Non-monogamy can’t save a failing relationship

I desperately want to have sex with men who aren’t my boyfriend,” is a text I sent my best friend four years ago. “I think I really need to be in an open relationship.”

This revelation didn’t come as any huge surprise to either of us. I’d had my misgivings about the relationship—especially the monogamous part of it—from the beginning. I’d been happily single for four years when I met my then-boyfriend, casually dating away my early 20s with various men, minimal commitment, and little desire to change that situation. I wasn’t sure if I identified as non-monogamous, per se—but I did suspect that if I ever were looking for a relationship, it probably wouldn’t be a monogamous one.

And yet, within two months of the kind of whirlwind courtship that I might now call textbook love-bombing had that term not been TikToked to death, I somehow found myself locked into a monogamous relationship with a man who was dead set on keeping it that way. That didn’t stop me from bringing up the idea of non-monogamy, however—something I did multiple times to predictably negative results. In the meantime, while I tried to talk my boyfriend into an open relationship, I tried to talk myself into believing maybe monogamy was the right fit for me after all.

I’ve been thinking about this recently in light of the discourse surrounding Lindy West’s new memoir, Adult Braces. In the book, West details how she came to embrace an open marriage after her devoutly non-monogamous husband began a relationship with another woman. By the end, all three parties are in a supposedly happy polyamorous partnership—but the internet’s response suggests many readers remain unconvinced by West’s happily-ever-after ending. Much of the Adult Braces discourse that’s reached a fever pitch online in recent weeks centers on the belief that West seems to have been coerced into an open marriage by a husband she should have simply divorced. In other words: This polyamorous throuple could’ve been a breakup.