The Thrillist
By GIGI ENGLE
Open relationships have always been a fascination of mine
How do you pull off a relationship like that? Don’t people get jealous? How do you have time for THAT much sex? Is labeling something “open” just a cop-out for not really caring that much about a person?
I am not in an open relationship; and honestly don’t think I could handle one. I am not chill enough for that shit. I’m jealous, uber-neurotic, and need attention from BAE like 20 hours a day.
But how do other people do it?
To get the skinny, I recruited some generous folks who know a thing or two about open relationships because they are currently in them. Here’s what I learned.
Open relationships require thorough consideration and planning
Before you open your relationship to other partners, you need to figure out what both of you want. You can’t have one person wanting openness and the other wanting monogamy. So you’ve got to sit down and have a serious chat.
Steve Dean, a relationship coach who’s been in an open relationship for the last few years, said it took a lot of questions from both sides to figure out what would work. “We [asked what we] wanted, how we wanted it, what are the things that we foresaw ourselves wanting. How do we get them? How do we expand the relationship, or contract it, to suit our emotional needs? To fit our physical needs?”
James*, who is in an open marriage and a member of the group OpenMinded, echoed Dean’s sentiment while talking about how he and his wife decided to open their marriage up. “It kind of all started with bedroom talk,” James said. “We talked about other people and turn-ons and stuff like that, and then got to a point where we actually decided to dip our toes in the water and see what that road was like.”
Communication is key
As with all romances, communication is absolutely essential to the health of a relationship. James advises anyone entering an open relationship to “try to keep an open mind on everything and try to be honest. That’s really the only way that it really does work. As soon as somebody starts hiding things, then that’s where shit gets off. It’s easy to fall into that trap. And that’s probably the hardest part. As long as you can stay honest and communicate with each other, then it’s worth a shot.” …