And I apologize in advance for not knowing the correct terminology to use here (please feel free to educate me). When I say transitioning to an “open” relationship, I mean any relationship that previously involved two people as a monogamous couple, where now one or both parties is able to engage in a physically and/or emotionally intimate relationship with one or more “new” people outside of the previously established relationship. For the purposes of the questions I’m about to ask, this definition doesn’t apply to a couple which has jointly taken on a third party (or another couple) to be added to their existing relationship (but I welcome responses from people of all experiences).
So, for people who have been involved in relationships that have gone through such a transition (either as a member of the couple, or as the new party), I am curious about the following:
Were both members of the couple allowed to pursue other individuals, or was it just one party?
Did the decision to make the relationship open come out of a general interest in pursuing other relationships, or because one party had already found someone else of interest, and then sought permission from/agreement with the existing partner?
Were there difficulties with jealousies from one or both parties? Did the third person experience jealousy issues with the original relationship?
Were there “rules” established about how the original partners could conduct their relationship? And specifically, did the rules require that the partner in the new relationship notify the other partner when such liaisons were occurring?
If you were the other partner, would you want to know when such liaisons were occurring? Why or why not?
I don’t wish to limit the discussion in this thread to just my questions, so please feel free to share whatever thoughts and experiences you find relevant.
I’ve never been in a relationship like that and likely never will, but I remember someone on another message board ranting about it.
She and her husband had a simple agreement: New partners had to be approved by the spouse. They actually had to meet. So her husband introduced her to a woman, and she said Absolutely Not. Then when she was away, he had sex with the other woman anyway. She considered that cheating and I think they even got divorced over it.
I’m strictly mono, but my understanding is that any open/poly relationship has to have ground rules to keep things from dissolving into a morass of misunderstandings and hurt feelings. It makes sense, really; everybody has a point where they say, “I’m fine with this, but no more” about anything, and being happy in a poly relationship (or a mono one, really) absolutely requires not going past either partner’s no-more line.
My understanding is that most folks’ understandings include knowing at least the bare-bones basics of what’s going on the partner’s love life, because not sharing that information smacks of hiding the relationship and starts to edge into territory they would consider cheating. If I were poly, I’d have no interest in the gory details, but would need to know who and when and how serious.
But it doesn’t really matter what anybody else would want from an open relationship, because they’re not the ones who will have to live with your decisions.
I think a lot of people would agree that whether or not the wife’s veto was right or wrong, the fact that he went behind her back to conduct the affair was wrong. No argument from me, anyway.
What if the other person specifically didn’t want to know, though? Would that suggest potential jealousy issues that might cause problems down the line? Or might it be normal that someone just didn’t want to know anything at all about their significant other’s “extracurricular” activities?
:: nods ::
Exactly. The nature of the arrangements does not matter as much as the deception involved in breaking them.
I think there has to be a certain level of trust and prior arrangement even in such cases. If Spouse A doesn’t want to know the details of Spouse B’s arrangement with Possible Spouse C, fine; but if I were Spouse A, I’d be leery of okaying such an arrangement without getting some guarantees that Spouse B is not going to bring home an unexpected complication from C, such as an STD.
Some of these answers are from personal experience, some are from second-hand information.
Were both members of the couple allowed to pursue other individuals, or was it just one party?
Generally, both members would be allowed to have other r’ships, but both members may not be equally interested in doing so. I would be extremely skeptical, if not suspicious, of any arrangement where one person has more rights/responsibilities than the other.
Did the decision to make the relationship open come out of a general interest in pursuing other relationships, or because one party had already found someone else of interest, and then sought permission from/agreement with the existing partner?
IME, the latter arrangements DO NOT WORK. If you think you might be interested in a poly arrangement, the time to discuss it and figure it out is well before you actually have someone in mind. Trying to use poly as a back-dated excuse for wanting to fool around with someone else is not going to go well, as in probably destroy the initial relationship and quite possibly the new one as well.
Were there difficulties with jealousies from one or both parties? Did the third person experience jealousy issues with the original relationship?
Absolutely, in all directions. This is one of the things that makes poly r’ships so difficult. The only solution is excellent communications, and honesty and respect between all parties.
Were there “rules” established about how the original partners could conduct their relationship? And specifically, did the rules require that the partner in the new relationship notify the other partner when such liaisons were occurring? Yup. Not just notify - partners get a veto IME. And not following the rules is cheating, just as much as having an affair is cheating in a mono r’ship. (ETA: If “when such liaisons” = “details of what time you’re having sex”, then no. Most people don’t want gory details. I’m assuming that “liaisons” means “another r’ship”.)
If you were the other partner, would you want to know when such liaisons were occurring? Why or why not?
Absolutely. For one thing, that other relationship IS going to affect my life. I’d much rather go into it with eyes open than sticking my head in the sand. For another thing, infatuated people don’t always have the best judgement. If I see a trouble-making trauma/drama queen, I’m going to veto the whole thing, and my partners would do the same.
What if the other person specifically didn’t want to know, though? Would that suggest potential jealousy issues that might cause problems down the line? Or might it be normal that someone just didn’t want to know anything at all about their significant other’s “extracurricular” activities?
I don’t think I could do poly under those circumstances. I think there would be jealousy issues, huge ones. I’d very strongly suspect that the person who didn’t want to know is just pretending to themselves that it will all be OK if they don’t look, and sooner or later it will all go boom.
I can tell you flatly that I would never be the third party in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” relationship. You’re in a relationship and want me around? You’d better be ready to introduce me to the spouse, because they will have to tell me it’s OK before it goes anywhere.
To not know who my partner is [sleeping/giddily holding hands/having deep soulful discussions] with would be a very weird situation to me. I mean, consider if your partner didn’t want you to meet their family or friends? Wouldn’t that be weird? Normally, you’d expect to meet the people important to your partner. Hell, normally I’d expect to meet my friends’ partners (and other friends).Which leads to a further oddity: if I meet my partner’s friends, and my partner’s partner also meet these friends, do these friends have pretend that the other partner doesn’t exist? That they didn’t meet? Or what? Because a relationship model that puts requirements on the actions of people outside the relationship seems untenable to me.
It seems that such an arrangement would require a partitioning of one’s life that is, at the very least, severely inconvenient.
So, uh, yes :). I’d want to know, partly for the reasons above, partly out of general interest in my partner’s life and the people therein.
I’ve watched a few open relationships fall apart, not from up close but I was around enough to follow the general trend. I think that sometimes that’s just going to happen and the poly part of it plays into how things fall apart, but I don’t imagine it was really because of that.
From my outsider’s perspective it seems that such relationships work best when there is trust and honesty as well as a regard for the other person. It seems like if you want them to work well you have to work even harder than in a monogamous relationship (which itself takes a certain amount of work).
I’m in one of those relationships actually. We were mono for several years and are open now to some degree. Our version of open is more that we can sleep with other people if we choose. Neither of us have sought an ongoing relationship with a third party and that would require more discussion anyway.
Both.
General interest, though more on his part then mine.
Yes, there has been some jealousy but we work it out. We are very clear with third parties that we are together and so far that hasn’t caused problems.
Yes, knowledge that the other of us is picking someone up is absolutely required. As not so much a ‘rule’ but a general guideline is that it doesn’t happen often. Often being defined rather loosely.
Yes. Sleeping with someone else and not letting me know beforehand is not kosher.
Somewhere in The Ethical Slut, the authors point out that when a poly marriage ends in divorce, people tend to take that as “evidence” that poly arrangements just don’t work. But when monogamous marriages end in divorce, nobody thinks that it shows that mono marriages just don’t work.