As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, one of my specialties was working with people who were either already in open relationships or were considering opening up a previously monogamous one. I found that having detailed conversations about decisions that will need to be made can help guide people to success.
You will notice that some of these documents are geared towards either “poly” type relationships and “swinger” type relationships. This is simply used as a shorthand to reference the much larger groups and communities that make up ethical non-monogamy. When referring to “poly”, I simply mean situations in which relationships are intended to be established, while “swinger” refers more to situations that focus more on sexual play and connections rather than committed relationships.
There are several different documents available to help you create a robust open relationship agreement. Each one provides an easy to follow framework for making decisions as well as a guide for how to fill out the document and questions to consider when writing your answers.
More information about this particular document:
Agreements Framework
This document helps create an overall framework for your open agreements, including deciding together on specific definitions and language used. As our boundaries are often put to the test only through experience, this document will help you put in place procedures for contingency reviews of the open agreements. In addition, the document will ask you questions about unexpected feelings and confidentiality.