First, some background, as I always enjoy reading these sorts of details here. My girlfriend Anne and I have been dating for roughly 4 years. We met in college and initially had a very casual relationship – we started hooking up, hung out more and more frequently, and eventually things evolved into a committed relationship. Our sex life was fairly adventurous from the start, but nothing too out of the ordinary. About 6 months after we started dating, Anne studied abroad for 6 months, and we decided to continue dating but to open up the relationship while she was away. We both had a few encounters, but after she got back we decided to remain monogamous as our communication wasn’t the best while we were open, and this experiment frankly wasn’t the greatest for our relationship.
Fast forward a few years, and while I had occasionally expressed interest in once again trying an open relationship, Anne didn’t think it was something she’d be into. I was a bit disappointed in this, but things otherwise were great so our relationship proceeded as usual. That is, until she listened to an episode of Dan Savage’s podcast that made non-monogamy ‘click’ for her. A few weeks after this epiphany, Anne was scheduled to once again leave town for a few weeks. We decided to give non-monogamy another trial during her absence – if it went well, we might stick to it.