Today’s article is an anonymous guest letter from a reader. Enjoy!
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Dear Poly Land,
Sharing with the air, because I’m sure there must be someone here in Poly Land who needs to know they are not alone.
I went 13 years without having a second date. Between June 2004, when my last very unconventional emotionally interdependent yet platonic relationship just POOF ended with [he’s now my boyfriend; you’re now my best friend. My family wouldn’t get us] until December 2017 when I began [a string of 5 lunches across 3 months; now Facebook Friend].
Am I just too many types of weird? I wonder… People tell me I’m attractive. College educated, manage my brain weasels in a GENERALLY functional manner — check, check, check. And yet it still seems the only people who are ACTUALLY ATTRACT-ED are the very occasional (seldom, thank heavens!) creepers.
It still seems like no one’s looking for a hot chick who’s hypogender, naturally-hyposexual / medically-graysexual, demiro, and queer.
Note: I take oral contraceptive pills (OCP) to control migraines, so coming off of it to increase my sex drive is not a viable option for me. And even before my hip-spine injuries at 18, AND before OCP since 19, my libido seemed fairly hyposexual compared to how I perceived society. So rather than it being a problem, having an OCP-lowered sex drive is sort of a strange relief to me, given my injuries.
There was a time that I thought my lower-than-normative romantic/sexual patterns were a result of my parents never modelling anything more than companionship (extremely anti-PDA), but both of my siblings’ relationships appear entirely normative in publicly-acceptable ways, so I arrived at accepting it’s probably me, not a parental thing.
Being Non-Polar on Multiple Spectrums Turns Your Dating Pool Into a Shot Glass #
In my experience (YMMV), sexually normative folks aren’t into a hyposexual who medically can’t tolerate frequent sex and who thanks to OCP has an incredibly gray drive for it anyway.
Cis normative folks aren’t looking for an identified-woman who doesn’t really check off all the typical-woman boxes.
Polar aces and aros wonder why I feel like a regular long-term companion would be better than just having several good friends who each maybe only check off a box or few of my social, romantic, and/or sexual needs.
The queer part blessedly seems a little less daunting now than 30 years ago, back when binary orientation (either straight or gay) was visible, but bi/pan/queer was more frequently invalidated and erased, compared to now, worse by the gay community than by straights (again, YMMV).
Sometimes people like to say that their dating pool has shrunk to a “dating puddle.” To hell with a dating puddle! I feel like I have a dating shot glass.
Identifying as Polyamorous and a Secondary, While Single #
I also identify as polyamorous. Primarily because I believe polyamory is 100% ethical; partly because I have never had a successful monogamous primary relationship.
I’ve had people in the polyamorous community ask me why I identify as a secondary, let alone polyamorous, even when I’m single. Erm, same reason people still have a sexual orientation when they are single! I see polyamory as a relationship-type orientation, not as something that becomes null and void any time a person is single.
My monogamous primary relationships have usually ended with partners cheating on me, even when they’ve known I am 100% okay with polyamory, as long as I get to vet potential partners. Only one ended (four months) with the early maturity of [hey, our needs don’t match; let’s be kickass cool friends, and seek our romantic/sexual needs from other people].
All I can figure out on the cheating topic is that some people feel super guilty asking a disabled partner to vet a potential secondary or fling, even when they darn well know there are rules that make it potentially 100% acceptable. It’s as if they believe disabled people begrudgingly accept poly by circumstance (and granted, some MIGHT be), rather than being honestly poly.
Newsflash! I’m honestly poly!
My emotionally healthiest relationships have been when I was secondaried to someone who already had a primary or two — someone with far less than primary level romantic and sexual expectations of me. Being graysexual and demiro, my own romantic / sexual needs really don’t demand what American society deems “normal.” It’s better when everyone can be honest about needs.
Note: I’ve never had anything beyond friendship with 100% aces or aros. I wouldn’t ask them to meet my sexual or romantic needs, respectively, since that would go against THEIR nature, but they’ve always been terrific friends otherwise.
In the course of lifetime fluidity, I’ve even gone through a few aro / gray-fraysexual phases, but my natural buoyancy point seems more demiro than aro, and fray doesn’t check all of my sexual needs boxes in the longterm.
In a normative world, I feel like I was just born for a secondary level relationship, even when I don’t have a primary. Just like single people still have a sexual orientation, I choose to own the heck out of my relationship orientation: Secondary.
Even in a low-demand relationship, I still want ethical non-monogamy to be potentially allowable for everyone. Rules, people!
Sometimes I Wonder if I’m Just a Mythical Creature Looking for a Mythical Creature #
Were I ever to find a gray demiro likewise-unpartnered Secondary looking for a graydemiro unpartnered-secondary as a longterm companion, who also wouldn’t mind me being queer and hypogender, admittedly, I might have to wrestle with some major disbelief during any [getting to know whether this person is socially, politically, religiously, and 15 other ways compatible] phase that would occur. I’m sure they would probably wrestle with identical disbelief.
Then anxiety creeps in — would looking in a mirror, for the first time ever, be too shocking or creepy? Am I just a mythical creature looking for a mythical creature?
Ahhh, see, now there go the brain weasels…
If you identify with any of this, you’re less alone than you thought, but you are probably ALSO wise enough to know, that doesn’t mean I’m any more automatically interested in you, specifically, than two non-whites in an otherwise all-white high school would be automatically interested in each other.
Just know there’s one more of us out here than you knew about yesterday. Maybe one day we’ll cross paths, and get to commiserate, anyway!
Love,
A hypogender, graysexual, demiro, queer Secondary.
#hypo-polylife
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Poly Land is always on the lookout for different perspectives on polyamory and relationships in general.
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