, like you said, possession is comforting. I do think there is one key way to get beyond that, and that is honesty. Not honesty in the sense of sharing every single thing that we do, but honesty in being clear about how each of us defines the relationship we are in.
ohmyhappiness
November 14, 2012
One more thought: Sex is easier to get than love. I think that’s why I think love is more important. It is more rare, and once you have it, you don’t want to let go of it.
rola
November 14, 2012
yeah but not all emotions are love. u dont immediately start loving someone else. and that love you have with ur partner started in that “click with” and “compatibility” “feel good around a person” way, the same could happen with a new person a stranger even. its not until you allow those feelings to prosper that they become love. theres a good spectrum till you reach love… so why is that spectrum off limit. maybe love isnt that difficult to find… maybe we think so because we are always banning ourselves and our partners from even thinking about it (in that dont u even fu*kin dare), and unsaid ill cut ur [insert body appendage] off if you go there.
maybe there would be a lot more love if we werent so possessive about our own love. My love. Your love. possession again.
ohmyhappiness
November 20, 2012
Too much love is not a good thing? (Isn’t that how the saying goes?)
feministarab
November 14, 2012
Okay time for me to talk! It’s funny how you wrote About this in the time where I need it the most. I disagree with what you said, for the first time eh? :p My boyfriend is in the US. We’ve been together for about 7 months now, after he left Lebanon we made an agreement that I can go out with whoever I want and he can do the same because eventually it’s all physical, we know that the only feelings we have are for each other. Yesterday he sent me text saying ” I met a very sexy half white half Asian girl that invited me for dinner at her place “. I couldn’t not cry and get upset! I know that that’s something we agreed on, but i just couldnt.
If its someone you love, you really really love, how can you handle the fact that he can be with someone else. Even if its just sex. For me I can’t bare it, I can’t tolerate with it at all. I stopped replying to his messages and calls since last night. And I won’t cause every time I read a message from him all I can think about is what he’s going to do with her. Everyone cheats, of course. But.. I don’t know, it’s not something a person should go through, and a person whos in love shouldnt do that. On the other hand, I love what happened with the guy at the end. I might even try it who knows. By the end of the day the important thing is that you’re happy and screw everyone else.
Always getting perfection from your words 🙂 keep it up R xx
ohmyhappiness
November 20, 2012
Hello Feminist Arab! Nice to hear your thoughts on here. 🙂
OK, so I understand that what you’re going through is tough, but that’s expected. We’ve grown up with a certain understanding of monogamy, and just saying we want to break that does not change years of upbringing.
There is also a difference in this case. Your boyfriend said he was having dinner with the new girl. It is not a purely sexual thing. They are getting to know each other, and that hurts. That blurs the lines between the physical and the emotional.
Regardless, I hope you’re not taking this too badly. In my opinion, you should be as honest as you can about how his actions make you feel, even if you’ve agreed to see each other people! Thanks for reading, always!
Todd Rogers
November 14, 2012
Your article was very thought provoking, even if a bit disingenuous.
Look, I too have done the open relationship thing. I hated it. There were less rules when we were monogamous for Pete’s Sake!
I had a partner for 8 1/2 years. I loved him more than I have ever loved another human being, and he fucked me over again, and again and again and again. Demanding that I acquiesce my emotions, desires, my dreams to accommodate his constant need for validation through sexual contact with me and others.
Bottom line is this, my Lebanese friend….
Anyone that would cheat on you doesn’t deserve you, if you would otherwise be monogamous in the absence of your partner’s desire to cheat or have episodic sex with random “HAWT” strangers.
Cheating is a choice. And I disagree wholeheartedly that “everyone cheats”.
I did not cheat on my man once in 8 1/2 years, though he cheated on me.
If you truly love someone, cheating is not even a thought that occurs to you.
Sure, you might be people watching while sitting at a table in some cafe or restaurant bistro and see attractive men and in your mind’s eye wonder if they’ve got a big dick or if they’re good in bed, but that’s as far as it goes. Wordless thoughts.
To put action to those thoughts is the true crime; the ultimate betrayal.
I did not dignify the daily disappointment and disillusionment I felt at always being treated as second class in my own relationship with the idea that I could rightfully end the relationship and find someone that will treat me with the respect I felt I more than deserved.
I stayed in that relationship until I finally realized that I had to love myself more than I loved the idea of being with him, warts and all, and it was then I gained the strength to end the relationship and take my life back.
I have not regretted that decision, even as 3 1/2 years after the break up, I still miss him and the good times we had together.
NEVER COMPROMISE YOUR PRINCIPLES IF YOU TRULY LOVE SOMEONE AND NEVER EXPECT LESS OF YOUR PARTNER IN RETURN!
Start there.
ohmyhappiness
November 20, 2012
But if we redefine monogamy from the start, then the concept of cheating changes entirely, and we are less likely to get hurt. We get hurt because it is something that we are taught is wrong. I’m arguing for redefining the wrong and the right, and for understanding that it is completely natural to want to have sex with more than one person. I don’t understand why falling in love with someone should put restrictions on our attraction to other people.
Rania
November 19, 2012
Its a good thing that therapist wasnt a murderer. What conclusion would you have reached then? I have been through many phases and one of them was the open relationships phase. I strongly believed that to keep yourself alive you needed open relationships and that those would only work if you are 100 percent honest. Then after a while i decided to be 100 percent honest with myself. Truth is, i only wanted open relationships to protect myself against hurt or to make sure my partner was honest. I would pretend i wasnt hurt, and i would always have cool reactions despite being torn inside…just to have the whole truth. To control my life. Truth is whenever i was in love, i would never keep my end of the open relationship deal. Fantasising is one thing, acting is an another. I want to be honest always. if i fuck up, i want to admit my mistake and apologise. however one thi is for sure, i will never not want to touch another person. And i never want another person to touch my partner. My partner does not belong to me. I cannot make him feel or do things he/she does not want to do. I can accept their choices and love them with their past, with their actions, with all their thoughts, love our differences, love who they are, as they are exactly. Its not about possession. Not about jealousy. Jealousy can be controlled. Its about love. It is easier to cheat or have polyamoury. Monogamy is the harder choice. But if you are with your love, you will understand your urges, accept and control them. You will respect your partner and his or her heart, and his cock or lack of and have the balls to be honest about all your thoughts and discuss them. Marriage is not one act or a pcs of paper. To me, you can be dating someone and be married to them. Marriage means monogamy. It means finding your someone and being blissfully happy. I dont like the word settle. And i dont know about endless sex. The ultimate thing to aim for in life i find, is to keep yourself alive and evolving, and to always find it worthwhile to fight for your relationship. Ups and downs are part of life. Cheaters never prosper and thank god we’ re not all cheaters.
ohmyhappiness
November 20, 2012
Honesty is key. No matter what you decide, you need to decide it with your partner. Not by yourself. I wouldn’t force my boyfriend to agree with my thoughts on monogamy, and I certainly wouldn’t sleep around if we agreed that I shouldn’t. But what I’m saying is that monogamy the way we know it now is not realistic. It forces us to limit our love, our sex, and our relationships. Why would you want to put limits on anything/anyone you love?
Rania
November 19, 2012
Shit should have proof read. many mistakes but need to clarify this one: I will never want to touch another person not i will never not want…..
Rami
November 20, 2012
I have voiced this same opinion many times! Every time I do it, I get in trouble with my boyfriend and with my gay friends even.
Can you offer a course on the subject so I can register everyone, and save me the quarrels 😉
At any rate, I agree, I think sexual monogamy and emotional monogamy are two separate things. I even have my theories for evolutionary reasons of our sexual monogamy that no longer apply to heterosexual couples, not to even mention homosexual couples.
harleymc
January 14, 2013
Are you completely sure The Therapist wasn’t/isn’t emotionally monogamous (to himself)?