"3 no longer a crowd as open relationships see a boom"

New York Post

As conservative as Rupert Murdoch's media properties are (think Fox News), they do have a policy of not allowing anything to get in the way of letting sex sell. Not even the fawning award that the former pope gave Murdoch for his service to Catholicism.

Hence, no doubt, the article below, which is actually nice. Unfortunately the article doesn't provide real data to support the headline.

Open relationships growing among couples

The first time Danielle Ezzo met Matt and Rachel, she was relieved. The fashionable trio had met on the dating site, Nerve, and had been exchanging messages, but hadn’t yet met in real life. Ezzo, 29, recalls that evening at the Bowery Hotel in spring 2009 fondly: “I was excited that they were just as cute as their profile pictures.”

Rachel, Danielle and Matt

Danestabrook.com

She was even happier to learn that she had that hard-to-find thing with both Matt and Rachel — chemistry. They talked about life and love and learned that they had the same ideas when it came to dating.

“I was really excited to meet people that felt the same way,” she says of her ongoing relationship with the married couple, both 34-year-old self-employed artists...

Ezzo, also an artist, is polyamorous. Loosely speaking, she seriously dates more than one person at a time, and has an emotional, as well as a sexual connection, with her partners.

...“One of the wonderful aspects of polyamory is that you do get different things from different partners, both emotionally and physically,” says Ezzo, who is in what’s known as a “triad” with Matt and Rachel.

“There are three very different dynamics, all of which are personally valuable.”

...Ezzo is part of a growing movement of people who are practicing consensual non-monogamy — or, in plain English, open relationships.

...“I’ve always inherently had this notion of or had this blurred line between friendship and lovers … to me there is a huge overlap. It’s easier for me to simultaneously love multiple people,” says Ezzo.

...Pop-culture is having a poly moment too: TV shows like “Sister Wives” (Sundays on TLC) and “Polyamory: Married & Dating” (Thursdays on Showtime) are giving people a glimpse into the complicated sex lives of multi-partnered couples.

“The interest and the visibility around open relationships has just skyrocketed,” says sexpert Tristan Taormino, who wrote a book about the subject, “Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships.”

“We’re having these discussions in really mainstream media that just weren’t even possible two years ago,” adds Taormino, who points out that her book actually sold more copies last year than it did during its 2008 debut.

...Unexpectedly, the biggest difficulty people in non-monogamous relationships encounter isn’t jealousy, but something way less dramatic.

“Time is the real thing,” says Taormino, who is in an open marriage herself....

...Another misconception? That there are no rules.... The marriage contract of the San Diego family featured in “Polyamory: Married & Dating” is nearly five pages long. Posted online, it has extremely specific codes of conduct ranging from when to talk about relationship problems (“No relationship processing after 9:30”) to guidelines around dates (“Do not postpone or cancel a date with one partner to see someone else.”)....

Read the whole article (Oct. 2, 2013). Here's the San Diego family's relationship agreement that it refers to.

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