krystalfawn

The other night I decided since I didn’t have a Netflix tv obsession at the moment that I was going to instead sit through an entire movie. The movie I chose was called Fling. I picked it because it was about a couple in an open relationship. I thought it would be interesting to see how they worked through these ideas via a mainstream outlet. It was pretty typical in that the monogamy-culture won in the end.

But what really struck me odd was the way in which they proceeded to carry out this open relationship. It was unrealistic to say the least. They had established no boundaries in their non-monogamy, choosing to flirt, go home with, make-out with other people within each other’s presence. Now, there are very few people in the world who could handle doing this at the rate in which this couple did. Like they would go out together and then each other’s flings would show up at the same space and they didn’t think there would be drama or tension or awkwardness. And if there was awkwardness it wasn’t something the main couple were capable of admitting was happening between the two of them.

What tore the couple apart was not the non-monogamy though. It was only after they started keeping secrets, lying, not communicating, that their relationship started to unravel. And they weren’t just lying to each other but to everyone close to them. The main guy started sleeping with his best friend’s sister and neglected to tell him. The best friend flipped and it was hard to determine if it was because he thought his sister deserved better or that he felt he was being deceived. In any case, it could have been not nearly dramatic if they were all just upfront from the beginning about everything–because if you love your sister and you love your best friend–why would it be a big deal if they loved each other too?

Some may say the main partnership always had problems and the two involved in the open-relationship were doing it because they didn’t want to be alone and were only with each other until something better came along. Because they blatantly loved each other I don’t think that’s a strong argument, but perhaps what happened is that they loved each other, but were no longer “in love” with each other.

It felt that they just threw themselves into an open-relationship without much thought as to how it should or could actually function properly. It initially worked when they were being truthful about everything and weren’t making any intense connections with other people. It was when other connections became stronger and they didn’t know how to balance all of the different emotions and issues within each coupling that it all seemed to fall apart.

I was left feeling torn because in a way it did show how an open-relationship doesn’t work and that could be just as beneficial for making sure that doesn’t happen within one’s own open-relationship, but at the same time it pushed monogamy, making their relationship seem perverted and not as serious or meaningful as it could be, which is bullshit.

The things that go wrong in relationships, whether monogamous or other, are generally the same. People fall out of love for whatever reasons and instead of ending it because they’re too scared or too comfortable they end up being dishonest, deceitful and they fail at communicating what’s going on with them.

In the end, I’d say it was an okay story, but it would be nice to see more movies or tv shows where non-monogamy (polyamory, open-relationships, etc.) works in a positive healthy way, but I suppose it takes people in them to start telling their stories and perhaps when it’s positive and healthy it’s actually pretty boring and no one really cares.