From the outside, an open relationship can look thrilling and terrifying all at once. The idea of new adventures excites some people, while others immediately picture the jealousy, the endless rules, the difficult conversations.
But the reality is often something else entirely. People who have actually lived it tend to say the same surprising thing: the hardest part wasn't the problem they braced themselves for.
Three women shared what really caught them off guard.
"I thought the sex would be the hard part. It wasn't."
Lilla was 36 when she and her husband decided to try an open relationship.
"We'd been together eleven years. We loved each other, the sex was good, we didn't want to break up. We were simply curious." The beginning went surprisingly smoothly.
"The first time he went on a date with someone else, I assumed I'd spend the whole night at home with my stomach in knots. Instead, I ordered a pizza and binged a show."
The difficulty came later.
"It didn't hurt that he slept with other women. What hurt was when he told another woman first that he'd had a bad day."
That, Lilla says, was the moment she understood that emotional closeness bothered her far more than physical intimacy ever could. "Sex is easier to share than attention. Nobody warned me about that."
Their relationship survived, but they set new boundaries. "I realized I wasn't afraid of losing my husband's body. I was afraid of losing my place in his life."
"It was humiliating to realize I was competing with a woman in her twenties"
Eszter is 42, and she lived in an open relationship for three years.
"The whole idea started with me. I was the progressive, liberal one. I was convinced jealousy was just social conditioning."
For a long time, she says, everything was fine. "Then my partner met a 27-year-old."
Eszter was blindsided by her own reaction.
"There I was on a Saturday night, watching skincare videos, wondering whether her skin was just naturally that tight." She laughs about it now, but back then it wasn't funny at all. "The worst part wasn't that she was younger than me. It was that I'd suddenly become a woman who compares herself to someone else."
The relationship didn't ultimately end because of this, but the experience made Eszter reconsider a lot of things.
If you've ever wondered whether your reaction is love, insecurity, or something deeper, it's worth learning how to recognize the real signs of jealousy before they take over.
"I thought I was so modern. Then I realized I longed for the exact same thing as everyone else — to be chosen above all others."
"The hardest part was when I became the other woman"
Réka is 33, and she says nothing could have prepared her for this situation.
"My partner and I agreed we could both see other people. On paper, everything worked."
After a while, though, Réka started seeing one man regularly.
"He was in an open relationship too. It seemed like the ideal setup."
Then one evening, something shifted. "He talked about his girlfriend. About the plans they had together, the apartment they wanted to buy, where they'd travel in the summer. And there I was, lying in bed next to him, suddenly realizing I was an extra in someone else's love story."
According to Réka, this feeling was far harder to bear than any kind of jealousy.
"You think an open relationship is about freedom. Sometimes it's really about learning, very precisely, where you stand in someone's life."
Today she's in a monogamous relationship. "The most brutal realization was this: being loved by more than one person doesn't mean you're anyone's first choice."
What do these three stories have in common?
In every case, the deepest pain wasn't physical and it wasn't about sex. It was about emotional closeness, being chosen, and knowing where you truly belong in another person's life.
Is jealousy really just social conditioning?
Eszter believed exactly that — until her own reaction proved otherwise. For many people, the longing to be chosen above others runs far deeper than any belief about how relationships "should" work.
What is the "other woman" feeling in an open relationship?
As Réka describes it, it's the moment you realize you're an extra in someone else's love story — that being wanted isn't the same as being someone's first choice.
Can an open relationship survive these difficulties?
It can. Lilla and her husband stayed together by setting new boundaries once they understood what actually hurt. For others, like Réka, the experience led them back to monogamy instead.
