Every person I’ve ever met who participated in an “open relationship” became the target of profound jealousy, or became jealous themselves.
I think it sounds appealing; 🌈my partner and I love each other but our hearts are too big to only enjoy one person’s company🌈 then their partner sleeps with someone else and they get all shitty and bitter.
My experience has always been “Are you sure your partner is ok with this?” --> “Yes definitely” --> The partner becomes a shitty rage machine. I had a guy corner me at dinner with my friends and yell in public because he was so jealous. He agreed to the open relationship. He was a hypocrite. All three of us suffered because he couldn’t handle it. He should not have been in an open relationship.
That was the worst one but I think it applies to most people. It’s a pipe dream that they don’t have the emotional maturity to actualize.
Open Relationships/Polyamory can work. I know, I’ve done then.
They take effort, and communication, and boundaries, and respect… and most importantly of all, emotional maturity…Its something you generally have to have mutually in mind from the very beginning of the relationship.
Most of the time when they crash and burn in catastrophe, is when a monogamous relationship tries to go Open/Poly… because, at least in my experience, Mono trying to go Open/Poly is almost always because one partner pushes for it, because that one partner has found someone they’re gonna fuck/try desperately to fuck regardless, but they at least want to try and engineer permission for it (either before or after the fact). and that shits always doomed to failure.
Not to say a Mono can’t successfully convert to Open/Poly, or that there arent Open/Poly that fail even if its Open/poly from the start… Theres always gonna be exceptions and outliers.
But the biggest factor in the success/failure of any relationship, whether it be Mono, Poly, or Open… is mutual respect, open communication, healthy and respected boundaries, and effort.