Non-Monogamy 101: Debunking Myths & Rewriting Relationships

The Bothered Blog by Danielle from Openly Committed

August 2026

What if there isn't one "right" way to build a relationship? For Danielle, founder of Openly Committed, non-monogamy is about questioning inherited assumptions and creating relationships tailored to the people involved.

This interview is adapted from an episode of Smut Talks, where Allison Whaley sat down with Danielle to talk about what non-monogamy actually means, the evolution of her own 16-year marriage and some of the biggest misconceptions surrounding non-monogamy. They also imagine the perfect smut story—one involving a threesome, a $300 sex-shop budget, and a color-coded spreadsheet.

Non-Monogamy 101: It's an Umbrella, Not a Rulebook

Allison: If someone is unfamiliar with non-monogamy, could you give us a quick lesson? 

Danielle: Ethical or consensual non-monogamy are probably the two big words used today to describe non-monogamy, and it's really an umbrella term. Within non-monogamy you have polyamory, which is having emotional, romantic, and physical relationships with other partners. You also have a swinging community, which is much more physically focused and not as much on long-term connections. And you have a little bit of everything in between.

I usually call myself open because I love how it sounds. I love being open to new ideas, open to new relationships, open to things changing and seeing how it goes.

There's another term that's currently in the limelight, which is relationship anarchy. At its core, it’s about developing a relationship that is specific for the people in it. 

Sixteen Years of Figuring It Out

Allison: Tell me about your personal non-monogamy journey. I know that's a big part of the work you do, and you're very open about it.

Danielle: My husband and I met 16 years ago, and within two months of dating, he asked me to consider an open relationship. He brought it up because he had seen affairs destroy relationships, destroy families, and he wanted to affair-proof our relationship. He approached it from a really romantic way, saying, "I want to be with you forever. I want to figure out and create a relationship that is specific for us." But that's not what I heard.I heard “open relationship”, and I was angry, and embarrassed, and cried, and was like, "What the f—?"

It took us two years. Even though I had a really big emotional reaction, I was also curious. And so I agreed to explore the concept. We met as many people as we could, we went to a swingers club, we had a threesome for the first time. And we spent time crafting the relationship that worked for us. 

We've evolved so much. The rules that we wrote down 16 years ago are not the same rules that we have today. There are some things that are stricter, there are some things that are more relaxed, and I also like to think that we've gone through so many phases. Phases of monogamy, like when I first gave birth to our first son. Phases of polyamory, where we had very beautiful, romantic relationships with other people who were involved in our lives. We had phases of swinging, when it was all about the physical. Thinking of our relationship as something that is constantly evolving is one of the reasons that we're still together 16 years later, and are confident enough to share it online. 

Debunking Non-Monogamy Myths

Allison: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about non-monogamy that you'd like to debunk?

Danielle: I’d like to move away from the moral judgment, which stems at its core from two assumptions. The first assumption is that if you're in an open relationship, then it must be all about sex. And the second one is that you're just cheating on your partner.

I'm writing a memoir at the moment, and I made a very conscious decision to not have any explicit sex scenes in the book. I think it’s more important to tell the story about an open relationship without sex. Because I am very passionate about debunking this idea of open relationships just being about sex.

I also want to debunk this myth that there's one person out there who’s going to meet every single one of my needs. That one was really hard for me to get over. I had to recognize that I have found an incredible partner in my life, but that our partnership was built, it wasn't found. And then, it wasn't some preordained or predestined thing, so it was okay not to have 100% of my needs met by just one other person. And that gave us a lot of freedom.

The History of Monogamy: Women as Property 

Allison: How do you understand the history of monogamy in the context of the patriarchy? 

Danielle:  I don't think it's monogamy that's been dictated by the patriarchy, but women as men's property. About 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, at the advent of agriculture, when people started settling down and having crops and property for the first time, inheritance mattered. And when inheritance mattered, paternity mattered. So much so that in the earliest documented legal codes in the west, rape was punished as theft—a crime not against a woman, but against a man’s property. And that legislation has been passed down for 4,000 years. 

The first big change came about 170 years ago, when a woman was allowed to actually keep her own property, keep her own inheritance, and earn a wage. And even then a woman couldn't get a credit card under her own name until about 60 years ago.

This idea that women are the property of men has been so deeply ingrained that only in the last 50 years our laws have been restructured to enable women to choose something other than a relationship with a man. 

I think this is why so many women in particular are excited about alternative relationship types, whether that’s a lesbian marriage, being bisexual, living alone, or non-monogamy. Now, a whole bunch of women are independent because they're earning their own wage, and so they’re like, wow! I've got some options. 

What Would Danielle's Perfect Smut Story Look Like?

Allison: If you could have a smut story written for you—or for the world—and we were going to publish it, what would you want it to contain?

Danielle: I would probably write from a female's perspective. Something has happened to her that completely changed her life, and then she’s in a situation where she can either decide to go the old, trusted route, or she can push herself outside of her comfort zone. 

So she makes a checklist of things she would never normally be comfortable doing, but because of the list now she has to do them. Like she’s a 40-something-year-old and she’s going to go have sex with a 20 year-old. She’s going to walk into a sex store with a $300 budget and buy something insane, something the store owner sells just to her. And I would definitely give her a threesome. 

She would be scoring her experiences afterwards. It'd be like, that was a 9 out of 10. She’ll have a spreadsheet and she will 100% have it color-coded. 

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About the Author

Danielle explores non-monogamy in practice, not just in theory. Since opening her relationship in 2010, she's built a marriage, raised two kids, and navigated the complexity of loving more than one person at a time. Since 2022, she's shared that experience with hundreds of thousands of people online and spoken directly with hundreds of individuals and couples exploring ENM, learning from their stories as much as her own.