I wish I could say this story has a happy/hot ending, but unfortunately I cannot yet promise that.

Tonight my girlfriend and I had our first open-relationship experience. We have been talking about it for a few days and decided to finally give it a try. We are in a long distance relationship, and she had a Tinder date with a guy that attends the same university as her. We agreed that I would not sleep with other girls, as she is not comfortable with it, but she could sleep with other guys because we both thought it was hot. Strictly sex, and whether or not there would even be a second "date" was still up in the air.

She went on her date, slept with the guy and then went home to tell me about it. As a precursor, we had a discussion about the conditions of what needed to happen in order for me to be okay with this. One of them was that she would either tell me in detail about the whole night, and/or film it so I could see. If these two conditions are not met, I feel very hurt and betrayed. I can't help that's how I feel, I just do. I feel very left out. This is my first time doing anything like this, as was hers, and I was not sure how I would ACTUALLY respond to her having this experience. We both agreed that if one of us was uncomfortable with the situation, she would happily stop, no questions asked. Also, when she was using Tinder to find dates, I would get on her account and message some of the guys for her, because she didn't want to go through the small talk, and because I found it quite exhilarating.

She came home and we started texting a little. She reassured me that even though she had slept with another guy, I'm still the one that she wants. I'm the one she would be okay with and love having sex with the rest of our lives. That I'm the one she was thinking about while doing it. That I'm the one she comes home to at the end of the night. This did absolute wonders for me because the whole evening I had a nervous/excited/anxious feeling about the whole thing, but wanted to see how it played out and see how I felt after. We got on FaceTime and started to talk. I was asking questions about the night, while clearly pleasuring myself, and she was telling me in detail about the things that happened. It seemed to be going alright. After a few minutes, I could tell she was starting to not talk as much. This obviously didn't feel too great to me because I felt like she was closing up. I think it's something about hesitation, or reluctance, or not complete transparency that makes me uncomfortable with that happening. Almost a feeling of being cheated on. A few more minutes pass by and I notice she's paying close attention to her phone. I ask "what are you doing?" "Swiping." she says. This was a big blow to me emotionally. I was trying to talk it out and mentally unpack everything that had just happened, and she was swiping instead of giving me attention. This may sound petty, but I need that extra reassurance by having her attention after something like that. She then tells me to log out of her Tinder account because it is messing up the distances of the people who are coming up on her Tinder feed. (we live about 400 miles apart) This was the final blow to me that caused me to start to regress into my shell. I get quiet and begin to withdraw when I feel hurt. This MAJORLY upsets her. We have had instances in the past that this has happened, with both of us reacting this way to emotional pain, hurt or insecurity. I try my very best to do this as LITTLE as possible, because I know it inhibits our communication ability if left unchecked for too long, but sometimes my emotions overwhelm me so bad that I cannot see that in the moment and do it.

This night caused a lot of problems, not just because of this, but she says other things have been bothering her too, which just added to the long and drawn out argument that we had. These other issues will need to be addressed outside of this post. However, one of the biggest points of contention throughout the conversation was that she thought I'm being controlling wanting to see the messages between her and the other guys she's potentially sleeping with on Tinder. She says she doesn't like the fact that I'm trying to control her by wanting this. To be honest, I don't exactly know why, but it does emotionally hurt me very much thinking about her messaging other guys and being left out. (aka not being able to read along with her) This is my first time experiencing something like this. I knew my feelings would likely be fluid and change here and there along the way, past our first open experience, but I don't think I told her that I felt like my feelings might change. Was that a mistake? Should I have made that more clear? Was this a failure in communication? What would you have done differently?

Here's my question: is this controlling behavior or is it something else? Is it being controlling, or being honest with your partner about how you feel? Is it wanting to be a part of your partners experience as much as you can, and feeling left out when you aren't able to be, because you love them and want to share that experience with them as much as possible? Is it a matter of boundaries? Is it a misinterpretation of unclear expectations? Is it a combination of two or more things? Explain what you would have done in this situation. I want to hear about how you would react if you or your partner had a disagreement like this AND what you would do/what you would say as a good resolution to the disagreement.

I really don't like sides in a relationship. I try to avoid taking sides as much as possible. I believe both partners have valid views and opinions. When both people feel as if they cannot find a resolution on their own, there has to be room to step back and take a look at things from a 3rd perspective. Perhaps one partner is not seeing the whole picture. I am completely willing to further inflect and change something about myself if I feel I'm in the wrong or we could both benefit from a behavior change in myself. I try my VERY BEST to apologize first, take the blame and be the first one to try to come up with a solution to issues. Please, in your best way possible, avoid playing the blame game. If you cannot express your thoughts in any other way, so be it. Feel free to open up and share however you deem fit. But if you're able to creatively critique, I would love that.

I feel like our relationship is in jeopardy. This is one of the reasons, I feel, but not the only one. If I can receive some insight on this, maybe something will be helpful enough that we can implement into our relationship to restore it back to its beautiful state.

(For now, we have agreed that our relationship is closed until we can figure out a better way to navigate this as a couple.)