One of the standout scenes in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is the three-way make-out session between Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. A reality show focusing on polyamorous dating, Couple to Throuple , was released in March. And at the beginning of the year, Molly Roden Winter’s book More: A Memoir of Open Marriage became a New York Times bestseller .
Non-monogamy, in its various shapes and sizes, has become a hot topic. But how many of us are really opening up our relationships? Not that many, according to research conducted by Relationships Australia . In a 2023 survey, only 6 per cent of respondents said they had been in an open relationship before.
This reportedly matched national population data, which also found that the majority of those who had been in an open relationship were men (61 per cent) and aged between 35 and 44 (23 per cent). Liam and Abbey have been in an ethical non-monogamous relationship for nine years. Credit: Jeremy Wikner Australians may not be practising non-monogamy as often as pop culture suggests, but their curiosity is certainly growing.
About 41 per cent of Tinder users are interested in “non-monogamous adventures”, according to Tinder’s dating expert Sera Bozza, while Bumble’s resident sexologist Chantelle Otten says about a third of single Australians think ethical non-monogamy is “the way of the future”. However, the chief executive of Relationships Australia NSW, Elisabeth Shaw, says it’s still frequently misunder.