Thinking about the 70s concept of open relationships
Or rather, open marriage, after the bestselling 1972 book
The term was lifted from anthropology where it meant a system where individuals freely chose their own partners, contrasted with “closed marriage” where partnering was determined by broader social structures, and only a small part of the book addressed nonmonogamy, but that’s the association that stuck.
(The term “free love” went through the same progression in the 19th century)
And thinking about 70s stuff on the poly spectrum – “swingers”, as an identity for full-swap couples (not that F/F was unwelcome, but M/M def. was); the “key party” as event (a couples’ cocktail party mixer where at the end women would blindly draw from a bowl of the men’s car keys and go home with the corresponding man)
Like, that's… that’s where the 70s were at right there. Totally willing to accept nonmonogamy, totally assuming patriarchal marriage anyway.
Or maybe I’m looking at it backwards, and sleeping around was such the expected condition of unmarried singlehood it was just assumed, facilitated by singles bars, singles cruises, singles resorts…
So I suppose maybe the novelty is our having meaningful primary relationships that aren’t marriages, or on the marriage track.
Of course, the “divorce crisis” of the 70s was people deciding that the fact they once had a meaningful primary relationship with someone was not a good reason to be married to them, so fair enough.
(Of course, a lot of those people had been teenagers in the 50s, in the age of “going steady”, class rings and fraternity pins and letterman jackets, when the adults fretted this early sexual-romantic exclusivity would leave them socially stunted, and that they should play the field and go to “petting parties” like in the good old days of the 20s, so fair enough.)
