“Yes, we love each other. And emotionally, we get everything we need from each other. But we would also like to sleep with other people.”

If you’re in an open relationship, saying that is easy. The hard part comes with actually executing the plan. How do you decide on rules? How do you decide on boundaries? Are there any boundaries?

A lot of couples who decide to try out open relationships use ‘Open Relationship Contracts’. It’s basically where you sit down and decide on the ground rules so there’s no confusion and (in theory) nobody gets hurt.

There’s probably some great contracts out there. There’s probably some couples for whom this system works brilliantly.

This is not one of those contracts.

The open relationship contract featured on Jezebel today is an example of what happens when open relationships go horribly, horribly wrong.

Clearly, the man who wrote this contract either had no idea what ‘open relationship’ meant, or knew what it meant but was obviously uncomfortable with it.

There are some rules that seem fair enough.

For example:

That seems reasonable. Or:

So he wants to know details. If he can handle it, that seems okay.

But then, the contract takes a bizarre, controlling ‘I’m actually not really okay with this’ turn:

Ah, what?

‘Approval’?

Say what now?

WHAAAAAA?

And then there’s this bizarre rule, which seems to defeat the purpose of having an open relationship at all:

So yeah. Wow. This really is an example of what not to put in an Open Relationship Contract.

Originally published on B-Side Blog, the author says this was the open relationship contract for a friend a few years ago. Needless to say, the friend exited the relationship fairly quickly. Read the full contract on Jezebel right here.

So, this all begs the question – would you ever agree to an open relationship, and if you would, what rules would you put in your contract?