Should you open your relationship? Fix it first

At some point in many long relationships, one person says it, usually at an unglamorous moment, like loading the dishwasher: “What if we opened things up?”

What happens next depends almost entirely on what state the relationship is in when the question lands. This article is about that. To set expectations: I’m not arguing for a specific relationship type. It is not about whether monogamy or non-monogamy is better. Only you can decide what is best for you, and the research I found gives no reason to rank one above the other.

The short version is this. If your relationship is struggling, fix that first. If it is solid, check that it really is. If it passes, here is how to open it without breaking anything.

If your relationship is struggling, opening it is the worst plan I can think of

Let me be fair. That heading is my opinion. The research does not say that opening up wrecks a struggling relationship. It also doesn’t say it fixes one either.

The best evidence I found is a study that followed 233 people who were thinking about opening up their relationship and checked in again two months later (Murphy, Joel and Muise, 2020). Of those, 155 went ahead. The lead researcher summed up the result by saying they found no support for either idea: that opening up ruins a relationship, or that it cures one. People who opened up were no more or less happy with their relationship than before.

Engineers know this principle well. If a system is unstable, adding a component to it does not make it stable. It makes it a larger unstable system. Nobody adds a wing to a building with a cracked foundation and expects the cracks to close.

Here is a table of common reasons for wanting to open up, and what a new person does about each:

The problem Will a new person fix it?
“We never talk about difficult things.” No. There are now more people to not talk to.
“We want different amounts of sex.” Possibly the sex part. See “A fair exception” below. Not the rest.
“I’m bored.” Briefly. Then you are bored and busy.
“I’m afraid of losing you.” No. This has more to do with trust and adding more people to the mix won’t make it easier to build trust.
“We are fine, and curious.” Now we are getting somewhere. See the next section.

In another study, the people who opened up were more satisfied with their relationships than those who did not, at both points in time. The couples who did it successfully were not rescuing a sinking ship. They were adding a room to a house that was already standing. The researchers caution that these were people who were keen on the idea to begin with, so we cannot conclude that being satisfied causes success. But the pattern is hard to ignore.

The Kinsey Institute’s Justin Garcia, speaking in an interview, puts it bluntly: couples who open up hoping to fix existing issues often find that the same issues carry on, just with a larger cast.

What “fix it first” means

  • Communication. You can talk about sex, fear and jealousy without it turning into a crisis. If you cannot discuss the weekly shop calmly, a third person is not going to improve the dynamic.
  • Trust. Each of you is agreeing freely. “Fine, do what you want,” said out of guilt, exhaustion or fear of losing the relationship, is not consent. It is a ticking time bomb.
  • Understanding. You know why the problem exists. Stress, health, medication, grief and unspoken resentment can all switch desire off, and none of them is solved by recruiting.
  • Support. A GP, a couples counsellor or a psychosexual therapist. In the UK, the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT) keeps a directory. If you are considering non-monogamy, look for someone who understands it. In a study of 249 people in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships, therapists who knew about CNM and responded without judgement were rated as more helpful, and clients were less likely to quit early.

A fair exception

One study found that opening up raised sexual satisfaction, especially for people who had named sexual incompatibility as their reason, although it did not change how satisfied they were with the relationship overall. So if the one thing wrong is a mismatch in desire, opening up is a real option. If the lack of sex is a symptom of something else, you have the same problem at a new address.

Only open a relationship that is solid

If you still want to proceed, good. Here is what you are signing up for.

Opening up is demanding. I cannot prove it is the hardest thing a couple can do, since nobody publishes a league table, but the research describes a long to-do list. A 2026 study of 429 people, followed by three international surveys totalling 4,290 (iscte, 2026) people, identified nine separate practices that people use to keep consensual non-monogamy going. They include telling a partner about your attractions to other people, talking openly about jealousy, looking after sexual health, sharing time and resources fairly, and managing your reputation. (I did not make up that last one.) Several of those sound like a normal Tuesday. The rest sound like a job. And if you have ever tried to find a free evening for two people in a busy household, you will already have an idea what adding a third calendar does.

Jealousy is real, and manageable. One study compared 529 monogamous and 159 non-monogamous people. Monogamous participants were more distressed by imagined partner involvement overall, while non-monogamous participants showed more suspicion-based jealousy. The ways people coped were not mysterious: negotiating boundaries with their partners, and cultivating compersion, which means feeling happy about a partner’s happiness elsewhere. It is the opposite of jealousy, and it is also a word that spell checkers do not recognise.

Outside pressure exists too. The American Counseling Association’s practice brief lists stigma, setting and keeping boundaries, and communication among the challenges clients bring, along with fear of telling family and colleagues.

The good news. When it works, it works as well as anything else. A 2025 meta-analysis pooling about 24,000 (Taylor & Francis, 2025-03-24) people found no difference in relationship or sexual satisfaction between monogamous and non-monogamous people. A caution: most of the studies were cross-sectional, relied on volunteers and used self-reports. Couples who struggled and split may no longer be in the sample. Engineers call this survivorship bias, and it means we should read the finding as “it can work”, not “it is easy”.

Are you ready? Ask these in order

Work through these one at a time. If any answer is no, stop and go back to the first section of this article.

  1. If we set sex aside, do we still want to be together?
  2. Is each of us agreeing freely, or to keep the peace? If it is to keep the peace, go back.
  3. Have we ruled out the causes we can fix? If not, take the counsellor first.
  4. Could either of us say “stop” and have it respected, without a crisis?
  5. Do we have the time and energy? If not, wait. Waiting is allowed.

If you reached the end without detours, congratulations, you are in a far better position than most.

If you are ready, here is how to do it

  1. Agree why, and agree what. Say out loud what each of you wants and why. “Open relationship”, “polyamory” and “swinging” are different things, and research tends to lump them together, so agree your own definition rather than borrowing one.
  2. Negotiate explicit agreements. What is allowed, what you will tell each other, how much time it takes, and what happens if someone changes their mind. A study of 329 people on a dating site for those already in relationships found that non-monogamy was not harmful to satisfaction when both partners had agreed to it. The agreement is what makes it different from cheating. Write it down if that helps. Nobody will mark it.
  3. Look after your sexual health. In an earlier study, people who cheated were less likely to practise safer sex and to get tested than people in openly non-monogamous relationships. Agree testing and protection before the first date, not after. The American Counseling Association’s brief also cites research finding that non-monogamous people reported more condom use and more regular testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
  4. Talk about jealousy early. It will turn , I promise. The people who cope best seem to be the ones who talk about it before it becomes an argument.
  5. Go slowly, and schedule reviews. Check in on a regular date and agree that anyone can pause. The long-term evidence is thin (the main study I cited followed people for two months), so treat your first year as an experiment, and be prepared to pivot if needed.
  6. Get support. Find a therapist who understands CNM, and friends who will listen without judgement.
  7. Date honestly. Tell new people that you are partnered and that your partner knows. This is the part JOAD cares about most. It is not a way around your partner, and honesty with them is a condition of being here, not a nice-to-have.

Three questions people ask

What if my partner is not interested in opening up? Then you have your answer to one question, and an interesting conversation about another. Pressure is not agreement.

What if we try it and it does not work? You can stop, and you can talk about it. A review that ends in “not for us” is a successful review.

Can we skip the part about fixing things first? You can. It is the same as skipping the part of the instructions that says to read the instructions.

Where JOAD stands

Whichever way you decide, if you find yourself dating again, as a monogamous single or as part of an open relationship, JOAD will be here. We ask you to say precisely what you want when you join, and you are only shown people who want the same thing.

In the comments: what is the best piece of relationship advice you have ever been given, and what is the worst?

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