On Opening up a Relationship
How is this not the hottest thing ever?
Maya’s NYC FWB, Todd, for whom she held warring and oft splitting feelings of admiration and frustration, wanted to eat his cake and still have it, or rather, have his cake and stop his beloved from having theirs with his one penis policy. Symmetry is one of the most overlooked but important qualities of the terms of a partnership. People change, and so our preferences and comfort zones change with us. Relationships must bend in harmony with that reality.
I am regularly asked by guys (rarely girls) about how they might go about opening up their relationship. To this I have to ask, “Again?”.
“What do you mean again?”
“Well you were open until you weren’t, right?”
“No, we’ve always been exclusive.”
“Always… meaning…?” I would reach for clarity.
“From the first date I was sure that I wanted to focus on this person and make them my partner.”
“Okay that’s great!” I would say. “But as you turned up on that first day you were sure that this was the only person you wanted to sleep with forever more and you wanted to make them agree to the same?”
“Well… before I turned up it wasn’t really a relationship.”
“Mild acquaintance, relationship, prospective partner, whatever. The point is that you were open to see other people until you slid into monogamy with your current partner. You didn’t notice it but there point where you were convinced that the pros of mono outweighed the costs.”
Let’s take some time now to step through that assumption again. No obligations. Just a conversation. Let’s try.
There’s an odd situation that is more common than we realise where if one person in a partnership is wondering what it would be like to sleep with other people, then their partner likely is thinking about it too. We all know a few monogamous ‘forever couple’s who would say that they never have eyes for other people. But this is more a description of their terms, not the reality of their biological experience. Work by American Psychologist Sandra Murray and Canadian Psychologist John Holmes shows that committed individuals engage in derogation of alternatives, unconsciously rating other potential partners as less attractive or diverting attention away from them. And so the ethical dance around not wanting to be the first one to gently inquire, “Babe, have you ever wondered what it would be like to see other people, just for sex,” is like a Mexican standoff with blindfolds. So how might we approach it?
You might be surprised to learn that there is a ‘line’ which is some variation of: “I’ve been thinking about something a bit sensitive, and I want to raise it carefully because I care about us. I’d like to talk about whether some form of openness could ever work for us. It’s just a conversation about something vulnerable, not something I expect.”
That framing matters. It reduces perceived threat, which research in Relationship Psychology shows is the main reason these conversations escalate. If your partner hears “I’m already halfway there,” the discussion is effectively over before it begins. If it’s met with hostility then we should de-escalate using Adult persona techniques [See — On Transactional Analysis].
You can make it slightly more grounded by adding your motivation, but keep it specific and non-accusatory:
“This isn’t about something missing with you. It’s more about curiosity/sexual variety/experience, and I don’t want to act on anything without being fully honest with you.”
A purist’s deconversion from monogamy would involve saying, “I understand that we are exclusive at the moment, but I realise that you and I didn’t have good reasons to be exclusive, so we should discuss those partnership terms whether implicit or explicit with a view to check that they are serving us.” But a successful reinstatement of physical freedoms is sometimes hard to reframe from an assumed-not-stated system of monogamy. Such a transition depends on preparation much more than it does intent. So here are the 3 steps:
The 1st step is explicit alignment, to explore why each partner wants to cease exclusivity, what feelings they expect to have about their own experiences and hearing about their partner’s, what needs they believe it will meet, and what risks they anticipate. Vague motivations of “wanting more freedom” produce instability; specific vocalisations of “wanting sexual novelty, not emotional”) are easier to operationalise. It’s time to discuss:
What we sacrificed for monogamy.
What we expect to feel about group encounters.
What we expect to feel about solo encounters.
What we want to feel about each other’s solo encounters.
What we could do wrong.
The 2nd step is the composition of terms. This includes defining what counts as worrying behaviour and what should and should not be shared looks like. Couples often underestimate how granular this needs to be. Ambiguity creates conflict later because each partner fills gaps with different assumptions. It is also important to agree on pacing — rapid transitions are associated with higher distress, whereas staged approaches allow for adjustment and recalibration. There’s more to work out here such as:
What max/min session count is best.
What min/max head count is best.
What we should willingly / never share.
What acts are tolerable.
Whether encounters should (not) be declared, & with(out) warning.
Whether private spaces can (not) be used.
Whether to (not) check-in mid-date.
Whether we will (not) vet FWBs.
If barrier should be used.
Whether to search, or be opportunistic.
The 3rd step is in the onboarding. Since step 1 was discussing the ‘why’ and step 2 was discussing the ‘how’, this phase is about discussing ‘with whom’, ‘where’, and ‘when’, with one key consideration for each:
Who to do it with — Whether to start in group dynamics (M/F/MF).
Where to do it — whether to do it at a sex party.
When to do it — whether to do it while partner is busy.
Emotional management is the core difficulty. Feelings like jealousy, comparison, and insecurity are not anomalies; they are predictable responses. Work by Elisabeth Sheff, particularly from her longitudinal studies of polyamorous families, shows that successful CNM relationships rely on explicit agreements and ongoing renegotiation.
Attachment Theory is useful here: individuals with pursuant attachment experience heightened threat sensitivity, while avoidant individuals under-communicate discomfort. Research stemming from American Psychologists Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver shows that attachment style predicts how people respond to non-exclusivity — for example, anxious individuals report more distress, while avoidant individuals may suppress or minimise emotional reactions. This is widely replicated across relationship types. Effective couples treat these reactions as signals to process, not problems to suppress. Regular, structured check-ins (rather than reactive arguments) are one of the few consistently recommended practices.
Finally, there needs to be a clear understanding that opening a relationship does not repair underlying issues. If there are existing deficits — mistrust, resentment, mismatched libido — they tend to amplify rather than resolve under a large change in relationship terms. The dynamic is most stable when the base relationship is secure, communicative, and mutually responsive. Without that foundation, going non-mono functions less as an expansion and more as a stress test the relationship will fail.
