Over the past few months I’ve been getting to know myself and the world much more deeply than I ever could have imagined. And it all started very simply. I fell in love with a person who matched (and exceeded) all my desires and dreams, but who is polyamorous.
At some point in the past I had looked a little into ethical non-monogamy. Back then it seemed to me that it was all about sex – meant for people who want more sexual partners. That completely didn’t resonate with me. I don’t enjoy casual dating, I don’t like meeting new people “just to meet people”. If I’m looking for a relationship, I’m looking for something serious.
Also, I’m demisexual. While I’m not one of those people who would wait a very long time before sleeping with a new partner (sexual compatibility is important to me), my passion is always intertwined with feelings of love. If there is no love, there is no passion either. Fortunately, I fall in love quite quickly.
In long-term monogamous relationships I never had even the slightest inclination toward infidelity. That’s why ethical non-monogamy seemed completely “not for me”. I really considered myself a very monogamous person. In fact, I didn’t even know it was possible to fully love more than one person at the same time.
When my current partner told me about it, I openly told him that I thought it wasn’t for me. That I was very monogamous. And I couldn’t really imagine how it could work, how he could give me enough attention, etc. He suggested we run an experiment and just see. I fell in love almost immediately. At the same time came a very strong inner knowing that if I didn’t at least try to build a relationship with this person, I would spend the rest of my life with unanswered questions. So I decided to “experiment”.
At first I thought I would have one partner and would simply accept him as he is (i.e. I would live monogamously and he would live polyamorously). And to some extent that’s still how it is, at least for now. My beloved (let’s call him D) has a wife and a small daughter (yes, his wife knows everything, she goes on dates herself, and she and I communicate and are building a friendly relationship). I don’t have any other partners yet. But very quickly I noticed that even my interactions with friends feel different while I’m in this relationship.
Once I asked D: “And what happens if I want to touch someone, hug them, kiss them or more?”
He answered: “Most of the time those things don’t just fall out of the sky. When something starts happening, we’ll simply talk about it. But never block love.”
That sentence (“never block love”) hit me very deeply.
How many times in monogamous relationships did I wonder whether this hug was already crossing a line? Whether this touch was already “too much”? How many times, when I felt the first spark of falling in love or passion, did I cut it off as something dangerous or wrong?
When I stopped doing that, I simply became softer, more loving and more open. Even toward friends. One of my friends recently said: “I’m so grateful to D, because he’s making you a better witch.” And I understood she was talking exactly about this – about my deeper courage to love and to touch people.
By the way, I’m a little bit in love with one of my friends. As I joke, when I float on waves of love during meditation, 99% of them are for D, but there’s always that 1% (a very honourable mention) for that friend. And it feels incredibly good to know that I can flirt, hug, touch without restraining myself. And it isn’t scary or dangerous to anyone. Love simply flows more widely. There’s more of it. The world is more beautiful.
I’m very lucky that I’m not a jealous person. So in this experience I haven’t had to deal much with jealousy. But jealousy is a very interesting and multi-layered topic. I think just exploring jealousy alone could be very serious inner psychological/spiritual work (maybe someday I’ll write a separate piece about jealousy).
In monogamous relationships jealousy often becomes not the problem of the jealous person, but of their partner. And not even a topic for discussion. If jealousy exists, it means the partner is doing something wrong. I think if we could take just one thing from polyamory into monogamous relationships, it would be a different attitude toward jealousy: it is an invitation to grow for the person who feels it.
And if a non-monogamous relationship is possible in which love is full, commitments are deep, and jealousy becomes an invitation to grow and get to know oneself… If love and freedom become the core values… Is it really so scary and dangerous?
D jokingly calls us “the new gays”. In his opinion, gay people are more accepted in society today than polyamory. And honestly, the kind of polyamory we practice (D calls it “big love”) was something I couldn’t even imagine before.
Moreover, after getting to know this possibility, I realised that not only would I have a very hard time going back to the “normal” relationship model, but I also started seeing my surroundings differently… I realised that there are so many people around me who, in my opinion, are polyamorous (or could learn something from polyamory), yet live in monogamous relationships and suffer greatly because of it. Or cause a lot of suffering to their partners.
For example:
- one woman lived in a marriage for many years and periodically kept falling in love with other people. Sometimes she slept with them too. Then she would tell her husband everything.
- one man is so jealous of his beloved that he doesn’t let her work. And if she does work anyway, he later subjects her to huge dramas. He thinks she is to blame for his jealousy.
- one woman says she feels she is polyamorous and is never truly free or happy in monogamous relationships, but she doesn’t believe that where she lives it’s possible to find a man she likes who would be okay with it.
- another woman has a wonderful husband, but she is much more sexually curious and wants to explore more than he wants or can. So she has to block her desires.
For these people the alternative simply doesn’t exist. Not because it isn’t there, but because monogamy is the only thing we understand and the only thing we grew up with. We may have heard of polygamy (oppressed harems of wives), swingers who usually only have sex and have to block feelings of love if they arise, or isolated stories of a man secretly living with two families. None of that ever seemed like an attractive or worthwhile alternative to me.
But when I tell friends about my relationship, they say these kinds of stories expand the boundaries of possibility and create new neural connections. And interestingly, even those whose initial reaction was very sceptical, when they see how I am and the positive changes over time, accept it more and more easily.
In truth we are unique. And we can create lives according to ourselves. So many rules about “how it’s supposed to be” were given to us from somewhere. And they don’t necessarily fit us or work for us. We can question norms, question what we think we definitively know about ourselves, explore and create something new and truly authentic to us.
I’m sharing this because I realised that after living in such non-standard relationships for about half a year, I simply can’t share stories from my life anymore – this thing is so big and important to me that I don’t know how to talk about anything else without talking about it. D says I overshare. There’s probably some truth in that. But at the same time I think our love isn’t shameful and shouldn’t be some kind of secret. In fact, I think it can inspire people to perhaps take a fresh look at something in their own relationships. And sharing in my safe space matters to me. It’s both therapy and a way to touch other people’s experiences and stories.