TL;DR: Couple agrees to open their relationship and sets four basic rules. Woman can't help herself and breaks the first two (with beta boy's permission, of course). Also, if your gf is trying to stir up trouble in the relationship, she's probably trying to make both of you unhappy so she feels less guilty about cheating.

Article: There’s Good Cheating and Bad Cheating — Here’s How to Tell the Difference

When we moved in together, we decided to have an open relationship with certain ground rules:

  • No sex with co-workers.
  • No sex with people we’d see regularly in a way that could make our lives inconvenient or uncomfortable.
  • No unprotected sex.
  • Total honesty.

Seems fair enough. If you're intentionally walking into a minefield, at least have a strategy to minimize the damage. Rule #1 and #2 were clearly her idea, as women always fear emotional infidelity more than physical infidelity.

And it worked. He was more permissive than I was, giving the go-ahead to my liaison with a female co-worker, even as it dragged on for almost a year and became emotionally complex.

Holy shit, that escalated quickly. What happened to the rules about not dating co-workers and not dating people you'd see regularly? Ya know, the rules you probably deemed most important of all?

Beta boy was pretty much boned as soon as she asked for permission to break the rules. Even if he tried to turn her down, he'd just sink even deeper into beta territory because he'd look weak / insecure. "What's wrong, honey? It's just a girl!" Plus, as we'll see later, this slut can't keep it in her pants and will do anything to get her way.

I preferred he stick to out-of-town trysts, though at one point he had a few dates with someone in town, and that was fine.

Hypocrisy, probably the least surprising part of this article. "That was fine" most likely translates to: I knew he didn't have a chance with this girl, so I let him play make-believe for a little while. It never panned out, as I expected.

The funny thing is that, in reality, Jeff and I mostly stayed at home, made dinner, and binge-watched The Wire. We hardly took advantage of our libertine arrangement.

We? More like he -- she was having a year-long physical and emotional affair. One that broke half their ground rules, no less.

In fact, the reason I got interested in open relationships to begin with is because I saw, from experience, the damage that a hidden desire for someone else could do. In those cases, I’d become so obsessed with the temptation, and the fact that I couldn’t act on it, that I’d start to pick fights, and resent things that never bothered me, so I could justify my own inevitable terrible behavior.

This is a master-class in sociopathic hamstering. If your relationship isn't broken enough to justify cheating, break it yourself! Act like a crazy bitch, pick fights, and invent reasons to be unhappy. Make your boyfriend's life a living hell, and then to top it all off... cheat on him!

Lessons: Guys are always the losers in open relationships, and if your SO is picking fights / acting extra crazy, she might be trying to make both of you miserable to justify cheating.