I was in an open relationship for a year and a half. I did it mostly because I was in love with my GF at the time, a radical feminist who didn't want to be the possession of any man. I did get to have sexual relationships for short stints with 3 women during that period but I have to admit, I wished I was monogamous with my primary partner.

What is not talked about a lot is the constant scheduling when you have multiple partners. When I scored a major project with a client, I had to go and repeat that story three times with diminishing excitement to three different women. I was also constantly fighting for time with my primary partner. If I wanted us to take a trip together, I had to "reserve" dates with her months in advance. Any chance of taking an impulsive trip was not possible.

And then there are the rules. It's a whole charter of things to respect and exceptions. We decided on a "don't ask don't tell" policy but to always use protection but we would tell each other if a secondary partner was going to become a bigger presence in our lives.

There were also periods of one-upping each other (because we were both two insecure people) and protest behaviour, passive agressive agendas, jeez...it was not a healthy relationship.

I was also active in the poly/open circles and met a few couples in the same lifestyle and mostly noticed that it was usually two or three anxiously attached people chasing one avoidant/ narcissist type. I also noticed these people tend to be students, artist, part-time working types because this lifestyle requires a lot of time and they somehow have it.

No judgements here, people can do whatever the fuck they want but I'm not going to go down that path anymore. Either I stay single and fuck whomever I want casually or with the right person I get into a closed monogamous long term relationship with clear plans for the future.