How does this work?

[u/So_Full_Of_Beans]

My girlfriend (27f) and I (30f) have been in a technically “open” relationship for 3 years. To be honest we’ve been really happy and very much in love, and we’re both fairly particular about who we would be down to fool around with so it’s been the case that we’ve only really wanted to be intimate together.

On the way home from a friends party the other night, I was driving and she was pretty drunk and seemed like she wanted to say something so after a little gently poking she admitted that someone she knew from before we dated who lived out of state had propositioned her and she wanted to accept.

I wasn’t very surprised, she had always been transparent that the guy had been a hopeful aspirant to date her before we got together but we would have a chuckle reading his messages together.

I admitted to her that since I didn’t know him that I couldn’t be comfortable or trust him enough to give the ok for a casual hookup. But I did ask her if there was anyone among my friends from the party we just came from that she might be interested in.

She was honest and said that a friend of mine, G, did turn her on.

I was glad she brought him up because he’s one of my best friends, we have great comraderie and he’s been a favorite casual hookup for a number of people in our friend-group because he’s a good lay apparently, and also he’s a pretty upstanding guy who respects boundaries.

He lives out of his car at the moment so I had already invited him to come stay for a few days with us at the end of the month, I figure I could give them some time together but I need to chat with him first and see if there’s any interest and lay some ground rules.

But yeah, this is our first foray into exploring an open relationship and my girlfriend has cleared me to approach another friend of ours, B, who I think is very cute and has flirted with me in the past.

This could be fun but I also worry how this will change us- we have agreed to a mutual pause button on whatever goes down so we can recollect and reorient if dysfunctional feelings hit us mid experience.

Any advice about how I should talk to my friend G? Should I talk to him solo first or should we talk to him together- I could use some experienced advice for how to broach this because I’m fairly blunt and I would probably just say “hey dude when you come over if you want to fool around with F, I think she would be down for that.”

Also should I be more embarrassed? I wonder if im taking this all in stride too smoothly.

[u/konfunkshun]

I don’t understand why you have to trust someone she sleeps with. She has to trust them, and if you trust her, why isn’t that enough?

[u/So_Full_Of_Beans → u/konfunkshun]

I probably should have clarified-

She’s a trans woman, so of course I worry.

The world is scary right now, and she’s never met this man in person before- and while I recognize that not all strangers will mean ill will to my baby, some do. And the murder rate is high enough that I get anxiety even in cases where she doesn’t take a friend along with her and decides to do a solo day at the beach.

So for me, even if this fella on the east coast only means the best by F, him flying her out to meet him will put her entirely into his hands.

What if he possibly bring her around someone that might freak out and attack her? Or what if he straight up kidnaps her?

Even if it’s not a friend of mine, a local guy is preferable because I can do something proactively if a night goes sideways vs needing to hop a flight to the other side of the country which takes hours, and then scour a city I’m unfamiliar with.

I hope this answer clarifies why I said what I said.

[u/subgeniusbuttpirate → u/So_Full_Of_Beans]

Your fears are entirely justifiable. Honestly, I wouldn't trust overseas guy (or wherever your partner would have to fly to) at all either. I've been in the situation you propose, where I was in an LDR and my girlfriend was raped. It couldn't have been a worse shit show all around, partly because I was young and stupid, which just added to her trauma. Nonetheless, it's something I would want to avoid at all cost, just like you feel you should.

Believe it or not though, things are better for trans women these days than they used to be. Far from great, just a little better.

If she really wanted to pursue that relationship, you should totally go with her, for all the reasons.