How does an open relationship work?
An open relationship can mean many things. For most people I know, it means both physically and emotionally open. But some people who describe their relationships as “open” have agreements with their “primary partner” about what is and isn’t acceptable in the relationship. So they might have an agreement that “sex is OK, but falling in love is not,” or they might have the reverse, that “it’s ok to love someone else, but sex is reserved for the primary partner.” People who describe themselves as “polyamorous” usually mean something more structured than simply “open” or “anything goes,” but not always. Since polyamory is a coined word meaning “many loves,” most polyamorous people describe themselves as loving more than one person, or being open to loving more than one person at a time. That might or might not include sex. In order for any sort of open relationship to work (well), everyone involved needs to be honest, to have good communications skills, and to be willing to invest the tim
