I knew that if we set off half-cocked, our romance would quickly crumble.
If youre not and forge ahead anyway, things are almost certainly doomed to failure.
So take your time, explore your feelings and use your words.
Practically, all relationships have agreed-upon boundaries.
The key boundary in monogamous relationships of course is to not fuck anyone else ever.
Indeed, in some traditional wedding ceremonies, brides and grooms vow to to forsake all others.
Being open means making up your own language for whats okay and what isnt.
Youll note that Im using the word boundaries and not rules.
She wanted the broad strokes, I preferred a blow-by-blow.
Boundaries are about autonomy over your own decisions, whereas rules are about power over the others decisions.
Open relationships can feel isolating, she explains.
Annie and I were lucky to have friends, Charlie and Kiki, as inspiration.
Kiki could see other women too but not other men.
From the start we knew that we wanted to be equal and have equal expectations of each other.
Facebook has many public and private groups that you could join, and there is apolyamory subreddit.
Search for open relationships, polyamory and/or non-monogamy to get you started.
Learn the Lingo
Like kite-surfing or ferret breeding, being open comes with its own peculiar jargon.
While getting comfortable with the idea of being open, I came to grips with some of the terminology.
There are lots of other ways in which people agree to go about it too.
Annie and I decided that being monogamish was for us.
Another new word I learned wascompersion.
Its often defined as the positive feeling you experience when a partner is enjoying another relationship.
You may find, as I did, an unimagined capacity for compersion.
The former is a character trait, she explains.
If you are a [dispositionally] jealous person, you might want to rethink non-monogamy.
It is the latter that we manage.
It also helped that the thought of my wife being sexual outside of our marriage turned me on.
Annie changed my mind about being open.
