How to Have a Conversation About Ethical Non-Monogamy

Seven considerations to make sure that your first or initial conversations are compassionate, slow, and intentional.

Editor’s Note: For the summer, we’re rotating our publication schedule to Monday/Wednesday/Friday. As this article introduces a new podcast episode, it’s free for everyone! Subscribe to Relationship 101 below!

This spring, our podcast series answers the ten most common questions that we hear from clients and others in the faith transitioning space.

We’ve dubbed the series “Ask Two Sex Therapists”.

Although for our most recent episode, we have four sex therapists.

We’ve invited our friends Jimmy Bridges and Becs Waite, co-owners of the private practice This Space Between, to answer the following question:

What if I want to have sex with other people?

For the next week and half, our Substack articles will focus on ethical non-monogamy; specifically, the initial steps of opening up a relationship.

Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash

And we’ll be relying on Becs’ and Jimmy’s wisdom, as well as research from the field of relational and sexual health, to guide our exploration.

I love how Jimmy and Becs describe the dilemma that many folks are experiencing on their website:

“Many folks were told from a young age that monogamy was the best - and only way - to love and to be loved. Many folks are also now beginning to question if a monogamous relationship structure is what is best for them. Relationship therapy can be a great way to start to explore the possibilities.

Our goal is to support you in building the scaffolding of your relationship structure. You will be the architect of your new design, while we help you navigate the tricky stuff like: anxiety, jealousy and conflict. We will also show you how to cultivate curiosity, love, connection and security.”

If you are interested in opening up your relationship, I invite you to consider seven core ideas that can help hold this conversation.

1. This conversation is heavy. In fact, I want to pause for a minute, because I realize that questioning the sanctity of monogamy and marriage creates a lot of anxiety and other feelings for folks. Check in with yourself and ask what might be coming up for you. All of the feelings—excitement, disgust, stress, dread—make sense.
   
   To the person who has the feelings, make sure that you have a way for ensuring that your feelings don’t translate into bad or coercive communication. To the person who is receiving the feelings, make sure that you have a way for validating and not dismissing these feelings.

2. Every relationship is an open relationship. Do you have a best friend? What information do you share with that person that you may not share with your partner or spouse? What are conversations that you have with your parents or your siblings that you don’t have with your partner?
   
   None of us exist in a true monogamy; in fact, a true monogamy—one in which each person solely depends on their partner for every single function in their relationship—often has abusive elements to it.

3. Every relationship plays a specific role in our life. Roles could include emotional support, financial planning, physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, co-parenting. I’ll reference other roles and the principles of relationship anarchy at some point during this series. Some relationships play multiple roles. Our partners/spouses play many roles with many functions. And we could depend on these different relationships to play one role one time over the course of a few minutes, or to play one role over a prolonged period of time.

4. The most common conflicts about ethical non-monogamy challenge our ideas and expectations about sexuality. Sexuality is not just about fucking; sexuality is a window into our souls through a collision of vulnerabilities about our bodies, attachment to and acceptance by other people, and pleasure. For many of us, when we get married, we have an expectation that the sexual relationship is the one thing that is strictly ours and nobody else’s. The desire of one person to explore ethical non-monogamy exposes the vulnerabilities and insecurities that we’re not good enough or sexy enough or enough enough.
   
   From our perspective, the Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal endorsement of abstinence-only education, to the extent of informing young participants that any premarital sexual activity is “cheating” on your spouse, only makes this anxiety more unmanageable.

5. Eroticism depends on differences and distance. I love this definition of eroticism from Australian sex therapist May Soo:

   “Eroticism is a state of sexual arousal or sexual excitement (an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts) or anticipation of such.”
   
   Familiarity is simultaneously an attachment builder and an eroticism killer.
   
   In fact, in sex therapy, we notice that the more often a couple has sex in the same way, with the same initiator and the same rotation of touch and sexual activity, the less likely that couple is to desire sexual experiences. Regardless of whether or not a couple chooses to practice ethical non-monogamy, conversations about ENM can be one window into helping a couple diversify their sexual experiences by learning more about the sexual preferences, peak sexual contexts, and fantasies of each person in the relationship.

6. We simultaneously have more and fewer resources than we think we have. Ethical non-monogamy invites us to consider that our world offers far more opportunities for a variety of connections than we might otherwise think. It asks us to own our desires and fantasies, and give ourselves permission to work with others in our close circles to develop arrangements so that we can explore these desires and fantasies.
   
   As we move into logistical conversations, ethical non-monogamy also reminds us that we have limited resources—financial, emotional, temporal, spatial, energetic, occupational, and relational, among other considerations. Ethical non-monogamy forces us to take an honest inventory of those resources so that we can experience greater enjoyment, depth, pleasure, and growth. Part of that inventory also includes the relationships—those we currently have and those we have yet to discover—that might partner with us in the pursuit of enjoyment and growth.

7. Your partner will likely not want the same thing that you want. And that’s totally okay. I love how Becs clarifies some of the initial goals of relationship therapy that includes the possibility of opening up a relationship:

 “I'm assessing for clarity first and foremost. I’m wanting to see if each partner has clarity about why it is important to them, but also seeing if there's clarity, if each partner understands why it's important to their partner.

I want to see how they tolerate differences, because when we have that tolerance, we are able to consider a different perspective without feeling like our own experience or perspective are being threatened or our own perspective is being threatened.

I ask why. And I think it invites, again, this idea of how do we navigate this with intentionality. It can really ground both people and the therapist in the intentionality and it invites us to slow down.

So often, Jimmy and I encounter couples where at least one partner is feeling of pretty intense urgency to move forward, and this can be a way to invite that partner or partners to slow down and really get to know themselves and their partner before stepping forward.”

Understanding these seven principles can make a stress-inducing conversation less reactive and more fulfilling.

Becs, Jimmy, and This Space Between are amazing resources for exploring ethical non-monogamy together.

Julia and I also offer free 30 minute consultations with couples who are interested in pursuing relationship and sex therapy/coaching, and ethical non-monogamy is often something that we help couples navigate as well. (60 minute consultations for paying members of Relationship 101!)

We specialize in working with who participated in an Evangelical, Mormon, or Pentecostal community, and are looking to discover or rediscover the role that sexuality might play in your life and relationship.

Let’s heal together!

Jeremiah and Julia