Open relationship can have unintended consequences

* My wife of three years has suggested that we have an open relationship.

She says that she has met someone and would like to have sex with him, but only if I agree. She also says that I can see other women for sex. At first I was devastated (I always thought our sex life was fine), but I don’t want to lose her. Is her proposal realistic?

>>No. If polyamory was a realistic option it would have burned through the dry brush of long-term commitment like wildfire. But when it comes to relationships, we have an instinctive firewall. None of us actually needs to be monogamous to have sex — or even children — yet monogamy continues to be the overarching definition of a committed relationship. There are many complex reasons for this but they all boil down, in one way or another, to our being very bad at sharing.

For most people, there is something profoundly unsettling about the thought of the person with whom they share a primary emotional attachment having sex with a third party. Being given permission to do the same themselves is no consolation.

Very occasionally, both partners together decide to explore the idea of an open relationship, but more often one partner presents the idea as something that might be mutually beneficial.

The lowest estimate for the number of married couples in open relationships is 1.7%; the highest, 6%.

When Pepper Schwartz and Philip Blumstein in 1983 asked more than 6,000 couples whether or not they had an understanding allowing sex outside their relationship, they gave different, often contradictory, answers when interviewed individually.

One husband said: “Sure we have an understanding. It’s ‘You do what you want. Never go back to the same one.’ See, that’s where it’s going to screw your mind up, to go back the second time to the same person.” In contrast, his wife said: “We’ve never spoken about cheating, but neither of us believe in it. I don’t think I’d ever forgive him. I don’t think I’d be able to. I don’t know. I haven’t met up with that situation.”

Those conflicting sentiments reveal the essentially one-sided nature of what is supposedly a “mutual” agreement, but fear makes people compromise in ways that they never intended to. Even a request for an open arrangement dramatically shifts the power dynamic in a relationship.

Managing a successful open relationship involves laying down strict ground rules about “who, what, where and when”. The person managing two lovers needs to be acutely sensitive to the emotional and physical needs of both, and if the primary partner is not put first and feels neglected in any way, the relationship will not endure. If, as your wife implies, both partners find another lover, each may fail to invest in the primary relationship, which means it will also fail.

Holly Hill, the Australian author who coined the term “negotiated infidelity”, would argue that “it’s better to walk the dog on a leash, than let it escape through an unseen hole in the back fence”, but agreeing to let your wife have sex with someone just so you can keep tabs on her is not what you signed up for when you took your vows.

And that, of course, is the firewall. You made a commitment that was based on sexual exclusivity and your wife now wants to renege on that promise. She may genuinely believe that her attraction to this man can be kept in a separate box reserved specifically for sex, but I don’t — and nor should you.

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