Open Marriage Acceptance - Loss of Social Support

Loss of Social Support

Due to strong social disapproval of open marriages, people in open marriages frequently try to hide their lifestyle to family, friends, and colleagues. Blumstein and Schwartz note:

"Openly non-monogamous married and cohabiting couples often feel they are thought of as bizarre or immoral by the rest of their world. They have to work out their sex lives in opposition to the rest of society. They may have an understanding with each other, but they usually keep it secret from family, friends, and people at work." (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983, pages 294-295).

Keeping their lifestyles secret reduces the amount of social support available to people in open marriages. Numerous studies have shown that social support carries many psychological and physical health benefits. Thus, strong social disapproval of open marriage may lead to a loss of psychological and health benefits for couples in open marriages.

Read more about this topic:  Open Marriage Acceptance

Famous quotes containing the words loss of, loss, social and/or support:

    Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
    Bible: New Testament, Philippians 3:7-9.

    I have always observed, when there is as much sour as sweet in a compliment, that an Englishman is eternally at a loss within himself, whether to take it, or let it alone: a Frenchman never is.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    As the saffron tints and crimson flushes of morn herald the coming day, so the social and political advancement which woman has already gained bears the promise of the rising of the full-orbed sun of emancipation. The result will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy.
    Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)

    The sceptics assert, though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects, as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind.
    David Hume (1711–1776)