When I first started this column as an undergrad, I was writing about hookup culture between seminar readings. Now, I’m back as a med student and trading in dorm gossip for cadaver lab. But honestly, they’re not so different — both involve plenty of anatomy and a few highly questionable decisions. I’ve always been nosy about how people navigate sex and relationships, and this column gives me an excuse to explore the uncomfortable topics. I want to write about your curiosities, so please send me your anonymous questions!
If you’ve spent any time on College Hill, you know Brown prides itself on being open. Open curriculum, open conversations, open minds — it’s our whole brand. For many of us, that ethos is what drew us here and what makes Brown feel different from anywhere else. But after four years of watching relationships unfold across campus, I started noticing a pattern: Everyone talks about openness when it comes to academics and ideas, but what happens when we apply the same philosophy to our love lives?
The temporal aspect of college life can often lead to the difficult conversation of having an open relationship. The most common open relationship model I hear about at Brown is the seasonal one: open during summers and winter breaks, closed during the semester. On paper, this seems logical. You’re apart, you might meet other people — why not explore?
From there, the questions get more serious. Does it make sense to toggle between open and closed? How do you balance being with someone you love while also learning about yourself through new experiences during such a formative time in your life?
These questions crystallized after having a 30-minute conversation with a stranger in a coffee shop. He described his own open relationship and wondered how non-monogamy played out in college settings. This exchange stuck with me because it articulated something I had been subconsciously noticing: While many Brown students love to theorize about open relationships, very few actually seem to make them work.
The irony is surprising. At a place that celebrates intellectual and social openness, the “anything goes” mentality that we wear as a badge of honor might actually be working against us when it comes to successful non-monogamy.
Brown’s social culture values being cool, collected and, above all, chill. Nobody wants to be the person who “can’t handle it” if their partner hooks up with someone else. Nobody wants to admit they’re struggling with jealousy or insecurity. This creates a perfect storm where open relationships are less about genuine desire and more about proving you’re sophisticated and emotionally evolved enough to handle them.
But successful open relationships require the exact opposite of this. They demand radical honesty about uncomfortable feelings, constant conversations about boundaries and a willingness to have awkward conversations. When campus culture suggests that expressing strong emotions makes you uptight or possessive, it becomes nearly impossible to do the emotional work that non-monogamy actually requires.
Successful non-monogamy isn’t about temporary, seasonal permission slips when it’s convenient. Switching relationship styles every few months means you're constantly renegotiating the fundamental terms of your partnership. Instead of building the deep trust and communication skills that make open relationships work, you’re creating a cycle of uncertainty and mixed signals. Moreover, the implication that you only want to see other people when your partner isn’t around frames non-monogamy as a consolation prize rather than a genuine relationship preference. This undermines the foundation of trust and enthusiasm that healthy open relationships require.
Brown’s casual hookup scene operates on a very different set of principles than ethical non-monogamy. Campus hookup culture often thrives on ambiguity, minimal communication and the ability to avoid complicated feelings. When students import those norms into open relationships, they end up with something that looks like non-monogamy but lacks the communication, emotional processing and partner consideration that make it functional.
None of this is to say that open relationships can’t work at Brown, or that students shouldn’t explore non-monogamy. Rather, it’s a call for the kind of genuine openness that our campus culture claims to celebrate. Real relationship openness isn’t about proving how cool and evolved you are. It’s about being honest about your needs, boundaries and limitations. It’s about having difficult conversations and sitting with uncomfortable emotions. It’s about recognizing that what works for other people might not work for you, and that’s perfectly okay.
If Brown students want to explore open relationships successfully, we need to move beyond “performative chill” and toward genuine emotional intelligence. This means being willing to look uncool while you figure things out. It means owning up to struggle instead of suffering in silence. And it means recognizing that true openness in relationships, like true openness in all aspects of life, requires more courage and vulnerability than we usually want to admit.
If you have questions about sex or relationships that could be discussed in a future column, please submit questions to an anonymous form at https://tinyurl.com/BDHsexcolumn. Anusha Gupta ’25 MD’29 can be reached at anusha_gupta@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
