I know the age gap might terrify you whenever it comes up on reddit but let me say something. I've known him several years before we even put a title to it, in a lot of ways getting to know each other that way is what made us finally decide to explore a relationship and even then we spent 6-8 hours each night over 3 nights talking to each other and it was wonderful then we decided "yeah, we could put a title to this." For a lot of reasons, many of which our interest in leather and bondage, but that's a different story.

Any-who, for many reasons I no longer want to deal with open relationships. Why? Because I've been in 2 that ended for many reasons, sure being monogamous may not have stopped them from poly-bombing me, gas lighting me or fucking their ex, but being open really opened me to just saying it's not something I want to deal with. That doesn't mean I'm saying don't have friends, alone time, solo vacations, hobby times, but I just don't want to deal with the balancing act of emotions, thursday nights to fuck, etc. It's just not appealing anymore.

But...why do I feel tremendous guilt that I feel like I'm tying him down to something he's not comfortable with just because he likes me? I don't need a relationship and neither does he, we want to be in each others lives but I made a point that I have certain things I won't list here that I want in a partner going forward, and an independent together dynamic is likely number 1 (god I hate that show, but that song is very true for what I'm looking for).

But I don't want someone to be monogamous for me in the same way when I was open I didn't want anyone not into it change their values for me. I want it because it's something they want and not something I'm forcing on them. If he enjoys that dynamic, I want him to have it, but I just don't want him to be something he isn't...