An Enthusiastic Endorsement for Dating Someone in an Open Relationship
One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years of failed relationships and poor choices that make up the bulk of my dating history is that monogamy is probably-definitely not for me. Try to lock me down or wife me up and I start searching for the emergency exit. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t crave the romance and connection monogamous unions are meant to solidify. Hi, I am a Pisces, which means a cocktail of delusional romance and chaos is my drug of choice.
In theory, an aversion to monogamy + a desire for romantic connection should make me an ideal candidate for an open relationship. But while opening my own relationships—when I’ve had them—has certainly been something I’ve considered, I’ve always balked at the idea of being an accessory to someone else’s ethically non-monogamous union. Which is to say that I, like many women, typically swipe left on dudes who identify themselves as ethically non-monogamously partnered on dating apps.
As I mentioned, I’m not alone in this. I know many fellow singles find themselves annoyed by the growing number of people in open relationships who have started popping up on the apps in recent years as non-monogamy becomes an increasingly visible, viable option for couples. And listen, I get it. It’s hard enough to find a decent match, let alone a real relationship, and now we have to share the already crowded, often cutthroat dating pool with the quasi-taken? For anyone looking for a monogamous relationship, this invasion of the already happily coupled can be understandably frustrating.
But that’s the thing; I’m not one of those people. I’m not looking for a relationship of any kind, certainly not a monogamous one. Moreover, you can often find me soapboxing on the virtues of non-monogamy, sometimes even actively arguing against its opposite. And yet, even I, someone who considers herself as progressive and open-minded as the next sex and relationships editor, have found myself routinely passing on the open relationship boys of Tinder.
That is, of course, until I agreed to go out with Adam* a few months ago. You know that person you’ve matched with multiple times on every single dating app but have never actually gone out with? Yeah, that’s Adam, who has literally been saved in my contacts as “Adam Matched on Like Every App” since c. 2019. We matched yet again a few months back after I was unbanned from Tinder following a four-year exile (it’s a long story) and decided we might as well take this years-long flirtationship out for a spin.
I’d known that Adam was in a long-term, ethically non-monogamous relationship with his primary partner from the first time we’d ever matched—which, in retrospect, is possibly part of the reason we’d never actually met up. Look, it can be hard enough to convince yourself to take a chance on a dating app rando when staying in and doomscrolling yourself into oblivion is always a viable option. So it makes sense that it would be twice as hard to follow through with plans when you know there’s no chance of “a future” with the other person, even if that future (i.e. a monogamous one) isn’t actually something you want. Maybe I thought it would feel kind of pointless to date someone who’s already “taken,” or uncomfortable to know that there’s some other woman in his life who will always be his romantic and sexual priority. Or maybe I just worried about feeling like a loser walking back to my apartment alone after a date knowing he’s going home to a loving girlfriend.
But I’ve been seeing Adam for a couple of months now and am thrilled to announce that I have felt exactly zero of those things! In fact, the entire situation has been, in a word, lovely. It’s all the fun and excitement of dating someone new, minus the pressure to DTR or hop on the relationship escalator. Meanwhile, his relationship status sets certain inherent boundaries around our own arrangement that keeps our casually hot and heavy fling from venturing into the messy, emotionally risky territory of situationships and other ambiguous affairs. Basically, it’s casual dating without the carelessness and confusion that often plagues ill-defined quasi-relationships. For someone like me, who craves romance and intimacy but rejects the strings and expectations that tend to come with it, it’s about as close as I’ve come to having my cake and eating it too.
Not to mention, there are certain qualities we can somewhat reasonably assume people in open relationships possess—ones that make them generally good candidates for a date. In case you haven’t heard, open relationships take rock-solid communication skills, boatloads of honesty, self-awareness, and introspection to succeed. Anyone able to maintain an ethically non-monogamous partnership is probably a decently strong communicator capable of evaluating and managing their emotions—which is, ahem, not always the easiest thing to find in a man! (Or anyone—but, you know, mostly men. Sorry, boys.)
Folks who have actively rejected society’s mononormative ideals are also probably at least somewhat open-minded and non-judgmental, which is pretty damn refreshing. These aren’t universal truths, obviously. I’m sure plenty of people in open relationships still manage to be close-minded jerks, but I suspect there are fewer close-minded jerks among the ethically non-monogamous than in the dating pool at large.
Dating someone in an open relationship might also present an opportunity to reflect on your own beliefs and values when it comes to love and monogamy—or it has for me, anyway. Having open conversations with Adam about his relationship with his primary partner has given me the space to uncover and interrogate a lot of the internalized reservations and biases about non-monogamy I didn’t even know I had—including the ones that have historically kept me from swiping right on the ENM guys of Tinder. Turns out a little self-reflection pairs excellently with a bottle of wine and scintillating date-night conversation.
Of course, going out with someone in an open relationship is very much not for everybody. If you’re a die-hard monogamist swiping for your soulmate, then getting involved with someone who’s already partnered is unlikely to go well for literally anyone in that situation. But if your current relationship goals are more “here for a good time, not a long time” than “lock down long-term partner and die together in wedded bliss,” consider this an invitation to try dating someone else’s boyfriend—you know, ethically.
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