What is an open relationship?

The short definition

An open relationship is a committed relationship in which both people have agreed that one or both of them can have sexual or romantic connections with other people. Everyone involved knows. That is the whole distinction between an open relationship and infidelity, and it is not a small one.

The phrase is used loosely, which causes most of the confusion around it. Some people use open relationship to mean any arrangement that is not monogamous. Others use it more precisely, to describe a couple who treat their own relationship as the anchor while dating or sleeping with others. Both usages are in circulation, so when someone tells you they are in an open relationship, the useful next question is what that means for them specifically.

What makes it open rather than something else

Three things have to be true, and if any one of them is missing the arrangement is something different.

• Everyone involved knows. Not suspects, not tolerates without discussing, not found out and never mentioned again. Knows, and had the chance to say no.
• Everyone involved agreed. Consent given under threat of the relationship ending is not consent in any useful sense, and arrangements built on it tend to come apart.
• There is a shared understanding of the terms. Not necessarily a written document, but a common picture of what is and is not in scope. Most of the trouble people run into comes from two partners holding different versions of an agreement neither of them stated out loud.

The common shapes

Non-monogamy is not one arrangement, and knowing the vocabulary saves a great deal of misunderstanding.

• Open couple. A committed pair who date or sleep with others while treating their own relationship as primary. The most common meaning of the phrase.
• Polyamory. More than one romantic relationship at a time. May involve a primary partner or may deliberately reject that ranking. See open relationship or polyamory for the distinction.
• Solo polyamory. Multiple meaningful relationships without merging households or finances, and without seeking a primary partner.
• Swinging. Recreational and social rather than romantic, usually organised around couples, events and known venues.
• Relationship anarchy. A rejection of ranking relationships at all, including the assumption that romance outranks friendship. Covered in relationship anarchy explained.
• Don't ask don't tell. An agreement that other connections may happen but will not be discussed. Workable for some people and a common source of trouble for others, because it removes the mechanism for noticing problems early.

What people actually agree on

The agreements that come up most often, in roughly the order couples tend to encounter them, are about who, what, where, when and how much is shared afterward. Some couples set out most of this at the start. Others begin with a general principle and work out the specifics as situations arise, which is slower and often more durable because the terms are grounded in real events rather than imagined ones.

Common areas include whether other connections can be romantic or only sexual, whether either partner can meet the other people involved, how much detail is shared and when, whether there are people who are off limits such as close friends or colleagues, and how much time can be given to someone else. That last one is the most underrated and the most likely to cause difficulty, because time is genuinely finite in a way that affection is not.

What opening a relationship does not fix

This is the most important paragraph on the page. Opening a relationship does not repair one that is already failing, and the belief that it might is behind a large share of the arrangements that end badly.

If two people have stopped talking to each other, adding more people does not restore the conversation. If one partner is deeply unhappy, other relationships tend to make that visible faster rather than resolve it. If the underlying problem is that one person wants to leave, an open arrangement is often the mechanism by which they do, which is a painful way to arrive at the answer.

Open relationships work best between people who are doing well and want more, not between people who are doing badly and want relief. That is not a moral judgement. It is a description of which arrangements survive.

Is it common?

More common than most people assume, and consistently under-reported because of stigma. Published research suggests roughly one in nine American adults has been in a polyamorous relationship at some point, and a larger share again has practised some form of consensual non-monogamy. Survey work in New Zealand has found that around one in three singles either does not believe in monogamy or believes in ethical non-monogamy.

The figures vary by country and by how the question is asked, and self-reporting almost certainly understates the real numbers. What is not in doubt is that this is not a fringe arrangement, and that organised communities exist in most large cities across the countries we cover.

If you are considering it

Two pieces of practical advice recur from people who have been doing this a long time. The first is to talk before there is a specific person involved, because a conversation about principles is enormously easier than a conversation about someone you have already met. The second is to expect the first six months to be harder than you anticipated and the second six to be easier, which is the pattern most people describe.

If you have not raised it with your partner yet, how to raise it with your partner covers the conversation. If you have and you are working out the terms, rules and boundaries that hold covers what tends to work.