On Sexually Open Relationships
“I wonder how her date’s going…” “I wonder how his date’s going…”
My relationships since 2017 have been sexually open. More and more people are engaging in such a model, and certainly more are starting to understand what that entails.
I’ve never been a jealous person. I used to trust my early 20s’ partners greatly, despite having a mild history of abandonment since my parents would work every day, and divorced the year they sent me to boarding school. I actually really liked that people would try to hit on them and I would never interrupt their sarging. Their desire for a girl who desired me was fuelling our relationship. I used to enjoy the idea of my date being sexualised by and maybe even sexual with other people, past and present. That inclusion of other people in the bedroom in spirit was exciting. I became very aware that during sex I was fantasising about other women, either ones I’d been with or wished I had. And knowing statistics about the commonplace of thinking about other people naked, my partner likely was too. And it became a bull elephant in the bedroom that I learned to welcome, his tusks useful for hanging my mentally cuckholding hat.
After a string of 6 month relationships, at the point we’d emerge from the honeymoon stage to the power struggle stage and it was time for this very natural interest in rubbing my body against other people like interactive porn to square up against the relationship’s sexually closed terms, as assumed as they were in accordance with convention.
And so finally coming towards Christmas 2017, and it looking more likely that Eolanda and I would be shacking up that winter, the romance grew so quickly that we didn’t really have time to de-escalate with other people we were seeing, time we were spending with others that bore few signs of things of being able to develop into romance. E and I had that strange conversation that caught the essence of “I would describe you as partner. I would describe my feelings as romantic. I would describe this as committed. I would describe others as fuckbuddies. And so if you would describe all as the same, then let the words we say to each other and the time we spend together as our base.”
There were crises in confidence. There were occasional instructions. There were failures in communication. There was seasonality in sexual expressiveness. But over the years we learnt to recover ourselves from the maw of jealousy, and nurture something that we were proud of, expert in, and often defined by.
I used to mention my relationship status a lot. I’m not sure if it was a badge I liked to wear to promote conversation and show my mental fortitude against the trappings of monogamy, or to fish for like-minded people who I or we as a couple would get to fumble around with that same week. We both found that we stood stronger chances of getting laid if we didn’t mention each other to our new FWBs. We’d never lie, but for single people they saw a prospective future with a romantically single person to be a nice bonus on top of getting naked with them.
We were seen as very open and very secure in that openness. “Are you sure this is okay with Eolanda?” was always met with an affirmative. “In fact, she thinks you’re really cute and hopes we have a great time.” Eventually though, this line became a lie. E never celebrated my connections with others. Her own insecurities about her friendship circle bled over into judgement of my model which she said was too sex-focussed, whereas what she meant was too sex-focussed ‘for her’. In my INTJ way, I was driven by more 1 on 1 connections, and whilst I was sporting a charming manner and torso under 10% body fat, I would say yes to sex when it was offered, and offers came in a lot. E was sure that I was texting girls for the next meet up. But it was nearly completely the other way round; these connections were chasing me, and it excited my primal desire for variety. If in a month, E hit the club on 1 night with 8 friends, I would hit up 8 friends on 8 nights.
Her creeping resentment for my connections made it hard to introduce them to her. I didn’t know what she wanted. I didn’t know how to ask. I reset to focusing on myself and showing her that time together was to be our focus, but she pleaded suffering in my diluted sexual energy, and her protest behaviour was to withdraw, adding a positive feedback loop.
From Parallel Dating Shortlist to Position of Partner
Non-monogamy, umbrellaing sexually open relationships, romantically open relationships and structurally polyamorous throuples (or quads or larger) have been gaining popularity and visibility in recent years, with as many as 1/5 Americans reported to have been in, or interested in, some form of consensual non-monogamy. According to OKCupid, 39% of their users are willing to be in an open relationship with the right person.
In the modern dating world, especially in cities, single people in the dating marketplace find themselves parallel dating. As they grow to understand their prospective romantic interests they rightly close doors on new prospectives, arrive at a shortlist, and eventually collapse that list into 1 lucky someone. Some suitors will go away empty handed or must be relegated to friend or acquaintance.
At some point, with the selected romantic focus, a conversation must be had, as opposed to assumed, around sexual exclusivity. So begins a struggle, not just with one’s own objectives and pre-conceptions of what the relationships should or could be, but with those of the new partner.
It’s a little-used way of framing the nature of relationships, albeit definitionally true, to say that we all are in non-monogamous relationships with everyone we meet. And of course we continue to be in NMRs with everyone we haven’t yet had an exclusivity agreement with. We are born into a state where we have no obligations to control our behaviour to keep others’ sexual pathways cordoned and reserved, for that surely is the cornerstone of exclusivity. When we forgo other sexual partners, we are vowing that our partner is able to rest assured that our bodies are bound to theirs by continuous policy and occasional physicality with them alone.
A weak line of reasoning for monogamy follows that, a couple should be physically preserved only for one another so that the sex can act as a scaffold, something around which love adheres and incarnates. But we must be aware that such a theory’s real benefits are jealousy avoidance. People advocating for monogamy say, “how could someone develop a deep love by sleeping with other people and allowing their partner to do the same?” But they mean “how could someone develop a deep love when they have the same sexual access to all the same people they used to, whilst holding in their mind the fact that the object of their affection is doing the same?” They say this whilst happily having 3-course meal, touch rugby, life-drawing, cinema, and pole dancing dates with as many other people. Sex gets special treatment, and seems to be held as the only expression of an emotion that is direct towards a romantic partner. For them, physicality is sacred but when it’s co-op, for masturbation, soliciting prostitutes, one night stands, porn consumption, flirting and other dopaminergic titillation are exempt from scrutiny. It’s in the sharing of these acts with 1+ others that the question of carnal infidelity arises.
To escape this fallacy is to stop conflating romance with sex, something that facilitates eroticism and orgasms, but as a new category of love-making, something that buttresses companionship, vulnerability, acceptance of scars and foibles. Yes, sex is the vessel for romantic love as well as autonomic physical excitement, the same way it was before new age romance, and the same way it will be after.
And so the description of a relationship as non-monogamous is a bit like saying non-theist, non-bricklayer, or non-tapdancer. We shouldn’t need a word like atheist to describe what everyone on the planet starts out as by definition — that is to say a non-believer since one has to be indoctrinated to start believing in anything especially religion, just as one has to be indoctrinated in order to assume that loving and sleeping with one person is the natural order of things.
And so we are in NMRs with everyone and continue to be until we are convinced that some particular relationship should have terms of sexual exclusivity applied under pain of treason. Modern dating is parallel dating, especially if in an area of high encounter incidence (like a city) and possessing of relatively good ‘game’ in the dating marketplace, then we whittle options down to a shortlist and further to a chosen candidate. Then either person has to make the pitch for monogamy, and rules settle in whether consciously discussed or not.
Glossary
I mentioned how non-mono is an umbrella term. Some more definitions would be useful:
Relationship: A direct interpersonal dynamic or civilisational contract established between 2 people. This can be said even of 2 people who haven’t even met.
Acquaintanceship: a relationship between two people who have met but do not know each other well.
Acquaintance: a person with whom we have reciprocal familiarity, as in if we’ve had a few business meetings with them or bump into them at parties or purchase cigarettes off them every fortnight. Unilateral familiarity is known as a parasocial relationship.
Friendship: A kinship between 2+ people who spend time together for joint experiences.
Friend: A person with whom we choose willingly to spend time, or at least can share stories and experiences.
Friend with benefits: A person, also known as lover, extra, friend-plus, that is willing to spend part of our time together with us exploring sex.
Partnership: A unit of 2 people, sustained by an enduring love and is nurtured by romantic availability and closeness.
Partner: A person, also known as boyfriend, girlfriend, primary, who is a current focus of our romantic investment.
Nesting Partner: A person who is cohabiting with their romantic partner.
Life Partner: A person whose intention is a durable bond with their partner for the purpose of navigating life together.
Dating: Spending time with someone to evaluate them as a prospective romantic partner.
Friend date: Quality time organised with someone for varied non-romantic ends.
Romantic date: Quality time organised with someone to evaluate them as a prospective romantic partner.
Courtship: A bond formed of deep attraction and intention to escalate to Partnership.
Romance: A bond that is formed of feelings of prioritisation, bonding, sharing life experiences, and conjunction, fuelled by romantic love.
Love: An umbrella term for different types of affection and respect. In the context of Relationship Theory, ‘love’ means a romantic feeling of magnetism, warmth, and yearning when apart.
Polygamy: having 2+ spouses.
Polygyny: having 2+ wives.
Polyandry: having 2+ husbands.
Non-amorous: said of a person having 0 partners, or a relationship that is not founded on romance, as in a friendship.
Non-Monogamy: The umbrella term that has come to represent not literally the rejection of 1 spouse at a time (a legal mandate in most countries), but to capture dynamics of sexual unexclusivity, romantic unexclusivity, and interromantic groups.
Monogamous: (not literally the state of having 1 spouse) Said of a relationship between a couple that is sexually closed, romantically closed and not polyamorous.
Monamorous: said of a relationship where both participants love each other reciprocally and no one else.
Polyamory: The exploration of a second simultaneous romantic partner
Secondary: A person considered as a lesser romantic partner within a Polyamorous relationship.
Polyamorous: Said of a relationship that is in actuality and not policy involving 1+ of the partners being in love with 2+ people and that love is openly discussed between them.
Metamour: A person to whom we are connected not by our love but by the love of our partner.
Romantically Closed: Or exclusive, said of a relationship that is in policy (not necessarily in actuality) not supportive of exploring romance with yet more people.
Romantically Open: Or inclusive, said of a relationship that is in policy supportive of exploring romance encounters with others.
Sexually closed: Said of a relationship that has made terms to cease all sexual contact with people outside the relationship.
Sexually open: Said of a relationship that has made no terms about ceasing all sexual contact with people outside the relationship.
Sexually half-open: Said of a relationship supportive of a partner having solo sexual encounters with others only after forewarning their partner so that they may vet in order to greenlight or veto.
Swinging: Said of a relationship where partners invite singles, couples, or throuples for group sex dates
Club Swinging: Said of a relationship where partners go to public or private sex parties to play with others together
Soft Swinging: Said of a relationship in which penetration with others is not supported, as opposed to Hard Swinging.
Same-room Swinging: Said of a relationship in which sexual encounters with others are only supported when partners are in the same time and space.
Unrequited: Said of a love that is developed for an individual but not returned.
Boyfriend / Girlfriend: A label that is essentially a gendered version of romantic ‘partner’.
Monogamous: Said of a relaitonship that has terms in place that forbid sex with others.
Polyamorous: Said of a relationship group of 3 or 4 or more where there are in love with each other in different configurations.
Sexual Contact: An act between 2 people involving 1 person’s erogenous zones, including, nipples, mouths, genitalia, and anus. Familiar kissing and medical inspections are excluded.
Sex: Sexual contact between 2 people using any of their respective erogenous zones.
When couples or throuples or quads are romantically closed and sexually open but profess to have extra boy- or girl- friends, I encourage the use of the term FWBs instead to preserve the original usage of BF and GF to be defined by romance, and since societal stigma has a lot to say about who we partner with but much less to say about who we are friends with wether or not we have sex with them.
I discourage the use of ‘mongamous’ and ‘polyamorous’ to describe people rather than relationships. Describing people as mono is moot, since the the more we learn about the human brain and body, and proto-man, the more evidence we find that feelings that people are mono are byproducts of nuclear family systems based on husbandry, effectively the management of a household and the pater’s chattel. Sex at Dawn (2010) looks extensively at that question and draws powerful parallels from looking at our physiology and that of our mate-swapping ancestors and closest great ape cousins. There are also many powerful lessons to be learned from looking at human genital anatomy and function, as are seconded in Sperm Wars (1996).
The description of a monogamous person suggests not that they don’t have sex with others, but so many do in the form of cheating. They will commit adultery and still protest that this doesn’t make them poly. Some others might mean that they don’t fall in love with others, which flies in the face of love affairs that many fall into. If they mean that they don’t get crushes on others, then this is self-delusion as proven in studies such as Maner et al’s which demonstrated that ‘monogamous individuals’ do respond more to more attractive people. Extensive relationship data collected over two decades by Dr. Chris Fraley confirms that the tendency to find others appealing is a completely normal human baseline, even for self-described ‘monogamous’ individuals.
We are all susceptible to a love so great that it challenges our existing romantic relationship. And so calling people who are not in a relationship and looking for a new primary polyamorous, is as premature as calling someone who is emotionally cheating on their partner polyamorous. In the only way that has meaning, it is relationships that are mono or poly, and not people.
Analogies for Anal Orgies
A recurring analogy I use is one of playing Tennis. Physically exerting. Grunting guaranteed. You both score. The balls go in the box. It’s just a euphemism designed to highlight the exchange of moves and the distance between players is the emotional distance that is maintainable between participants be they 2 or 4 or more.
Another recurring analogy for sex will be one of trying different plates and from different restaurants since eating is one of the 2 things that humans partake in for no benefit other than consciously sought pleasure. The connection over a meal too or even just a coffee can be a great forum for more intimate discussion to happen, as often does happen between friends sharing a macchiato or postorgasmic heart to heart. Thus ‘tapas y cafe’.
Let’s entertain the obvious pushback on these metaphors. If you’re thinking “well, coffee isn’t like the sort of chats that happen after sex; coffee doesn’t have you giggling and embracing and thinking about other sexual encounters or what you want to explore next time,” then you don’t know how intimate coffee dates can be. If you’re thinking “well, tennis and tapas aren’t like sex; in tennis you don’t merge bodies,” then you are putting undue fascination and focus on physicality, something that doesn’t define relationships, especially primary romantic relationships which can theoretically be asexual.
Sustainable Ethos
Open couples receive a lot of misdirected hate, stemming from suspicion. Understand how pure the core tenet of open relationships is, which verbalised as, “If I want to have sex with someone who wants to have sex with me, then I’ll do it.” All the following accusations that straw-man, misrepresent, or presume:
“You guys’ sex can’t be good if you want to see other people.” — Open couples/ throuples don’t keep FWBs because their sex is bad, but for the same reason why we’d have coffee with one friend every fortnight and tapas with another every month — it’s just a matter of ritual, preference, and variety. Sex isn’t a box that needs ticking, it’s an opportunity and a pasttime. The number of times we eat out has nothing to say about the deliciousness of the homecooking.
“If you have sex with other people then you aren’t in love with your partner.” — Open couples / throuples don’t keep FWBs because incoming or outgoing love is high or low. Sex is as unemotional for them as it is for people meeting during a boozy club night, or watching porn. It can be connected, special and intimate with certain people, but it has little to say about their concern and affection for their romantic partners, whether they be in the same boudoir lubing up, or back at home watching Netflix.
“You’re being greedy by eating your cake and still having it.” — Sex with FWBs is not indulgence any more than having 12 friends rather than 4 is seeking social validation. People who enjoy sex and variety have as many sex dates as people who love clubbing go to raves.
“One of you (normally the male) must be coercing the other.” — It’s normally true that one partner out of the 2 has the higher libido but that isn’t the same as one bowing down to keep the other happy. In my research it’s about 50–50 whether the guy or girl in a MF couple has higher sex drive, but attraction skills stand in the way between drive and ability to close the deal.
“It will push you further apart. You will fall in love with a FWB.” — This presumes openness is inherently destabilising. In practice, couples who negotiate explicit agreements communicate more clearly than closed couples who rely on assumed norms, as is encourages conversations most couples never have.
“You only do it because the relationship is already failing.” — The reality is many couples open up from a place of security, not distress. Opening to patch a broken relationship is a real and well-documented mistake, much like having children. It’s argument against bad reasons, not against the arrangement itself.
“Your brain is broken, as you’re not able to get jealous.” — Ongoing communication about the relationship’s quirks tends to surface and resolve tensions before they fester. Jealousy is normally bubbling away even after many years. It’s just worth putting up with in the face of the benefits.
“It’s just a phase.” — Some couples do add monogamy rules for a period whilst they are undergoing a crisis. And eventually some do close down their relationships when their libido is waning
“You don’t have permission; you’re lying to your partner, therefore to me.” — Healthy open couples are transparent about their FWBs with their partners, most friends, and sometimes even family. The thing that normally stops them is the fear of being judged by the closed-minded. But also sex is a very private thing. A gentleman never kisses and tells. Discretion is a personal preference, not an admission of guilt.
“You’re just avoiding real commitment.” — When sexually open is working, it’s really working. The degree to which it highlights multi-variability in who we choose as sex pals, is surpassed only by the degree to which it highlights who we want to build a life with as an emotional base.
Measuring Sexual Openness
So sexually open couples have agreements that include some combination of the following rules. I’ve listed some common rules below for Person A, whose going on a FWB date, and Person B who isn’t, and given them each a point value which can be added up to evaluate and compare ‘openness’:
Rule
Theory (in order to…)
Points
Let B veto FWBs
Prevent troublesome FWBs from becoming too attached and start to have a negative effect on the partnership, normally through crowbarring or saying negative things about the partner. -2
Let B meet FWB first / see comms transcript
Prevent contact with people who don’t understand the simply sexual escalation of a friendship to FWBs, or just make sure they are an upstanding member of society. -2
Don’t have sex in my/ our/ your/ their place
Erase the specialness or immediate accessiblilty of accommodation, or tarnish its sacredness, or become to entwined with the FWB’s life. -1
Only gender X
Limit potential for romantic feelings in sexually bi couples then the romantically straight or gay -3
Only X times a month
Limit the bonding time with FWBs and preserve time and sexual energy for B. -2
Only ONSs
Prevent the development of romance with FWBs -2
No more than X active FWBs
Preserve time and sexual energy for B. -2
Not use nicknames
Give B some more specialness if only in language used about them. -2
No staying overnight
Prevent bonding through sleeping side by side -2
Divulge
Prevent Partner’s imagination from running wild with jealous imagination. -1
Declare sex dates post-hoc
Give B an idea of frequency to guide connection strength -1
Only repeat encounters
Prevent sexually disrespectful behaviour with FWBs -2
Use Barriers
Prevent transmission of STDs -1
Give X days warning to B
Allow B to mentally prepare. -1
No FWBs who were A’s friends first for a long time
Prevent confusing relationship dynamics -1
No FWBs who are B’s friends
Prevent confusing relationship dynamics for B -1
No colleagues
Prevent confusing relationship dynamics -1
No people who are B’s colleagues
Prevent confusing relationship dynamics for B -1
No exes
Prevent confusing relationship dynamics -1
Check in mid date
Keep an emotional tether with B -1
TOTAL -30
Skeptics say “I couldn’t be doing with all the rules.” But by definition not implementing monogamy is having fewer rules. These aren’t rules so much as caveats for freedom. Checks for approaching intimacy with others safely, and these guardrails are normally relaxed with time, and by time I mean enough successful play dates to instill trust. How did you score?
0 to -10 Very Open
-11 to -20 Moderately Open
-21 — to -30 Slightly Open
In the Media
There aren’t many celebrity confirmed open relationships. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith have indicated that their marriage does not operate under strict sexual exclusivity and both have acknowledged outside relationships. Mo’Nique and Sidney Hicks have spoken about their arrangement, stating that their marriage allows sexual relationships with others provided there is honesty and transparency. Nico Tortorella and Bethany Meyers have described their relationship as sexually autonomous while maintaining a committed partnership. Media theorist Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller have popularised the concept of being primarily committed but with negotiated allowances for outside sexual experiences. Margaret Cho, who described her past marriage to Al Ridenour as open. Tilda Swinton and artist Sandro Kopp also speak of their sexual flexibility.
As for fictional characters, Aurora in Friends (1995) has an open marriage, much to Chandler’s dismay, then delight, then dismay, and his emotional journey with her is very typical and good to see on the screen. The Underwoods in House of Cards (2013) are open but portrayed in a way that if they ever slept with other people for reasons other than developing their own political agendas, then there’d be a discussion. Oberyn Martell and Ellaria Sand from A Song of Ice and Fire (1996) openly share lovers.
There are reasons why these relationships aren’t portrayed more in the media. Protagonists are marketed through recognisable archetypes and mass appeal. Open relationships threaten them. Publicists prefer clarity over nuance. Moral signalling toward broad audiences matters economically. Imagine a character who is head over heels over their love interest but still sleeping with everyone they fancy on their journey to ‘win’ them. Even if public attitudes toward non-monogamy are softening, large segments of audiences still interpret it through frames like infidelity, instability, or unnaturalness. But open is more objectively natural in a literal sense than most people think.
Neurospicyness & Sexually Open
A 2022 study in the journal Sexuality & Culture found that autistic adults were significantly more likely to practice or CNM than neurotypicals. Autistic people tend to build their own social rules than follow civilisational script. They consistently score lower than average on conformity tests, which spills over into partnership rules too. They are also less affiliated with jealous responses, not assigning emotionality to practicality of orgasmic pleasure seeking as a default. ADHD is associated with higher novelty-seeking, which monogamy structurally suppresses.
Sexually Open in Nature
Turning to our closest primate cousins, we get a clearer picture of what human sexuality might look like stripped of civilisational pressure Chimpanzees, who share 98.7% of our DNA, are promiscuous and community-oriented. Females mate with multiple males, and paternity ambiguity may actually reduce infanticide by giving all males a stake in the offspring. Bonobos, equally close to us genetically, use sex as a social tool — for conflict resolution, coalition-building, and… for lack of a better word… ‘greeting’. Alpha silverbacks keep a harem. None of these species have religion, money, inheritance law, or the social contract. But they do have hierarchy, coalition, and familial structure — things we share with them. If we filter out everything civilisation added and ask what the overlapping substrate looks like, we find a picture far more varied than what a wedding suggests.
Prehistoric humans almost certainly lived in small bands where paternity was ambiguous and sexual access was communal to varying degrees. Anthropologists call this the ‘original affluent society’, one in which bilateral sexual exclusivity was not yet a property right one way and a duty the other. Apologies for my lack of romantic language.
Advantages
Love is about security and familiarity, yet passion is about risk and novelty. Fulfilment is about having what you want, yet desire is about wanting what you haven’t had for a while. If life is about balance, then achieving all 4 of these states is the greatest balancing act of all. Sexual exclusivity collapses both of these spectra. Having fewer rules in a relationship definitionally leaves more room for growth and exploration, and fewer chances of cheating and failing.
This brings me to the 3 massive strengths that are the trunk of the argument for preserving sexual openness, They are presented in 3 core principles:
Practice attracting. Practice sex — If we don’t use it, we lose it. To save our flirtation muscles from atrophy, we use them throughout our partnered life still. To prevent our couple’s sexual playbook from reducing to 1 page, Open couples carry techniques, tempos, and energies between partners. What they learn with a FWB comes home with them, and what they’ve grown comfortable with at home makes them more grounded elsewhere.
Compete for your partner — when our beloved is still being competed for on the sexual marketplace, an instinct tells us that we risk losing them, not emotionally but in terms of sexual focus. It’s exciting to see one’s partner being desired. And that excitement translates directly into responsive desire and impassioned romance.
Bring the best of yourself home — Solo adventures generate energy, novelty, mystery, and attraction, and all these can be shared with our partners. What we learn about ourselves out in the world makes us more present at home. We learn from open-mindedness, jealousy, honesty, and story-telling. We take the best energies home with us from dates. We learn so much about a person over a coffee, but to see them all and in the altogether, is another level of trust, respect, and validity that feeds and affects the soul on a spiritual level, and our partners can feel that too. It’s genuine. It’s human. It’s naturally unbound.
We don’t want a lack of physical connections, quietly extinguished over years of monogamy to be one of the the escalatory reasons — the other 3 being marriage, kids, and joint affairs — to feel stuck with our partner. We want it to be as easy as possible for them to leave us. That way we know that the reason why they keep coming back to our bed at the end of the night or the week, is because they can’t stop loving us in mind and body. They choose us, because we enjoy and share this sexual freedom, and because they wouldn’t have it any other way.
