Open Relationships Don’t Effing Work

Have you ever listened to a couple in an open relationship explain it to people? Your face is always screwed up. I’ll be flat out honest with you, I’ve never believed both people when they explain it. Will and Jada have been explaining their relationship to people for years. Black folk pushed back in their seats trying to figure out if that’s something they could ever do, make it easy on yourself, you can’t. But since like Day 1, I’ve always thought, does anybody remember that Jada is a lesbian? Remember that episode when Tupac came to visit Jada on Different World? As soon as he appeared on the screen just about everybody watching busted out laughing. They knew wasn’t no way that little girl was dating Tupac, she wasn’t into men like “that”.

Anyway, here’s the gist behind open relationships; basically since you never stop being attracted to other people there’s no reason to suppress your inner desires. There’s a chance they’ll come out at any moment, so rather than running from your feelings, you just manage them in a mature manner. Now this was best explained to me by my boy Columbus, “That’s like those guys who swear up and down they not gay, but then his wife come home and catch him with his ass up in the air. No reason for him to be trapped in the closet, just bring your ass out so we can all see you. Not ass first though.” A few things, we call him Columbus because he’s horrible with directions even when holding the GPS. Two, it wasn’t until we had this conversation that I realized that Trapped in the Closet was about more than R. Kelly being trapped in a closet. Point is, when you suppress your real feelings ain’t no telling when they will show their face.

You should try it. ;)

But let’s be honest, nobody starts out looking for an open relationship. If you in your heart of hearts tell yourself from jump, “I’m going to be in an open relationship” you’re full of shit. It goes down three ways, and only three ways. You are with a person and they keep cheating so you say, f*ck it, let’s open it up. You was with a person and you cheated on them and couldn’t stop and said, the next relationship I’m in, open it up. You want to be with someone so much that you are willing to do whatever you have to do to be with that person. When you want a relationship with them, they say, “I’m only looking for an open relationship” and you go for it because it’s your only chance. You have never in your life heard of someone who was born with the desire to be in an open relationship, a legitimate open relationship, if such thing really exists.

Read: NOT HAPPY

Real talk, the best thing I can tell you is that you can never really have trust in an open relationship. It’s a pseudo way of approaching the problem. You continuously tell yourself that you can do it, but in reality, you can’t. You create what we like to call a “false sense of security.” “I feel like since you’ll tell me the truth about something that makes you a trustworthy person.” Do you know how ambiguous the phrase, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” was? Hella ambiguous, enough to keep the President of the most powerful country in the world employed. Trust, your best case scenario is that you don’t trust each other. I tried that with women for a while and that worked as long as I didn’t care about them all that much. I told myself and the women I dated, “I don’t trust you, I don’t have a need to. When you aren’t here, I don’t believe sh*t you say and I operate under that.” It worked until I actually had feelings for a girl and then I really did care about her when she wasn’t around me. Then you have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in your relationship perhaps. DUMB AS HELL. Do you know what it’s like to be in the Garden of Eden and it’s a peach tree in the middle and you stuck picking berries and figs? It’s torture! That’s what “don’t ask, don’t tell” is, it’s the Tree of Life. The only worked for the US military; it would never work for regular people like us. In the military they give young Black men guns and tell them to go shoot up a village in Africa and that’s what happens. In Compton they give young Black men guns and tell them to go shoot up HSBC and they say, “Wait, why?” Monique probably has never asked her husband about the women he sleeps with on the side, but it creeps in her mind every now and then. That’s basically what happens, it keeps creeping in your mind, over and over again until finally one day, “BAM, you’re drunk and you think, hell why not go through that phone on the coffee table?” That’s the damn Tree of Life right there.

An open relationship is like Pandora’s Box, or more accurately described as a capitalistic relationship. And we all know that you can’t regulate Capitalism, there’s no way to control chaos. You just have to let it go. One you open your relationship up and you agree not to be monogamous, then you can’t try and regulate free trade. That’s nonsensical. I can see it now, “oh because you dipped out on the relationship on Wednesdays and that’s supposed to be our day, I’m setting up a P*ssy embargo.” Do you logically think that’s going to work? It’s a damn open relationship, the man will just go eff another chick. And you can’t be mad about that? You know why, because he’s allowed to! And please don’t think I haven’t thought about men in this situation who think it’s a good idea to open their relationship up. It’s all fun and games until you slip in a little too easily one time. Yeah, I said that shit. Men need to stop acting like we are not territorial as all hell. The only way someone like Will Smith agrees to let Jada go outside of their relationship is because it’s supposed to be so she can sleep with other women. The second he found out that Marc Anthony was not another woman, he went bat shit. No man wants anyone parking in his garage. None. Not me, not you, not any of us. You ever have a FWB that you keep around for years. (If you are a man, that means a chick that you mess with but you know in your head she really want to be with you. She willing to take a piece of you, rather than nothing at all, so you just give her FWB.) What happens to your ego when you find out she had a man for the last six months that you decided not to talk to her because you were banging some other broad? It shrivels and then all of a sudden she ain’t all that attractive no more. You cannot regulate chaos. Women and men are not able to deal with open relationships like that.

This is what Babyface was talking about in "Our Feelings"

Here’s a moment of real talk. ALL and I mean ALL open relationships are inherently fucked up. Excuse my French. (I never knew why they said that phrase until I realize how disrespectful the French are.) Let’s review, Scenario 1: It’s two people who are very attractive and can’t control themselves. For example, Will Smith and Jada. Will Smith has been married to Jada for how many years and each time he comes out with a movie, women want to sleep with him a little more. Will Smith hadn’t even gotten his trailer setup before Charlize was like, “I’m gon’ get me some of that chocolate pie.” Jada Pinkett is on TNT and people don’t even care about Southland, or Southside, or Southeast, whatever the hell that show with Regina King’s single as a last cigarette ass. Soon as Marc Anthony walked on set he was like, “I’m going get me some of that chocolate pie.” Scenario 2: One person is a whole lot more attractive than the other and has the option of having multiple partners. Mo’nique wanted to be married and she didn’t want to be married to a man that was wack. For as much shit she talks on stage, if her man was a hobbit, it would reflect badly on her. So she went and got a man who was willing to be with her, but basically said, I still need to be with other women because this cool and all, I appreciate you letting me live here and spend your money. However, there’s a whole lot of living I could be doing right now if I wasn’t with you. Scenario 2 is just like Scenario 3, except it’s for people like Mo’Nique who just want the marriage more than the fidelity. And we all know some pathetic ass women who want to be married so much they see past all of their man’s faults. They tell themselves they are focused on the war and not the battle, but really what they are saying is, “please don’t leave me.” Listen, when you were 4 years old and your mother dropped you off at day care, you held onto her leg for dear life. You knew that it wasn’t ever going to be as good as it was right here. You ain’t have no homework, you could speak a different language when you wanted to cuss out your moms about something, you didn’t have to piss where they told you, you basically was above the law. But you held onto momma because you didn’t think it could be any better than it was right then and there. Never mind the fact that the person who causes you the most pain is your mother who keeps making you take naps and sleep when you want to go see new shit. Think about that for a second.

So glad I found this exact picture to put it in perspective.

Are you starting to see why I say there’s no way an open relationship works? I hope so. Here’s my suggestion, this is my unadulterated suggestion for people who are interested in open relationships: Just cheat. People cheat every damn day and they get away with it. Men cheat on their wives and the wives know about it and don’t say nothing about it. I know a woman who grew up watching her dad screw the whole township, when she got old enough that she felt she could take a solid jab from her mother, you know what she did? She asked her, “Ma, do you know that Daddy is cheating on you?” Her mother told her, “Yes I know he been f*cking that lady for years.” See, now that’s a functional ass open relationship. Wives cheat on their husband ALL the time and nothing happens. I know a guy who was arguing with his wife at a gala. I’m like, “Dog you making a scene and shit.” His response was, “No I’m not. You see that guy over there that my wife is hugging all over? That’s the dude she’s f*cking. I mean give me a break, don’t have me out here looking like a fool.” Perfect ass open relationship. Or… just maybe you can cheat and not get caught. Heaven forbid that happens. But in reality, people get messy. You know why they get messy because they get lazy. I thought about this over the weekend; you can have a side piece, you can do that. It’s the fact that you don’t want to do all that you have to do to maintain on TWO relationships. A woman told me the only reason why she didn’t cheat on her husband was because she had to put up with his shit and she didn’t want to do it twice. She cheated once with a younger guy and that little immature brat started hitting her up all the time and that wasn’t part of the deal. I was like, “maybe you should have told him that up front so you didn’t have that problem.” But just to bring it back full circle, if you want an open relationship, since that makes no sense, just freaking cheat like an adult. You do what you gotta do to not get caught and you move on from there. In the end, your relationship won’t be as volatile as Pam & Tommy, and you can deal with cheating on an ad-hoc basis as needed.

As I close, I just want to say, I don’t think that cheating is a wise thing. I just think that if you’re going to cheat, do it like all the rest of us. It’s like when someone drops a mixtape. I can’t respect a hot mixtape like I can a hot album. I want to see that you can do it like all the rest of the people you compete with. Anybody can get someone to listen if it’s free. Anyone can find multiple people to sleep with if it’s allowed. I respect that woman who can get away with it even though it takes hard work and determination. Prison Break would have been a wack TV show if the front gate to the jail was open. It was the fact that it was closed and it wasn’t allowed that made it a great show. Open relationships are like halfway houses, they don’t have any real purpose. Just let the man go, or keep him locked down, you can’t have it both ways.

And then there were three...