An Excess of Love

In both the social sciences and pop cultural representation, gay men's open relationships are consistently described according to a contradictory logic in which coupled gay men may enjoy non-exclusive sexual practices because they are able to separate sex from emotional attachment and only on the condition that they separate sex from emotional attachment. Since the emotional response to outside sexual partners that should not occur always is a threat, gay men are cautioned to institute and obey rules to produce and enforce a boundary or separation, in the interest of protecting primary coupled relationships. This article argues that the failure to forestall an emotional response outside, beyond, and despite the boundaries of the couple has an important ethical value in the post-Obergefell world of gay normalization. An excess of love, flaring up where it shouldn't, holds open the possibility of other forms of community, sociality, and relationality.