Letâs suppose, for a minute, that âcommitmentâ is equivalent to âexclusivity.â Of course, as a polyamorous person, I donât subscribe to that equivalency in the slightest. But for this example, Iâm using the language that (many) monogamous people use.
When I was younger and didnât know polyamory was an option, or (later) didnât yet think I could personally handle it, I would apprehensively think about my projected future in a monogamous marriage. I wanted to take comfort in things that people said, like the above.
It made no intuitive sense to me.
I had to sort of parse it out deliberately. Okay, I think what they probably mean is:
You wonât have the anxieties inherent in dating new people anymore.
Once youâre in an exclusive long-term relationship, you donât need to worry about whether youâve selected a good partner, because youâve made that decision once and can stop thinking about it now.
You wonât have the general mental overhead of being single and perpetually seeking someone; you will have the freedom to instead devote that mental energy towards something that feels reliable, such as your spouse or your kids or your hobbies.
Is that what they mean? Maybe. Or maybe thereâs something more I still havenât gleaned.Â
Problem is, none of that comes even slightly close to selling me on monogamy. For one thing, if Iâm seeking freedom, those arenât the types of freedoms that matter to me. Because, if they were, even within polyamory, I donât have to date any more than I want to. Thereâs no rule that I need to always seek new partners. Thereâs no rule that I have to date anyone ever.Â
I have the freedom to choose to experience all of those things, or to give myself the freedom from them.
The freedom I want, plain and simple, is the freedom for all my relationships to find their own natural, best-fitting formats. To date, if we want. To have a physically or emotionally intimate relationship, if we want. To be buddies, if we want. To choose what we want. And freedom from those decisions doesnât feel like any sort of freedom to me at all. Thatâs me; to each their own. I know there are many who feel differently than me, and thatâs the beauty of the diversity of human experience.
