Open marriage

What is an open marriage?

An open marriage is a marriage in which both partners agree that sexual or romantic contact with others is allowed. It is the marriage form of the broader open relationship. What stands out is that the term comes from a 1972 book and back then meant something much wider than sex outside the marriage.

What an open marriage looks like in practice

Take a couple who have been married for years and notice that the marriage vow pinches on one point: sexual exclusivity. Instead of divorcing or going behind each other’s backs, they choose to make it discussable and think up rules together. Who may do what, with whom it gets discussed, and what stays theirs together. The marriage itself, with everything legally and socially attached to it, stays standing. What changes is the agreement about exclusivity. That makes an open marriage different from loose infidelity: the core is that both know and consent.

Where the term open marriage comes from

The name has a clear source, and it causes a stubborn misunderstanding. In 1972 the book Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples by Nena and George O’Neill appeared with the publisher M. Evans. It was for the overwhelming part about refreshing a marriage through trust, equality, room for one’s own growth, and better communication. Only one chapter, titled “Love Without Jealousy”, devoted twenty pages to the thought that an open marriage could also include sex with others. Through appearances by the O’Neills on television and in magazines, the meaning shifted in public awareness, and “open marriage became a synonym for sexually non-monogamous marriage”. Nena O’Neill later even distanced herself from that reading. So the term that now mostly brings sex to mind was originally meant much more broadly.

Why couples choose an open marriage

The appeal sits in combining two things that at first glance clash: the security and the shared life of a marriage, and the room not to have to bottle up desire or curiosity. For one person that is air after years of the same, for another a way to be honest about what was already going on anyway. What it can give a couple is that a difference in need no longer lies on the table as a threat, but as something you make agreements about. The honest flip side: openness does not remove jealousy by itself, and without clear agreements and a lot of talking it gets stuck. It is not a repair for a marriage already on the verge of falling over, and that is exactly where it goes wrong when couples use it as a last resort.

What an open marriage is not

“Open marriage always meant sex with others.” Not according to the source. The O’Neills’ book was largely about growth and communication; the sexual reading grew over it later.

“An open marriage is the same as cheating.” The opposite. With infidelity, knowledge and consent are missing, while an open marriage is built precisely on those two things.

“An open marriage ends in divorce by itself.” That is an assumption, not a given. Whether it works depends on the agreements and the conversation, not on the label alone.

What I see myself

Women who are married and write to me often do not have the marriage itself up for debate. They love their partner and want something alongside that is not there at home. Surprisingly often such an open arrangement goes more calmly than people expect, precisely because everything has been spoken out. I’m not a relationship therapist and your agreements are not mine to decide. But I do notice that the difference sits in the preparation: whoever has thought it through together comes in very differently from whoever does it in secret.

More reading on the open marriage

Within this glossary, open relationship explains the broader form not tied to a marriage, and ethical non-monogamy the whole field around it.

Beyond this site, the original book Open Marriage by Nena and George O’Neill can be read via the Internet Archive, and the encyclopedia entry on the book describes how the meaning shifted.

Where this fits on this site

I’m not a matchmaker or a relationship therapist. What I do is meet a married woman who, with her own consent and within her own agreements, is seeking room for attention that is missing at home. Discretion is part of that as a matter of course. If you want to know how such a date goes, look at my services. A first message is without obligation.

Sources

• Open Marriage (book). Encyclopedia entry on Nena and George O’Neill, Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples, M. Evans & Company, 1972. Gives that the book was largely about trust, communication, and personal growth, that chapter 16 “Love Without Jealousy” devoted twenty pages to sex with others, and that “open marriage became a synonym for sexually non-monogamous marriage”.
• Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples. Nena O’Neill & George O’Neill, M. Evans & Company, 1972, via the Internet Archive. The original source of the term.
• Prevalence of Experiences With Consensual Nonmonogamous Relationships. M. L. Haupert, Amanda N. Gesselman, Amy C. Moors, Helen E. Fisher & Justin R. Garcia, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 43(5), 424–440, 2017. Gives that more than one in five American singles (21.9 and 21.2 percent in two samples) had ever had a consensual non-monogamous relationship.

Related terms

The open marriage is the marriage form of a broader phenomenon. The terms below place it in that field.

• Open relationship. The same agreement without a marriage attached, the overarching form.
• Ethical non-monogamy. The whole field of several relationships or contacts with everyone’s consent.
• Swinging. The recreational variant, often experienced as a couple, with its own scene.
• Polyamory. Several love relationships at once, where an open marriage usually focuses on sex.
• DADT. The don’t ask, don’t tell agreement some open marriages use about the details.