#theintentionallife

Thank you! I really enjoy your blog as well! I hope it’s okay that I’m answering this publicly; I think these are really good questions, and they spurred me to do some writing in response (and I’ve been bad about writing myself here lately).

I am polyamorous, yes. I am open to having multiple relationships that involve love/romance/intimacy/sex if those connections arise for me, with the knowledge and informed, willing consent of everyone involved. It was kind of a long and winding path to get there, but I’ve been doing my relationships non-monogamously for the past three years or so, and it feels truer to myself and my heart than anything I’ve done in the realm of relationships and love (and I think it’s also helped teach me a whole lot about myself and how I exist in the world and how I exist with others, and how to connect with others in all sorts of ways). 

I hope that expectations around love and relationships do change to allow people to explore different types of relationships to find out what best allows the people in those relationships to thrive. Do I think that everyone would choose non-monogamy or polyamory if it were more socially accepted? No; I think that a variety of different relationship structures fit different people, and I think that even what fits each person can be different at different times and in different contexts. What I’d like to see is an encouragement for people to really, truly explore who they are and what they experience and what they want; I want people to feel supported by our culture in exploring that. If someone finds themselves in a situation in which they feel strong connections with two different people, for example, I want those people to be able to sit down with each other and talk openly and honestly about what kinds of relationships they’d be up for having with each other, what their goals are, what their wants and needs are, etc. and see what they might want to do with those connections, rather than having the person experiencing those attractions immediately thrown into a state of panic because how can you love two people at once that doesn’t work you have to choose someone’s going to get hurt you’re going to hurt someone this isn’t fair you must not really love one of them you must love one of them more than the other right pick one pick one this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. I want someone who feels a connection to someone else not to be taught to feel hurt and wronged and denigrated by the fact of that someone else also feeling connections with other people; I want us not to be encouraged to define our own worth by our partners’ lack of connection to anyone else. I want it to be the case that people are supported in looking at how they feel and sharing those feelings honestly and seeing whether and how they’d like to act on those feelings, while always keeping caring, compassionate, honest treatment of others and of ourselves in the forefront.

As far as marriage goes, I would be all for allowing multiple consenting adults to enter into marriage with each other. I don’t know that I think it’s likely to happen any time soon. I’m also a little less concerned with that right now than I am with a general opening and expansion of relationship expectations (because I don’t think marriage has to be the end goal for every relationship, either—currently it’s expected to be, but just like most things about relationships, I don’t think there’s any one thing that’s right for everyone or for every relationship). What we’ve got now is a dominant culture that insists that there’s one model of relationships and one model of finding love that’s supposed to work for everyone, and the facts on the ground are just simply that it doesn’t. It doesn’t work for everyone, and the fact that it’s the only option we’re all given makes it less likely to work as well as it could for anyone, in my opinion. If we’re all told from the beginning what it is we’re supposed to want and how it is we’re supposed to feel and what it is we’re supposed to experience, it makes it that much harder for us to figure out what it is we actually do want and feel and experience.