Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage Read Online Free PDF

staying out too late, so they didn’t have much to complain about.
    It wasn’t long after prom that I decided I was ready to sleep with him. It was as ideal a first time as I could have dreamed up. His parents were away, and he set up a romantic tableau, complete with candles and music. He had never pressured me; he had waited until I was ready. “I want you to be sure,” he told me that night. “I don’t want to be that asshole who ‘took’ your virginity.”
    “I’m sure,” I said. “I love you.” “I love you too.”
    Afterward, I cried. Not about anything, really—almost as a release, I guess, or maybe even as a substitute for the orgasm I hadn’t had, didn’t know how to have.
    “Oh god, are you okay? Are you sorry we did this?” he asked.
    “No. No, no, no,” I assured him. “I’m just . . . wow . . .
    I’m just . . . I can’t believe I’m not a virgin anymore.” “So . . . it was okay?”
    “Of course. It was great. I’m so glad it was with you.” “I am too,” he said. “Want to do it again?”

    “Uh-huh.” The second time around, I willed myself to let go and allowed my body to take over. Kevin rolled onto his back, pulling me on top of him. At that moment, I understood what it meant for something to come naturally. I moved my body rhythmically with his, and came in a way that made my private fumblings in the dark seem like sparklers compared with these fireworks. I was hooked.
    Later that night, Kevin turned to me and said the words that were to become the mantra of my sexuality: “You are responsible for your own orgasms.” He told me that I had to ask for what I wanted and needed, and that there was nothing worse than expecting one’s partner to be a mind reader. It was a new opening, and it forever shifted the way I looked at my own sexuality. Granted, because this was my first sexual experience, Kevin’s comment set the bar quite high in terms of my owning what I wanted and getting what I needed, but there it was.

    my breakup with Kevin was as hurtful
    as our relationship had been wonderful. I found out from friends that he was sleeping with another girl while we were working at adjacent summer camps: a Swedish exchange student, of all people, named Olga. I felt stupid and rejected, ugly and small, when I finally laid eyes on her. She was his age and seemed so worldly. She was tall and blond—and had boobs. I totally understood why he’d want her instead of me.

    After some weeks of dealing with my heartache, I finally crawled out of my teenage drama and begin to see the whole experience for what it was. I was lucky. My first time had been with a guy I loved and trusted, and who made me feel confident about my sexuality and my own reign over it. And even losing him to every boy’s porn fantasy didn’t negate that.
    I felt alternately empowered by and terrified about my experiences with Kevin. On one hand, I felt cocky and secure (“I’ve been down love’s rocky road, and I refuse to fall prey to its terrain”), and on the other hand, I felt terrified (“I’m never going down that road again. It’s too painful”). But ultimately, I spent so many hours talking to Janelle about what dating in college would be like that Kevin started to seem inconsequential.
    By the end of that summer, I was excited about the freedom that awaited me in college. I was glad that I had loved Kevin, but also happy that I’d built up a degree of callousness after having my heart broken. I decided I was going to protect myself and not be so quick to trust just anyone with my heart. Lesson learned: Love is not a guarantee of anything. And if you open yourself to enjoying it, you also open yourself to being crushed by it. Not that I wasn’t still looking for love; I figured Tennyson must have known what he was talking about when he wrote, “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
    “It’s good,” Janelle told me. “You’ve had your firsts— first love,