Every so often I want to open up the blog for you to share and teach me on a topic that I don’t know a lot about. This is your chance to teach me and the other readers of this blog. I encourage you to comment, subscribe to the comments and keep coming back to add more insights.

From the Wikipedia page on Open Marriages:

Open marriage typically refers to a marriage in which the partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded as infidelity. There are many different styles of open marriage, with the partners having varying levels of input on their spouse's activities. The impact of open marriage on relationships varies across couples. Some couples report high levels of marital satisfaction and have long-lasting open marriages. Other couples drop out of the open marriage lifestyle and return to sexual monogamy. These couples may continue to believe open marriage is a valid lifestyle, just not for them. Still other couples experience serious problems and claim open marriage contributed to their divorces. All couples in open marriages may therefore want to pay attention to their relationship maintenance behaviors.

Today I'd like to learn about open relationships and marriages. Here are the questions I have for those of you with experience in open-style relationships:

  1. What rules are there in the relationship to prevent infidelity or violation of other limits? Why do the ground rules exist?
  2. What style of open relationship do you have? Is it polyamory or one that we haven't discussed yet? Is polyamory considered an open relationship?
  3. How do you handle jealousy issues?
  4. What sexual protection do you use with other partners?
  5. The illegality of having another partner other than your wife/husband can cause issues, what do you have to keep the safety of all partners involved safe?
  6. Have any of you seen the Handbook on Open Relationships found at Open Hands? What do you think of its content?

Do you have anything else you' d like to share about open relationships that I might not have considered?