Letters to the Editor
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The logical thing is to try an open relationship. After all,
the worst that could happen is that you or your boyfriend could contract an STD from some wonderful open-minded person you add to your formerly monogamous relationship.
You clearly don't want to share your boyfriend, but you are not enough to satisfy him. Dump him and find someone who wants to be just with you. Save yourself a lot of degradation and pain.
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don't do it
You said “we’ve both mentioned that an open relationship is probably the next step” and that may be literally true but I get vibes that you meant different things when you mentioned it. I get the feeling that your boyfriend meant “I would like this to be the next step” and you meant “aw shit, this is falling apart, probably my car will break down too, just my luck."
You clearly don’t want an open relationship. You say you think you are willing to try it, but I don’t believe that for a minute, since in the very same sentence you say you don’t think your relationship would survive. So why would you be willing to try something that would probably ruin a relationship with somebody you love?
If you enjoy being played for a sucker, you will say “oh, sweetie, I will try anything you want, it’s fine with me (sob sob), just run around as much as you want and I’ll be here when you come home.” If you have any self-respect at all you will say “this is not what I signed up for, and if you can’t live up to your promise, goodbye.”
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Open relationship -- a little perspective and experience
Try it. But figure out first what you want. I spent 2 years in an open relationship -- which was open from the get-go, but was really something he wanted more than I. He acted on it. I didn't at first, then I briefly dated someone else simultaneously. After I ended my other relationship, I struggled with feeling like it was always going to be a question of me (with open relationship) or not me (because I didn't want an open relationship). It hurt me that if presented with those choices he would choose "not me." One stipulation was that he had to tell the other person that he was in a relationship, and that his girlfriend was ok with him sleeping with someone else. Finally, after a year, I realized I needed to know when he'd slept with someone else. Otherwise it just felt like cheating, if he could sleep with someone else and not tell me about it. And, I figured that if he told me, it would force me to deal with whether I could deal with it in the concrete real world way.
Because philosophically I agreed with the arrangement. It was just hard to reconcile with emotions/jealousy/etc. Funny thing is, he never told me about sleeping with anyone after that. Maybe he never did act on the open relationship, but he claimed (and now that we're broken up, it's hard not to wonder what really happened) that when he told other people about our arrangement, a lot of them didn't want to deal with it, or didn't believe him. And he started to realize that it might really hurt me, and he didn't want to deal with that reality, either. It was not meant to be manipulative, my asking for him to tell me. But I needed to know in hard cold ways whether I could actually handle it. So who knows -- if this is something you want to explore, here's the chance. And at the very least, make sure you're asking for the parameters that work for you, even if you are ambivalent about your feelings for the circumstances. Better to know than to hold onto an ideal that doesn't work for you.
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My Personal Experience
I was pressured into an open relationship by my boyfriend who convinced me that is my the mature, forward, enriching thing to do. He told me I would have nothing to fear, because he would not live me for someone else since he could be involved with someone else and me and would never consent to be an exclusive relationship with someone else since he didn't believe in that. To make a long store short, he met someone else about a year later who won't agree to an open relationship and he wanted to be with her more then me, so he dumped me and married her.
I have seen this same scene played out countless times by friends, both gay, straight, and bi. They make all kinds of noise about being open and having their freedom but when someone who really floats their boat comes along, they will be monogomous with that person if that is want it takes to keep them.
My advice to the letterwriter is to decide if he is willing to put up with the discomfort and emotional challenges any open relationship brings when you have strong feeling for someone and would it still be worth it if he ends up getting dumped even from an open relationship in favor of an exclusive relationship with someone else. If he isn't personally very commited to open relationships but is only agreeing to do it to hold on to his boyfriend longer then he shouldn't do it, because he is setting himself up for a world of hurt. Better to stand fast and see if how much his boyfriend values him.
I wonder if Cary would have given the same advice to a straight women. It is commonly believed that men by their nature are less interested in monogomy, and gay men even less so. I don't know where the truth lies, but I do know that my gay male friends hearts can get be broken just as throughly as any straight women's.
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Just tell him...
.. that you are glad he wants an open relationship, because you have always wanted to give the hetero thing a fling, and that you would like to start a family, only you didn't want to tell him in case it hurt his feelings, but now you know it is alright, and you are so happy, and, oh gosh...