The rising curiosity behind open relationships

Share using Email

Share on Twitter
Share on FacebookShare on Linkedin

(Image credit: Getty Images)

By Jessica Klein5th August 2022

Taking on additional sexual partners while in a committed relationship has long been taboo. And while it’s not exactly

mainstream now, there’s still rising interest in being open.

D
Dedeker Winston has been in non-monogamous relationships for more than a decade, yet
she has never seen such keen interest in open relationships.

The subject has traditionally been very taboo in many places, including the US, where
Winston is based. In 2014, when she started the Multiamory podcast, she and her co-
producers had to decide whether to use their real names on the ethnical non-monogamy
show. “At that point, there was pretty much only one or two other podcasts actually
broaching this subject,” says the dating coach. “And the people who were producing and
hosting those podcasts used pseudonyms.” 

But things have changed. Around 2016, Winston noticed a real “explosion of interest
around non-monogamy”, about a year after she started work as a dating coach
specialising in those types of relationships. “That was when I feel like I saw the biggest
turning point, of all of a sudden so many people online being willing to talk about being
non-monogamous,” she says, “and to express the fact that they have an interest in these
sorts of things.”

Sarah Levinson, a counsellor at Creative Relating Psychology Psychotherapy in New York

City, who specialises in sexuality and relationship dynamics, has also noticed an
increasing interest in open relationships within the past decade. “It was much more
obscure 10 years ago, and now it's incredibly common,” she says. 

These accounts as well as some data show a growing interest in consensually non-
monogamous relationships, including open relationships. Experts say many societal and
cultural factors that have led to a wider embrace of non-traditional relationship styles, and
the pandemic may even be playing a part. But while interest in open relationships may be
climbing, experts are mixed on how wide their uptake may actually be – at least for right
now.

'Free passes' and swinging

There are many ways to engage in non-monogamy, says Levinson. “It could be anything
from living with multiple partners and sharing finances, or it could be supporting your
partner in once a year having a free pass at a work conference out of state to have a hook-
up.”

Open relationships fall under the non-monogamy umbrella, but many tend to differentiate
between those types of arrangements and other types of non-monogamy, like polyamory.
Polyamory often means participating in multiple intimate partnerships, while open
relationships are more often associated with people engaging in primarily sexual
relationships outside of their prioritised, two-person partnership. In other words, open
relationships are less focused on emotional connections with people outside a primary
relationship, and more on sexual ones.

Open relationships are generally associated with people engaging in primarily sexual
relationships outside of their prioritised, two-person partnership (Credit: Getty Images)
For some, this means going on casual dates and having ‘friends-with-benefits’-type
relationships with people other than their primary partners. For others, an open
relationship just means that occasional “free pass” to have a one-night stand or brief
sexual fling. And for others still, the arrangement could look more like swinging – such as
having sex with other couples as a couple, but not going on dates separately. Winston also
brings up “don’t ask, don’t tell”-style open relationships, in which both members of a couple
permit the other to have sexual relations with other people – they just don’t want to discuss
those experiences together.

Other terms, like “monogamish”, which US-based relationship and sex columnist Dan
Savage popularised several years ago, can overlap definitionally with some of these
open-relationship arrangements. Savage has discussed his monogamish relationship on
his podcast, in which he and his partner are committed to each other, but still have non-
committal sex with other men. 

People of all stripes are engaging in open relationships. Over the past few years, Levinson
says she’s been seeing “quite a bit of diversity” among those participating in open
relationships in her sessions, in terms of everything from “economic resources” to
“ethnicity”. (However, she acknowledges that as a counsellor working in New York City,
she gets to see a different sample than one might come across in other more conservative
parts of the US.) 

Among Winston’s client base, podcast listeners and website visitors, she’s found many
who are interested or participating in open relationships tend to skew relatively young –
between the ages of 25 and 45. And many identify as queer, bisexual and/or pansexual.
However, in her practice, she’s worked with clients interested in or practicing open
relationships who are as young as 19 and as old as in their 70s. “The people who come to
my door completely span the spectrum,” she says.

‘Getting curious’ 

Dating-app trends help highlight the rise in interest in open relationships. For one, there
has been an emergence of platforms particularly focused on non-monogamy,
including open relationships, to cater to rising curiosity. But even more traditional dating
apps, such as OkCupid, have seen a spike in interest in open relationships. 
“While the majority of OkCupid daters seek monogamous relationships, in 2021, users
seeking non-monogamous relationships increased 7%,” an OkCupid representative told
BBC Worklife. Among more than 1 million UK-based OkCupid users who responded to the
question, ‘Would you consider having an open relationship?’ in the app, 31% percent said
yes in 2022, compared to 29% in 2021 and 26% in 2020.

When you keep choosing monogamy and it's not working… you start getting curious about [whether] there’s another

way – Sarah Levinson

Additionally, 2022 data from dating app Hinge showed one in five Hinge users “would
consider” trying out an open relationship, while one in 10 have already engaged in
one. Hinge’s director of relationship science Logan Ury says there may be a pandemic
effect, since she believes it was “the perfect opportunity to pause and think more about
what we want.”

Counsellors and professionals including Levinson and Winston have also observed an

uptick. Winston says that much of the recent interest she’s seen in open relationships
comes from millennials who are simply “questioning the way they’ve been raised” – in
most cases, to believe that long-term, married monogamy is the end goal of intimate
relationships.

This may stem from an overall trend towards open mindedness, believes Levinson.
“Societally, we are all more open minded to all sorts of identities that are less
conventional… people are more willing to challenge societal constructs in a general way.”
This has opened the door for people to question their own desires, too.  When “you keep
choosing monogamy and it's not working… you start getting curious about [whether]
there’s another way”.

And for those who are curious, there are more resources than ever. Along with the
“explosion of interest” in open relationships, adds Winston, there’s an “explosion in content
creators and people writing about it in media… in apps, in community meetups”. This
means information about non-monogamy is widely accessible – not in “old, dusty
LiveJournals [personal online journals]  in the corners of the internet”, which is where
Winston says she needed to look for information more than a decade ago. 

More fantasy than reality?

Despite more people embracing non-monogamous arrangements, and a rising visibility

around open relationships, the general perception still leans negative. “Research and
public opinion polls suggest that attitudes toward consensual non-monogamy are mostly
negative overall, although they appear to have trended more positive in recent years,”
says Dr Justin Lehmiller, Kinsey Institute research fellow and host of the Sex and
Psychology Podcast. 

While those negative attitudes may not stop people from thinking about being in open
relationships, it can deter them from engaging in them. In his research about sexual
fantasies, for instance, Lehmiller has found that “most people have fantasised about being
non-monogamous in some way before, such as by participating in swinging, opening up
their relationship or being polyamorous”. However, he adds, “relatively few are practising it
in real life”. Although there is no post-pandemic data on how many people are in these
arrangements, Canadian research from 2019 puts the figure at about 4%, with
a similar figure emerging in a 2018 US study.

Even if an increasing number of people are engaging in open relationships, the subject
may remain taboo, say some experts (Credit: Getty Images)
Levinson believes this may in part stem from an entrenched perception that open
relationships are broadly seen as ‘unhealthy’. Among her therapist colleagues, Levinson
has observed that plenty still view the “dyad” or “couple bubble” as the “only workable way
of having a secure attachment”, she says. She feels these attitudes can “cut into people
feeling like this is a viable option for them”. Religious beliefs can also deter people from
engaging in sexual and/or dating relationships with more than one person at a time, as can
the cultural norms of certain communities. 

Even so, Winston sees people, particularly millennials and Gen Z, continuing to move
away from the idea that one partner can fulfil all their needs (something the traditionally
monogamous concept of marriage encourages). She points to more platonic friends
deciding to live together and coparent as well as declining marriage rates, to suggest
a possible future societal shift in the way people engage in relationships. “People are
branching out more into creating the relationships that make the most sense for their
lives,” she says. 

While Levinson agrees there will be a continued increase in “creative relationship

structures” for similar reasons, she doesn’t think it will become a global phenomenon. Too
many cultures around the world present challenges to people hoping to open their
relationships, and the taboo remains globally prevalent. 

OkCupid’s head of global communications Michael Kaye has a different view. “The
behaviours we see among daters today have been around forever. But people are
becoming more open and transparent about how they identify [and] what they want in a
relationship. I think with every single passing year, were becoming a little bit less
judgmental about others.”