Mods, feel free to delete this post.
My girlfriend and I have been talking about entering an open relationship the last 3 years. We’ve been together for 6 and had our ups and downs but we’ve been really solid the last two years. We love each other and I say our relationship is strong.
The last week, we’ve been laying ground rules for potentially opening up our relationship. We want to keep it very casual with other people.
Anyone willing to share their experience both good or bad?
This presupposes that the relationship would've ended without any open relationship exploration.
In my particular case the relationship was never not open. And also I was already heavily considering ending things before I slept with my then-roommate-now-gf, that just cemented that I needed to.
Honestly the problem wasn’t the open, it was the difference in thoughts of what our relationship was. I thought we were basically friends with benefits and if we were together that presents as acting like a couple. She thought of us as a couple but sometimes we go on dates or sleep with other people.
Opening up doesn't alter the fundamentals of a relationship. If you can comunicate well, or poorly, a bit of pleasant exercise isn't going to change that. People often make a mistale where they think the new context will change who they are and that very rarely happens.
What it does change is it raises the ammount of work you have to do to maintian relationships healthfully. So sometimes you don't have thre energy for that and that is a concern. That is part of why you see so many comfortable liberals in the lifestyle. The have the time and resources to do it.