I Wish He’d Just Had An Affair

When Ava, 22, was a junior in college, she reached an inflection point in her relationship with her boyfriend. She was going abroad for a semester, and although she didn’t want to break up, she wasn’t sure they could handle long-distance. She proposed an open relationship. It was intended to be about sex; they wouldn’t seek out other long-term arrangements or hookup buddies, or use dating apps — but if they met someone at a party, a one-night stand would be fine. “Yes, it’s open, but like, that doesn’t mean it’s free rein. That was the boundary that I tried to establish,” Ava says.

It didn’t work as anticipated. Soon after Ava left, she received messages from campus acquaintances with screenshots of his Hinge profile and evidence of him sliding into people’s DMs. The one time he came to visit her, he was cold and unaffectionate; he told her he wasn’t seeing anyone else, but they still broke up soon after.

Even though he’d technically broken their agreement, she didn’t feel as warranted in her sense of anger and betrayal as she would have if he’d cheated in a closed relationship. What would have been black and white was now gray: It was her idea to open it at all in an effort to keep him happy, so how could she expect to complain? She gave an inch, and he took a mile — and in her mind, she and everyone else would see that as her own fault.

In hindsight, Ava regrets suggesting an open relationship. “I wish that instead, he had just cheated because I think he would have experienced more guilt about what he was doing,” she says now, two years later. He might’ve also acted with more discretion — so even if he slept with someone, at least she wouldn’t have had to hear about him hitting on girls she knew.

For many, open relationships work out swimmingly. But when sh*t hits the fan, some folks, like Ava, are finding out the hard way that they’d rather their partner had just had an old-school affair — at least that way, there’d be no confusion about where blame lies when things get sticky.

Ava’s not the only one who feels this way. “I would honestly rather my partner cheated than I had to gaslight myself and watch, or pretend to be happy as they went out with someone else,” said one U.K.-based woman who asked not to be identified. “The outcome is almost the same with either infidelity or open relationships,” added a 49-year-old woman in the United States. “Oh, except for the extra fun helping of self-loathing/hatred in open relationships — as you ‘accepted’ the open relationship thus, ‘can’t be mad at anyone but yourself.’ Ugh.”

Although various forms of non-monogamy aren’t new, the subject has become more mainstream over the last few years. On social media, it’s a regular subject of debate and jokes. On the App Store, one of 2024’s “Best Dating Apps” allows users to link profiles with up to five people. (That’d be Feeld.) And even more ceremonial news outlets, like The New Yorker, have reported on polyamory’s popularity, saying “consensual non-monogamy is now the stuff of Park Slope marriages and prestige television.” All this has meant more and more people feel comfortable giving them a try — and, because one size has never fit all, some of those people will necessarily discover the arrangement doesn’t work for them.

If it had been an affair, I would be justified in asking her to cut it off with him or break up with me.

Howard, 28, is one of those people. He says his first proper relationship was open and polyamorous, and for years, things were more or less fine. “Problems started when she began wanting to get with people that I knew and didn't like,” he says. The biggest issue, though, was that the “open relationship” label blurred the boundaries of friendship versus relationship.

“I remember asking her if she thought there was any difference between a close friendship and relationship,” he says. “She said no.” With that, he felt stuck — like the only way to prevent her from having a sexual relationship would be to ask her to stop being friends with someone, but that it would be overly controlling to do so. If she’d just had an affair, the boundaries — and the breaking of them — would have been clearer. They broke up soon after. “I felt I had no place to say she couldn’t be with him,” he says. “If it had been an affair, I would be justified in asking her to cut it off with him or break up with me.”

“Open relationships often involve awkward discussions, new rules, and big negotiations,” says Wendy Walsh, Ph.D., relationship expert at DatingAdvice.com and professor of health psychology at California State University, Channel Islands. “That can make the shift to an open relationship feel, well, official, maybe even permanent. A quiet affair, on the other hand, might seem like a one-off, an experiment, or a temporary lapse rather than getting out the whiteboard and drafting an entirely new relationship. For someone who’s skittish about permanent change, denial is way easier than restructuring the entire relationship.”

“The most important thing is that both partners are on the same page. The couple has to be in a very secure relationship to be able to test this out. They should both have a clear voice in the relationship. There can’t be a power imbalance,” says Walsh.

Power imbalance or not, Howard and Ava aren’t alone in their distaste for the dynamic. In fact, a whole subreddit, aptly titled r/OpenMarriageRegret, exists where people discuss regretting the arrangement. “Opening a monogamous relationship often leads to disaster: a literal FAFO [f*ck around, find out] situation,” the description for the group reads. Here, more than 16,000 members lament opening up their long-term relationships and express the pain of seeing their partners grow close with someone else. As with Howard, some couples open up their relationship only to find that they’re poorly equipped to set boundaries. If one or both partners is unwilling to navigate gray areas, they’re likely to get mired in them.

It’s a theme that appears on monogamous subreddits, too. Recently, someone on r/Monogamy shared that he and his partner of eight years had decided to open their relationship, and it hadn’t gone well for him. Soon after having their first child and returning to work, his partner began seeing a colleague; very quickly, she began spending entire weekends away while he stayed home with the baby. “I asked if it could be possible to put some conditions on this, to spend less time seeing her,” he said. “The answer is no.”

“As I like to say, it’s all fun and games until somebody falls in love,” adds Walsh.

Of course, a clearly, candidly discussed open relationship works out for plenty of people. One January 2024 study even found that non-monogamous and monogamous couples report equal levels of relationship satisfaction and emotional well-being. The issue may be that you simply don’t know what’s right for you until you try it, and that if you want to find out, you may jeopardize your relationship in the process.

Many are perfectly happy sticking with what they know, while others are compelled to learn from experience — just like, given the choice between being open or having an affair, some people would prefer their partner do the latter.

Or, as one young woman in NYC told me, she’d rather be the one who cheats. After trying an open relationship, she says, “I came to realize I preferred affairs.” Call that a learning experience, too.