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Polyamory?? Ethical non-monogamy, Part 2

Writer's picture: akinkandaprayerakinkandaprayer

Updated: Aug 2, 2022

Before you want to skin me alive, let me explain why I’m not just going to continue my story from last week right where I left off. Right where I demanded that PM explain to me why he wouldn’t even consider sharing me sexually with another person.



I’ll be backtracking a bit this week because I’m finding that I need some time to process all the conversations PM and I have been having and the feelings that I’ve had simmering for a lot longer. I hope in sharing some of my more general thoughts first, I’m providing helpful context  to my readers for what I will write in the coming weeks.



But to be honest, I also need to provide a framework for myself — to help me understand why PM and I are having these conversations in the first place, when what we have between us is otherworldly, without trying to sound too dramatic. Because I’m realizing that none of this is completely out of the blue. And I’m trying make sense of it all.



I hope you can trust me, follow along, and know that we’ll arrive somewhere together. I’m not sure where that somewhere is, and what the landscape will look like, and when exactly we’ll arrive, but if I’ve learned anything in the last two smokin’ hot years rediscovering my passion for PM, it’s the journey that’s the important part. So bear with me 🙏



Last week I said that I’ve been wondering whether I’m more polyamorous than…I don’t know what the alternative is…conventionally amorous?? Conventionally monogamous?? *shrugs*



So what do I mean by this? Well, I’m trying to make sense of feelings of restlessness, of longing that I have despite being a partner in what I consider an amazing marriage to an amazing person.



Not that PM and I don’t have our issues. Everyone does. No person is perfect and, therefore, no relationship with a person is perfect. But in spite of my happy relationship status, I still dream of more.



So, while I’m not exactly sure what all this means, I think I may be capable of loving multiple people, that is, having a loving, romantic and/or sexual attachment to multiple people. And that’s how it seems folks generally define polyamory these days.



And in my case, since I’m very much in love with PM and want to stay with him, be married to him, hopefully til death do us part with him, then the appeal of a form of ENM (ethical non-monogamy) for me begins to make more sense. Because, otherwise, I have a difficult time making heads or tails out of my crushing on other people and my wistful thinking about what ifs.



I know what I’m not interested in. I’m not really interested in sex with a stranger…I don’t think. *grimaces* No, it really doesn’t appeal. I’m pretty positive I’d have to feel a connection with someone beyond sexual chemistry. Even in my erotic fantasies that involve other people, I tend to imagine some sort of connection with those persons. Well, besides just the connection of certain body parts. *winks* So I think this suggests that all of this is about more than just sex.



But again, I have a connection with PM, and while we physically connect in a panty-combusting way *fans herself*, what we have is about more than our genitals. And I’d want to keep that. And I also know my desire to stay in a relationship with PM reflects more than the fact that we’ve created a life together, have children together.



I know some people stay in a marriage because it would be just too damn hard to leave. But that’s not me. I’ve got something rare with PM, and I know it.



Don’t get me wrong. It would be ridiculously hard to separate our lives at this point. And because of that fact, at least in part, it sometimes feels like I don’t have a choice. But I really do like PM. I love him as a person. He’s my best friend, but he also lights me up like a Christmas tree. *sharp exhale* So, at any rate, while, yes, it would be a fucking mess to try to disentangle our lives from one another, that’s not why I want to stay, why I’m committed to him and me remaining a we.



Although we’ve been together for almost 25 years and we were both different people when we started dating as teenagers, I know without a doubt that if I met him today for the first time, I would be undeniably attracted to this man. I’d want to be around him. I’d want to know him better. I’d want to get him in bed and crack that calm exterior. Mmm-hmmmm.




But over the course of our more than two decades together, I’ve also periodically felt a similar pull toward other people. I kind of feel that way about someone, my crush, right now. (See my previous posts here and here where I’ve specifically talked about crushes and how I feel about attractions to other people.)



And yet this desire to explore other attractions, to connect with someone else, has never existed in my mind as a replacement for the love or connection I feel with PM. I’ve never really thought that some other relationship would be better, that I’d be happier with someone else. The pull I’ve felt toward other people over the years has really always been as an AND for me, not an OR or an INSTEAD OF.



I know. I know. In a culture that assumes monogamy, what I’m describing reads like an example of trying to have my cake and eat it, too. Which, of course, we view negatively. Or, in the very least, as an impossibility. It’s the belief that there are some good things in life that one can’t have at the same time. In love, I’m supposed to choose one person or the other, because I can’t have both. I choose one road, and I reject the other. And even if neither choice is better-fitted for me than the other, I still have to choose. Yet I selfishly (or so culture tells me) want it all.



The idea behind the eating cake idiom is that I can’t keep the cake and also eat it. Because if I eat it, I no longer have it. I want two good cake-related things (the retaining of that beautiful, eye-pleasing, mouth-watering confection and its heavenly consumption), and these two pleasures cannot exist in reality at the same time.





But this metaphor doesn’t hold for everything, does it? People aren’t cake. And loving someone is not eating cake, although the feelings of delight are certainly there. (And hopefully there’s a lot of devouring being done *eyebrow waggle*). The person I love isn’t consumed in that way, disappearing into the ether, in my loving them. And I don’t cease to exist or lose any essential part of me in being loved. So in this case, why can’t I have my cake and eat it, too?



Because, perhaps, if we don’t assume that monogamy is the best and/or only way to love, then loving and being loved by more than one person at the same time could have the potential to add to the cake (if I mess with the original metaphor), not consume it away. Maybe my simple but delicious single-tier cake could potentially become a multi-tier confectionary masterpiece, and maybe I have the ability to do the same to someone else’s cake. I’m not sure, but I think I prefer the metaphor of an act of creation for loving someone to one of consumption and destruction. It makes more sense to me. What do you all think?



Of course, I’m already part of a loving, committed relationship with PM, so regardless of my own self discoveries, PM has to weigh in on all this. When I mentioned to him today that I was writing about polyamory this week, I giggled and added, “And I have lots of love to give!” His response? “Ah, yes, and lots of people to drain.” Cue the anti-climactic sound effect. *shakes head* Yeah, well, more on that to come.



That’s what I got this week, people. Musings and processings, really. But I do promise that I will return to my conversations with PM in the coming weeks. (And, of course, all the hot and sweaty deets in-between.)



Until next time, stay kinky 😉

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