Jealousy and Sluts
Dealing with how our need to seed causes professional jealousy in open relationships.
Being in an open relationship with another slutty gay man produces a lot of delightful emotions. Still, no matter how much effort I put into reason and open-hearted acceptance to banish its existence, I experience an unpleasant erotic charge that is a mixture of anger and being horny at the same time. My partner and I call it “Anghorn.”
Anghorn can cause a kind of sleeplessness that only rubbing one out while thinking of my partner’s hook-up can cure. It’s wanting to know all the details and then feeling jealous because those details turn me on so much.
I’m not talking about romantic jealousy resulting from an actual or perceived incursion of the romantic bond between my partner and me.
I’m talking about professional jealousy, the kind that comes up when two capable dudes want the same thing, and only one of them is currently getting it.
I expect to feel a lot of professional jealousy this week while I’m in Liberty, Missouri (where I’m writing this from), helping my mom transition into a new home. This purple state is a brutally non-erotic place for me. The Grindr grid is rather challenging to look at, and Masseure Finder doesn’t even post ads. It’s a place where the spicket of gay hook-up culture slows to a parched, shame-ridden drip.
Meanwhile, my partner is home alone in Los Angeles, with a playroom and a few vacation days to use before I get back to join him on an Atlantis cruise. His track record shows that he’ll catch up on all the sex he has NOT been having because of his work schedule. I love him, and his happiness brings me happiness. I feel compersion and celebrate his joy. But I also feel something icky, something I don’t want to feel. And that makes me feel like I’ve failed at being a liberated, urban, gay slut.
I feel competitive.
It’s confusing to hold two conflicting emotions simultaneously. I’m happy for him; that’s love. I want what he’s having, but it’s not available to me; that’s frustration/anger/jealousy. My love for him makes me happy that he’s happy. Really, it does. However, there is a primal competitive sexual energy that gets stirred up as well.
I used to think that loving my man and feeling competitive with him was wrong, or I had failed somehow, like I hadn’t meditated enough, talked through it enough, or released the patriarchy of ownership enough.
Isn’t being slutty all about feeling pleasure?
It turns out that we may just be designed this way biologically. In the book Sex At Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, “sperm competition” is described as a way our species gets stronger. They theorize that human women are designed to receive sperm from multiple men to achieve the best match for their genetic makeup through sperm competing inside the body for the prize of egg fertilization. And, if that’s true, I can get into the sexiness of a man driven to shoot his load, like Spock experiencing Pon Farr in the Amok Time episode on Star Trek when he needed to mate or die. That’s hot. That’s primal passion.
Basically, according to Sex At Dawn, being a cum dump produces the best offspring. Maybe gay men possess some of those same instincts. Receiving more cum is better. Planting more seed is better. I want that to be true. It helps make sense of all these emotions.
I am not jealous that my boyfriend will have sex with other guys. I am jealous because I will not be having sex with other guys! I will not be in the mix.
It’s a type of professional jealousy. The same sensation I feel when I see another Substack writer I love doing well. The kind that comes up when a favorite coworker gets a promotion, my social peer buys a new house or car or starts dating the hottie at the gym I’ve secretly coveted forever.
“Good for you!” Fucker.
When I admit that I’m having a feeling (rather than suppressing it) and acknowledge that it’s a normal human feeling, it helps. I’m not a bad person for feeling it. Nothing is wrong. They are not bad people for succeeding at something I want to succeed in.
It’s just professional jealousy.
When I was pursuing a ballet career, “I hate her” was one of the most sincere ways to complement another dancer. First of all, regarding gender, all the people in the room were referred to as “her.” Sitting in class or rehearsal and seeing one of my friends kill it with moves I was still dreaming of producing left me and other dancers with no other words.
“I hate her.”
In the changing room afterward, if we felt generous, we’d say it to their faces. “I hate you so much!” Which usually led to bright smiles on everyone’s faces, except for the bitter Mary in the corner, who hated us for being friends.
When I can share my “I hate you” feelings with my partner or another close friend, it helps. It almost instantly becomes funny, and humor helps.
For sluts like me, the Anghorn (Angry Horny) of Pon Far (mate or die) is worth all the joy and connection being open provides.
Like the times my boyfriend and I share a “dance” with a guy we’ve found together who is as equally delighted to be with us as we are with him; when I’m on my own traveling, at the gym, or in a different room of a sex venue and I indulge in unbridled pleasure, knowing I’m squarely centered in my primary relationship’s agreements concerning acceptable sexual dalliances; when we expand our base of friends separately and as a couple; when, individually, we each get to have our sexual mojo and self-confidence stoked; when we high-five each other’s successes; when we have someone to commiserate with regarding the inevitable disappointments of hook-up culture.
It’s all about love and primal exuberance.
Just like the uncomfortable effort it takes to work out, write, or reach out to make a new connection, the discomfort of anghorn is worth it. The effort is worth the improved aesthetic look, the joy of feeling heard, and the life-extending bond of social connections. The discomfort of anghorn yields a generative piqued sense of my own sexuality, a heightened erotic pull to my partner, and a delightful raunchy roll on the floor with my primal sexual nature.