#open-relationship-thoughts

There’s a moment where wanting to be wanted turns into something quieter. Something harder to name. Not desperation, not exactly. Not sadness either. Just… the aching knowledge that no one’s coming to take the need away. And in that moment, I don’t just want to be wanted anymore. I want to be numb.

Sometimes submission feels like a substitute for silence — a way to be undone in someone else’s hands before I do it to myself. If someone else pulls the need out of me, fucks it out of me, uses it up...then I don’t have to carry it alone. But when that doesn’t arrive — when no one responds, when no one takes — the ache folds in on itself. It stops being hunger and starts becoming weight.

That’s when the craving shows up. Not always for sex. Not even for him. For something else. Something I used to chase in the bottom of a bottle, something that promised to take the edge off the wanting.

Because alcohol was never just about chaos. It was about quiet. It was about muting the echo of wanting to be wanted and not feeling chosen. It was about softening the shame of needing too much, feeling too much, reaching and being met with politeness instead of possession. It was about erasing myself before anyone else could.

And sometimes, when I crave a drink now, it’s not the taste I want — it’s the option to disappear. To not have to be the girl who’s still waiting to be chosen. Still aching after polite goodnights. Still staring into a kind of silence that doesn’t hurt outright — it just doesn’t reach back.

I stay sober, but the craving isn’t always for alcohol. Sometimes it’s for a break from being full of need. Sometimes it’s for the version of me who doesn’t mind being unseen.

I told him I might go out tonight, like we agreed — open honesty, shared awareness, no shame. He responded kindly, which is worse in some ways. Because what I really wanted was for him to say, “Don’t.” Not because he had the right. But because he wanted me enough to ask me to stay.

It’s the strangest kind of ache — to be given freedom when what you crave is restraint. To be told, “Thank you for sharing,” when what you wanted was, “You’re mine, and that’s not for sharing.” I don’t want rules. I want a reaction. Something selfish. A flicker of jealousy. A bruise of need. I want to feel the tension of being wanted just enough to be kept. I want the leash that slips between permission and possession — the one that tightens not because it has to, but because he can’t help it.

I almost went. Not because I wanted to, but because I wanted him to know that I could. That I might belong to him in the quiet way we agreed on, but I’m still someone other people want, too. I wanted to see if he’d flinch. If hearing I’d said yes would stir something in him — not enough to change the rules, but maybe enough to claim me anyway.

But I didn’t go.

Because I don’t want to be wanted out of reaction. I don’t want to twist myself into proof, or provoke him into care. I want to be chosen without having to shake the table to be noticed. And if he doesn’t feel it, I don’t want to force it. I want it real, or I want it gone.

So I stayed home. I sat with the ache. I didn’t numb it, and I didn’t chase it into someone else’s hands. I didn’t reach for the easy out.