Hello - I'm new here, just joined the forum. I have what I think is a bit of an unual story that I'd like to share, kinda to get responses from people who don't know me and my partner, kinda to get it off my chest in a safe space.

I met my partner (R) at university, back in 2009. There was no attraction then, I just admired his talent and I just assumed he was gay. Much to my surprise, he began a relationship with a mutual friend who was female, which is when I learned R was bi. For a whole year, we were just friends. Then we started working together on a project, which coincided with the end of his relationship. As we became quite close, R started confiding in me more and was very open about his very active and promiscuous (his own words) sex life. Eventually and unexpectedly, we hooked up at a party and I had a great night with him. We ended up sleeping together a few more times after that, but I 'caught feelings' and felt like I wanted more than just a friends-with-benefits situation. I was a bit shy and never said it, but R picked up on that and tried to 'break up' with me. He was very open, honest and even caring in the way he tried to nip this in the bud to avoid trouble in the future. I remember at the time asking him to keep seeing me until the end of the year (2010), because I'd go travelling for 5 weeks at Christmas and I thought it would be easier to move on as a result, and R accepted that arrangement. During the next couple of months, we were never in a committed relationship and I knew he'd been sleeping with other people and I was OK with that, as long as they were men. In a way, I understood that another man could provide something that I couldn't, but another woman would feel like direct competition (but I never told him that). Then there was a big crisis moment which I still don't know much about. Something happened that required the police and mental health professionals involved. R was dismissed by both without further consequences, and he still carries that trauma. He called me crying saying something bad had happened and he wanted company that night and I went to his place and stayed the night with him, but to this day I don't actually know what the event was.

Anyway, Christmas came, we agreed to end our 3-month thing and I went travelling for a bit. The problem was that when I came back, we were still gravitating in the same circles and occasionally working together. I yearned for him and he knew that but R was reasonably good at standing his ground or not taking advantage of me. I'd get drunk and try to kiss him at social events and he always gently avoided that, but eventually, in the summer (2011), I succeeded. At a friend's birthday party, R relented and took me back to his place under my promise that it would be just a one-night-stand. Of course it wasn't. We got back to seeing each other regularly, albeit not in any exclusive way, for another couple of months, until I invited him to take a trip away together and R declined and broke it off again. 

Rinse and repeat. We stayed friends for another year, until summer 2012, when we got back together once more, for about 4 months and then I had to move away to a different country for a while. For the first few months I was away, we kept corresponding, not in a romantic way, but in a friendly way. Again, this was not a committed, exclusive arrangement, but R was with me up until the moment I got to the airport. We picked up where we left off when I came back to visit the following year and we spent the whole of summer 2013 together. When I left again, I told R I loved him before getting in the taxi for the airport. He just replied with 'take care'. We continued to correspond, but he started spacing out communications a bit more until he went for several weeks without returning my emails and messages. Eventually, at the start of 2014, R wrote to me saying he was in a committed relationship with another woman but he still cared deeply about me, and he'd understand if I didn't want to maintain a friendship, considering what I'd said before getting in the taxi and how he responded. That really borke me and I replied that I could be diplomatic but I didn't think I could be friends. The next few months were incredibly painful and I felt bad for feeling bad, feeling guilty for letting myself fall for this guy who had been nothing but open and honest about his feelings and his lifestyle from the start. This made it harder, because I couldn't hate or blame him, there had been no lie or deception. But I also felt I'd never had such a great connection with anyone else. Tough.

As usual, I came back in the summer of 2014 to visit and R messaged me asking if I'd be up for getting a coffee and I said I'd rather not. During the next few weeks, I ended up reconnecting with another guy (B) that I'd had a fling with a few years prior. This made me feel safer and I agreed to have a catch up with R. He was still dating that other woman, but we didn't talk much about that and it was just nice to see each other. I went away again and we still wrote to each other occasionally but not loads. I didn't block or unfriend him on any social media, but seeing the constant posts (aways by her, taggin him) was doing a lot of damage, so I unfollowed/hid him from my timeline. I was trying really hard to look after myself and move on. 

I got accepted into a PhD programme and moved back to our city of residence in November 2015. He knew I was back, but we didn't meet up or speak much. In early 2016, B (the other guy) moved to a nearby town and we started seeing each other regularly. R took me out for lunch on my birthday and told me he'd broken up with the woman he'd been with. He wasn't asking to get back together and I didn't tell him about B. A few months later, R messaged me saying he knew he didn't have any claim on my time, but he had a new project that he wanted us to work together on. I accepted but on our first meeting, I asked us to put cards on the table and told him I was seeing B. He told me he was in an open relationship with another woman, but they had not discussed the terms properly yet.

B moved away to a different country (there's a lot of that going on here) for work at the end of 2016 and we ended our relationship. In June 2017, R had a dramatic break up from this other woman he'd been dating, which culminated in another trip to the police (this time, he had to ask them for help), which once again left him shaken and traumatised and he once again reached out to me. We sat in a bar and talked about the whole thing at length until they closed up. When we were walking home, we ended up kissing. I then took a step back and told him, 'sorry, but we're not starting this again. I'll go this way and you go that way', and we parted. He just sent me a message apologising for being awkward the next day.

We remained on friendly terms after that, though we didn't speak much or saw each other at all, until - you guessed it - summer 2018, when I messaged R about something that happened at an event that I'd been working at, which I knew he would appreciate. He happened to be walking back from his work and not too far from where I lived at the time, so he asked if I wanted to get a drink. One thing led to another and we ended up sleeping together that night, nearly 5 years after the last time we had slept together. I was genuinely surprised. I knew I still loved him, I had even described him as the love of my life to people when telling them the story, but I was honestly not expecting R to come back to me ever.

The thing is, since then, we have gone from strength to strength. A few months after that first night, I plucked out the courage to ask him if we were now in an actual relationship and he said yes. We made that commitment. Couple of months after that, we changed out relationship status on Facebook. Another couple of months later, R told me he loved me for the first time. I met his family. Another year and a half later, we moved in together. Then the pandemic happened. We got on just fine during the first few months of lockdown, but I felt he was a bit distant and stressed about something. I noticed he hadn't deleted Grindr from his phone, and granted, we decided we were in a committed relationship but never discussed exclusivity. I was in a really bad place with my own stress and anxiety and I wrote him a letter, asking him about how he felt and if he wanted an open relationship. I stated I didn't feel the need myself, and I was aware of relationships that are 'monigamish' and offered some possible 'rules' for us to make this work if that's what he wanted. I gave him the letter and hid in the bedroom, crying. He came in and we had a long and productive chat, reviewed the rules/boundaries together and reached an agreement.

With the pandemic and other things happening in our lives, the past year has been challenging and I know he hasn't really had an opportunity to actually meet up and have sex with anyone outside our relationship, but we have had other conversations about different ideas. He confessed to me he has a porn addiction, which bothers him and he's been thinking about seeking professional help for it, but he's also scared of how that might impact his personality. We have both said we still very much enjoy having sex with each other, but he said he worried we didn't do it often enough and that we could be more adventurous. I suggested a sex questionnaire for couples that we both completed on New Year's Day. We had a bottle of wine and talked through the first few questions together a few nights ago, but he's still worried about the more 'hardcore' ones coming up. It all sounds good and healthy, but the truth is I feel scared and really insecure. Last night, R was exchanging messages with a friend and former casual hookup of his, who had sent him some videos about porn addiction. R told me he'd like to meet this guy and talk more about it, as this has become his life crusade now. I want to be supportive and I want to honour what we agreed when we discussed having a monogamish relationship last year, but I feel so many emotions inside that I can't even articulate. Bottom line is, I know we are approaching the point in which the opening of our relationship will happen in practice - either with him just going off and sleeping with someone else, or by us exploring versions of group sex together - and although I really want to give it a good try, I am also terrified and unsure I can cope. I'm not sure what exactly I need from the forum, either, but if you've read it up to here, thank you and congratulations for your patience, and I appreciate any thoughts and comments you may have.