So I know I don’t need a label but I’m trying to sort out some feelings I think conventional society doesn’t give us much room to think about. Pardon the rant. Would love discussion.
I know I’m Pansexual and enby and panromantic. I am in a long term monogamous relationship. But I can fall intensely in love with others, while still being intensely in love with my partner. My partner is monogamous, and I am happy to respect that. I think there is a lot of pressure in media to have to pursue every sexual and romantic desire. They press this message that if you “fall in love” with someone else than you must have also fallen out of love with the other. But I don’t find this to be true for myself.
I’m not sure where I’m going exactly why this. Still working through a nebula. Any thoughts?? Ty!
Edit: I just want to thank everyone for their input and advice. I truly appreciate it. I always figured I was poly I guess. But I don’t necessarily need to be in that kind of partnership. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to be at peace with my “outside” attractions, I’ll sit with it and experience while realizing that I’m not compelled to act on it unless it’s the right thing to do for me and my partner. My partner is definitely monogamous and needs to be the only sexual partner. I’m ok with it. I respect them and love them and I love our relationship.
Even so, I really would like to know more about this part of myself, so I especially appreciate the book recommendation and hearing other experiences.
I’m sorry I haven’t responded to comments, been very busy and will do so tomorrow most likely.
Love you all!
“Human”
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That’s poly. There’s many ways on how to deal with these feelings, but acknowledging them and knowing that these aren’t wrong feelings, nor signs of “wanting to cheat” is definitely the first step.
After that, it’s very important to speak about this with your partner, so they too can acknowledge that this is a thing and can understand ehen you talk about such feelings (in order to make sure they don’t think you’re wanting to cheat). Partners sometimes have a hard time dealing with it, been there, it sucks.
Once you’ve built that transparency, there’s many ways to go. Generally, people tend to try out more open ways of relationships, but there is no such thing as “a universal open relationship”, every has to figure things out by themselves, with their partner(s).
As someone who’s poly herself, I can tell you that anything related to relationships has just turned into “hardmode”.
Either you suppress your polyamory and continue staying in a mono relationship. Been there, it didn’t work out for me long-term.
You can try and open the mono relationship up a bit, defining key things you’re (both) allowed to do. This can include flirting, kissing, non-commiting sexual acts (one night stands), non-commited relationships (“dating” but without any commitment, “I might be gone at any time depending on circumstances with my partner”), dating with commitment (having 2 partners at the same time), in which you can also seperate between having a “main partner” and a “side partner”.
Throughout all of this, open, transparent and completely honest communication from everyone involved is mandatory, setting rules and boundaries and accepting them is essential, communicating clearly to new partners where you stand and how those rules are set is paramount.
Love is a strong emotion, it can make you fly over the skies, but it can also pull you into deepest, darkest depths. It’s your responsibility to ensure that the latter is being limited, for you and everyone involved, basically damage control. You will fail often, but that’s just how love is, in mono as well as poly relationships, although such failures hit you harder when in poly relationships.
One of the most important pieces of advice I can give you is to not be ashamed about this, about being poly, about falling in love with people randomly. It’s the same as with any other thing in the LGBTQ+ space, you can’t decide about it, you just are.
Oh right, and one of my biggest points of advice: never commit to more then 3 partners, ever. The time investment is too high to handle it and you will burn yourself out.
There’s a lot more things I could write, but I guess this is the “poly 101”. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out :)
Dropping a few resources here which touch on the topic of polyamory:
- The multiamory podcast an extensive, long running podcast with dedicated episodes to hundreds of topics on polyamory.
- Everyone classically recommends polysecure which is how to apply attachment theory to polyamory, but I think in this case polywise the newer release by the same author is more pertinent as it’s about navigating changes in relationships - opening up a relationship or changing in some fundamental way how you two (or more) interact with each other.
- The ethical slut which is more about non-monagamy than it is about polyamory (you could argue it can be about hierarchical poly of a particular flavor) but in general it’s good to help start deconstructing parts of the relationship escalator and just what is on or off limits in a relationship.
- Speaking of the relationship escalator, stepping off the relationship escalator is a great book on some of the tenets of relationship anarchy and continuing to help deconstruct them.
- There’s a lot of resources online such as this one on relationship anarchy if you just start searching the web.
Hopefully one or more of these resources will resonate with someone. Would also like to mention as a relationship anarchist and someone who’s been practicing poly for a long time that I’m around if you have questions as well 💜
Just sounds like “being a human” but it might be a hint that you could be poly 😊
University Student
Just the basic feeling? There’s no term for that (in English) because it’s (ordinarily) the universal human condition. Monogamy is a choice, not an off switch.
If it were to become anything more complex than that it might start putting its thumb on the scale for the term “polyamory”, a linguistic abomination (should be polyphilia or multiamory) you can look up for a deeper dive.
Polyamory! Welcome to the club 😁. There are multiple “configurations” to poly couples. Don’t worry about labels and do what feels right with everyone involved. There needs to be a lot of open communication, but it’s worth it
Don’t let the name of this book fool you, but go read “Polysecure” it talks about what is going on in your head and what your partner might be thinking about. It really changed my mind about how to approach anything to do with non-monogamy.
Oh man. Polysecure gave me so many of the words I needed but didn’t have.
Dang, I can’t find the article I read about women using a promiscuous reproductive strategy and how they are less likely to care about the promiscuity of others than women using a monogamous reproductive strategy, who care very much that no one be promiscuous.
Long story short: there are both men and women who do and don’t mind multiple sexual relationships.
That said, societies put limits on what is acceptable and you probably see that in movies. From my personal casual observation, it seems normal for people to be attracted to multiple people, but acting on that – or even talking about it – is likely to upset a partner trying to establish a pair-bond. It can be a threat that the pair-bond may be broken if/when a competitor lures the ‘attracted’ partner away.
More than that, I know new moms furious at their husbands for playing video games. Hubby says he’s worked all day and wants to unwind, but mom says the baby needs care and hubby’s gaming leaves mom as stranded and alone as if hubby was cheating.
Here’s a short bit: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2000/10/female-monogamy-is-fiction-not-fact-hrdy-says/
Stuff on monogamy:
