Mono/Poly: How Does That Work?

Around when I graduated from high school, I met my life partner Shawn long-distance.  As a very picky demisexual gray-romantic person, I hadn’t really had a huge abundance of traditional “romantic” or sexual relationships.  When I found out Shawn was monogamous, I thought, “Okay, I can roll with that.”  After all, the situation was such a rarity, so why not?

A few years later and I figured out that wasn’t going to work.  Funnily enough, the thing that made me realize that wasn’t even a sexual relationship.  I’d met a friend I love deeply (what she and I have always called “a thing that’s not a thing”), and suddenly it occurred to me that after school is over, deep friendships like that are usually frowned upon by monogamous society.  I started learning about concepts like “emotional cheating,” and began to feel I was perhaps being unfair to everyone, especially myself.

So I told Shawn over the phone that I couldn’t pretend to be monogamous, and that our relationship as it was needed to change.

He promptly misunderstood, believing I was dumping him, and pre-emptively dumped me instead.  I had to drive across the country to apologize for my very poor communication.

That wasn’t the end of our relationship though; it was in many ways the beginning.

Now and again somebody asks me how I can be in a relationship with a monogamous person and still be polyamorous.  This seems like a good topic to address since a lot of people are curious.  Recently for example, a stranger messaged me about my FL profile and asked:

“How does that work, "I'm poly, he's not", in the framework of a committed relationship? Does he begrudgingly allow you to have sex with other people, or do you deprive yourself of it for the sake of you relationship?”

The answer is “no to both.”  

There’s no begrudging and no deprivation.  I cannot deprive myself of sex (or especially, intimacy) for the sake of a relationship, pretending to be monogamous for the sake of convenience.  Doing so would actually lead to the destruction of the relationship.  It would be dishonest and unfair to both of us, as I was in the beginning when I foolishly underestimated the importance of my orientation.  It almost did lead to the death of the relationship.

Shawn for his part doesn’t begrudgingly “allow” anything.  I owe him communication and honesty, not obedience.  He’s not jealous, and wants me to be happy.  He isn’t begrudgingly tolerant of my orientation, nor of my relationships, because he knows that they make me better.  Without being able to pursue meaningful, intimate relationships and be true to them, I could not be true to myself or to him.  He deserves the best in me, and living a lie would not make me my best.  If I were to live a lie for his sake, how could he trust me?  And if I would sacrifice another relationship for his sake, how could he know I would not one day sacrifice my relationship with him?  People are not expendable.  I will not treat them as if they are.

Neither of us has to make a sacrifice to be together.  Unless you count time and care to understand and build trust, but I call that “having a relationship.”  There’s no reason these situations can’t work just fine for a lot of people.  I’m not saying it can work for everyone—it depends on what you want and need in your life.  But a mono/poly group on FetLife has more than 2,300 members!  That should tell you how common this type of thing is.  Two or more people with different orientations can love each other and build a happy life together.

So what about jealousy?  That brings us to my next point ... 

Jealousy Stems from Insecurity

Jealousy is a pretty minute part of my emotional makeup, but I recognize that for a lot of people, it's a big deal.  Jealousy is a dangerous and unhealthy emotion.  I have never in my life witnessed a noble deed born of it, only misery, anger and oppression.  It leads people to tear apart the ones they love and set ultimatums where the price for a relationship is integrity, honesty, trust, and ultimately, love itself.  I feel completely within my rights to assert this, because I used to be a very jealous person when I was young.

Jealousy stems from insecurity.  We live in a society where monogamy is the norm.  Since we are taught that you can have only one super special relationship, it is natural that people worry that they will be left forever if their loved one starts another super special relationship with somebody else.  After all, society wants to force them to choose.  So even someone who doesn’t want to choose typically will.  Even if it tears their own soul apart.

Some people really are hard-wired to only love one person or only find one person attractive.  Those people will always choose, and they should, because that’s who they really are; they really are monogamous.  A lot of people aren’t like that though, and they should never be asked to make a choice that doesn't honour their relationships, their love, and their will.

Monogamy is so ingrained by social norms that I frankly wouldn’t be shocked if isn’t even the majority orientation once you strip away social convention.  I believe many people are capable of deep, loving relationships with more than one person than realize it, and may simply lack the courage or assurance to proceed.  Since their lives are ruled by fear and insecurity, they never find out.

Dealing with Insecurity

There is no need for jealousy or terrible choices where there is honesty, mutual respect, and commitment.  Will there still be insecurity?  Of course!  Most people are insecure in some way or other, whether they’re poly or monogamous.  The key to a successful relationship is to communicate about insecurities.  We have to learn to understand, forgive, and assure others when they are insecure, and learn to recognize our own insecurities for what they really are: illusions.  They shouldn’t be given undue reverence.    

A monogamous person may worry that their poly loved one will abandon them for another, because it is what they would do, but that doesn’t make it true (as an addendum, I don't mean to imply that serial monogamy is ubiquitous--just that this can be a common source of insecurity).  And a polyamorous person may worry that their monogamous partner will leave them out of their own insecurity—but that doesn’t make it true.

The reason Shawn and I can be together is that we share a relationship of honesty, trust and respect.  And yes, we both have insecurities.  He has abandonment issues, and so do I.  In fact, there’s a part of me that will always be insecure because of the incident related at the start of this entry, even knowing full well it was a simple miscommunication.  Would he be more comfortable if I were monogamous?  Probably.  Would I be more comfortable if he wasn’t?  Probably.  But we are both wired the way we are wired, and we love each other as we are—and all that matters is our commitment to one another.  Love, as I recently mentioned in another post, is not mere convenience.

So yeah, now and again I dread another pre-emptive strike.  And now and again, he probably fears I’ll walk out the door.  But we are so much more than the sum of our insecurities, and we live that fact every day.

How This Works With Regard to Sex

I don’t deprive myself of sex for the sake of my partner, though I rarely experience attraction.  I have faith that if an opportunity arose which was really worth it, it would work.  I would be extra cautious going into a physical relationship with anyone, but this would be true even were Shawn polyamorous himself!  Sex is complicated, and should be handled with care. 

How This Works With Regard to Intimacy

I don’t believe that anyone can get everything they need—or give everything they have to offer—to a solitary person and be doing them any sort of service.  What Shawn and I have is unique to us, and we share things that I couldn’t share with others.  But likewise, other people can share aspects of my life and interests that he cannot—and the same goes for him, I am sure. 

There is no single person who can rejoice deeply and fully in every aspect of who we are—not without being our own mirror image.  That said, someone who loves us can respect those aspects 100% and rejoice that we share them with those who can fully appreciate them.  As an example, I am kinky and Shawn is not.  It’d be stressful at best, traumatic at worst to try and persuade him into sharing that with me.  But if I found someone I could explore that with in a meaningful way, he would support it, knowing the fulfillment it would bring to my life would reflect positively in my relationship with him as well.

I’ve noticed that some people are what I would call “hyper-monogamous.”  They not only are incapable of more than one sexual relationship, but are incapable of more than one deeply emotional or committed relationship of any nature.  Intimacy of any variety is reserved for one person.  Everyone else is way down on the ladder.

My partner is sexually monogamous, but he is not hyper-monogamous; he is capable of intimacy with others, and a sense of belonging to a closely knit community (a family, really) is central to his being.  And polyamory is not all about sex, or even mostly.  So from that point of view, I don’t really see that we differ all that much on a fundamental level. 

Polyamory for Me Is ...

Everyone has a different definition of polyamory.  This is mine, as applies to my life:

Polyamory:  Where partners have the freedom to allow their relationships to take their natural course, whatever that might be.

Plain and simple.  By that definition, Shawn actually is as polyamorous as I am.  He simply has no natural desire for sex with more than one person.  But like me, he does not constrain his relationships based on existing ones, and allows intimacy to flourish however it feels right to him.

I don’t devalue non-sexual relationships.  In fact, almost all my most important relationships have been non-sexual in nature—but deeply intimate.  I am, in my own way, deeply in love with all those I get close to, even those I have zero sexual or physical interest in.  I define friendship by this kind of love.  Shawn (who is always supportive of these relationships, and displays compersion, not jealousy, in regards to them) is also capable of deep relationships outside our own. 

… Which essentially gives us considerable common ground—despite our differing preferences when it comes to sex.

So yes, mono/poly relationships can work—and the line between monogamy and polyamory is a lot blurrier than a lot of people think anyway!  Healthy mono/poly relationships have nothing to do with begrudging allowances or self-deprivation.  They have everything to do with mutual respect, love, and trust—and the understanding that when insecurities do arise, they can be worked through rationally and lovingly without turning into jealousy or resentment. 

Shawn and every person I love in my life is 100% unique and irreplaceable, and so are their relationships with me.  They don’t fit neatly inside quaint little categories or rank on a scale of relative significance, because people aren’t categories—they are individuals.  And that is exactly why they don’t have to feel insecure with me.  Because I never, ever could replace any one of them and would never try to.  Even the people I lose are never replaced—the holes left in my heart are permanent, because no one else can ever fit inside them.  That’s the risk to my heart with every relationship I enter.

I’ll close with a link to a wonderful post by my friend Mike: http://othersidesthoughts.blogspot.com/?zx=ddb82d6b3b769a57

Here’s a quote:

“Our culture has idealized this holy state of "dating" or "being in a relationship", when all it really means is you both get something out of spending time with the other person. And this is where I stumble with respect to monogamy - because I get something out of every relationship I have, not just ones that end up naked and in bed.”

Just perfect.

Thanks for reading - and remember, this post focused specifically on my personal experiences :)  Your mileage may vary!