Advice | Carolyn Hax: Does a semi-nude massage at a group event cross a fidelity line? - The Washington Post

[massage]

Hi, Carolyn: I’ve been in a (same-sex) relationship with “Celia” for eight months. We have agreed to be monogamous since the start, although Celia’s preference was non-monogamy. I wasn’t comfortable with that, and she agreed to have an exclusive relationship with me.


Last weekend, Celia attended a women’s body positivity workshop that I knew involved being topless, which I was fine with. I told her to have a good time and didn’t worry about it further. However, after the workshop, the event posted photos showing (censored and de-identified) photos of the women massaging one another’s naked bodies and describing it as “sensual touch.”


I confronted Celia about whether she took part, and she said she did. I was gutted that she hadn’t sat that part out, or at least warned me it was involved.


I feel like a boundary has been crossed. Celia says it never occurred to her that I would be upset because the context was completely platonic and focused on body positivity. The workshop was predominantly attended by heterosexual women. But I struggle to see how this isn’t an act of infidelity.


Is this a harmless situation that I should work to get past, or is it a bad sign for our relatively new relationship?


— Overthinking

End of carousel

Overthinking: The worst of the bad signs is that you’re trying to make Celia into someone she is not.


Celia herself is cooperating with that, obviously, in her way. She agreed to a monogamous relationship. Many in her position do this and mean it.


She may even hold herself to her promise for life, for her own reasons — not (just) to appease you.


But none of this changes who she is. She was honest about herself, and honest about her weekend, and that honesty is a gift to you. It’s a chance for you to take her at her word and accept that your partner in monogamy doesn’t see it the way you do. In a way, she’s agreeing to terms.


If your emotional reaction to that fact is to be watchful for any deviations from her promise, then think hard about whether Celia is a good fit for you. Anxious vigilance wears people down. Love needs air.


It needs trust, too, but trust is as perfect as people are. And while her candor is a (really) good sign for trust, your misaligned values aren’t, especially about something so important. Whether a relationship is sustainable is always the big unanswerable question, but we all can choose not to lie to ourselves about the various pressures against it.


At some point, regardless, you still need to be able to trust yourself to handle it if things go sideways — say, if the person you know prefers an open relationship isn’t monogamous quite to your standards. Can you trust yourself to let go with someone who loves more freely than you do? Is that something you want?


If it isn’t, then that’s completely fair and might be grounds to break up.


If it is, then, okay. That is a valid thing to work toward.


Even then, there’s another question waiting: Do you want to be the one asking her not to be fully herself, for you, for always?


The “work” to “get past” something is often necessary but can add up quickly. Be mindful of how much of it you’re signing yourself up for in advance — especially in what you intend as restorative parts of your life.


Because that’s foreseeable work; there’s still all the surprise work that awaits every couple. So a bad sign is lying to yourself about how much you can take.


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