Couple Announces Open Relationship, Can’t Find Any Takers

Megan and Tyler Henson, of no particular place worth mentioning, announced last week that they were launching an open relationship available to the general public, which responded with the enthusiasm of people in the waiting room of a dentist’s office.

The announcement, distributed through a shared Google Doc formatted like a merger prospectus, included a mission statement, a conflict resolution flowchart, a favorite-positions questionnaire, and a snack allowance. Tyler, who works in something involving data, described the initiative as “an opportunity to scale.” Megan, who teaches hot yoga to people who already seem too warm, said she was “excited to explore new modalities of connection,” which is a sentence that has no bottom.

Recruitment materials asked applicants to submit a résumé, three references, two revealing photos, and a brief essay on their emotional availability. The panel-style meet-and-greet will be moderated by someone whose professional qualifications remain unclear but who owns several crystals.

Forty-eight hours after the Hensons had cast fly rod to the winds, four individuals had expressed interest. Two were bots marketing a cryptocurrency that does not technically exist yet. One believed the listing was for a co-working space and claimed to have a leather laptop bag with chains and reasonable expectations. The fourth withdrew upon receiving a calendar invite titled “Q3 Intimacy Alignment Sync,” which sources say looked like every meeting they had ever wanted to leave.

The inbox has been quiet for three days. Megan refreshes it the way you would check a wound. “These things take time,” she said. “Rome wasn’t polyamorous in a day.”

Sociologist Dana Kravitz, who has written extensively about people making poor decisions with good intentions, called the Henson approach “a startup nobody wants equity in.” She noted the vision board with arrows pointing nowhere as particularly emblematic. “The arrows are the tell,” she said. “Nobody who knows where they are going draws arrows.”

The couple has since pivoted. They describe themselves now as “open to new energy and lubricants,” a phrase vague enough to mean nothing and flexible enough to survive indefinitely without testing. The Trello board labeled Potential Lovers (Active Pipeline) has been expanded. The quarterly newsletter went out to eleven new subscribers, nine of whom are almost certainly the same bot.

At press time, Tyler was updating the mission statement.

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