Ne-Yo, who turned 46 on October 18, is openly dating four girlfriends. But he’s far from the only celebrity embracing non-monogamy. Here’s what other stars have revealed about their experiences.
Ne-Yo is done with labels for his relationships with four girlfriends—and even more done with the criticism.
“There’s a few titles that I guess make sense, but we don’t really rock with the titles,” the singer shared on the ABC News special IMPACT x Nightline: Ne-Yo: My Four Girlfriends. “I’m in a relationship with four beautiful women. We are in love. We’re building on a team. We’re a team. We’re a unit.”
Critics, he says, just don’t get it. “It’s primarily people that don’t understand,” he continued. “They look at it and they see only the sexual element of it. And mind you, sex is an element of it the same way sex is an element of any relationship—any monogamous relationship—but it’s not the only thing.”
After debuting his girlfriends—Cristina, Arielle, Moneii, and Bri—on Instagram in March, the Grammy winner shut down the noise: “Say something nice or move on with your life,” he captioned the post. “We happy over here.”
Read More: Ne-Yo Defends His Polyamorous Relationship With 3 Women
Ne-Yo wasn’t always upfront about polyamory. He was married to Crystal Renay, mother to three of his seven children, until their 2022 divorce (she alleged infidelity; he vowed to handle “challenges behind closed doors” privately). The split finalized in 2023, and now he’s all about honesty.
“After my divorce, I decided, ‘You know what? I ain’t lying to nobody no more,'” he told BigBoyTV in March. “I hurt a lot of people with just being dishonest about things that I could’ve been honest about.”
He laid it out clearly for his partners: “I ain’t manipulating nobody. I ain’t brainwashing nobody. I ain’t lying to nobody,” he said on the Rickey Smiley Morning Show in February. “I set it out there. ‘Here’s what it is: I like you, but I also like her, and her and her. If you cool with that, come on. We’re gonna have a great time. If you’re not, thank you for your time. Go on about your business and we’re straight.'”
His children—two each with exes Monyetta Shaw-Carter and Sade Bagnerise—get the same transparency. “I’m not lying to nobody, not even my children,” he added. “‘Hey, this is daddy’s girlfriend, and so is that, and so is that and so is that.'”
Ne-Yo isn’t alone in navigating non-monogamy. Here’s what other celebrities have shared.
RuPaul
For RuPaul and husband Georges LeBar, an open relationship is simply “realistic,” the RuPaul’s Drag Race host told The New Yorker in 2024. “There’s no such thing as monogamy with men.”
They never planned it—it evolved naturally after meeting at a New York nightclub in 1994, two decades before their wedding. “We didn’t decide,” he told Vanity Fair in 2019. “The hoax is that monogamy is actually something that can actually happen. I wouldn’t want to put restraints on the person I love the most on this planet. I wouldn’t do that to someone I love, my very best friend.”
It strengthens their bond: “Listen, if you get something happening that you cannot resist and that’s going to make you happy, go for it,” RuPaul said. “Because the truth is, I know in my heart of hearts like I’ve never known anything before, that man loves me more than anything else in this world.”
The Sister Wives Stars
Kody Brown once believed “love should be multiplied, not divided.” For years, he lived in a plural marriage with wives Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown, chronicled on Sister Wives.
“I just fell in love,” the father of 18 said in the 2010 premiere, “and then I fell in love again and I fell in love again.”
But polygamy soured for him. Christine split in November 2021, Janelle in December 2022, and Meri ended theirs permanently in January 2023. Now, only Robyn remains. “I’m not an advocate of plural marriage, but I’ve had my own experience in it and I’ve had my own failures in it,” he told People in December 2023. “Because of that, I’m like, you got to be really, really wise about who is doing it, how they’re doing it.”
He admits it can succeed for some: “There’s those marriages that have people who know each other very, very, very well, and they still don’t work.” Christine has since remarried David Woolley in 2023 and vowed never to return to polygamy. Janelle would consider it again, while Robyn said in 2024 she’d try if it promised success.
Willow Smith
Willow Smith sparked a family debate on non-monogamy during a 2021 Red Table Talk episode. “With polyamory, I feel like the main foundation is the freedom to be able to create a relationship style that works for you,” she said, “and not just stepping into monogamy because that’s what everyone around you says is the right thing to do.”
Her cohosts—mom Jada Pinkett Smith and grandmother Adrienne Banfield-Norris—listened intently. Willow argued monogamy often fails due to infidelity: “Let’s say you haven’t always been the kind of person that wanted to have sex all the time, but your partner is. Are you gonna be the person to say, ‘Just because I don’t have these needs, you can’t have them either?'”
When questioned about sex, she countered: “In my friend group, I’m the only polyamorous person, and I have the least sex out of all my friends.”
Shailene Woodley
Shailene Woodley prioritizes personal rules over societal ones. “Listen, I’m someone who has experienced both an open relationship and a deeply monogamous relationship in my life,” she told The New York Times in 2020, “and I think we’re in a day and age where there should be no rules except for the ones designed by two people in a partnership—or three people, whatever floats your boat!”
Key to any dynamic: “There has to be a level of responsibility… and that responsibility is simply honesty and communication and trust. Apart from that, it’s really none of our business what people choose to do with their lives.”
Nick Cannon
Nick Cannon has faced scrutiny for fathering children with multiple women, but he rejects monogamy as a “Eurocentric concept.” “You’re supposed to have this one person for the rest of your life, and really that’s just a classified property when you think about it,” he said on The Breakfast Club in 2021. “Just the idea that a man should have one woman, we shouldn’t have anything. I have no ownership over this person.”
He shares twins Moroccan and Monroe with ex-wife Mariah Carey; kids Golden Sagon, Powerful Queen, and Rise Messiah with Brittany Bell; son Legendary Love with Bre Tiesi; daughter Onyx Ice with LaNisha Cole; twins Zion Mixolydian and Zillion Heir plus daughter Beautiful Zeppelin with Abby De La Rosa; and daughter Halo Marie (plus late son Zen) with Alyssa Scott.
“Those women… are the ones that open themselves up to say, ‘I would like to allow this man in my world, and I will birth this child,'” he explained. “So, it ain’t my decision. I’m following suit.”
Bella Thorne
Bella Thorne, now monogamous with fiancé Mark Emms since 2022, once thrived in non-monogamous setups. “It’s a really fun experience… I love loving two people at once. I love sharing stories with three people in one room,” she told Cosmopolitan in 2019. “So, I’m always trying to find ways to make it work because I think it really would make me happy.”
She respects differing views: “A lot of my partners start out like ‘what?’ and I’m like, ‘Bro, this is who I am.’ So, you’re either down or you’re not down… If it will hurt you too much, then we’re not right for each other at this moment in my life because this is what I’m looking for.”
Yungblud
Yungblud (Dominic Harrison) identifies as pansexual and polyamorous. “I probably would say now, I am polyamorous,” he told Attitude in 2020. “Before I didn’t f–king know what I was. I was meeting people and learning… by meeting them and talking about sexuality and gender, I [was] going, ‘Oh my f–king God, maybe I’m this, if I’m going to be f–king close to anything on the spectrum.'”
Bob the Drag Queen
Bob the Drag Queen balances two partners—one in LA, one in Georgia—who even like each other. “My partners also have partners too, which is great for me,” the Traitors star said on Boyfriend Material With Harry Jowsey in April 2025. “I’m a really independent person, and I actually don’t like the idea of being someone’s everything. I actually kind of get exhausted at the idea of being around someone all the time. So having your partner have a partner is really a gift.”
Nico Tortorella & Bethany C. Meyers
Nico Tortorella and Bethany C. Meyers married in 2018 after 12 years together, describing their bond as “queer polyamorous” in a Them essay. “If you had to label it… Labels that help people understand, but not labels that define us,” Bethany wrote. “Most think we planned this… We didn’t. It’s just the way our relationship developed.”
The pandemic and births of sons Kilmer and Pesce Pearl shifted them to monogamy. “To answer your question point blank: Are you still open? No. Right now, we’re not,” Nico said on their 2024 podcast Full of Shift. But the door isn’t closed forever: “Is that to say that in the future it could be different? Who knows?”
Omarion
Monogamy doesn’t resonate with Omarion. “Being open is important” to him, he told Sherri in February 2025. “The women just truly outnumber the men… It’s only a few good men. Whether or not it’s a physical thing, we end up fostering the next generation as well… Why not have our queens align with that? It takes a village.”
He sees it as an evolution: “This concept isn’t really foreign, it’s just a little old and it’s meant to be upgraded.” More dialogue is key: “I love this conversation because… when men are open and honest that they don’t wanna have just this one thing for the rest of their life, it gives a woman the opportunity to choose and further understand a man.”
