Open relationships, to me, have always seemed like a minefield of hurt. I spent my early teens educating myself on relationships using the ultimate gal's guide to love: a copy of Cosmo and a weekly dose of Carrie B. I thought I knew everything. I was the practically celibate, advice-giving, rosé-chugging, chain-smoking, northern, working-class amalgamation of “50 hot sex tips” and four fictional New York women, and on the hunt for the ultimate, the everything: The One.
Now, we all know "the one" is a myth, just like Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes. It implies that all relationships last happily ever after, when the truth is – most of the time, at least – they don’t. No one said “It just works”, “We never argue” or “We still have sex 25 times a week” without it coming back to bite them in the ass. Please. Today, finding “the one" – by which I mean a single, lifelong dedicated love – seems pretty unlikely. What if there’s not one, but four ones, and what if they come along all at the same time?
After speaking with five different people who have been conducting long-term, polyamorous relationships, I realised two things:
1. Perhaps open relationships don’t have to be for everybody, just like monogamy isn’t for everybody. Perhaps some people find openness to be the form of dating and sex that works for them and their partners. There’s no hierarchy or major level of enlightenment that people who are monogamous, or non-monogamous, have. It’s just a different viewpoint. Among circles of queer friends who are in open relationships, this is something I had felt before: that because I didn’t think non-monogamy would work for me I was somehow less queer, less radical, less enlightened. That’s not true. What was clear from all the conversations I had was that everyone works hard at their relationships in pretty much the same ways, no matter what form those relationships take.
2. That the open, poly, and non-monogamous community is very broad. It’s not restricted to gay people, queer people, hippies, kinky straight people: it is just another way of living that a lot of people opt into.
There’s far more to it, of course, but I leave that to the five voices to follow.
Joanne, 25, London
It wasn’t your normal first-date chatter. We were curled up together in a gazebo in the garden of a London club, having just had our first kiss, when my soon-to-be-lover began to list the other women he was seeing. It was sort of surreal, and funny in its way, if a little daunting. There was The American, The Post-Grad, The Older Woman… Actually, some of these may be the same person – I sort of zoned out after a bit.
There have been a few strange moments. Taking a phone call from my sister while in bed with the boy, and having a full conversation about a girl I’d made out with the previous night while he listened in; comforting him about people who have broken up with him while we’re cuddling and post-coital. It can feel strange, but most of the time it really is just funny. The biggest challenge can be trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all while he’s pouring his heart out to me.
Because we've only been dating about four months, we don't have a lot of rules. One is, obviously, to use condoms with anyone else. Also, I guess we have an implicit rule not to mention other people unless one of us asks directly (that’s usually him). I think it's made easier for both of us that we're both aware that – for the time being at least – we are one another's favourites. And to be honest, there’ve been no problems so far, but it helps that we're at an early stage and we're both aware that neither of us is seeing anyone else seriously.
I think it's possible to be emotionally monogamous and sexually open, but I don't know whether it's possible for everyone – or even whether it'll turn out to be possible for me, in the long run. Once, I saw that he'd gone to the cinema with another girl and I got jealous enough to stalk her on Facebook, but in the end it didn't bother me enough to ask him about her. I think that perhaps in a later stage of life, or in a down period where I felt more self-conscious, I might resent it more because I'd worry that the other people he slept with were somehow preferable to me.
Both my partner and I are bisexual so I suppose there's an element of still being able to access something my partner can’t fulfil for me. The main point is having opportunities, and not feeling like I have to compromise my lifestyle or miss out on anything just because I'm dating someone. I like going out and knowing it's okay to flirt with people, and I like not having that gnawing background feeling that I think a lot of the Tinder generation has, that the price of choosing one person is giving up all of the potential partners who might change your life.
For me, the power structure hasn’t been so asymmetrical so far, despite the potential implications there with gender. I feel like it's not just the emperor-concubine story, but also the modern playboy and/or commitment-phobe man-child stereotype that play into those ideas. It's definitely true that when we first got involved a lot of my friends and family expressed concern that I was just letting myself be played by a guy unwilling to commit for sordid reasons. But I still don’t feel that’s the case.
Ewan, 27, Liverpool
Rules: these can vary depending on the person I'm with. Obviously communication is the biggest rule, about what the expectations are. I've been with girls who would like to know if I'm going out for a date, and others who know I'm dating others but don't want the details.
Mainly, the reason I’m in an open relationship is that I feel that being with one person cannot give me 100% of what I want out of a relationship. I've been in monogamous relationships in the past that made me feel I was missing something. A few years ago I began to question the sociological construct of monogamy. What is the purpose from an evolutionary perspective? I come from a psychology background and am interested in evolutionary psychology; in the animal kingdom you do get lifelong mates, but from higher mammals you get more complicated structures. If the structure of monogamy is to raise children in a secure environment, that shouldn't preclude the need to love and feel emotions for others.
It's a fairly new experience for me (just about a year) and I can't profess to know all the answers. I dated a couple of women earlier on in the year and it went well, and the openness was seen as essential for all parties. We all went in knowing what was expected, I had met them both independently but they did meet and got on very well with each other... Which was fun.
If you’re thinking about it, first off read about the dynamics. There have been a few articles written on the pitfalls, etc. And be open about what you want and question why you are entering into the lifestyle. If it's just to have sex with lots of people there are easier ways of going about it.
Jin, 38, Bristol
I have so many rules about openness, to the degree that it would be boring to go into them all. I guess the point is, for me, that the rules of a good poly relationship work a bit like the common law system: you start off by mapping out a few basic principles but every now and again a case comes up that doesn't fit with them and needs a new ruling, so together you set a precedent, which becomes a part of the overall body of rules that you have. And, hopefully, as a result the whole system gets stronger over time.
But the thing is, in an open relationship, just like a monogamous relationship, it's easy to mess up and hurt someone's feelings through being selfish or inconsiderate. There are many things I've done wrong, but pretty much all could be attributed to a basic error of doing what I want without considering my partner's feelings. There's no miracle strategy to work through it, you just look at what you did and why you did it, take on board how and why it was hurtful to your partner, and try and be a better person next time.
We can all agree that male privilege impacts all relationships and all of society, which means of course it impacts polyamory too. There are a lot of ways that it does, but maybe one of the subtler (but damaging) ways is that men are often not expected to do the emotional problem-solving in relationships; but if you're dating multiple people – especially if you're a man dating multiple women – it's really not okay to just skip out on that part of it. A lot of the male privilege I see in poly relationships involves men being reckless with other people's emotions, then trying to dodge the blame. I'll hold my hand up and say that I've been guilty of that too.
If you're bad at monogamy, you're going to be even worse at polyamory. Seriously: if you end up cheating on partners because you can't be honest about what you want or need, this is a terrible idea. The number one most important thing is being able to be honest with the person(s) you love, so think about how emotionally open and vulnerable you're willing to be.
Tash, London, 26
I’m non-monogamous because I don’t like having to fit myself into one particular form. I guess I never found monogamy so fun when I did it in the past: it didn’t really suit my desire to have relationships with other people, it was also just kind of presented as a default that you would have one partner, which for me felt like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I guess also because I believe that some people have the capacity and desire to have meaningful emotional and physical relationships with multiple people, rather than just one.
And now I’m sort of a proper relationship anarchist. I have a primary partner who I have been seeing for quite a few years, and another boyfriend who I have been dating for about a year and he’s a meaningful person in my life. We've been together for different periods of time, but I try not to see it as hierarchical in any way. And then I casually date and see other people.
The other day I met my boyfriend in town because he came to bring my bike to work, and I went to meet my other boyfriend to go on a date, and he was meeting someone to go on a date too. And I was asking, “Oh why did you bring your bike here too, where are you going?” and he explained, “We’re going on to the Curzon on Shaftesbury Avenue to see a film.” And we ended up going to the same film, at the same time, in the same place. It was ultimately fine, but just quite hilarious.
Of course both boyfriends know about each other, and know each other too. They’re not like close friends but we have hung out socially, because we have shared friends and mutual friends. I don’t think they’d hang out independently, without me there, but we’re all very happy to socialise together. My other boyfriend has a girlfriend; we have hung out just the two of us, too. That said, I think for me it’s important in poly or open relationships to not draw comparisons between different partners. She and I will talk about our other partners though. I don’t use it, but some people use the word 'metamour' – it describes my boyfriend’s girlfriend to me, we’re connected by another – I find the word a little cheesy. There’s a lot of terminology in and around non-monogamy, and different people use different terminology, but it just feels a little naff to me. It’s personal preference.
In terms of rules across my relationships, I think something that I am very clear with all of my partners about is safe sex practices. Using condoms with other partners. That is more of a rigid thing. Otherwise, for me personally, I kind of like to have a sense of what my partner’s up to, who they’re dating: I’d rather know, rather than there be this big thing in their life that I’m not aware of, especially if someone’s dating someone that I know. And the poly and non-monogamous community is fairly small – most people kind of brush up against each other socially, so it’s a likelihood.
I think everyone does their formation differently, and it’s one of the joys of non-monogamy because you can really work on your individual needs. For me I like honesty, and I think you have to be good at communication. That’s not really a rule, just something I try to focus on I guess. Something else to highlight is that the poly and non-monogamous community is not perfect at all. It works for some people, and doesn’t for others and that’s okay. Just as with all dating and structures, there’s loads of problematic things that can occur in these types of relationships and communities.
Dan, 30, London
For me we need to defy rules. The reason we want to create something more beautiful, deeper and with integrity to our queer souls is that for far too long rules have been set by heteronormative monogamous society. I prefer "parameters" over "rules" as a term to describe certain borders in my open relationship. Being trapped by rules is the problem, not the solution. Human beings have so much capacity to love, it's just the narrow values of society that constrain us. Never let visionary dreams of what alternative relationships look like be confined. It is a delicate journey of listening and loving, from the now to achieving our dreams.
Personally, I don’t think you can be emotionally monogamous and physically non-exclusive. No. Humankind's capacity for emotional depth and breadth is beyond all our wildest imaginations. We just have to support each other to explore it. But even I have been privy to making assumptions and mistakes. Once I had just had sex with a really hot guy, we had just cum, and he asked me about me. I started gushing about my primary partner: explaining how much I love him, how amazing our connection is. And the guy looked a little upset: telling me he wanted to get to know me more, and that he really liked me. I felt a little bad. I guess I naively thought that he was just in it for a shag, too, which was my mistaken assumption.
But I think it’s naive to say that "one person can’t fulfil my needs", it’s not about that. Everyone can fulfil, it's just whether they have the political/ personal will and capacity to do so. For me, open relationships primarily aren't about opportunism in the external world, but about challenge in the internal world, to your soul. If I can't challenge myself on my own conditioning then there's no hope – it’s actually very political.
When it comes to gender and sexuality, openness has really shown me just how deep the queer inferiority complex runs. Heterosexual society's narrow-minded superiority complex vastly overshadows our ability to think, critique, reach out, organise, imagine, revolutionise and, ultimately, love. It’s about escaping this single-track way of thinking. Don't follow anyone else's sexual PR, follow your own heart!
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