It's been an interesting month and a half since I started dating again for the first time in 7 years... while also still living with my girlfriend of 7 years.
I guess a lot of people hate dating but I really enjoy it. From flirting with people at parties and in bars, to having a compelling and devious reason to engage with strangers to the wild new (to me) world of app based dating.
I'm also really enjoying engaging with the world in a sexual way again. It's part of my personality that's been turned off for so long and it's nice to have it back in the repertoire of daily living.
My girlfriend is still freaking out and we are fighting a lot. I'm still not sure if we will be together next year, next month, next week or tomorrow. She is slowly becoming more comfortable with the whole thing, but we are spending too much time fighting and she is still to upset most of the time for this to be long term sustainable. I am very resentful that she has been engaging in sex work for more than a year, more or less unmolested and unconstrained
by me, but that she started engaging in emotional warfare when I started dating people, which was our initial agreement for her getting back into sex work. This part of the open relationship has been one of the most difficult things I've done. The upside is it's a gun-to-the-head crash course in emotional intelligence and communication, 2 areas I am trying to improve in.
My girlfriend is also interested in group-sex, swinging and couples dating, which are things that I'm also interested in, but am largely unfamiliar with. In this way she's pushing me out of my comfort zone, which I appreciate. Our first couples date is on Saturday. She's also having her first solo date with a man tonight. She told me 50% of why she's going out with another guy is so that we can empathize which each other's positions. I'm hoping this moves her further towards being o.k. when I go out with women.
Props to this thread for a lot of useful advice. Thanks to @c40 + everyone else for the advice about putting my foot down for what I wanted and also for getting off my ass/ over my fear of embarrassment and actually dating. Props to @7w5 for some accidental dating advice from her experience including (paraphrasing) "don't chat to women forever when online dating" and "make definitive plans quickly."
I've gotten a ton of pushback from my friends on open-relationships. Despite the fact that we are all supposed to be alternative liberal weirdos who call each other "they" and are all liberated and post-everything, my friends hold strongly traditional views on relationships. I think they'd be less mad at me if I was just straight up cheating. My behavior would be more or less tolerated with the old "boys will be boys" attitude if I was just single and operating as a fuckboy. The offensive part is that I'd like to sometimes care about multiple sex partners at the same time rather than only caring about one or not caring about any.
Some problems that I hadn't thought about that I'm experiencing are, how time consuming dating is and how awkward it is to get ready for a date when you live with your girlfriend. However, the latter would be less awkward/ more avoidable if I had a more willing co-conspirator. I also keep ending up on Tinder dates with women who live within 5 blocks of my house. This is not what I want, I'm in agreement with 7w5 in that I'd like my new paramours to be separated from myself and all other paramours in location and social circle.
Compulsory unsolicited online dating advice for women from an ERE-male on an ERE-dating thread: IN YOUR PROFILE, MEN REALLY HATE IT WHEN YOU LIVE IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD.