An open marriage is a marriage in which the partners agree that each couple is free to have sexual relationships with other people.
While there might be a lot of advantages of an open marriage; there is is a wide list of disadvantages many people don’t think of when in a open marriage.
Here below are 10 disadvantages of being in an open marriage.
It takes effort: Open marriages are time consuming and takes effort to make enough time for all your partners. You might not have the capability to make everyone happy and neither have enough time.
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Jealousy: No matter how much you’re okay with the situation, jealousy will occur at some point.
It’s only human nature for jealous feelings to happen, no matter how much it is discussed in advance.
Concentration: Open marriage enables you to lose focus on the things that are very important to you. Whether that’s goals you want to achieve and accomplish. This might cause a great distraction in your life and might make you unhappy in the long run.
You have less privacy: You won’t have enough privacy and though you might have an idea thinking you’ll be free to come and go as you please. But that is not true because someone might always gets hurt in the end, or lies or breaks the rules.
Manage your emotions: A struggle with emotions often happens in an open marriage, managing your emotions and feeing overwhelmed with everything. There will be times where you will feel low about yourself and times you will feel high about yourself. A mixture of emotions might make you end up struggling and to manage it.
Social stigma: People’s perceptions about open marriages might be negative. This is a disadvantage because if you care deeply about people’s opinions, negative stigma therefore might impact you as an individual.
Complicated: Open marriages tend to get complicated which leaves you with difficulties to cope with. You might change your mind or partner at some point. Open marriages tend to ruin the order of things, which might make your relationship with your partners complicated.
Diseases: Open marriages have a higher risk of contracting STI’s (sexually transmitted diseases) as having multiple sexual partners can cause this. This is disturbing because not all of these diseases are readily treatable.
Awkwardness: There will be a time where awkwardness will occur and things might not be the same again. You might feel awkward being around the person or bumping into them in public. Sense of regret or desire comes with this also.
Lack of communication: Being in an open marriage means you will need to able to communicate. Lack of communication often occurs in open marriages which might leave you frustrated, alone and doubting.
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