Someone just asked me about polyamory. Here’s my (edited) response:
Polyamory can be a tricky thing and I often see people get into it for either the wrong reasons or not fully understanding the impact of it.
Polyamory, in its core, is loving more than a single person at any one time. This requires a lot of trust, respect, and communication from all sides. There’s also an added responsibility toward all partners involved.
I especially see young people (i.e. early 20s) abuse the term to get away with sleeping around. There is no love there. It’s just sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if you are open to that, but I’d like it if they’d call it for what it is. Either swinging, an open relationship, or similar. You can do some serious harm to a person by not being completely honest about your intentions.
That said, even if you are polyamorous in nature doesn’t mean you always need to have a secondary relationship in your life. Poly people can live out a happily monogamous life.
I’m all for monogamy. I see too many poly people with an elitists attitude condemn it or call it against human nature. (There’s a twist.) I cannot but disagree with that statement. Monogamy can be really fulfilling and not feel like you are “missing out”.
My boyfriend and I revised the parameters of our relationship a bit since that video I made a year ago. We’re still semi-poly but with clearer ‘rules’ and some restrictions. That, and we doubt that either of us will be able to handle a complete secondary relationship. We don’t even have the time for that so it would be a foolish thing to look for right now.
Again, I’m a huge fan of monogamy and feel that it gets a bad rep in large part due to young people rushing into relationships and even getting married before they hit 25. So yeah, statistics will tell you it doesn’t work. But statistics have to be taken into proper context to be fully understood.
As always, communication is key.
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