I am a free agent at the moment but when I start dating again, I want to date more than one person. I would be up front about this and hope he would date others also.
Whats the protocol for this? I am looking from people who have open relationships. I want no one or two night stands, I want a relationship, but want us to see others. Should we both tell each other when we are dating? or keep it to ourselves?
Can it work or does one partner get jealous?
This is going to be a tough order to fill. The commonly accepted circumstances are either you are dating people, or you are in a committed relationship.
Open marriages can work for some few people too, but that’s a rare exception. I would imagine it will be hard to find someone who wants his/her partner, that they consider themselves to be in a committed relationship with, to date around when he/she gets the urge to do so.
Good hunting, anyway.
There are a couple fairly prolific posters around here on the subject, though I’m not sure how you’d search for it (open relationship?). You may have trouble finding people of like mind initially, but they’re out there and it’s not all that rare, from what I can tell.
I’m in an open marriage, and I’d love to talk your ear off about it (or, as **Kalhoun **nicely euphamizes, I’m “a prolific poster” 
), but I’m on my way to a funeral right now.
Briefly, it’s about being honest not only with the other person (people), but with yourself. I’ve seen a lot of attempts at open relationships fail when one partner starts feeling ooged out or resentful, but plays like everything is still OK. We all have times of jealousy and even self-doubt, but if you cannot express those to your partners, then something is wrong.
As for how to bring it up, that’s a tricky one. Bring it up too soon, and you come across like a slut. Delay too long, and you’ve misguided the other person. I find it easiest to begin by talking about it as an abstraction, to guage the person’s interest. It’s pretty easy to tell if someone’s into the idea.
Do a search on my username and “open marriage” or “polyamory” and you’ll probably get some useful hits. I remember in at least one post detailing the several “types” of folks you need to watch out for when open dating, and I think it was a pretty good post. I’ll try to find it when I get home this afternoon and link to it.
Yep, just be honest. I suggest using speed-dating services or Lavalife or some other of this sort. It’s a way for you to meet a variety of like-minded people. And of course, be honest right up front. “I really like you and I’d like to spend time with you and have fun. But I’m not looking for anything serious or committed; I just want to have fun, with no jealousy and lots of freedom.”
There are lots of people who feel the same way.
Have fun!
Yes indeed. I’m one of them.
My problem is I start to date a gal who says this is what she wants too only later on down the line she changes her mind and says she wants something more.
OK, I’m back. What’d I miss? 
Hmm…this thread needs a bumpin’. Let me do that with a couple of links.
Here’s the post in which I detail the “types” of folks I run into trying to date openly. SHAKES, your girls are included in numbers 3 or 4.
Actually, the whole thread that the above post is in turned into a “The World According to WhyNot” thread, with some great contributions from other open dopers, as well. It answers a lot of the logistical questions most people have about open dating (or open marriage, more specifically.)
This post contains a lot of Food for Thought and things that Ought To Be Discussed before embarking on an open relationship - emotions, STDs, pregnancy and more.
And here’s the alt.polyamory FAQ. Terrible formatting, good information.
I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you might have, but I’m not sure what else to add right now.
See? Told ya!
Hmm, back when I used to date, I just made it clear up front that I was dating, not committed. So if I went out with Jim on Friday night, there was no assumed Saturday night date with him. If Jim asked for a date for the following evening, I said, “Sorry, can’t, I already have plans.”
(My father, however, couldn’t keep them straight. Once, he had a long conversation with my date Scott on Friday night about his transmission issues in his Camaro. The next night, my father proceeded to continue the conversation – with a different guy, who had a Porsche with no transmission issues whatsoever, while my mother and I frantically tried to shut my father up. My Saturday date was befuddled, to say the least. As soon as I explained my dating policy, he understood and was quite gracious.)
What level of disclosure you have with your partner is up to what you agree to. There are people who do don’t ask, don’t tell sorts of relationships, but that isn’t what I’d recommend. Some people recommend informing a partner of absolutely everything; also not what I’d recommend.
The way it works in my life is that I find partners from among my circle of friends. Sometimes this is people I spend a lot of time with; other times it’s someone I’ve spent a fair amount of time talking with online. If it’s someone who hasn’t been in a position to observe how I do relationships, I explain it up front when expressing an interest in them. (As it stands at the moment, my more recent relationship – my husband and I have been together for twelve years and have never been monogamous, so we’re pretty clear on how we do relationships – is someone I’ve known for four or five years, who has also been lurking on poly discussion lists for quite a while and had an archive of back posts that included some of mine. That was funny.)
As a result of this, who I’m involved with is pretty much general knowledge to my other partners; I also consider it a matter of courtesy to be clear to people what demands there are on my time and energy, and also what sexual exposure risk status is. I’m not likely to develop a new relationship at any point in the future, as I don’t have all that much uncommitted time left, but if I did my partners would almost certainly hear about it before it happened, and would probably already know the person (or know of them, at a bare minimum; it’s not like I don’t talk about the people I spend time chatting with).
There are dating sites for people who aren’t interested in monogamous relationships, such as polymatchmaker.com; I can’t speak to how good they are, as I’m not a personals ad kind of gal. You may also be able to find a poly group near you to get local contacts and advice, but keep in mind that these gatherings are likely social, not places to find dates. A bunch of local groups are linked off www.polyamory.org, as are a number of useful things (I highly recommend the FAQs).
As to jealousy, my experience is that it’s an emotional reaction to feeling that something of mine is threatened. Sometimes it’s because I’m being an overcontrolling psychobitch who’s treating stuff as ‘mine’ that was never given to me; sometimes it’s because, yes, I’m being treated badly or something is a threat to the stability of an extant relationship. Learning to tell the difference is important. (Also, if you’re not sure if you have a knee-jerk “Mine!” about exclusivity, you may be unpleasantly surprised by jealous reactions to evidence of non-exclusivity. I’ve never had this problem, myself, but I know other people who have.)