Non-​​Monogamy and Loving One Who Loves Only One

I recently decided to label myself as polyamorous. I have yet to decide how I feel about that label, but it is read­ily avail­able as an antonym to monog­a­mous. It will do for now.

The year 2009 has become a year of great per­sonal growth for me. This was the year I ven­tured out into the online com­mu­nity to inter­act with oth­ers like me and this was also the year I ven­tured out into the local com­mu­nity to make real-​​time friends. I have never felt more wel­come and cared for since I was a child and I am immensely grate­ful for each and every per­son who extended their hands in friend­ship. I can­not even begin to imag­ine what 2010 will be like for me.

Before this year I stayed behind closed doors, only did what I did in pri­vate, and still felt a great deal of uncer­tainty about inflict­ing myself on oth­ers. It had been a few years since I accepted myself for what I was but I still felt like no per­son in her right mind would choose to remain in my pres­ence once she saw my nature in my eyes. I knew that there were indeed peo­ple that craved the atten­tion of the likes of me, but it still seemed awfully far-​​fetched and surely they were few and far between, rare as unicorns.

Nev­er­the­less, the urge to com­mu­ni­cate and to learn finally com­pelled me to sign up on FetLife some­time in April of 2009. The lovely sushi_​wa was the first one to con­tact me and we struck up a friend­ship even though I could tell that she was rat­tled by the dark­ness inside me. Khan­droma con­tacted me shortly there­after and we con­nected over poetry and in the immense spheres of spir­i­tu­al­ity. And then Shi­donae got lost in my poetry and I found myself equally lost in hers.

These three women have wrapped their hearts around me and stood by me and cheered me on, even when it took me away from them. Each in their own way have taught me to love again. To feel. They all taught me that what­ever I am, it is not a bad thing. I am not a mon­ster; at worst, I am a movie vil­lain and, yes, I can live with that. He he.

I am so dif­fer­ent today than how I was in the begin­ning of 2009. I am alive again. My heart is beat­ing because these three women and oth­ers wrapped me with warm, giv­ing, nur­tur­ing fem­i­nin­ity and gave me emo­tional CPR. They made my heart beat again. I was cold and frosty inside and the sadist inside me was feral with very lit­tle con­trol. And here I am now.

Almost a man. Imag­ine that.

Through this inten­sive care with love, in the bot­tom of a vir­tual cud­dle pile, I real­ized that some­thing I had never been able to under­stand before, all of a sud­den felt so incred­i­bly right; I am capa­ble of lov­ing more than one per­son at a time. And the most incred­i­ble thing is that it does not dimin­ish the love for each.

I real­ized that there is no con­flict in my heart, lov­ing more than one amaz­ing, won­der­ful woman. If any­thing, it felt right. It felt com­fort­able. It is almost uncom­fort­able how com­fort­able it felt. It was as if lov­ing only one in the past, only allowed my heart to fire on one cylin­der. Fir­ing on two cylin­ders made it run a lot smoother and a lot stronger for both. And I know that I do not have a V-​​twin in my chest, but some­thing larger.

I con­nect with women. I enjoy women. Not in a sex­ual sense (well, yes, but that is out­side the scope of this piece) but because I enjoy the way they think and the way they feel, emo­tion­ally. Maybe it is because I need a healthy dose of fem­i­nin­ity around me, maybe it is because of some­thing else, but the friend­ships and con­nec­tions I want and need have pre­vi­ously always been threat­en­ing to my part­ners, and I would ter­mi­nate those con­nec­tions to not “cheat.”

Actu­ally, it is indeed sex­ual. How could it not be? I am painfully aware that they are female and I doubt it has escaped any­one that I am male. Nobody has ever accused me of pass­ing up an oppor­tu­nity to admire an invit­ing cleav­age or a round pair of sway­ing hips, but I think that is tol­er­ated because it is also appar­ent that I gen­uinely care about the human being in front of me. I will trade hot sweaty mon­key sex for sit­ting and talk­ing about the mys­ter­ies of emo­tion and life any day of the week. Well, almost any day.

This is my truth. I can­not be monog­a­mous any longer. I may be one day again, but that is not my path right now. There is already too much love in my heart and the thought of cut­ting off what I feel for all but one makes me nau­se­ated. I would feel ampu­tated. This is what feels right for me, no mat­ter how hard it is going to be. But as long as I stay true to what feels right, it is right. And as long as I remain hon­est with myself and every­one around me, no mat­ter how much the truth hurts and no mat­ter the con­se­quences, it is the right path, a path of integrity and honor.

This is all new to me, it is very recent, and I am only begin­ning to wrap my brain around con­cepts and logis­tics and con­se­quences of form­ing non-​​monogamous rela­tion­ships. Where does jeal­ousy fit in, for instance? How do I deal with my jeal­ousy and some­one else’s?

Recently I have been con­fronted with the ques­tion of how to deal with devel­op­ing feel­ings for some­one who is essen­tially or pri­mar­ily monog­a­mous. How can you make it work? Can you make it work?

Heck if I know. Sigh.

I am open about my feel­ings. If I am in love with a woman or if I have a crush on her, I will sim­ply inform her of that fact. I will not expect reci­procity, although a sim­ple acknowl­edg­ment that she under­stood what I just said would be nice. I view it is giv­ing her a per­ti­nent piece of infor­ma­tion that relates to her and me; I know that I would like to know if some­one devel­oped feel­ings for me even if I did not feel the same way.

So how should I deal with falling for a monog­a­mous woman? I will tell her how I feel and I will tell her up-​​front that I am non-​​monogamous. I may look into her eyes and wish that I was as monog­a­mous as she was but I also know that the per­son that I am, the per­son that is hold­ing her inter­est, is who he is to an inde­ter­mi­nate degree because of non-​​monogamy.

The sheer force of emo­tion I hold in my chest and my open­ness and vul­ner­a­bil­ity are all a direct result of non-​​monogamy, I believe. If I tried to stuff it back into the box I would return to being… noth­ing. Or at the very least not the kind of man that she deserves.

I am not going to try to con­vince her to join me on the “dark side.” This is a deci­sion she has to make for her­self, some­thing that she has to take own­er­ship for. I do not want her to shed life-​​long beliefs and moral stan­dards just to be with me. I do not shy away from respon­si­bil­ity, but this must be her deci­sion; she must decide that it is right for her, no mat­ter where I fit into the equation.

Since I only fall for for­mi­da­ble and mag­nif­i­cent women, I know that she will do the right thing. I know that I can trust her to make up her own mind and to take own­er­ship of her direc­tion in life. What­ever she decides will be the right deci­sion for both of us.

If she decides that my path dif­fers too much from her path, if the knowl­edge of me lov­ing oth­ers will cause her dis­tress, I will sim­ply step back and admire her from afar. I will still be her friend or any­thing she wishes me to be, but I will not, not, pres­sure her to be less true to her­self than I am being to myself.

And all this is of course eas­ier said than done.