Non-monogamous committed relationships are on the rise, at least if our Google searches are to be believed. On-screen, too, less traditional relationship boundaries are being explored more and more. Molly navigated being a secondary partner on Insecure last season, Netflix has a whole show called Wanderlust that watches Toni Collette and her husband, Steven Mackintosh, try to navigate long-term monogamy.
In House of Cards, Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey had a pretty fluid definition of monogamy, and apparently both even slept with the same Secret Service agent perhaps true intimacy is sleeping with the same other person. Open and poly relationships require a lot of communication and strict boundaries.
Practically speaking, how does that play out? It can be pretty fun and intense and exciting to have a new lover, and you can wind up really ignoring your primary partner. The rule is, when you are physically with someone in the same room, be mentally present with them, too. Other than that, it was fairly loosey-goosey. Other sexual partners are purely sexual, although we normally go on a date first to see if there's chemistry.
I have every appreciation for couples who wouldn't find this awkward, but we're not among them! I'd love to have a dedicated "play" room, but the reality of real estate in Seattle makes that a non-starter. But that's more because of an inherent difference between men and women in these scenarios: It's super easy for her to find single men interested in no-strings-attached sex, and so she can always find single guys to go home with. It's a lot rarer for me to find single women interested in that type of thing, so ordinarily the women I meet up with are also in open relationships.
She wanted to have that to herself, intimacy-wise. For me, I get no more jealous of her going out and sleeping with a guy than I do of her going out and drinking with a friend; either way, she's just having fun.
