How to open your relationship

What an open relationship is

In an open relationship, the two of you stay each other’s main partner while dating or sleeping with other people. Some couples keep it to one-off encounters, some to a regular lover, some to nights when one of you is away.

What holds it together is your agreement: what’s allowed, how much you tell each other, and what stays only yours, like your bed or a certain night of the week. The agreement will change as you learn. It’s always made by both of you.

Where to start

The first steps happen together, even though the dates themselves will be apart.

Make your profiles together

Sit on the couch and build your dating profiles at the same time, reading each other’s out loud. Choosing photos and words for strangers, with your partner beside you, makes it real in a way that’s more playful than scary.

Look before anyone messages

Spend an evening scrolling through profiles together, telling each other who you’d say yes to and why. Nobody writes to anybody yet. You’re learning each other’s taste.

Write the agreement down

Who’s off-limits, where you’ll meet people, what you’ll tell each other and when. One page is enough. Read it again before each first date.

Where it can lead

After the first dates, the steps grow. Two dates on the same night, so neither of you is waiting at home. Coming home at dawn and telling each other everything over breakfast. Then a whole weekend away with a lover, which asks far more of your agreement than a single evening does.

Opening up crosses other paths. Some couples find they also enjoy swinging or threesomes, where the adventure is shared. Others discover a curiosity about a gender they hadn’t explored before.

Making it work

• Go slower than you want to. Excitement makes you skip steps, and the steps are what make it hold.
• Expect jealousy. It turns up even when everything goes well. Treat it as information: it usually points to a need, like more time together or more reassurance, not to a mistake.
• Notice compersion. That’s the word for feeling happy because your partner is happy with someone else. Not everyone feels it, and rarely at first, but it can be a lovely surprise. The glossary has more words like it.
• Make protection routine. Testing and protection with other partners look after everyone, including the one at home.
• Guard your time together. A date night that stays yours matters more once there are other dates.

Open relationships in the game

In the game, opening up is a path that starts on the couch, side by side, and moves out into the world: first dates, two dates in one night, coming home and telling each other, a weekend away. Each of you likes the dares that tempt you in private, and a dare only unlocks once you’ve both liked it. If only one of you likes it, the other never finds out, which makes it a gentle way to learn whether you’re both curious. The Yes, No, Maybe list does the same, without the game.

Questions