I've written on here about my quest to get more friends, including posts about Girlfriend Social and living a more fulfilled life, but I haven't yet written about the site that has made a really big difference to me - OkCupid. I don't really feel the need to explain how OkCupid works, but I was attracted to it mostly because it's free, but also because it has a reputation for having a huge, and fairly young, number of users.
I joined on a whim, but got quite into writing my profile, and fairly quickly went from lurking on the profiles of cute people without messaging them to actually writing and replying to messages. Lots of the people who I messaged didn't get back to me, but I've found myself being much more ok with that than I'd have ever expected. I've not historically been great with rejection, this is linked to the social anxiety thing of thinking people are just pretending to like me, but it's a lot easier on the internet. So a few of my messages get ignored, or conversations fizzle out, because it's online it feels very low-stakes, there are always more cute people to message.
The next step of OkCupid improving my socialisation and confidence was actually meeting people for dates, or kind of dates, I spent a lot of time trying to work out if I was on a date or not. I met up with four people over the course of a few weeks, including a couple who I've seen since as friends, and every time it was much better than I was expecting it to be. The first time was nerve-wracking, even meeting someone for lunch was a huge deal to me, but I've enjoyed myself so much. I've been a bit starved for female companionship, and OkCupid has changed that so much. I've had conversations about make up and feminism! I've sat by the Thames talking about having a changing sexual identity and being poly! A few months ago I didn't know anyone who I could do these things with,
and perhaps it's ironic that a dating site has helped me find some
really good friends, but I'm ok with that.
There have been some not so great moments too. I've spent some time not having my profile available for men to see, because I was so bored of getting either one word messages, or at the other extreme, constant requests for threesomes and long, sexually explicit fantasies. They used to upset me, but I'm getting a much thicker skin now. I've also worked out that the appropriate response is snarky reply, followed by blocking the guy, and it is always a guy.
Not all of the men who have messaged me have been like that though, many have been perfectly nice and it is not their fault that I've been generally uninterested. I have met up with one guy from the site, and it's was the most date-like date that I went on, so I have been using it in it's intended way. I've had a couple of conversations where people have expressed surprise about me using a dating site mostly for friendship, but I've found it pretty easy to carve out my own little niche. Not only have I met plenty of people who are interesting in pursuing friendship if nothing more comes out of the date, but I've also met people interested in more, despite the fact I'm in a relationship.
Though I didn't know when I joined there is quite an impressive polyamorous community on OkCupid, possibly helped by the fact you can set your relationship as 'seeing someone' while still using the site to meet people, and I've seen quite a few couples who both us the site, and link to each others profiles. Not only that, but it's fairly LGBT friendly (though could do with more sexuality and gender options) and with users able to add questions there is the oportunity to show a preference for ethic non-monogamy which affects your matches, increasing the chance of meeting like-minded people. It's because of OkCupid that I've met other poly people, been more confident in talking about my own polyamoury and been to a poly-friendly club night. Again, more unexpected, but amazing, benefits.
I know a lot of people who read this post won't be surprised by anything I've said, I'm preaching to the converted to some extent, and there will probably be people reading this I've met through OkCupid. That just provides more evidence of how great the site has been for me, it has changed my life, and for the better, in expected and unexpected ways. So, OkCupid, I love you!
Thursday 12 September 2013
Tuesday 3 September 2013
A natural progression.
I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend for four years. We've not lived in the same city for most of that time, I've has two distinct periods of mental illness, there's been family problems and deaths, we're both had periods of unemployment or being unhappy in our jobs. Despite that we've been happy. We hardly argue, we talk all the time, he really is my best friend. To be honest we act more like a lovey-dovey couple who have been together a few months.
However, in the past few months there has been a big change in our relationship. It's never been a jealous relationship, in fact it has never been explicitly monogamous and one of us checking out another person is by no means a big deal. In fact, it often leads to jokes about how my boyfriend has a 'type', it's very easy for me to tell in a room of people who will catch his attention, he can do the same about me. Early on in our relationship he made out with another girl, when my boyfriend told me he was really worried I'd break up with him, but I really didn't mind. I can get jealous, very occasionally, but was not at all in this case, it just isn't really something that happens to me.
Although this incident was not repeated I think it stuck with both of us. A few months ago I turned 26, marking 10 years since I had any kind of sexual or romantic contact with a woman. My boyfriend has always said he wouldn't want to stop me experiencing this side of my sexuality, but for some reason this began to seem more urgent to both of us. Our relationship was clearly not going anywhere, but neither was my desire to be with a woman. I had also said I wanted my first time having sex with a woman to be just me, not a threesome, which my boyfriend respected and understood. With some discussion we moved from an implicit agreement I could have sex with a woman to an explicit one.
I joined OkCupid, which has been a revelation. I met up with a couple of people, meetings that turned out to just be friendly but also made me feel a lot more confident about what I wanted. It was around that time that my boyfriend and I had a discussion about fairness, about how I could sleep with another person but he couldn't. We also talked about what would happen if I met someone I really liked, who I wanted more than friendship or sex with. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but suddenly it seemed like the obvious thing to open up our relationship, to stop being at all monogamous.
He also joined OkCupid, both our profiles are very honest about our non-monogamy, and discussing people we're talked to or met through it has become part of our regular conversations. I've also done a lot of reading about polyamoury and non-monogamy, the internet is excellent for this, and it turns out I know a surprising amount of people who are ethically non-monogamous. One of these is possibly my closest female friend, she has a husband and a boyfriend, and is a real inspiration to me. We've talked quite a lot about her non-monogamy, and mine, and it's been really interesting and helpful. In fact everyone who I have talked to about non-monogamy has been, I feel like I've learned so much in the last few weeks.
This is the part that is hard to write, because I am very aware of respecting other people's privacy. All I can say is that my boyfriend and I's non-monogamy is no longer theoretical, and the whole experience has been both better and easier than I was expecting. There is no jealousy or insecurity, and for everyone involved there has been good communication.
I understand that my boyfriend and I are at the start of this journey, and though it has been overwhelmingly positive so far there are likely to be bad times. Already things have happened to change the dynamics we thought we would have - I mentioned that there is an explicit agreement we can both sleep/ have relationships with other women (he's straight, I'm not). This was because he didn't think he would be able to cope with me having sex with another man, this has been tested to destruction and disproved. So that's changed, in fact I have a date with a guy this week. It works because even before being non-monogamous we're very honest with each other and we communicate well.
I feel very positive about the way things are going, excited even. Non-monogamy is not for everyone, but I think it is for me, and I think it is for my boyfriend. I'm beginning to feel like a recent convert trying to get everyone else on board too, that's not what I'm doing, but I do want to talk about my experiences, and I'm just lucky they've been so good so far.
However, in the past few months there has been a big change in our relationship. It's never been a jealous relationship, in fact it has never been explicitly monogamous and one of us checking out another person is by no means a big deal. In fact, it often leads to jokes about how my boyfriend has a 'type', it's very easy for me to tell in a room of people who will catch his attention, he can do the same about me. Early on in our relationship he made out with another girl, when my boyfriend told me he was really worried I'd break up with him, but I really didn't mind. I can get jealous, very occasionally, but was not at all in this case, it just isn't really something that happens to me.
Although this incident was not repeated I think it stuck with both of us. A few months ago I turned 26, marking 10 years since I had any kind of sexual or romantic contact with a woman. My boyfriend has always said he wouldn't want to stop me experiencing this side of my sexuality, but for some reason this began to seem more urgent to both of us. Our relationship was clearly not going anywhere, but neither was my desire to be with a woman. I had also said I wanted my first time having sex with a woman to be just me, not a threesome, which my boyfriend respected and understood. With some discussion we moved from an implicit agreement I could have sex with a woman to an explicit one.
I joined OkCupid, which has been a revelation. I met up with a couple of people, meetings that turned out to just be friendly but also made me feel a lot more confident about what I wanted. It was around that time that my boyfriend and I had a discussion about fairness, about how I could sleep with another person but he couldn't. We also talked about what would happen if I met someone I really liked, who I wanted more than friendship or sex with. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but suddenly it seemed like the obvious thing to open up our relationship, to stop being at all monogamous.
He also joined OkCupid, both our profiles are very honest about our non-monogamy, and discussing people we're talked to or met through it has become part of our regular conversations. I've also done a lot of reading about polyamoury and non-monogamy, the internet is excellent for this, and it turns out I know a surprising amount of people who are ethically non-monogamous. One of these is possibly my closest female friend, she has a husband and a boyfriend, and is a real inspiration to me. We've talked quite a lot about her non-monogamy, and mine, and it's been really interesting and helpful. In fact everyone who I have talked to about non-monogamy has been, I feel like I've learned so much in the last few weeks.
This is the part that is hard to write, because I am very aware of respecting other people's privacy. All I can say is that my boyfriend and I's non-monogamy is no longer theoretical, and the whole experience has been both better and easier than I was expecting. There is no jealousy or insecurity, and for everyone involved there has been good communication.
I understand that my boyfriend and I are at the start of this journey, and though it has been overwhelmingly positive so far there are likely to be bad times. Already things have happened to change the dynamics we thought we would have - I mentioned that there is an explicit agreement we can both sleep/ have relationships with other women (he's straight, I'm not). This was because he didn't think he would be able to cope with me having sex with another man, this has been tested to destruction and disproved. So that's changed, in fact I have a date with a guy this week. It works because even before being non-monogamous we're very honest with each other and we communicate well.
I feel very positive about the way things are going, excited even. Non-monogamy is not for everyone, but I think it is for me, and I think it is for my boyfriend. I'm beginning to feel like a recent convert trying to get everyone else on board too, that's not what I'm doing, but I do want to talk about my experiences, and I'm just lucky they've been so good so far.
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