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have access to potential partners who have nonmonogamy experience and strong relationship skills?
    • Do you have the self-knowledge and communication skills to
be in an open relationship?
Why People Choose Open Relationships
    If you've never been in an open relationship of any kind, you may be
wondering why people choose them and what they get out of them. People choose to create nonmonogamous relationships for many different reasons, and I will explore some of the most common in this
chapter. One or more of the following may ring true for you or echo
your own experience.

Sexual and Fantasy Fulfillment
    For those who have a primary partner and choose to explore only sex
(no emotional attachment or relationships) with other people, erotic
desire is the driving force. Maybe you've always had fantasies about sex
with someone other than your current partner, bringing a third person
into the bedroom, or hooking up at a party while others watched.
Many long-term couples find that having additional sexual partners
keeps their relationship fresh, breaks up monotony and routine, adds
excitement to their sex life, and brings them closer to each other.
    How can sex with someone else increase the intimacy between
primary partners? For some people, sharing their fantasies with each
other-even if those fantasies are about other people-is an important
step toward building closeness. Eli likes to explore with other people
different kinds of sex that his partner doesn't enjoy; he says, "It enables
me to show different aspects of my sexuality to those who appreciate
them most." When couples explore a fantasy together, it can be a special,
exciting, bonding event; just as some couples go mountain-climbing or
skydiving together, others go on sexual adventures. You can talk about
your experiences afterward, and your different perspectives may give
you new insight into each other's sexuality.
    In general, after a night of [playing with others], we are very hot
for each other have the most amazing sex, and have the strongest
feelings of confidence in our own relationship. -Jack

Rejection of Monogamy
    Many people say that their discovery of nonmonogamy resulted from
their dissatisfaction with monogamy: the monogamous relationships
they've had just didn't seem like a good fit for them. Some feel that the
structure and expectations of monogamy are confining, stifling, and
unnatural and that they simply aren't "wired" for monogamy. From
the time they began dating and having relationships, they've always
preferred several partners to just one, and they enjoy exploring different kinds of relationships and dynamics with different people. In an
interview about the study she conducted on brain activity of people in
love, Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry
of Romantic Love, says:
    I have a theory that we've evolved three distinctly different
brain systems for mating and reproduction. The sex drive
being one, that craving for sexual gratification. The second
is romantic love, that obsession, the craving, the ecstasy, the
focused attention, the motivation to win a particular mating
partner; that early, intense romantic love. And the third
brain system is attachment, that sense of calm and security
that you can feel with a long-term partner.
    What I find most remarkable about these three drives... is
that they're often unconnected. You can feel a powerful sense
of attachment to a long-term partner while you feel intense
romantic love for somebody else, while you feel this sex
drive for a whole range of people.'
    Fisher's conclusions support the folks who simply cannot imagine
themselves in any kind of relationship other than an open one, like Shari,
who says, "I've never had a monogamous fantasy in my life ...I just never,
ever, dreamt of `him.' I always dreamt of `them,' from the earliest days
of my sexual fantasizing. My sexuality is very fluid and wide-ranging."

Freedom and