Sometime after the second year of a relationship, you might start to question if this - meaning the relationship - is the end of the path you’re on when it comes to sex and dating. Even if things are good, you’ll probably still think about it, at least for a second, since you realize now you’ve committed a lot of time to one person. You might wonder if the person you’ve spent, say the last 24 months with, is really the person you want to spend the next 24 plus years with. At some point you will think about this. About committing (which is different than getting committed). You’ll contemplate “settling down” verses making sexy love with someone new and exciting.

But I don’t think it has to be one way or the other. I don’t think being in a relationship with one person means you can’t sample other dessert options too. At least sometimes. And I know of a lot of people who think like me, even if we don’t all think this way all of the time. See, I’m at that 3.5 year point in my relationship, and over the last few months we both decided that we need to change things up a bit. We both need to find ways to balance the love of, or in, our lives as well as the sex our bodies still want with other people.

My friend, and sex-memoir writer, Suzanne Portnoy, in her fun new book The Not So Invisible Woman writes about having a monogamous heart, but not a monogamous groin. I can relate to that. I’m a horny girl, who has, since getting with her boyfriend, also gotten back into good shape, and now I want more men, and occasionally women, to worship my ass (and my brain too).

Does that make me more selfish than you, or just more honest?

The Ethical Slut has been around for a long enough time to tell me that people do talk about, and try out, open relationships. Not necessarily poly, which means to me, loving more than one person, but even just open, which means, again, to me, having sexual relations with more than one person. And now Tristan Taormino has come up with her own book, and website, devoted to Opening Up (which happens to be the name of her book that comes out in a few short days). She’s from my generation of sex writers and educators, and we’re on similar pages when it comes to being ready and willing to explore relationships that don’t necessarily fall under the governments guidelines of traditional family values.

I don’t know how long Jonny and I will be open, or even if we are open, and then subsequently close the relationship, if we’ll do it again. I just know that being able to explore things that need to be explored, for my own body and mind, as well as his, means that sometimes sexy love will happen with someone else.

And sometimes it won’t.

My friends seem concerned mostly with what happens if either of us meets that someone else who feels more special than we do to each other, but I don’t let that worry me. We’re strong, we’re together, and if we’re meant to be apart, then that will happen because it’s the way the cookie crumbles. I believe we can’t own our partner, the only thing we can own is our feelings. And even that’s hard to admit to “owning up to” sometimes.

So I’m opening up. Seeing what the universe has in store for me. For him. For us. For the future of love and relationships. Because monogamy isn’t natural, it’s just become normal, and there’s no such thing as normal anyway.