One of Us Wants to Open the Relationship. Now What? How Queer Couples Therapy Can Support Honest Conversations
You’ve built a life together. Shared meals, shared laughter, shared hard moments. Maybe you’ve traveled, raised pets, supported each other through loss or transition. You know the curve of each other’s shoulders and the things that make each other feel known.
Then one day, one of you says something that changes the air in the room:
“I’ve been thinking… I wonder if opening the relationship is something we could talk about.”
And suddenly, nothing feels quite the same.
That moment can land with fear, curiosity, sadness, hope, confusion, or all of the above. For many queer couples, this conversation marks a crossroads: not necessarily a breaking point, but a point of transformation. Something is surfacing. Something that matters.
In this blog, we’ll explore how queer couples therapy can support you through the complexities of this conversation—whether you’re the one wanting to open things up, the one hearing this for the first time, or both of you are trying to figure out how to move forward. You don’t need to have all the answers right now. But you do deserve a space where your truth can be spoken, heard, and held with care.
Why Do People Want to Open Their Relationships?
The desire to open a relationship doesn’t always emerge from dissatisfaction or emotional distance. In many queer relationships, it arises from growth—a desire to reclaim agency, reimagine connection, or explore evolving identities. Sometimes, it reflects a longing for experiences that feel affirming, expansive, or previously inaccessible.
Here are just a few of the reasons people bring up non-monogamy:
Exploring New Aspects of Gender or Sexuality
For many queer individuals, identity is not static. It evolves. It stretches to include previously unspoken truths or embodied shifts that surface over time. When someone begins to explore a new aspect of their gender or sexuality—especially after coming out, transitioning, or leaving a restrictive environment—the desire to open the relationship may reflect an urge to experience that emerging identity more fully.
It might be about discovering how their body feels in different contexts or how their orientation lives in the world beyond theoretical understanding. For example, someone who previously identified as lesbian may realize they are pansexual or bisexual and feel a pull toward experiences that align with this expanded identity. Or someone who transitions may want to explore intimacy from their new embodied perspective—not to replace their current partner, but to connect with others in ways that affirm and reflect back who they are becoming.
Opening a relationship, in these cases, can become part of a broader reclaiming of agency, self-definition, and liberation. In queer couples therapy, this exploration is often tender, because it touches not just on desire but on visibility, congruence, and the longing to be seen in one’s wholeness.
Discrepancies in Libido or Erotic Interests
Over time, many couples—regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity—encounter shifts in libido. These differences can stem from hormonal changes, trauma history, mental health struggles, parenting stress, medications, or simply evolving desires. In queer relationships, where erotic connection often intersects with complex histories of shame or invisibility, these shifts can feel particularly loaded.
When one partner desires more frequent or varied forms of sexual connection, and the other feels more limited or disinterested, it can create a dynamic of disconnection or guilt. Rather than positioning either person as “too much” or “not enough,” some couples choose to explore open relationship structures as a way to meet divergent needs without compromising emotional intimacy.
This doesn’t mean the primary partnership is broken. Instead, it reflects a belief that one person may not be able—or expected—to meet every physical or erotic need their partner holds. For some, this leads to freedom and reconnection. For others, it surfaces grief or fear. Therapy can help couples navigate this path in a way that centers consent, communication, and care—not pressure or avoidance.
Feeling Drawn to Different Kinds of Intimacy—Emotional, Sensual, or Creative
Opening a relationship isn’t always about sex. For many people, the desire is rooted in longing for other forms of connection—intellectual, emotional, sensual, creative. You might want to share poetry with someone who sees that part of you, dance with someone who connects to your rhythm, or have emotionally intimate friendships that fall outside the container of traditional romance.
In queer community, where chosen family and relational multiplicity are often part of survival, many of us long for intimacy that doesn’t fit the narrow mold of coupledom. When one partner desires deep connection with others outside the relationship, it doesn’t always mean they’re seeking physical intimacy—it may be about feeling fully expressed in different dimensions of their selfhood.
In couples therapy, couples can explore: What kinds of intimacy feel safe or sacred within your bond? What kinds are negotiable? What does it mean to trust each other across these dimensions—not just physically, but emotionally and creatively?
Expanding the definition of intimacy can challenge inherited scripts about exclusivity, but it can also create space for more honest, authentic expression.
Wanting to Deconstruct Societal Norms Around Possession and Exclusivity
Some couples arrive at the conversation about non-monogamy not out of personal struggle, but from shared political or philosophical beliefs. Many queer people question the societal assumption that romantic love must be possessive, exclusive, or hierarchical. They may see traditional couplehood as rooted in patriarchal, capitalist, or colonialist models of ownership—where love is conflated with control, and commitment with surveillance.
In these partnerships, the desire to open the relationship often arises from a place of ideological alignment. It’s less about filling a void and more about living into a shared ethic of liberation, autonomy, and relational abundance.
But even in these cases, couples must reckon with the emotional and nervous system realities that theory can’t always predict. Deconstructing societal norms doesn’t mean you’re immune to jealousy, grief, or fear. In fact, those reactions can feel even more disorienting when you’ve intellectually “signed on” to the idea that you shouldn’t feel them.
Queer couples therapy offers a space to honor both your values and your feelings. It helps couples distinguish between who they want to be and how they truly feel—and to move toward integrity, not just ideology.
Navigating a Personal Awakening Post-Trauma, Transition, or Burnout
After trauma, illness, burnout, or major life transition, many people experience a kind of reawakening. A desire to reconnect with pleasure, vitality, or autonomy. For queer individuals who have spent years surviving—whether through religious trauma, family estrangement, medical discrimination, or oppressive work environments—this reawakening can be profound.
Sometimes, that process includes reevaluating relationships. You may feel the need to explore what joy or aliveness means to you now, in a way that wasn’t possible before. Opening the relationship can become part of that healing journey—not because your partner failed you, but because you’re rediscovering yourself.
In therapy, we explore how trauma has shaped your relational template: How do you handle autonomy? Do you associate pleasure with risk? Do you fear losing connection if you express too much freedom?
This kind of awakening doesn’t demand a specific relational structure. But it often invites a reimagining of what connection, consent, and selfhood can look like.
Seeking Connection Outside of Couplehood Without Abandoning It
In many queer partnerships, especially long-term ones, the couple becomes a central emotional home. But over time, you may also realize that parts of your identity—your spirituality, your erotic self, your creativity—feel underexpressed in the confines of dyadic life.
Seeking connection outside the couple doesn’t have to mean exiting the relationship. It can mean supplementing, expanding, or nourishing aspects of self that your partner honors, but doesn’t personally fulfill.
This might look like cultivating emotionally intimate friendships, sensual non-sexual partnerships, shared creative collaborations, or sexual connections that exist with mutual consent and respect. For many, these relationships don’t diminish the primary bond—they strengthen it, by removing the pressure to be everything for one another.
Therapy helps couples unpack the fears and narratives that can arise around this. It allows you to affirm: We are still committed. We are still building something sacred. But that sacred thing includes enough spaciousness for us to breathe.
In queer relationships—especially those shaped by histories of marginalization or cultural invisibility—there can be tension between belonging and freedom. Many of us were taught, implicitly or explicitly, that we had to prove our relationships were “just like everyone else’s” to earn legitimacy. We were asked to fit queer love into a heteronormative mold. So when one partner proposes breaking from that mold, it may feel like liberation to one person and destabilization to the other.
Therapy can help you name these complexities and slow down the process, giving space for honest exploration without forcing consensus.
What Does Queer Couples Therapy Offer?
A queer-affirming couples therapist won’t assume non-monogamy is either a problem to be fixed or a trend to embrace. Instead, they’ll guide both partners into a deeper understanding of what’s underneath the conversation. What do you each need? What are you afraid of? What feels sacred in your connection?
Therapy offers:
A pause button. A chance to slow reactive thinking and create room for reflection.
Language for things you feel but haven’t been able to articulate.
A trauma-informed lens to explore how attachment, family history, and past relationship wounds shape this moment.
A mirror to illuminate power dynamics, emotional needs, and internalized beliefs.
A practice ground to experiment with honesty, repair, and vulnerability.
Ultimately, therapy offers the chance to transform a triggering moment into a deeply connective one. Not necessarily through agreement—but through understanding.
When You’re the One Who Wants to Open the Relationship
Bringing this up might be one of the most vulnerable things you’ve ever done in a relationship.
Even if your intentions are rooted in honesty and growth, even if your love for your partner remains strong, voicing a desire to explore beyond the relationship can stir up an earthquake. You may fear hurting your partner, damaging the trust between you, or being mischaracterized as disloyal or selfish. These fears are common and valid—and they often point to how much you care, not how little.
Before initiating the conversation, therapy helps clarify your intention:
Is this about escape or expansion?
Is it about healing a wound—or seeking a thrill?
Are you ready for the emotional work this will require, not just the freedom it might offer?
In queer couples therapy, clients often realize the desire isn’t about seeking someone else—it’s about seeking a part of themselves that has been hidden or silenced. For example, Jonah*, a transmasculine client, discovered that his growing desire to open the relationship stemmed from an emergent sense of embodiment post-transition. He wasn’t trying to leave his partner; he was trying to find himself more fully.
When you share this with your partner, consider how you speak. Lead with vulnerability, not defense. Let them know this is an invitation to dialogue, not a demand. And be prepared to hold their reactions with care, not urgency.
When You’re the One Hearing It for the First Time
You may feel stunned, betrayed, confused, or even humiliated. Perhaps you knew your partner was restless, but you didn’t expect this. Or perhaps you suspected this conversation was coming, and now that it’s here, the fear you felt is suddenly real.
In queer relationships, where social safety is often hard-won, the idea of destabilizing something sacred can feel terrifying. And when we’re afraid, we often interpret change as a threat.
Therapy can help you stay connected to yourself in the midst of strong emotion. It offers space to name:
What this brings up from your personal history
What parts of your identity feel threatened
What boundaries feel non-negotiable
What stories you're telling yourself—and whether they are rooted in truth or trauma
You don’t have to pretend to be okay with something you’re not. And you don’t have to demonize your partner to honor your pain. Both things can be true: this may be excruciating, and your partner may still love you deeply.
In therapy, we slow this down. We validate your right to safety and your right to feel grief, rage, or confusion. And we work to support your agency in deciding what happens next.
When You’re Both Curious But Cautious
Some couples arrive at this conversation together. There may be no betrayal, no secrecy—just a shared sense that something more is possible. You might feel curious and terrified in equal measure. You may have read books, talked with friends, or dipped a toe into non-monogamy before. Now you’re wondering: could this be for us?
Therapy helps you discern whether this desire comes from a grounded, conscious place—or from a desire to avoid hard truths or unmet needs.
Together, you can explore:
What kind of love and connection each of you most wants to experience
What fears live underneath the fantasy
What agreements you need to feel emotionally secure
How you’ll stay tethered to each other if things get complicated
For example, River and Mateo*, both in their 40s, realized they were bored—not because they had fallen out of love, but because their relationship had become a site of management instead of discovery. Therapy helped them name their longing for spontaneity and creativity. Opening the relationship wasn’t a way to escape their bond—it became a way to reawaken it. But only because they committed to ongoing dialogue, repair, and ritual reconnection.
What Might Be Underneath the Desire to Open Up?
This conversation is rarely just about sex.
It often reveals deep existential and emotional themes: identity development, grief, trauma, reclamation, aging, shame, and unmet needs for freedom, visibility, or play. Opening the relationship may feel like a way to reclaim something you lost—before trauma, before assimilation, before the roles of “partner,” “parent,” or “provider” became the center of your identity.
Therapy can help uncover those deeper motivations and honor them. You might ask:
Is this about healing from past relational harm?
Is this about honoring an aspect of self that’s been quiet for too long?
Am I seeking connection with others—or a deeper connection with myself?
Once the deeper longings are named, the conversation about structure becomes less threatening. It becomes less about permission and more about mutual understanding.
What Are We Really Afraid Of?
Fear often hides underneath anger, withdrawal, or fixation on rules.
Common fears include:
“If my partner desires someone else, it means I’ve failed.”
“If we open the relationship, we’ll lose everything we’ve built.”
“This is the beginning of the end.”
“If I say no, they’ll leave. If I say yes, I’ll lose myself.”
Queer couples therapy invites you to name these fears out loud. Often, once they are named, they begin to soften. You might realize that you’re not afraid of change—you’re afraid of abandonment. Or that you’re not afraid of desire—you’re afraid of being replaced.
The goal is not to eradicate fear but to relate to it with curiosity instead of control.
How to Have the Conversation With Care
When you're ready to have the conversation, consider these principles:
Set the tone: Choose a time when you’re both grounded, not in a rush or overwhelmed.
Speak from the heart: Use “I” statements. Avoid blame. Stay curious.
Let it be a process: This isn’t a one-time conversation—it’s a doorway to many.
Expect grief: Even if nothing changes structurally, the conversation may mark the loss of a fantasy. Grieve that together.
Stay connected: No matter the outcome, affirm your care and commitment to transparency.
If You Choose to Stay Monogamous
If, after honest exploration, you realize non-monogamy isn’t aligned with one or both of your values, you’re not regressing. You’re making an informed choice. You’re reclaiming monogamy on your own terms, not simply out of fear or conditioning.
In therapy, you can:
Grieve what won’t happen
Rebuild trust and intimacy
Reconnect with the reasons you chose each other
Rediscover erotic energy within the container you’ve co-created
This path, like any other, requires ongoing tending. Staying monogamous doesn’t mean the conversation is over—it means it’s matured.
If You Choose to Open the Relationship
If you decide to open your relationship, therapy can help you do so with integrity, emotional safety, and clarity.
You’ll want to explore:
Boundaries that are mutually chosen, not fear-based
How you’ll navigate jealousy, guilt, or disconnection
How you’ll celebrate new connections without erasing your core bond
How you’ll repair quickly when ruptures happen
There’s no formula for this. Your structure can be flexible and evolving. But it needs to be relationally honest. And it must honor the nervous systems, histories, and identities of everyone involved.
Final Thoughts: Courage, Care, and Ongoing Conversation
This conversation is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign of courage.
It means one or both of you are willing to speak your truth, even if it risks discomfort. It means you trust your relationship enough to let it change—or to hold steady after a storm.
Queer couples therapy offers a space to do this work with compassion and accountability. It invites both partners to stay present, listen deeply, and choose the next steps intentionally.
There is no one right way to love. But there is a right way to be with one another: with honesty, with empathy, and with care.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. But you do deserve to walk this path with support.
You're not alone.
*Names and stories are anonymized and fictionalized composites based on common therapeutic themes.
Could Queer Couples Therapy in Minneapolis, St. Paul, & Across MN Support a More Honest, Attuned Connection?
When one of you starts wondering about opening the relationship, it’s not always a rupture—it can be a reckoning. A moment that invites deeper listening, honest dialogue, and the chance to grow together in new ways. At NobleTree Therapy, we offer queer couples therapy in Minneapolis, St. Paul, & across MN that holds space for complexity. Whether you’re feeling shaken, curious, hurt, hopeful—or all of the above—this is a place where you can slow down, explore what’s emerging, and reconnect with intention.
Let’s connect—schedule a free consultation
Learn more about queer couples therapists at NobleTree
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Other Therapy Services Offered at NobleTree Therapy in St. Paul, MN
At NobleTree Therapy, we walk alongside individuals, couples, and queer families across Minnesota who are navigating the layered, courageous work of becoming. This is therapy for the parts of you that have waited quietly—perhaps for years—to be tended. Whether you’re moving through grief that doesn’t have a name, unraveling inherited beliefs around love or worth, or reimagining how to live more fully in your body and relationships, this is a space that honors your pace.
In addition to queer couples therapy, we offer LGBTQIA+ affirming care, support for religious and spiritual trauma, space for creative and identity exploration, and nervous system-informed work around trauma, intimacy, and reconnection. This is not therapy that rushes to fix. It’s therapy that listens deeply—to your story, your timing, your longing to feel whole again.
About the Author
Kendra Snyder, MA, LMFT, NCC (she/her) is the founder of NobleTree Therapy and a licensed trauma therapist offering care throughout Minnesota and Colorado. For over a decade, she has supported individuals and queer couples through the slow, brave work of reclaiming intimacy, navigating identity, and tending to what’s unspoken but deeply felt. Her approach is rooted in somatic, depth-oriented, and attachment-based therapy—inviting clients into a space of presence, nervous system safety, and relational honesty.
Kendra’s work is shaped by a deep commitment to those healing from religious trauma, chronic misattunement, and identity fragmentation—including LGBTQIA+ individuals, adoptees, and anyone reimagining their lives beyond scripts they didn’t choose. As both a clinician and a survivor, she meets each story with reverence. In queer couples therapy, Kendra holds space for relationships to shift, soften, and transform—honoring that love, like identity, often deepens when it is allowed to evolve.