Poly Question 1.3
How important is my desire for multiple romantic relationships?
I don’t know that I desire multiple romantic relationships. Rather, they just sort of keep happening to me, a natural byproduct of remaining open to meaningful connections with the world outside of myself, which, frankly, includes a lot of people.
For me, it’s less about the need for other partnerships and more about the overriding belief that it’s not some sort of betrayal to be attracted to someone other than your partner. Granted, having more people in my life is fun and enriching and actually adds a lot of joy, but I could absolutely be sexually and romantically exclusive to one person, provided we were compatible enough. Indeed, my husband and I took a break from dating others after the former web burned in order to do things like get me into therapy and school, build our careers, and become more financially stable, and we were very happy on our own.
But even at its most exclusive, this was a very poly-aware monogamy. I couldn’t be happy in a partnership where I wasn’t allowed to acknowledge my attraction to other people, where I’d “get in trouble” for looking at others, enjoying porn, flirting, masturbating, and all the other strange things that a lot of monogamous people get in trouble for doing.
As my husband likes to say, I don’t do bullshit, and there is a whole lot of bullshit involved in the magical make-believe of “I only have eyes for you.” For me, anyway. Your mileage may vary here. But I’m hypersexual and obsessed with women. While I can hide it, doing so takes a lot of work and makes me feel stifled and awkward, and at this point in my life, I’d have to have an awfully good reason.
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This post is part of a series in which I answer each of the chapter-end questions in More than Two with an essay. For the entire list of questions & answers, please see this indexed list.