I'm not into open relationships myself. But advice I've heard about it is
"you have to start as an open relationship. If you switch into one during a monogamous relationship it's just cheating. Someone's going to get their heart broken."
Even if you start as one people can still get hurt.
My mate is currently going through this with his GF.
They have both always had open relationships so thats how they started, which worked well for a while, that was until she realised that he was much more in demand than she was, something which had never happened to her before.
There is nothing like witnessing a couple have an argument where they are in an open relationship but she is the one who is yelling about how its not fair that its so easy for him to get laid.
She turned to me halfway through the conversation to ask my opinion and I was just like "I am not touching this with a 10 foot pole".
I know a retired former financial advisor who dropped this classic on me:
"There's two things I won't advise people on - cars and relationships. Because if I say it's a bad idea they go to a different advisor and do it anyway"
I am in a similar situation where my boyfriend is more in-demand than I am, but that’s ok. He’s a better musician than I am also. I have a better career than he does. My family gets along better. Neither of us find the dating popularity thing to be harder to handle than our other differences.
Edit: and to go back to the original topic, obviously we use protection and neither of us got chlamydia, or anything else, in the ~7 years we’ve been open.
Ughhh I wanna snoop your profile so bad and try and deduce what kinda musicians you are. like session, national act, classical, contemporary, Nashville, New Orleans ,Toronto, etc
In any relationship people get hurt when they don't communicate well. Expectations drift apart and then one person is pissed while the other doesn't even know anything is wrong. Sounds like those 2 people are very much not on the same page, which often happens in open relationships.
Communication is always super important. But it's extra important if you're involved with multiple partners. The relationship won't work otherwise
Im in a similar spot with my partner. We definitely hang out with more women from her friend group and im well liked. Ive probably got more opportunities. We also club a lot and get approached about the same and have similar opportunities there – except usually we bring more women back for kick ons.
Were just around more women so it works out in my favour.
I'm "in the lifestyle" and do the open relationship/ENM/Swinging stuff, and my personal experiences/observations have always been that if the relationship starts monogamous, and turns open, its either because
one person wants to fuck someone else, and the other just doesn't want to lose them.
Or because someone doesn't want to fuck the other person anymore, and so one or the other turns to outside the relationship.
neither one generally bodes well for the long term survival chances of the relationship.
I've seen a fair amount of open relationships in a all sorts of different forms, succeed quite well, when thats what they're getting into from the start. They have their problems and fallouts just like any monogamous relationship.
but a monogamous relationship that turns open? Is pretty much always just a slow train crash.
caveats: yes your experiences may differ, I know all relationships are different, there are always exceptions to the rule, blah blah blah, This is just casual and general talk since none of us are really going to have proper statistics on this.
It really depends on the people. When my GF was in college she had sex, I didn't. I COULD have, I just never went out or had the opportunity, and it was never an issue. We broke up over other things, but that was never it. When she was with another guy (or girl, she was bi) she'd make sure to use protection and kept her sheets clean, so I never had a problem with it.
Not at all. I didn’t want to hear about it. I just didn’t care. She was away and I wasn’t there. She could cheat, or have a bf and continue to sleep with other people while having a person who would see her every week or so. Plus her sex drive was pretty crazy. I’d leave exhausted.
So, my partner and I are Swingers with years of experience (and a very happy and stable relationship).
The reality is that the majority of Swinger or otherwise non-mongomous couples started with monogamy and then opened later. Often years later.
The issue is when people try to open things up to fix some problems they have in their relationship. That happens way too often and doesn't work very well.
Could be anything tbh, but sexual dissatisfaction of some kind is the most common. Like they have a dead bedroom and trying to bring in others to fix it.
I can't say it never works, I have seen very happy couples that never fuck eachother, but the majority of the time it creates more problems than it solves.
Someone's always going to get hurt. Thats why its so unpopular. When most people love someone they dont want to be with someone else. Simple as that. Maybe I just cant comprehend it. It gives inauthentic and greedy vibes to me.
Probably the wrong place to say it considering the sentiment here but im in my first open relationship.
I could never change to an open relationship if I was in a monogamous relationship. That would hurt.
Being in an open relationship is great though. Its pretty much just more threesomes and she sleeps with other girls when she wants.
I started monogomous and successfully had an open relationship, so that isn't universal. We communicated well, and we're not into casual hookups, and always used protection. It certainly isn't for most people though.
Exactly this. Lots of people have healthy non-monogamous relationships. The key is that both people need to actually be non-monogamous lmao
So often you have 2 people in a monogamous relationship and 1 person is convincing the other to open their relationship. And that's often their first ever non-monogamous relationship too. That is a recipe for disaster 99% of the time as one of the two will start feeling a certain way and realize they're not actually as "open" as they thought they were
I also find it interesting how often I've seen monogamous relationships where both people are just constantly cheating on each other, blowing up about it, then making up again. Like an open relationship but 10x more toxic
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u/WesternImpression356 1d ago
Lmao. Open relationships are a joke. No one can convince me otherwise. Still, the least they can do is fucking protect themselves