Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. People in open and other consensually nonmonogamous partnerships have been historically underserved by researchers and providers. We used multinomial logistic regression to identify correlates with relationship structure, and linear and logistic regression to investigate associations between relationship structure and testing, condom use, and relationship satisfaction.
Bisexual individuals and Black, Non-Hispanic participants were more likely to report NCNM; older participants were less likely to do so. Participants in open relationships reported more frequent condom use for anal intercourse and lower relationship satisfaction than monogamous participants. Identities, experiences, and behaviors within open and other consensually nonmonogamous populations should be regarded as unique and diverse, rather than conflated with those common to other relationship structures.
There is a need for greater awareness of diverse relationship structures among researchers and providers, and incorporation of related content into educational programming. For several decades, sexual minority individuals in the U. Early in the HIV epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified several such minority groups, including men who have sex with men MSM and women who have sex with women WSW , as target populations for research and programmatic interventions Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, , a , b.
Researchers have responded to these calls with numerous assessments of sexual behavior and health outcomes among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender LGBT persons. Individuals in consensually nonmonogamous CNM relationships, however, remain notably underserved by researchers and practitioners. Yet these individuals are also sexual minorities Herbenick et al. Such stigma may be particularly pronounced for nonmonogamous persons who also identify as LGBT. Sexual and behavioral health interventions grounded in assumptions of monogamy, or that are designed to promote monogamy as an ideal moral and behavioral standard, may be inapplicable and even harmful.
Consensual nonmonogamous relationships may take numerous forms. What unites these relationship structures is that the individuals involved agree to nonmonogamy and communicate openly with one another about that decision. Until recently, studies have not examined the prevalence and characteristics of various forms of consensual nonmonogamy in the general population of the U.
