You often see arguments about one sided open relationships, where one partner wants it, and the other does not. The general rule is if you can’t find a equilibrium between each others views it may be time to part ways.

So I have recently been pondering on a subject that’s been bothering me lately.

Where does the line between normal relationship leverage and coercion blur?

This is not a problem in my actually life, but a hypothetical question of where others stand on this. For starters I am a cis male who tries to live my life in as ethical way I can, and I believe I do fairly well with behaving like an actual human-being; however I am aware we all have some degree of bias and I am no different.

On to the question…

I believe all relationships have some degree of leverage too them, and I know this sounds like some gross Gordon Gekko wannabe hyper un-ethical shit, please but stay with me.

What I mean is we all do things we don’t want to do for the people we love and I assume the people we love do things that they are not thrilled about for us.

So when it comes to relationships isn’t there always some degree of coercion?

The literal definition of coercion is the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.

Obviously the force part is easy to determine as unethical, but the threats part is not so simple.

For example at what point does an ultimatum that involves using your bodily autonomy i.e. leaving a relationship have an implied (or not so implied) threat in it?

This brings me back to relationship leverage. It would seem the more giving you are in a relationship and the better a partner you are, the more this leverage can build. Even if you don’t want it to build, its building in the background regardless.

So now in this hypothetical scenario the leverage has built to the point that you have a pocket threat that is implied with every disagreement. The relationship itself is a kind of coercion.

Now bring up a subject like opening the relationship, and the answer of “yes” may not be an actual yes.

What are your thoughts on how to ethically navigate this?

-Andrew.