15 Poly People Tell How Relationships Started

8.

“I’ve spent much of my life being less than fully monogamous. I’ve never been able to fully commit to the whole ‘exclusively monogamous’ thing, where love and sex and intimacy and attraction are all focused on ‘exclusive monogamy.’ one The person I was dating. Inevitably, I become attracted to other people, not because there is anything wrong with my relationships or my psyche, but simply because there is a world out there with attractive people. ”

“This means that for a good portion of my dating life, I thought there was something wrong with me. After all, we have words for this — I was someone who was ‘unable to settle down,’ or who had ‘commitment issues.’ I was wondering if I could do that betterStop having feelings for others.

Eventually, I learned that open relationships weren’t just for long-haired hippies living in communes on organic farms, and that’s when I actually started thinking seriously about making it a part of my next relationship. Luckily, shortly after that, a good friend and I started dating and agreed to talk openly about it. Originally it started out as a primarily sexual arrangement where you could sleep with someone else but not develop feelings for them, but as it turns out, it’s hard to put limits on feelings, so we eventually abandoned that idea and comfortably moved into an arrangement we call polyamory.

Everyone in the Poly community does things differently, so here’s how I do it. I’m dating my girlfriend and she and I live together. Each of us has the freedom to develop other sexual, intimate, and loving relationships as we see fit, and we have done so. So far, we’ve each dated different people (her partner is not my partner). It’s not like we’re both adamantly against the idea of ​​dating the same person, but that’s not really the case.

Is there jealousy? I agree. Especially when we first started dating, I had a lot of battles with jealousy. Not surprisingly, I was working on undoing decades of socialization. exclusivity was the same as lovethat the only way to be special is to be incomparable. With time and practice, I’ve been able to overcome most of the cases, and although I do feel jealous now and then, I don’t see it as a terrible crisis that could spell doom for a relationship, but rather as a signal that I’m feeling insecure about something and need to work through it further. ”

—spencer dove