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By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions. So I swiped right, and we were a match. I immediately emailed Bobby to explain that I am a writer who was not looking to date him but would be interested in talking to him about this ethical nonmonogamy thing.
Would he? He said sure, on the condition of anonymity. Then something odd happened: The next two guys who came up in my feed also referenced ethical nonmonogamy. Those exact words. They did not say they were poly, they did not say they were in open relationshipsβthey said they were ethically nonmonogamous. And you know what they say about threes: That right there is a trend. Like a dog? I politely decline, sir! My pasta is the best. I swiped right on those next two guys, Brett and Michael, and they were also both matches.
My first question for Bobby and Brett was whether an ethically nonmonogamous relationship is the same as an open one. The only divide I find is between people who are simply non-monogamous and those who are polyamorous. People who identify as poly seem to be less casual with their relationships. They might have multiple people that they consider significant others. For my girlfriend and me, we are always each other's primary partner, and no one else can ever come before each other.
I asked Brett to explain it to me. A little background: He and his girlfriend have been together for over eight years, open for just over two. For Brett, it was the thrill of the chase, the idea of meeting new people, which is kind of adorably innocent-sounding, actually. After a rather long week apart, where we both did and said some things we regretted, we sat down and had a very long discussion about us and our relationship.
