Dr. Debra Soh on relationships: what the evidence says · JRE #1147
SUBJECT: RELATIONSHIPS
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
I mean, open relationships are actually pretty common, uh, consensual non-monogamy. There's one study that showed one in five Americans have actually tried it. So it's pretty common.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The "one in five" figure traces to a Haupert et al. study (Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, published online 2016 / in print 2017), which used two U.S. census-based quota samples of single American adults (n=3,905 and n=4,813) and found that 21.9% and 21.2%, respectively, reported having engaged in an agreed-upon, sexually non-exclusive relationship at some point in their lives. A 2021 follow-up study from the same research group (Moors et al., Frontiers in Psychology), using a similar national sample of single U.S. adults, reproduced a comparable range (19.6-21.9%) for lifetime consensual non-monogamy, while finding a narrower 10.7% rate for polyamory specifically. Both studies sampled only single adults, not the general American population, and coupled adults were not surveyed, so the figure describes lifetime experience among singles rather than "Americans" broadly. With that caveat, Soh's statement is a reasonably accurate paraphrase of a real, peer-reviewed, replicated finding rather than a fabricated or outlying statistic.