The first time it happened, I didn’t think anything of it. I was on FaceBook, surfing around and answering mail, when a guy I knew pinged me. 50-something, smart, and techie (like many of the people I knew), he was a distant acquaintance.

The conversation went something like this:
Guy: Hey.
Me: Hi.
Guy: How’s it going?
Me: Okay, how are you? (Wondering why this person is pinging me)
Guy: Uh, good. So, what’s up?
Me: Not much. I’m really busy with my start-up. (At this point, it is becoming clear to me this person I know in a work context probably doesn’t have a work question to share; in fact, it’s starting to feel like getting a call from a guy in junior high.)
Me: So, what’s up?
Guy: Not much, just saying hi.
Me: Cool, take it easy. Bye.

After this happened about three times, with a couple of different people, I realized that all these IMs were no accident. The guys were pinging me because my profile on FB said I was in an open relationship. For these men, that statement made me enticingly interesting.

In their minds, if they IM’ed me on FB, the conversation was likely to go like this:
Guy: Hi.
Me: Hi.
Guy: How’s it going?
Me: Great, but how about if you come over right now and rip my clothes off, no strings attached?
Guy: Sure, where do you live?

Only real life doesn’t work that way, does it? After this, I started to ask myself, “Do people think open means indiscriminate? And what it is with that?”

Truth is, there aren’t that many guidelines for how to talk to other people about open relationships.

Tristian Taormino, in her new book on open relationships, Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, talks a lot about how to open a relationship (communication, honesty, following the lead of the slower person, etc.). Her book is so good, I’ll probably buy copies to give to people who want to learn about non-monogamy, but she doesn’t go into how people in open relationships might deal with the assumptions of others in their lives that open equals not picky, or even indiscriminate, or even begging for it 23/7.

Jenny Block, author of another recent book Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage , which tells the frank story of her move from a traditional relationships to a non-monogamous open one, doesn’t really go into the reactions of her friends and family either. Rather than focusing on folks who fancy her available because she’s non-monogamous, she seems to dismiss these personal details of her life as too much information (TMI) for most of the people in her circle.

“...although I don't hide the way I live, I don't announce it, either. I introduce my husband as my husband, and my girlfriend as my girlfriend, and answer any questions that might arise,” she writes. “But unless friends and neighbors and colleagues read my work, they might not have any idea about the way I live. We are neither out nor closeted.”

I did a net search and didn’t find anyone else calling out these kind of experiences However, when I talked with some non-monogamous women friends about my FB pals, they said they’d been in situations like this as well. . “Yeah, some guys think open relationship equals slutty,” said A, a polyamorous friend. “Oh yeah, they hope you’re indiscriminate,” said another, citing the “puppy dog eyes” she gets from some of the men she knows.

For me, for whom non-monogamy is a political statement as much as a personal one (after many years of marriage, I don’t want to make absolute commitments to anyone and don’t think it’s necessary for me to do so), these experiences were amusing, but also provoking enough to write this post about them.

The observations this experience provoked were the following:

• Our culture puts such a high value on professing fidelity in public, but doesn’t follow these standards in private
• People who don’t give lip service to monogamy are then perceived as indiscriminate or easy
• We have celebrity couples (Will Smith, Jada Pinkett, Cate Blanchett) talking about their open relationships, but that doesn’t make it less charged for average people to discuss
• We have a culture here (as we do with so many thing) of watch what I say, not what I do (and don’t talk about that, please)

(Tiresome big yawn here.)

Sunny Strausburg at Reality Sandwich, talking about polyamory, a form of non-monogamy, had this post: "“In the popular culture, this term conjures up images of wife-swapping, anything-goes kinkiness. Somehow its true meaning has been pejoratively distorted into something resembling "polyfuckery." Asking people what they thought it meant, most snickered and said, "swingers," "sport fucking." " (Susan sez Oy vey!)

Putting it another way, Bitch PHD made an equally relevant point (on a slightly different topic): “No matter what you and your partner have agreed on, other people will cling to their antiquated notions.”

On the other hand, what’s the big deal? Everyone has assumptions about everyone else, many of which are highly inaccurate, so is this really any different? People do what they do and at the end of the day how much does it all really matter?

Comforted by those thoughts, I took one simple and satisfying step in response: I turned my Face Book IM off.

Related blogs and posts worth a read:

• Divine Caroline, Non monogamy, aka Open Marriage
• Not your Mothers playground: Open Marriage
• Feministing: What does open marriage look like for you?
• Stephen Baugh: Polyamory and open marriage
• OpenSexual: Background on relationships :"“This is how it works in my life and my relationships. I tend toward having a partner that I share a great deal of my life with, plus play partners on the side. I tend to have lots of partners like this; she tends for fewer partners that are more “relationship” than “play.”

Anyone else have stories to share? Thoughts and observations on open relationships and how other react?
Share, please.