| > The silver bullet, as it were, is open communication about your needs, wants, and fears. Sometimes, that leads to ethical non-monogamy -- when that is actually what you want, and when you can manage the genuine fears that come with that. I think you hit the nail on the head there. The thing is you really need to dig down into what those fears are and determine if they're legitmate or not. My partner and I talked about opening our relationship for at least 6 months before we acted on it. We talked about it in great detail and found that a lot of our fears really are unjustified. Things we discussed were topics like: "you might fall in love with someone else" - that is always a risk with relationships regardless of being open or not, and part of being in a relationship is the trust that they wouldn't run away with someone else. We took the pragmatic view that if it did happen, we were never meant to be together anyway and an open relationship allows us to get to that outcome quicker. "I'm not good enough to satisfy your needs" - this is where I think societal pressure comes into play. People compare themselves to others a lot, and they see happy monogamous couples and think that their relationship is dirty or failing compared to the ultimate gold standard. You come to realise that monogamy is seen as the gold standard purely because that is what western society says it is. Instead, you should be truthful to yourself and your partners wants or desires. There are serious and legitimate fears that need to be talked through, for example how much time you devote to others, or more practical concerns like STIs. This is where the communication part comes in and you ultimately need to decide if it's right for yourselves. > It would definitely help to stop having society declare non-monogamy the ultimate sin, even if that's what the partners want. Relationships are hard enough without having to satisfy people who aren't even part of it. Couldn't agree more. I once told a very close friend of mine that we were considering opening our relationship and the hostility I received was crazy. His conclusion was that 'you just agree to cheat on each other'. To me, this misses the entire point of why cheating is bad. Cheating isn't bad because of the act of having sex, it is bad because you chose to lie to your partner. After that incident we decided we'd never to tell heterosexual monogamous people again about our relationship, most just don't get it and it's not worth the risk. |