His Girlfriend Wants an Open Relationship. Should He Stay with Her?

Every once in a while, it’s fun to dip into a cultural issue that gets brought up on Reddit. In this case, the issue is “open relationships.” It starts with this unfortunate story:

I 20M broke up with my 21F girlfriend after she proposed to open up our relationship and now everyone is telling me to get back with her basically

I need to explain our history cause that may explain why everyone is telling me to get back with her.

Our parents were college friends and so decided to move close to each other. So i have known her since we were kids and we saw each other almost everyday even in the weekends outside of school days.

Our parents had been playing matchmaker i guess but i asked her out when we were in high school and i won’t lie i was very happy with her and we even took a gap year to just travel together.

So last year i moved into my university campus cause it’s a 2 hour commute with the train from my house and i don’t wanna be awake at 5 to get to a 8 am class. She stayed with her parents since she went to a local college which was a 10 minute drive from our neighborhood.

I of course did try to visit each weekend if i wasn’t busy with studying.

So 2 weeks ago while i was visiting she just seemed a little off the same way she was when she wanted to give me a present or something so after a while she eventually just tells me what she was hiding and she brings up having a open relationship. I personally never would be in one and for me things like intimacy are supposed to be monogamous. And im kinda sitting there in shock cause the girl i honestly thought i was gonna marry is telling me she wants to sleep around. And at this point like i just ask her if she has anyone in mind and she again becomes a little nervous and admits she has a guy in mind and this part is what i would do differently but i like lose my temper and while i don’t scream i do shout at her and i basically called her unfaithful alongside some other stuff which again wasn’t okay. At this point she is crying and like im grabbing my jacket to leave and as she starts apologizing and is like ugly crying saying she should never have brought it and basically pleading for me to not leave angry with her and that we should at least talk it out but i just leave.

I just went back to my campus which wasn’t ideal cause my usual 2 hour ride is a 4 hour ride by night time thanks to less trains running. And like by the next day im guessing my mom had found out and she is calling me and like at this point my anger is still at his peak so just call my gf some nasty words over the phone and call her unfaithful and my mom flips out on me which in hindsight i understand but like i just hung up on her.

Ever since my mom calls me and messages me every day and like my breaking point came was when my dad of all people called me and told me to at least hear it out and talk to my gf and he also mentioned she wasn’t eating well and was skipping her classes but i honestly i think that’s guilt tripping bullshit her parents probably told my parents.

Im just so conflicted cause my dad usually isn’t the type to involve him with these kinds of things and even he called me. I’m wondering if I should actually listen to my dad and give her a chance to explain herself or if that’s just going to make things worse for me. How do I know if it’s worth sitting down and talking it out like they want me to?

One of the reasons this is worth discussing is that it feels like popular culture is CONSTANTLY pushing this idea on people. You know what I mean…

Also, it’s worth noting that the world’s richest and arguably most influential man, Elon Musk, is essentially living a variation of that lifestyle:

Personally? I’d be surprised if Elon doesn’t have a bunch more kids out there that are being kept quiet because the mothers don’t want the attention. In all fairness to Elon, he’s in a position more comparable to the kings of old that had harems. Of course, how comparable are any of them to normal people? If wife #11 got out of line, the king could have her guillotined. Elon can’t do that, but he can be like, “Sorry, I’m four states away, and I’ll be super busy for the next few months, but the checks will keep coming, and you can talk to one of my assistants.” The rest of us? Not so much.

So, as a starting point, let me note that we’re going to be talking about open relationships in the US, not in some other country where they’re more common. We’re also not going to be talking about the moral implications of it, because people already have their opinions on that, and I’m probably not going to change them.

Let me also note that it’s easy to understand the appeal of an open relationship. If it worked, for a lot of people, it would be like the best of both worlds. You’d have that stable relationship at home with a person you love, but you also have potentially unlimited sexual variety. Maybe you’re thinking, “That wouldn’t be something I’d find interesting,” but everyone can see how some people might love the idea.

Still, there’s the theoretical fantasy, and the reality of what tends to happen in these relationships. So, let’s just talk about the reality of open relationships, polyamory, polygamous relationships, throuples, etc., because like most people who have been around the block and have gotten a little older, I’ve seen a lot of this play out in the real world.

Along those lines, here’s a story I wrote about a few years back that involved someone I knew in a position very comparable to the guy in the Reddit thread above:

In any case, after my friend from back in the day split from his wife, I asked him what happened. He told me that one day, she came to him out of the blue and said she wanted an open marriage. He reluctantly agreed because he was afraid he’d lose her if he didn’t. Next thing you know, she was bringing home different guys to THEIR HOUSE every other weekend and, as in this case, she wasn’t even sleeping with him. Things got more and more intolerable for him, and he said the last straw was when one of the guys from work called him to ask for his wife’s number. I’m not sure who technically filed for divorce from whom, but it was basically destined at that point.

Once someone is in a committed relationship with you and they tell you they want to open it up, that’s an EXTRAORDINARILY bad sign. It’s shorthand for, “I don’t really want to be in this relationship anymore and have my eye on someone I want to sleep with, but I am not going to deal with the implications of openly just saying that, so how about I put the ball back in your court by asking to open things up?”

Is that what’s going on with the guy from the Reddit thread? Yes, probably. Did he have the right instincts to cut ties and go in a different direction? Yes, he did. Why don’t his parents see that? It’s hard to say. Maybe they haven’t gotten the full story, or they’re just naïve. Whatever the case may be, his parents aren’t in a relationship with her; he is. If he were a friend of mine? I sure wouldn’t be encouraging him to try to patch things up with her.

Along similar lines, I have seen people in open marriages stay together. At least for a while. Would I call them happy marriages? From what I’ve seen? No. Are there all sorts of sketchy things happening? Usually, yes.

Just to name one example, a friend of mine used to date this hot girl, and they broke up, but stayed friendly. She moved away, got married, and she came back into town with her husband. Next thing you know, she tells my friend that she’s in an open marriage and the two of them slip off to sleep together. I asked him if they were REALLY in an open marriage, because she certainly hadn’t been bringing her husband around to meet us. He basically shrugged his shoulders, was like “I don’t know, I guess,” and didn’t worry about it that much.

I’ve seen multiple relationships implode over threesomes. Why? Because when it comes to our mates, we humans tend to be jealous, attached creatures. Men don’t want to see some other guy railing our girlfriend. Women get upset if their man seems more interested in somebody else in bed, which is pretty much guaranteed to happen if they’ve been together for a while, and bring in a new woman.

On top of all this, we do not live at the turn of the last century, when men and women felt like they needed each other a lot more, and divorce was rare and stigmatized. Today, having and maintaining a healthy relationship is orders of magnitude harder than it used to be, and divorce is common.

So, how much do you want to raise the difficulty level of all that with an open relationship? Some people will tell you a little bit of fear that your partner could get someone better is healthy for a relationship, but I’m not sure that really extends to her literally going on dates with the other guy and going back to his place to have sex. Similarly, how do you think you’d feel if you looked at your husband’s texts and he was calling some other woman a pet name he used for you? What if you found out your partner did something sexual with the other person that they wouldn’t do with you? How would you feel if a friend asked you about your boyfriend making out with another woman in a bar last night? What if the guys at work called you a “cuck” because they saw another man grab your wife’s butt, and you said you were fine with it? What about if you’re a “throuple” and your girlfriend is mad at you, so she spends a week deliberately buttering up the other guy in front of you?

There’s almost an infinite list of potential problems like this that can crop up. Theoretically, with the right two people, with the right “rules” in place beforehand, you MIGHT be able to navigate this maze and miss most of the landmines, but are BOTH of you up to that? At what point does one of you go, “Damn, I don’t want to deal with this drama anymore. I just want a normal relationship with a normal person who only wants me, not whoever they run across at the bar tonight?”

No hate for the people that do this (and I have known some people I like a great deal that do), but for the vast majority of human beings as we find them in America today, this is a wildly unstable form of relationship that is highly unlikely to work out.

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