Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships

“My partner is very aware that I need to feel that I’m special to him, and he’s great at letting me know that he loves and wants me.”

We allow each other to have emotional privacy and understand that the other partners touch us in ways we can’t with each other. We’re happy that we each have others in our lives who can do this for and with us.

Cheaters do at least one honest thing: they acknowledge that one partner can’t meet all their needs and that they want to have sex or a relationship with someone other than their current partner.

And make no mistake: relationships take lots of work.

You can recognize the feeling without shame or guilt and decide you’re not going to act on it because you don’t need to or want to. You will probably feel good about this decision—it is the decision made by people who’ve thought about monogamy and chosen it consciously. But the next three options are far more common: 1) Deny the desire: This is a c

it. I tried the whole intellectual route. I told her, ‘Honestly, everyone loves more than one person and people often lie about that.

The majority of swingers consider themselves emotionally monogamous and sexually nonmonogamous.

We have no boundaries, we are each free to pursue whoever we want, whenever we want, and fall as deeply as the relationship takes us. We recognize where we are in our life, how close we feel, how much time is available, so we don’t enter into relationships when they might negatively impact our primary relationship. —Ilana

Kindness is very hard. I’m certainly not always kind, but it’s an ongoing process and an effort; I think that what it shows is that the relationship matters and that your partner will try not to hurt you. Part of being in a relationship involves taking care of the other person.