Here's a scenario that sounds reasonable on paper: you and your partner agree to open your relationship, but neither of you wants to hear about the other's encounters.
Clean, simple, no messy emotions to navigate.
Just live your separate dating lives and keep the home life blissfully unaware. Except it almost never works that way.
It seems like the perfect compromise. You get the freedom you want without the discomfort of knowing details. But there's a fundamental problem lurking beneath this arrangement.
Don't Ask Don't Tell policies in open relationships have an obvious logical flaw: they require lying.
If you tell your partner "date other people but don't tell me about it," you've created a situation where they have to deceive you about basic facts. Where are you going tonight? Who was that text from? Why are you in such a good mood?
They can't answer honestly without violating the agreement. So they have to lie.
This is strange because most people choose open relationships specifically to avoid the lying that defines cheating. The whole point was supposed to be more honesty, not less.
The real problem shows up in daily life. Your partner needs Friday night free. What do they say? "I have plans" is technically honest but obviously evasive. "Meeting a friend" is a lie. Either way, you both know what's happening but have to pretend you don't.
People aren't stupid. You can tell when someone is being evasive. You know when their story doesn't quite add up. Every time you sense that hesitation, trust erodes a little.
Then you start second-guessing everything. Were they really at the gym? Did they actually work late? The cognitive load becomes exhausting. You've given permission for something but you're required to pretend it's not real, which means you can't trust anything your partner tells you.
You can have boundaries about information without requiring deception. "I don't want sexual details" is a boundary. "Pretend it's not happening" requires lying.
The difference is important. You can say "let me know when you have a date, but I don't need details about where or what." That maintains honesty while protecting comfort. DADT does the opposite.
I think DADT is usually a sign someone isn't actually comfortable with non-monogamy. They want the option to date but they're trying to maintain the psychological fiction of monogamy by refusing to acknowledge reality.
If you need to pretend your partner isn't dating other people to feel okay about them dating other people, that's worth examining. Maybe you're not ready. Maybe this isn't the right structure. There's no shame in that.
But there is harm in building a relationship that requires both people to systematically deceive each other.
Trust is built on truth. If the truth is too uncomfortable to share, that tells you something important about whether this is working.
