Hall pass : Being in a relationship and agreeing with your partner that if given the chance you are allowed to have sex with specific people.

That is an open relationship.

I think most people are under the impression that an open relationship only means the extreme. You have your (primary) partner but then you also have 3 other partners, and you have sex all the time, and you’re also part of a hippy dippy love cult where you drink each other’s blood. Chill. It is not that in the slightest. 

Monogamy is when you’re with one person and that person is only with you. You think about only them, you’re committed to only them and there are no other people in this relationship besides you two. Anything outside of that is an open/polyamourous relationship. The relationship doesn’t include just you two. 

A hall pass is an agreement that given the chance you could sleep with very specific people. This implies these people are now theoretically part of this relationship and only separated by their own agreement. That if they were to agree, they would also physically be part of this relationship for this brief amount of time. The fact that you now have an arrangement in the relationship that involves other people (with or without their agreement) is open relationship behavior. 

Are we monogamous or do you want to be in an open relationship? Because once you open this can of worms I will be treating this as an open relationship and we will have a lot more to discuss.

Conversations with Imaginary People

This piece of text was a response to a random scenario I made up in my head where someone asked me the question in the title. I found it easiest to write it all out and feel like if someone was to actually ask me this question this would be my most authentic answer, as I do sometimes get flustered and go off on tangents. Thank you for reading.