"Open" Does Not Mean "No Rules"

A former "sugarbaby"—she only started accepting money from men for sex because she was in dire financial straights and not, you know, because she's a real prostitute or anything—invents a new term for open relationships and makes world news.

Could letting your man sleep with another woman help your relationship? Author and former mistress Holly Hill thinks so.... By alternatives, Hill is referring to her idea of "negotiated infidelity." That shouldn't be confused with an open relationship, which to Hill "has no rules." Nor does it imply that it's necessary that a wife allow her husband to hop into bed with whomever he chooses—unless of course she's OK with that. Hill says negotiated infidelity could mean hubby makes a trip to the local strip club for the occasional lap dance or updates his porn collection.

Um... all open relationships have rules. Even open relationships that don't appear to have rules, i.e. there are no restrictions, have rules ("Rule #1: there are no rules.") And all open relationships—as opposed to relationships that are closed but one or both partners are cheating or have cheated—require negotiation. Hill hasn't crafted some revolutionary new approach to outside sex in long-term relationships here. She's just repackaged the oldest one. But, hey, good for her, she's going to sell a few books, and maybe contribute to the growing cultural realism about monogamy (nice idea in theory, good for appearances, not very workable in practice).

What I liked best about the story is the unchallenged pathologizing of people who "cheat," even with permission:

But psychology professor Lawrence Josephs believes it is more personality type than gender that indicates whether a person might cheat. "People who are higher in narcissim—whether they are male or female—are more likely to cheat. People who feel entitled to it, people who have what's called avoidant attachment style where they tend to have more impersonal sex," are more prone to straying, he said. The professor also said people who experience lower levels of empathy or guilt tend to engage in more infidelity.

Infidelity is so common in truly long-term relationships—I'm talking decades here—that people should just assume that their partners are guilt-free narcissists with entitlement issues who are running low on empathy and start the negotiations there.