How to Make Changes in Relationships by Thinking in Phases

Our open relationship style evolved alongside major changes in our lives—career shifts, cross-Atlantic moves, marriage, and parenthood. When our son was born, we naturally slipped into a phase of monogamy, although it wasn’t something we had explicitly planned. One late night, after our 9-month-old had a diaper blowout of alarming black poop, we scoured the internet, convinced his bowels were bleeding. Until the ER doctor handed our exhausted baby back to us with a bemused, condescending tone, saying, “He’s just eaten too many blueberries.” Near bloodshot and bleary-eyed, we collapsed on the couch with our child between us, sharing a beer, and suddenly realized we had been monogamous for over a year. But how can I call myself open when I was monogamous for a time?

I’ve built a deep connection with my husband, created a family, and explored many of my interests and desires because Rich and I have cultivated a relationship built on open commitment. For us, that meant we’ve gone through many different phases: Open. Swingers. Polyamorous. Monogamous. And honeymooners and new parents—phases most couples experience. Then there are the phases that are rarely talked about, such as the we-both-worked-late-nights-and-barely-kissed phase, the our-libidos-are-completely-different phase, and the I-don’t-know-what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up-even-though-I’m-40 phase.

One of the most challenging (but deeply rewarding phases) was when I fell in love with a boyfriend, and my husband dated a wonderful woman who came on family vacations. During that phase, we were polyamorous. Well, that’s what others called us. However, we didn’t use that term. Polyamorous didn’t feel like a word I wanted to use to describe myself. At the time.

I liked the definition enough— ‘Poly’ means ‘many,’ and ‘Amor' means ‘loves’ —it is true, I have many loves in my life. But the truth is, the idea of falling in love with multiple people was scary for me until it happened. Covered in post-partum scars, I lost confidence in myself as a woman, and after two kids, I couldn’t see who I was outside of motherhood. Despite my husband reassuring me almost daily how beautiful I was, it was as if I couldn’t hear him… until I met a Puerto Rican sailor who kissed me passionately, took me sailing, and provided a safe space of separation to rediscover myself. When he told me I was beautiful, I heard the words. And I heard them from my husband again after. I fell in love. I loved two people. That’s what I needed during that phase of our marriage. My husband and a boyfriend.

Looking back on the last 15 years of our relationship, I now see it as a series of phases. There was the figuring-out-how-to-be-open phase. Then came our swinger phase, when the idea of an emotional commitment with someone else felt way too complicated. We had a polyamorous phase, where we both fell in love with other people, followed by a monogamous phase when early parenthood left us with neither the time nor energy for anything beyond diaper changes and the occasional nap. There were phases when I was dating, and he wasn’t, usually when our libidos were on entirely different schedules. Once any couple starts to think of their relationship in phases, it opens up the space to reevaluate, reset, and reestablish boundaries and rules for whatever phase they’re in—no matter how messy or mismatched it might seem.

If I could go back in time to the first few months of opening our relationship, I would tell myself to think of it as just a phase. Transitioning from monogamy straight into an open relationship can be daunting. I wish I had told myself to focus on establishing rules for the next six months rather than trying to figure out all the rules for a lifelong relationship. Focus on the first phase of opening up and go from there.

This video about Phases is intended to help others by discussing how to create phases in a relationship, starting with small steps and gradually building up to more complex situations, especially for those new to non-monogamy. I hope the framework I’ve outlined serves as a solid starting point!