Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships

Let’s begin our journey with a gentle breath, letting go of any assumptions you may have about what relationships are supposed to look like. Imagine, for a moment, that the story of monogamy is just that—a story, told and retold, woven into the fabric of our culture. For most of history, marriage and sexual exclusivity were not synonymous. In fact, only a tiny handful of animal species are truly monogamous, and even among humans, the idea of one partner for life is more recent than you might think.

As we look around us, we see that the world is changing. The old model of marriage—the one with a stay-at-home wife and a breadwinning husband—has faded. Women now work, earn, and learn alongside men, and with this shift, the very foundation of marriage has been shaken. In the 1950s, nearly everyone married young, but that world is gone. The sexual revolution, the rise of feminism, and the LGBTQ+ movement all questioned the rules about who we should love and how. Marriage rates have fallen by half in just a few decades, and more people are living together, raising children, or loving outside the box.

But here’s the secret many don’t say aloud: cheating is everywhere. From the first Kinsey Report in the 1950s to modern polls, we find that a third or more of people in committed relationships have strayed. This isn’t just a failure of willpower—it’s a sign that the story of monogamy may not fit everyone. And so, quietly, bravely, people are inventing new ways to love. They’re talking, negotiating, and opening their hearts to more than one person, not in secret, but with honesty and care.

As we move forward, remember: there is no single way to love, and the rules we inherit are open to change. In the next section, we’ll meet the pioneers who dared to try something different, and see how their stories can inspire us to imagine new possibilities for ourselves.