Open Relationships and the rise of 'ethical non-monogamy'

I can still remember the moment my friend asked me for advice. She’d said she wanted to get my wisdom on something. We’d met for breakfast in Caffe Nero on the High Street. She had become engaged a couple of months earlier. And then she said, “My fiancé has asked whether I would be up for us being in an open relationship”. I don’t know what I had been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been that.

An ‘open relationship’ (which I hadn’t heard of at the time!), is a relationship in which a couple mutually decides that their partner is allowed to date, and potentially have sex with, other people.

The people in the open relationship may or may not be married. There isn’t one set way in which this works: although generally the couple will be honest with one another about who they are seeing and what they are doing, from what I’ve read, different couples set different rules about quite how open they are. The couples may set other rules for themselves, such as not dating friends, never bringing back a lover to the family home, or only seeing them in a different neighborhood.

The relationship is supposed to be entirely consensual, and as such, its participants do not consider themselves to be ‘cheating’ on one another. It falls within the broad umbrella term of what some people today call ‘ethical non-monogamy’ (a concept which innately seems alien to many of us, I suspect).

This blog piece isn’t describing some dystopian future; and it isn’t looking to be scaremongering. But it is important to understand something: the days of monogamy being just ‘assumed’ as the right way to live…those days are behind us.

On one level, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9); we’ve long been familiar with the concepts of ‘swingers’ and ‘sex parties’. But open relationships are starting to gain increasing acceptance within the mainstream, and societal attitudes are starting to shift.

Yesterday, The Times ran a piece ‘What it’s like to be in an Open Marriage’. This week, the play Unicorn, starring Erin Doherty (The Crown) and Stephen Mangan (Green Wing), opened on the West End, about a couple in an open marriage; the word ‘unicorn’ is, I gather, a slang term for a woman who looks to sleep with married couples. Various tv shows have explored the theme in recent years, including the hit show Succession, and Channel 4 series The Couple Next Door. And a number of books are hitting the shelves, including Deepa Paul’s Ask Me How it Works — Love in an Open Marriage, and The Non-Monogamy Playbook: Exploring Polyamory and Open Relationships with Confidence, from the podcaster Ruby Rare.

Polling has shown increasing openness to the idea; the latest YouGov stats suggest that 9% of people would consider being in an open relationship. That figure rises to 13% among 18-24s (that is greater than 1 in 8 young people). Others are searching for more information on the subject. Figures from Google show that ‘open relationship’ was the top trending search engine term about relationships in 2024; ‘poly relationship’ (a similar concept, which is less about sex and more about romance) came fifth.

Reading through the stories of those who have decided to enter into a relationship like this, as reported in The Times, was both illuminating and saddening.

Francisco, who is 29 and a graphic designer, commented: “I have a constant desire to explore sex, so even when I got together with my girlfriend I knew that I’d struggle to stay faithful. There are times when I just need to “play around” and seek out different physical experiences.”

Olivia, an author, wrote: “Once, on a train, I said to a total stranger, “I’ve always wanted to kiss a man without speaking to them first,” and we had this incredible kiss on the platform. It was the freedom that I wanted more than the actual affair.”

Many of the others interviewed had similar stories: having relationships outside their spouse supposedly allowed them to feel ‘free’, or to ‘experiment’ (more than one spoke of trying out fantasies around BDSM or kink), or to leave behind the mundanity of changing their babies’ nappies or raising a child.

Their accounts illustrate something we have been aware of for a while now: in the aftermath of the Sexual Revolution, there is but one sexual rule left: ‘consent’. The modern self is King. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, you can have sex with who you want, how you want, when you want.

And in a sense, in a world where people don’t believe in God, why wouldn’t you do that? If there is no one to whom you have to give an account, then why shouldn’t you live life how you want? If there is no transcendent moral law (in a world without a transcendent law-giver), then the customs by which we have ordered our society are just that: customs. And customs can be challenged, moulded, overturned…

We live in a world which has already, in recent years, changed its definition of marriage to include same-sex-couples, because, as the song goes, "All you need is love". By that logic, why shouldn't those customs evolve again? I am fully expecting further attempts to redefine marriage in years to come to move it beyond just being about two individuals.

At the start of the article in The Times, the American author Molly Roden Winter said: “I don’t know that being a human being has ever changed much. But I think culture tells us what are the acceptable parts of being a human being and what is OK to talk about and admit to.”

As a Christian, the only way I can describe it is this: it’s all so sad.

It’s a question we have probably all been asked over the years: ‘isn’t being a Christian restrictive?’ In one sense, the answer is, of course, yes; God has, in His Word, laid out a particular pattern for life, a pattern which does detail things we should not do. And that pattern, does, of course, relate to human sexuality.

Jesus, when asked a question about divorce, laid out God’s design for human relationships and sexual activity: ““Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”” (Matthew 19:4-6)

One man. One woman. For life. That is the pattern laid out by God. It was challenging even at the time. Jesus’ disciples said to him: “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” (Matthew 19:10)

But Jesus did not come in order to be restrictive: he came offering “life, and life in all its fullness” (John 10:10).

The purpose of law is not to be restrictive. The purpose of law is to help everyone flourish. Just as the Highway Code keeps us safe on the road and enables us to properly drive, so God’s laws are designed for our good and to truly live.

Our society increasingly reminds me of Romans 1. Paul writes: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.”

That seems to me to be exactly what has happened here: people are claiming that they are so enlightened, because they can live life how they want it. Humans were made - uniquely within creation - in the image of God, to relate to Him, to obey Him, and to enjoy Him. Instead, we behave ever more like the animals we were supposed to be distinct from.

The mistake which people make today is assuming that more options means more freedom. It doesn’t. It means more hurt, more tears, and more regret.

Olivia had spoken of the thrill of kissing a stranger on a train platform. She wrote in the very next paragraph: “The problem with open relationships is that even if you can dismiss sex pretty easily, you cannot dismiss the space around a lover. And one day, when we had three small children, Adam met a woman who had a large, empty, quiet, clean house. She might have had music playing. Maybe there were candles at dinner. Meanwhile, home life was an exhausting effort from beginning to end.

“And this is what is really dangerous about open relationships. It’s so easy to see how you could become obsessed with your lover, away from your three children and the smell of nappies and where you haven’t got a dying father or a son you’re anxious about. You’re not saying things like, “I’m so worried about the bills,” or, “My friends are dying of cancer” — singularly unsexy conversations. I don’t think the sex was so brilliant; I think it was the haven, the quiet place where he could think and talk. A lover with whom you can be free — free of the encumbrance of being human and responsible.

“I lost everything. I adored his family and, when Adam left, I lost not just him but the whole package that he had given me.”

Reading the testimony of those interviewed in The Times, my abounding thought was quite a straightforward one: people just do not ‘get’ the idea of marriage (or even relationships generally!) today.

Francisco’s testimony (“There are times when I just need to “play around” and seek out different physical experiences”) is illustrative. No one needs to just “play around”. How low a view of their own self-control does someone actually have to say something like that? And since when have relationships been about what you can take, rather than what you can give? This is nothing more than hedonism, pure and simple.

In our culture which is obsessed with the self, we have forgotten God’s call to us: to be selfless. The only word Jesus put after the word ‘self’ was ‘denial’.

Relationships - and in particular, marriage, in which we are not only called to “submit to one another”, but in which men are called to “love your wives as Christ loved the Church” - are at their best when we put our own needs to one side and look to serve our partner.

The problem with an ‘open relationship’ is that it is the very opposite of this: it is all about your own desires, your own fantasies, your own perceived ‘needs’. No commitment is needed from the person you date or have sex with. No sacrifice is required. If the person demands something from you, you can drop them and find something else.

‘Open relationships’ are almost like the physical embodiment of something CS Lewis once wrote about masturbation:

“For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.

"For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.”

I don't know what my friend who asked for my advice ended up doing. She was only studying in the UK for a year, and moved back to America at the end of it. I do know that her engagement eventually broke down.

‘Open relationships’ are selling people far too short. They sacrifice all that is best about marriage - intimacy, exclusivity, and yes, even love itself - on the altar of cheap thrills and quick blood-rushes. They are the metaphorical equivalent of Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of stew.

Because God wants so much more for us than this.

As Christians - and I’m aware that our national church has essentially lost its ability to do this - we need to be far bolder about proclaiming the goodness of God’s design for marriage. As Christians, we believe in a far better, deeper, truer story for how we are to conduct relationships and live out our sexuality.

It is a story rooted in the very fabric of our universe, in which God saw our sin and our mess, and decided that regardless, he wanted us for Himself, and was willing to lay down his life to win and woo us back (how about that for self-denial!).

It is a story which should provide true security, because the marriage-relationship is designed to be permanent and exclusive. If that commitment is taken seriously, then gone are the fears about whether some other sexual partner will outdo you in the bedroom, and gone are the insecurities about whether your spouse might prefer spending time with someone else.

And it is a story based around love: true love. It is the story of when two flawed people with all their imperfections and insecurities, are able to say to one another ‘I am yours’; ‘All that I am, I give to you; All that I have, I share with you.’

Tim Keller writes, “When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”

That is a story I want to live in.