It’s part of a series called ‘Sex – How To Do Everything’, which will be filmed next week. I will be in a studio discussion with the presenters, Em and Lo, focusing on how to have an open relationship. It is produced by TalkbackTHAMES, which is a company well known to UK TV viewers, having produced shows such as Grand Designs and QI (oh yes, and X Factor ). It will be on Channel Five at 11pm, on a Thursday some time in June or July (yes, I’ll let you know exactly when as soon as I find out) – the first episode is on 5th June. The presenters talk about it on their blog here. I’ve been promised a DVD and I will post a clip here when it’s been broadcast.

What advice would you give?

As it is a ‘how to’ show, it looks like they will be asking me questions like how a couple start to open up their relationship, how to suggest an open relationship to your partner, what problems to look out for and how to avoid them. Obviously I have lots of ideas on how to answer these questions, but there is so much that needs to be said that prioritising it is difficult.

So I’d like your help. What are the top three bits of advice you would give someone who is thinking about having an open relationship and doesn’t know where to start? Answers in a comment box please!

I’d like to think about couples who are currently monogamous (or where there has been cheating, or single people – take your pick which you focus on.

Would you like to join me on TV?

The producers are also looking for someone who is in an open/polyamorous relationship who could talk about their personal experiences: how they got into the relationship, why they wanted such a relationship and how they make it work for them. I won’t be talking about my personal experiences myself – I’m there to give general thoughts based on my research.

If anyone is interested, and can get to London next Friday, please contact me by email as soon as possible, preferably by Monday morning. I think they would be happy with one person,a couple or a group, and they haven’t mentioned any age or other restrictions. I would support you as much as I can in the process.

She has interviewed over a hundred people who have had no-strings-attached sex while married, without telling their spouses, and concludes that this is becoming more and more common in the UK. She also concludes that many of them don’t feel guilty about it. Women are no longer much less likely to have affairs than men, and age isn’t a barrier either.

Like so many journalists writing on this subject, Levin completely ignores the idea that someone might be honest about having sex with someone else. None of the interviewees seem to have considered for a moment the idea of telling their partners about their need for more sex, or about the fact that they are having sex with someone else. As usual, the choice seems to be between monogamy and cheating. The third article talks about what happens when the other spouse finds out, though this never seems to be through a confession.

Interestingly, there seems to be a consensus among the people interviewed that this extramarital sex keeps them sane and happy and therefore saves their marriage. To some extent I would agree with this: sex with others can enliven a relationship, as I have found myself and heard again and again from the people I’ve interviewed. But Levin does point out that “the partner who chooses to have a fling has to live a life of subterfuge and always be on the alert in case he or she is found out”. Yes, it is a big price to pay. I would go further: I’d say it the deceit that causes most of the problems, rather than the extramarital sex itself. In fact, if there is no deceit, sex with others has a much better chance of enlivening the relationship.

I want to say loud and clear to people in this situation: there is another way. You don’t have to be monogamous and you don’t have to cheat. But it requires talking to your spouse and telling them about your needs.

Here are some thoughts from an Open Fidelity perspective for someone who is married and considering having, or has had, a no-strings-attached affair, and who wants to stay in the marriage.

The ideal time to talk to your spouse about this issue is when you’re starting to feel unhappy and are tempted to cheat but before you have done anything concrete to find another sexual partner. It will be much more difficult to try and find a solution if you have already broken your original promises. But even that can be done. The longer you leave it, the more difficult it will be, either to keep the secret or to come clean. And the secret is almost bound to come out at some point.

Tell your spouse that you are having problems being monogamous. Tell them you have considered looking elsewhere for some sex, or that you have done so if that is the case. Also tell them how much you love them, how committed you feel and that you don’t want to leave them. Say that you would like to work out a way in which both of you can be sexually satisfied while still managing to stay together.

Then wait for the suggestion to sink in, for your spouse’s anger to die down, and for them to consider their options and the alternative options (the two of you splitting up; you having an affair behind their back; and you being unhappily monogamous). If your having sex with someone else with no strings attached will really not affect your love for your spouse or your relationship with them, it might be possible to convince them to accept this too (but make sure you are certain of it first!).

If you have been unhappy, the chances are they have also been unhappy, so they might be glad for the opportunity to talk about their difficulties. Who knows, they might also have been wanting something different in their sex life and have been wishing they could tell you. They might even have already guessed that you’re thinking of an affair. This will be an opportunity for you to work out what you both want and find a way in which your probably differing needs can be made compatible.

Then try, tentatively and gently, to negotiate with each other a solution that involves you getting some sexual fulfilment while staying with your spouse. I can’t say what the solution will be – each relationship is different – but I can, over the course of this blog, give you examples of people who have tried this solution and what they have learnt from the experience. Are there some rules that you can agree that will make it easier to cope with each other’s liaisons? Practising safe sex is an obvious example. Perhaps a period of strict monogamy would be a good idea while you find ways to make non-monogamy possible. Are you prepared for your spouse to have lovers too? If you find this idea difficult, ask yourself why. Look for support from others who have tried honest non-monogamy, perhaps via this blog and the links from it.

This whole blog is about this alternative to monogamy and cheating, called Open Fidelity, so keep reading if you want more tips.

If I promised to love only one person until death, I would be saying ‘never again’ to the experience of falling in love.

Never again to wallow in that delicious agony of lusting after someone.

Never again to experience the miracle of finding they lust after me too.

Never to flirt.

Never to kiss lips I haven’t kissed before (or at least only friendly kisses, not proper snogs).

Never to discover a new lover’s body, marvelling in its uniqueness, the way they respond or move or touch.

As I am also a bisexual woman, being monogamous with a man would mean ruling out all future sexual contact with a woman. And promising monogamy with a woman means the even more unthinkable suggestion of never again having sex with a man.

How can anyone volunteer for this? Does anyone really think about it this way when they make a promise to be monogamous? I can only conclude that for many people it is an intention not a certainty. Or even wishful thinking, or blind optimism, or self-deception. Or are some people even lying when they make the promise, knowing they don’t really mean it?

‘Oh no’, you may say, ‘for me it was easy, I knew I would never need anyone but my partner for the rest of my life’. Well, if so, I’m delighted for you and your partner, and good luck with never needing anyone for the years to come. My feeling, though, is that you are in the minority.

For me it is not monogamy itself that is problematic. I have been monogamous in practice for a year or two on several occasions; in other words I have had only one partner, and had sex with only them. But promising to be monogamous is another thing altogether. I tried once and lasted three months before ending the relationship. As long as I know I’m not ruling out possibilities in the future, I can live without these possibilities for the time being. But I couldn’t promise to be the exclusive lover, for the long term, of just one person.

I am using the word ‘monogamous’ in this blog to mean ‘having sex with only one person over a period of time’. A person who is monogamous is someone who, over the course of, say, a year, has sex with only one person. I will usually mean ’sexually monogamous’, that is, if someone has a romantic attachment to more than one person but has sex with only one, they are strictly speaking being monogamous. Of course there is plenty to discuss in all this, but this definition is where I am starting from.

Helen Fisher, in Anatomy of Love: a Natural History of Monogamy Adultery and Divorce, defines the term differently, as ‘having only one spouse’ regardless of any short-term sexual relations with other people. This is more of an anthropological definition, used in discussions of forms of marriage in different cultures.

I think the definition I am using is the more widely used one in general western culture, and so will make more sense to people. Besides, we need words that distinguish people who have sex with only one person from those who have sex with more than one person.

Partner

I generally talk about partners in all my writing, rather than about husbands, wives, girlfriends or boyfriends, for two main reasons. Firstly, what I am talking about applies just as much to same-sex relationships as it does to relationships between men and women. And secondly, whether a couple is married or not is not usually relevant to the argument, as nowadays many couples live together (or even separately) without being married but the same issues surrounding monogamy still arise, just as they would if the couple were married. I am aware that ‘partner’ can mean ‘business partner’, but here it won’t mean that.

The problem with the gender-neutral approach is that you can end up with lots of ‘they’s and confusion about who is being referred to. I don’t think it is useful to use ‘he or she’ all the time, and grammatically I don’t have a problem with using ‘they’ in the singular (it is very commonly used). If you talk about a husband and a wife, you can they say ‘he did this, she said that’ and it is clear, but with two partners, ‘they did this and they did the other’ is not. I will try to make it as clear as possible, sometimes by using examples with names when no other method works. Please add a comment if a particular sentence isn’t clear to you, for this or any other reason.

Infidelity

One of the main arguments I will be making is that ‘fidelity’ shouldn’t mean the same as ‘monogamy’. For the purposes of the next few posts, however, while discussing the status quo, I will use ‘infidelity’ to mean ‘having sex with someone who isn’t your partner without your partner’s knowledge or permission’. Someone who does this could be called a ‘cheater’ and their partner has been ‘cheated on’. These terms are not ideal but I choose to use them because they are generally understood.