In theory, polyamory is the ideal relationship. But in practice, in it is a hard-maintenance exercise, normally misinterpreted and usually done badly. Or at least, when I attempted to do it, I did it wrong. In this article, I try to explain what is a polyamory relationship all about, what are the typical misconceptions (and mispractices) of it, and why, when endeavoring it in my personal love and sex life, it simply didn't work.
On trust-based grounds, polyamory is a consensual agreement between people involved in a relationship that allows for the parties to maintain sexual and/or affective and romantic relationships with other people. For many years (and mostly in Christian-valued western cultures), this kind of relationship orientation (surprise! it is a personal preference) stood vastly criminalized. Christian guilt, along with the myths of romantic love, devoured our heads and hearts to believe in half oranges and the 'ultimate love for life'. Under this worldview, polyamory seems completely wrong: more like cheating, a promiscuous attitude, or even worse: a sin.
Polyamory practitioners have long supported that the idea of marriage between two people (because no law in the West allows for more than two people to get married) was idolized. Feminism also turned down all misconceptions and myths of romantic love –which I believe did wonderful–. And they were right: jealousy, possession, and unlimited devotion to somebody else to the point of self-nullification don't fit in healthy relationships, but rather into abusive contracts. However, the critiques of romantic relationships have led to a relativization of love, the radicalization of it, and its disavowal. Values that today are somewhat the new fashion.
Those who practice polyamory argue their polyamory relationships are equalitarian and free, contrary to what happens in monogamy where relationships maintain closed and stable –even if they are homosexual or heterosexual–. They consider sexual and love exclusivity the components of a closed relationship, ensuring it compromises all personal freedom and the possibility of new sexual and love experiences. In that sense, there are a lot of 'bad' connotations to monogamy: it has dominant roots and controlling demands.
It was under that premise that I thought –when discovering what love was–, that the abusive type of relationship is not for me. After surviving a gender-violence-based relationship, all I wanted to be was simply free. And polyamory's ideas fit perfectly with my desires: I wanted to discover new sexual experiences and encounter love in other non-hegemonic healthy forms. As a bisexual person who had to go through sexual deconstruction when coming out of the closet, and had to assume my non-hegemonic sexual orientation and identity in a compulsory heterosexual society, I thought my relationship orientation could also be the culturally 'discredited' one. So I started following on social media all kinds of polyamory populizers who kept sending the message that monogamy was wrong and patriarchal.
In polyamory relationships, there are usually a series of agreements (some are even formalized in written contracts) in which conditions of sexual and romantic encounters with other people are consensual by all parties. There are hundreds of ways of living polyamory: some prefer hierarchical structures where there are one or more 'main' lovers, and then 'the others' in which sexual and/or romantic relationships are established; threesomes; love groups who live together in the same housing; couples who enjoy swinging... As with any other kind of sexual and romantic preference, polyamory adopts different shapes and rules, according to people's desires and possibilities.
I fell in love with the idea of 'Relationship Anarchy', a concept firstly proposed in 2006 by anarchist activist and videogame producer Andie Nordgren in Relationsanarki i 8 punkter. Relationship Anarchy questions the idea of love as a limited resource and restricted only to a couple. It rejects all types of hierarchies and it has its bases on respect and communication, where love and sex are not exclusive anymore. This way, all intimate convention relationships (friends, roommates, family members, sex-buddies, lovers...) can't be reduced to only 'romantic', 'sexual', 'affective' or 'sexo-romantic' and 'sexo-affective', but rather, unlimited possibilities of relationships reside inside of an anarch-relationship network. It doesn't understand commitment as a heretic, but as a pledge to love. It understands that there are all kinds of connections where love is involved, and it conceives the possibility to love as many people as our heart allows us because as the result of every person being solely unique, every relationship will be unique in itself.
So there I was, at eighteen years old and labeling myself as an 'anarchic polyamory'. I was dating seven people simultaneously and having multiple sporadic sex encounters. As I was living a very busy love and sexual life, I met tons of amazing people, that's for sure. The way I lived and experienced each relationship was different by the single fact that every person is different. However, in this postmodern digital world where immediacy rules, I understood that the more sexual or romantic partners I had, the fullest I'd live my love life, and the happiest I'd be. And since I needed to heal, I forgot about others' feelings and focused on feeling good myself.
A misconception of the 'decentralized' love, resides precisely, in a non-caring frivolous manner of relating to others. I constantly consumed bodies rather than having sex with them. My personal interests ruled. Instead of seeing people as human beings, I only saw potential sexual encounters. This way, I ruined friendships, hurt many people, and most importantly: had no energy left for myself. As there were so many things happening at once, and as I gave so much love outside, I had no love left for myself and this had a direct consequence on my self-esteem, the way I understood love, and my self-conception, to the point that I became someone I despised. I loved everyone but hated myself.
As polyamory theorists argue, jealousy is something that needs to get managed. However, insecurities and emotional discomforts are intrinsic to humans as loving beings. In-between all chaos, and seven simultaneous relationships, I met my current partner, with whom I fell very deeply in love. As a monogamous person, he couldn't stand my 'free love' speech: it hurt him more than he loved us. But I couldn't see that because I was blinded by the polyamory ideal. As a committed poly-lover, I told him about every sexual encounter I had with other people, which was driving us apart more than building up the trust I intended. Furthermore, I criminalized all his jealous reactions, not leaving any space for sincere expression, and demonizing all despair I was causing him. I rapidly labeled him as insecure and immature, rather than attending to his emotions and caring for his wellbeing as partners are supposed to do.
It feels weird to share this with you, dear reader, because I feel I'm exposing my love life and my relationship way too much. However, I believe more people could find themselves in similar situations, and I think it is important to speak up about one's mistakes, as well as one's learnings.
After some months of dating, I saw how unintendedly, all my other relationships were slowly dying. I believe one of the reasons was because I was driving most of my energies to him rather than taking care of the others, but also because I'm naturally monogamous. But that, I learned just recently. I found myself with several sporadic non-enjoyable and immediacy-based sexual encounters while being madly in love with my current partner, and with all, hurting him. For this reason, I decided to devote my energies exclusively to him. At first, I had said to myself (and to him) that I was only doing it for his well-being. But later on, because we went through a period of a long-distance relationship, we agreed on 'opening up the relationship, allowing us to have sexual encounters with other people.
For three years, and as a monogamous being, he had always told me the moment he'd be with somebody else, he'd stop loving me. After not seeing each other for several months, due to our long-distance relationship, he came to visit me in Belgium, where I was finishing my studies. As soon as we saw each other, I knew: he had been with another person. As I asked, with a pang of guilt I've never glimpsed in his words, he explained: my constant persistence for a 'free love' relationship, and the multiple times I had been with other people, had led him to seek other sexual partners when we were apart. At first, as he described, he felt something was off because he had spoken about me previously. So at his second attempt, he'd completely hide my existence so he could engage sexually with other people.
As he was clarifying the story with tears in his eyes, I thought his love for me had ended. But as I started feeling a knot in my throat, and pain in my stomach, I understood: he did it because he loved me and wanted us to be on the same page. Before this happened, I had always defended that jealousy was something to be controlled and erased. For me, showing off jealousy was the devil incarnated. I thought it was a natural feeling, but a controllable one. However, what I felt when I heard him say those words, made me understand it all. Because I had always lived my sexual life in the most open way, it didn't mean I was polyamory. I simply enjoyed sex. A lot. I felt something terribly wrong with him seeing other people, but: why didn't it feel wrong when I was the one doing it? I did it several times, so why couldn't he do it too?
I did not only feel betrayed, since I always told him about my sexual partners, but I was deeply hurt. And this feeling was rooted so profoundly in me, that it suddenly changed the way I saw us and the way I understood what love was. As love is a constant learning process, I know I can't define it today, nor I will be able to define it in the near future. However, after three years of a loving relationship and a painful experience, I finally learned what I really wanted in love: monogamy.
There's an old saying that fits pretty much my experience with polyamory: you never know what something feels like until you live through it.In my experience, that was it. Because he was a declared monogamous person since the very beginning he never attempted to engage sexually with other people, while all I was doing was seeking for other sexual experiences. And, please, here don't take me wrong: we have an amazing sex life together. The fact that I wanted to experiment out there didn't mean I was not 'pleased' in any way. On the contrary, I thought that was what love looked like: consuming bodies rather than experimenting with deep and rooted connections. And the strongest, deeper, and more real affinity I had ever had with anybody is with him.
My intention with this article is not to discredit polyamory at all, but to share my personal experience with it to help other fake online-based polyamories out. Because I was one of them. The fact is that polyamory is possible when done in the right way. However, this was not my case. I was consuming bodies rather than sharing love and experiences. Today I feel lucky that my boyfriend stayed with me despite all that happened, and I am sure we both learned so much during this process.
There is a generalized confusion between polyamory and free sexuality. There is nothing wrong with having multiple sexual partners, but it clearly doesn't mean that when practicing it, love as a concept will be deconstructed. Polyamory means loving several people, beyond engaging only sexually with them. Poly stands for plurality, and disguising sexual connections with love is not only misleading but also harmful. Sexual freedom shouldn't need any masks: it is normal and it is healthy. But disguising it with love just perpetuates the idea that people's emotions are there for our consumption, and that affection can be found in a somewhat emotional market. Words like 'fuck-boy' and 'fuck-girl' (or 'fuck-NB person) are way more honest and real, because they don't hyde the fact that, in their way of conceiving and practicing relationships, there won't be any emotional implication.
Being a 'real' polyamory person implies delivering love, time, energy, and sex, as well as creating and curating effective and respectful links with everyone engaged. It's not about the quantity, nor the demonstration of anything. One is not 'more feminist' by being polyamory, nor 'less feminist' if one prefers monogamy. Relationships come in all shapes and sizes, and it is our duty to find out what suits us the best. Like any other type of relationship, including monogamy, it's all about respect and communication.
I understood that polyamory fits well when it is not associated with consumption and immediacy, but most importantly, when there is full consent in all parts involved. The concept of 'free love' should happen in both: polyamory and a monogamous relationship. Otherwise, if love is not free, it stops from being love to become something else, closely to an emotional dependence or an abusive relationship. All kinds of connections should be built in trust and commitment to love, not only polyamory ones.
Because without trust, communication, care, and love, can we even live in a peaceful world?
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