McIntyre and Allen say they’ve experienced the stigma themselves but that an open relationship is the most honest way for them to be together. “Gay men have always engaged more often in consensual non-monogamous relationships, and society has consistently stigmatized their decision to do so,” says Michael Bronski, a professor in the department of women, gender and sexuality at Harvard. In 2012, four studies from the University of Michigan found that participants’ perception of monogamous relationships were “overwhelmingly more favorable” than of open relationships. “To my knowledge, no one contracted HIV and only one couple contracted an STD.”īut despite Stults’s findings, there’s stigma associated with these kinds of relationships.
“My impression so far is that they don’t seem less satisfied, and it may even be that their communication is better than among monogamous couples because they’ve had to negotiate specific details,” Stults says.Īnd open relationships “don’t seem to put gay men at disproportionate risk for HIV and other STDs,” Stults says. So far, Stults says his finding is that non-monogamous relationships can lead to a happier, more fulfilling relationship.
“We wanted to see how these relationships form and evolve over time, and examine the perceived relationship quality, relationship satisfaction, and potential risk for HIV/STI infection,” says Stults, who finished coding the interviews this week at NYU and hopes to have the study published early next year. The study, funded by the Rural Center for Aids/STD Prevention at Indiana University, had multiple aims.