What is the point of an open relationship?

Start with what the point is not. An open relationship is not a repair kit, and it is not a compromise one partner makes to keep the other. If a couple opens up to avoid a difficult conversation, or because one partner privately hopes the other will come around, we think the existing problem gets more room, not less.

Interest shows up even among people who are currently monogamous, which is one honest part of the answer to “why bother”. A 2020 study in Archives of Sexual Behavior surveyed an online sample of 822 people who were in monogamous relationships: 32.6% said that being in some type of sexually open relationship was part of their favourite sexual fantasy of all time, and 80.0% of those said they wanted to act on it in the future. Participants who had previously shared or acted on that kind of fantasy generally reported outcomes that met or exceeded their expectations (Lehmiller). Two limits matter: this was one online sample, and a fantasy is not an agreement.

The closest qualitative research describes the swinging version of this rather than open relationships. In a grounded-theory study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers interviewed 32 people in the swinging lifestyle — 16 married couples, interviewed separately — and built a model of what they reported: the steps that preceded entering, the types of desires it fulfilled, the benefits they named, and the rules that guided them. The authors concluded that effective verbal and non-verbal communication was paramount to those couples’ experiences of sexual and marital satisfaction (Kimberly & Hans, 2017). The study is about swinging couples rather than open relationships, and 32 interviews is a qualitative sample, so it shows what those couples described, not how common any benefit is.

There is also a finding that anyone considering this should hear. A five-study paper in Archives of Sexual Behavior compared styles of non-monogamy and found that people in open-style relationships reported lower relationship satisfaction and poorer relational outcomes than people in polyamorous or swinger-style relationships. In the paper’s fourth and fifth studies, those differences dissipated once the researchers accounted for four things: the couple’s approach to communication, whether participation was intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, how strongly they held pro-monogamy beliefs, and how much contact they had with each other’s other partners (Conley & Piemonte, 2021). The comparison is between styles of non-monogamy rather than against monogamy, and it is correlational — it does not show that a style causes an outcome.

So the point has to be something you can state plainly: more honesty than the alternative, more autonomy without deception, and a primary relationship that gets more attention rather than less. If the answer is vague, or if it is mostly about what one partner wants, that is the signal to slow down. The open relationship and open marriage answers define the structures themselves; the ENM dating answer covers the practical side of meeting people. JoinTheSwing is pre-launch: new registration remains closed until the coordinated native-app release is approved, and the public answers library and free launch list are open in the meantime.