Polyamory is Simply Love Plural

I am one of the polyamorous people who are tired of talking about polyamory at this point. I spent so many years not saying anything about my relationship(s), that when I finally did say something, everybody questioned everything. Then all of a sudden polyamory became this popular term that now everybody wants to explore and talk about, and the ridiculousness started. Even though I am tired of talking about it, a few days ago I had an encounter with a young lady who claimed to be polyamorous, but her ideas about what that meant were just simply misguided, and the educator in me (I'm a teacher) could not let that slide. So after the discussion with her, I decided I would write this to let other people know what polyamory is not.

For starters, polyamory simply means to love more than one person at a time. It is about having multiple relationships. One of the misconceptions going around is that because you are living in a poly lifestyle you must be gay or bisexual. Some people are gay, bisexual, etc., but I am not. I simply love love, and I tend to have multiple male partners. My husband is also straight. He has a girlfriend. They have children and so do we, so we are all bonded through the children, but his relationship with her is his relationship with her, and his relationship with me is his relationship with me. We date separate, which means that his partners are his partners and my partners are my partners. Everybody in this lifestyle does it their own way. There are people who date each other and each others partners. Everybody has their own boundaries. Some people have closed relationships besides the people who are already in their relationships. People do what they are comfortable with. Everybody is not having threesomes every night. We are not swingers, that is something different. Swingers are about sex only or at least sex is their focus, polyamory is about relationships.

Polyamory is about open and honest communication about what is going on and having the consent of everybody involved. There is a difference between being polyamorous and just plain out cheating. You can not start a relationship with someone and then decide to tell them that you are polyamorous. That's manipulative. You can't wait for someone to fall for you and then spring it on them. I like to tell people when I realize that this is going in a romantic direction that I am polyamorous. Not only am I polyamorous, but I am married, and then I will talk about my boundaries and if they are okay with it, then we go from there, but if they have issues with it, then we stop and that is fine.

Now this is the part where the young lady earlier mentioned and myself had the discussion. She was posting on a post of another young woman who was talking about her obviously cheating boyfriend and asking why she just didn't open the relationship up to being a poly one. Polyamory is not going to work to save a failing relationship. Polyamory will highlight all of the things that are wrong with the relationship in the first place. In the young lady's case, the boyfriend was obviously lying to her and the other girl that he was cheating with, and he kept going back and forth with both of them. Clearly, he is a liar and could not be trusted. He will not be able to be trusted in a polyamorous relationship either. He's not going to tell any potential new partners about his relationship status, or he's going to lie to these women if he decides to bring in another partner. Plus, she's obviously a monogamous woman, and she does not want to "share" her man. She has every right to feel that way. We can't force people to open up their relationships just because we choose to live this way.

She then went on to make comments about it being human nature to cheat and everybody does it, so instead of being cheated on, the woman should open her relationship. This is false information as well. There are some people who can be completely monogamous in their relationships. Not everybody cheats. For me, I don't expect everything from one person, and I recognize that I don't own anybody, so as long as my partner(s) are being honest and safe, I say "live your life." I personally look at it like people are allowed to have multiple friends and nobody bats an eye, but the minute they say they have multiple partners, it becomes taboo. My partner(s) are my friends. The only difference is I don't normally kiss and have sex with my platonic friends. I am not polyamorous because I am afraid of a partner stepping over my boundaries so I'm trying to make it okay. I am polyamourous because I believe that everybody should be able to do whatever they want to do, but respect each others boundaries while doing it. There are people who are polyamorous because of religious beliefs. There are other people who are polyamorous because it works for their goals in life. For example, more people means more income, or more people means more children, or whatever that looks like for them. It's not about being afraid a partner will cheat so lets try to make it easier for them to have sex with multiple people and neglect our own feelings in the process.

The notion that we have it easier than monogamous people is ridiculous, which was another jewel she implied in the post. If anything, we have it harder. We have to schedule, we have to make sure everybody we are in a relationship with feels validated, we have to respect different people's boundaries at the same time, we have to do everything that we would do in a monogamous relationship, but with more than one person. We have to deal with jealousy on a much larger scale; our own and our partners. We have to have hard conversations that we would never have to have if we were monogamous. Being polyamorous is definitely not for the weak. Suggesting that we don't have to worry about a partner cheating because they are allowed to have multiple partners is also false. If you have a partner still hiding things and being dishonest, you are still being cheated on. If you have a partner still not respecting your boundaries, you are still being disrespected. Now imagine you have more than one partner being disrespectful and cheating. That's heartbreak on a much larger scale.

Don't get me wrong, there are great benefits to living poly, but I'm not here to romanticize it. If you aren't comfortable, you should not do it. I personally was never really good at being monogamous. I tried, and it does not work for me. I like being free to live a life that I can be happy with, and my partner allows me that freedom. I absolutely love my husband, but it does not stop me from loving someone else. I married my husband because I know that we are going to be in each others lives no matter what forever. Even through a separation, we still wound up back together because we have been connected since we were teenagers playing grown. Polyamory works for me because I love love, and I'm a hyper romantic which means that I fall fast, hard, and easily. I don't like having to choose between having a relationship and exploring others because you don't know who you might be missing out on. All of this does not mean that I believe that everybody should be polyamorous. There is beauty in monogamy; there is beauty in polyamory; and everybody has the right to choose the way they love, but it is their choice and not anybody else's.