She’s right there, asking me “But what If I do have sex with someone else and I end up feeling awful about it? What if I get my heart broken or my ego bruised? What if it makes me so emotional that it scares them off ‘cause now I’m crying and I can’t explain why? What if they feel used because this all turns out to prove that I’m not polyamorous and I can’t do it?”
By now (if you're in the United States), you've likely had at least one conversation about how your polycule is going to handle Thanksgiving (or Friendsgiving), and I'm guessing there's more than a handful of hinge partners out there that are starting to feel the pressure of multiple paramours vying for spots on the holiday calendar.
How's Lady Macbeth going to handle it when this tactic turns her into the villain?
Identities, for me, are not permanent. Well, not all of them, anyway. I allow for plenty of fluidity and lots of possibility for change in my life, so when I say I am monoamorous, I generally mean "have been up to this point in my life."
Once or twice a year I let my mind wander and imagine what it would be like to have another romantic relationship in addition to the amazing one I'm already in.
The patterns exist and are recognizable. They are reinforced by the messages we consume, whether they are generated from the society's large-scale mononormative culture, or the small microcosms of polyamorous subcultures. We internalize and normalize them until we don't even see them anymore.
What if where you are in your life is EXACTLY where you're supposed to be right now? What would that be like, to stop comparing your current location to a perceived end-game?
As a monoamorous person who has dated a handful of polyamorous partners over the last four years, I am happy to say that I have never had to increase or reduce the number of people I have wanted to be in a relationship with to make any partner happy.
If I were a Phyllis, and the only type of "camping" that could work for me was one that included a 24-hour room service menu, 10,000 thread count sheets, and HBO access - then I think we can all agree that it's not really camping.
When you're saying "it's fine" and it's clearly not.
polyammering 