Next year I’ll walk down the aisle knowing that my husband has slept with two of my bridesmaids. What might surprise you is that it’s not a secret, and I wouldn’t mind if it happened again.

I am in an open relationship and will remain in one after our wedding. It’s a type of ethical non-monogamy, but we’re not polyamorous. He’ll be my husband, and I’ll be his wife. We just enjoy having sex with other people – sometimes together, sometimes apart, and often with people that we know. Even our best friends.

It hasn’t always been like this. We first started dating six years ago and will have been together for seven years by the time we get married. We met through friends who couldn’t be in a more traditional monogamous relationship and for a while we were the same.

Slowly something changed as we became aware of how many people around us were in open relationships. At first I was like, what is our friendship group? What is going on? Then I started to realise how common it is. My fiancé owns a business, his best man is a scientist, I work in academia – you’d be surprised to know how many people are in open relationships.

We started talking about it when we were alone and grew more and more curious. Then we started talking about it during sex and realised it was turning us both on. We thought, let’s give this a go – maybe it works, maybe not.

The first time we opened our relationship was with two of our friends who were already in an open relationship. We went round to theirs with no expectations and after a few drinks one thing led to another, and we ended up having sex with them. It’s not like we were drunk or couldn’t remember it, but it definitely helped ease us in.

It started with me and her, which made things a bit easier because I’m bisexual. I think it needs to be the woman who takes the lead, because the man taking the lead can feel quite pushy and uncomfortable.

It was great and very relaxed, because they’ve been doing it for a long time. They’ve been married for 20 years and were able to give us a lot of useful advice about what they’d found difficult or easy. I’d say we spoke about it for about two hours, and their main message to us was to communicate.

I have to add, it’s not like this works with all friends. Everyone’s different and wants different things, and obviously you have to find them attractive.

After that night, we knew it was something we wanted to explore, and we knew we wanted to go into it with caution. I’ve found myself getting off on my partner getting off, which I didn’t see happening. All of this was so new to me because I’ve always been such a possessive person. I’ve been cheated on in the past and have felt very ‘this is mine’, but this felt different.

It didn’t take long before we really leant into it and started going to sex parties and meeting with other couples on sites like Vivastreet. They have an adult dating section where couples or singles can put up ads looking for other people to have fun with, so we make a lot of connections on there, including people who are now our closest friends.

Obviously, we’ve had to lay down some rules. We don’t ever spend the night with people. We don’t have sex with anyone else in our bed. I always want to know every detail when he’s been with someone else, including my best friends, so that I don’t feel excluded. And my partner wants to have sex with me straight away when I’ve been with someone else – this is often called ‘reclaim sex’.

One time, I told him over the phone that I’d had sex with my best friend, and he wasn’t happy about it because he was far away. He said, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ I wouldn’t do that again. I tell him when I see him, and then we usually have sex straight away.

When he slept with one of my bridesmaids, we had already talked about it. I was going away to the US for work, and he mentioned that he found her attractive. I said, ‘I’m going away – why don’t you just meet up?’ At first when I knew it was happening, I was having those old feelings of ‘that’s mine’, which is apparently very normal. After it happened, he facetimed me and I said, ‘Tell me everything. How did it start? What did you do? What positions did you do? How long did it go on for? How do you feel about it?’

I had a weird feeling in my stomach because this was the first time it had ever happened. Later on, she texted me to say she’d had a nice time and wanted to check everything was ok. That helped immeasurably.

I don’t get those same feelings anymore, because I know he tells me everything and I know he’d never do anything I was uncomfortable with. To be honest, there are some friends I wouldn’t be happy with him sleeping with, and he knows that too.

When it comes to our wedding, that night is just for us. We’re not having sex with other people around that time, but we will at our stag and hen parties. We’ve got a really small friendship group so we’re doing a joint stag and hen. We’re going to do three nights abroad, one apart and two together, and one of those nights will be a sex party. Obviously, it’s not for everyone. We’re only inviting our friends who we know will be onboard.

It’s the same with our wedding – we wouldn’t invite anyone who would judge the situation. It will be funny because it’s such a 50/50 split of people who are open and people who are single or in relationships. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. One of my friends was like, ‘This is going to be the weirdest wedding, knowing the four of you have had sex.’ I was like, ‘Why is that weird?’ When my bridesmaids are next to me on my wedding day, I probably won’t even be thinking about it.

I think when you’re good friends with someone, they understand. It was the same when I had sex with one of my best friends. With close female friends, adding sex into it just makes the friendship stronger and deeper, because you’ve got a further connection with them.

People have such a seedy idea of what open relationships can be like but it’s just not how it is. Everyone’s different, right? I’ve got friends who are polyamorous and that would never work for me. This is my relationship, and I wouldn’t want anyone else brought into it. The thought of him out for dinner with someone romantically makes me really uncomfortable.

If you had told me six years ago that I’d be comfortable with my friends sleeping with my partner, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. It’s taken a lot of time, but it’s definitely brought us closer. There may come a point when one of us doesn’t want to do it anymore, and if that happens, we’ll stop. But for now, it works, and I don’t think marriage or having kids in the future will change that.