Ethical Non-Monogamy: A (Self) Love Story

I was 22 when I first saw the movie “Your Friends and Neighbors,” directed by the often controversial yet always provocative and beautiful Neil LaBute. In short, the movie focuses on two couples and surrounding characters in an exploration of infidelity, the consequences of such, and the different dynamics that lead couples to turn away from each other in the first place.

I was by no means a psychologist or even a psychology major, but I couldn’t stop analyzing the dynamics of the film, and even why I, who considered myself someone of good “moral standing” found some of it so sexy and scintillating — despite the hurt, lies, and betrayal.

 See, I was a very late bloomer. I don’t know if I can honestly say I had truly “come of age” yet because I was raised in a single-parent home that didn’t allow for things such as basic as dating or even dances in high school. My college experience was one of commuting to community college while still living in my sexually suppressed home. And, if I can even recall correctly, I had only just about lost my virginity or lost it soon after. Given all of this I not only had a dismal view of what a “traditional” relationship structure should look like, I honestly had no opinion on relationships at all.

When Mr. LaBute put out “Your Friends and Neighbors,” something inside of me woke up. I remember asking myself over and over, “Why does love have to be this hard? There has to be a construct in which people can love honestly, grow together while growing individually, accept that they might change along their journey, but do so without hurt.”

Well, there was: polyamory, and its many derivatives. At its basic concept polyamory is the art of having close interpersonal relationships viewed as an alternative to monogamy, with the knowledge and consent of all partners involved. That little definition came from an article noting when the Oxford dictionary first acknowledged polyamory as a word, which shockingly after the decades-prior free love movement wasn’t until 2006. The thing about polyamory is that one definition doesn’t really suit. How it is practiced and expressed really comes down to the persons involved and the constructs of relationships. Polyamory, which at its origins really means “loving” multiple people, became the blanket term for open relationships or group sex or anything of such ilk. Like most things that are at their core healthy and good, it became bastardized by a fearful society that didn’t quite understand it, and the religious conservatives dubbed it all as dirty, pornographic, and excuses for cheating.

Since this is not meant to be an academic research paper on the concept of “love is love” and more a personal memoir, let’s go back to me and my LaBute-inspired sexual awakening. Or, rather, love awakening. I knew I was bisexual (well, I am pansexual, but my brain hadn’t expanded beyond that self-limitation until years later). My body and mind and heart and libido all started to properly align, but after many monogamous relationships (with men or women) in which I was intellectually or emotionally or sexually unsatisfied, I decided that I didn’t even want to date anymore. It was too exhausting. I felt like I kept outgrowing things and hurting people, either by what we now call “ghosting” them or by cheating on them. I simply could not get everything I needed nor give everything I wanted with one person: so I decided to go inward and simply focus on myself for most of my mid to late 20s.

Maybe love wasn’t meant for me.

I was about 30 when my world opened up in the most beautiful way. I met someone, a gentleman who I stumbled across through mutual friends and I fell head over heels for him. He was upfront that he was married and explained that he and his wife were poly, and then went on to explain what that dynamic meant to them. In their case, it was an open relationship, in which they each got to “play” safely with whomever they wanted, have other relationships predicated in love, and even combine play and partners, as long as it was all done with honesty, consent, and consideration. I immediately thought, “Huh, why didn’t those people in LaBute’s movie just do that?” Well, movies aren’t real life, but this very much was, and a relationship was formed. It was phenomenal in parts and it was hurtful chaos in others (what we all had in progression we vehemently lacked in maturity) and in the end so much unraveled — my relationship with him, my relationship with her, other peripheral relationships, and eventually theirs. But I was forever changed. I never wanted another “normie” relationship experience now that I had learned some good and bad lessons on how to give and receive love with multiple people involved.

I had no idea how to find it. Dating apps had become a more prevalent thing at the time but unless you were part of the swingers community (which I eventually got into in San Francisco), had the ins on the code words and symbolism, or lived very outloud with your lifestyle, it was hard to pin down. I later did all of the above, but for a while, I entered what I called “wifey mode” and got into yet another heteronormative relationship wth a man, who I cared about, and even helped raise his child from a previous marriage, but I never felt love. Eventually that ended with us both explosively cheating on each other — him because I was knowingly sexually neglecting him and me because I was bored out of my gore in this “tradwife” scenario. When I came home from a business trip to end things with him after yet another act of my infidelity, I was relieved to find that he had met someone else. I moved out, let him live in our house til he got on his feet, and declared once again, no more. I am not going to commit to anyone because I can’t land a poly situation that works right for me and the trad role didn’t fit me, either.

A couple of what the kids now call “situationships” later — one of which was seemingly modeled after the relationship of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon, without all of the drugs and threats of unaliving. But something about the excitement of it was at least better than what I viewed as a milquetoast little relationship in which I played the traditional role until my insides started to scream like banshees. A situationship in which we equally hurt each other seemed like a good idea. Except it wasn’t, and I can say it eventually ruined small aspects of each of our own lives.

All because neither of us were living honestly. He was in another relationship that he denied to me and I believed even though I knew deep down it was there; and I didn’t want monogamy in the first place. Nor did I only want a man. I wanted a woman, too. I moved across the country. We kept it going. Eventually we simply got tired of each other and went our own ways.

COVID happened less than three months after. The upside of me often being resigned to “forever alone” was that isolation was the best thing to ever happen to me (even if the pandemic itself was scary and awful and tragic). I could hoard paper towels and hang out with my cat and do Zoom parties with my friends and not even think about dating and all the complications that came with it for me.

When we emerged from imminent fatal threats all around us, the world got back on its axis though it was not the same. Around-the-clock delivery was a thing for everyone — not just those of us who lived in Manhattan, a lot of people entered alcohol abuse recovery (I was one of them), and the world was more openly talking about this concept of Ethical Non-Monogamy (ENM). As I worked through my recovery, and following the rules of not dating during my first year, I became more curious about this and how it was different than my earlier life, and what did this mean for me. There was even a glorious app called Feeld specifically for this purpose. Glee.

At its core, ENM embodied polyamory but wasn’t held to to confines of needing to have love “strings” attached (sorry, Mr. LaBute). At its core, ENM is a non-traditional relationship style where all parties involved consent to have romantic or sexual relationships with multiple people. It can, again, be defined by the people involved, but unlike the earlier days of simple swinging and polyamory and loose talk of honesty and consent, it became the paramount foundation by way all things were made possible. Whether a single or a couple, if you didn’t live honestly, you simply couldn’t step up to the ride.

Despite all of the Feeld billboards all over multiple cities and even renowned psychologists like Dr. Nicole LePera coming out about why they found throupling (like a couple, but with three) so healthy for them, the rumbles of judgment started again. They may not have been as loud as I heard them because, as someone who never really wanted a normie relationship, I was listening for them. They were there in the passive comments of friends and in the more broad cultural media (and the alt right, but for countless reasons, I avoid or discount their opinions) but they were definitely .

On the positive side, I saw more friends coming out openly about their ENM relationships, which took bravery in the eyes of society’s judgments, especially for those with more traditional, high-level executive jobs. Sure, you could be a finance brah on Wall Street with a cocaine problem, but deity forbid you be a happily married woman executive who lives ENM lifestyle with your equally happy, honest, consensual partner. I saw friends quietly embracing the lifestyle to help their marriages flourish.

One thing I have personally found, from the outside in looking at other relationships, Mr. LaBute’s movie, and my own experience with ENM, is that honesty, communication, and consent of all parties were taken so much more seriously than that of traditional relationships. It HAS to be, for both emotional and physical safety. Whether you’re ENM looking for couples play partners or a couple looking for a play unicorn or a couple looking for a romantic third or a single looking for a couple for long-term love, honesty, stability, nurturing, openness, patience, and alignment cannot be compromised — ever.

Now, with all of this out in the open, you might think that I am over here happy as a clam, slinging off my self-imposed forever alone badge and landed myself that couple I always dreamed of. Partly true. Unfortunately, my finding this couple, which I still love, coincided with me hitting my first year of sobriety and I had yet to scratch the surface on how not to live my life in extremes, how not to swing others along those extremes with me, and because of the insecurities that I had never addressed soberly, my learned poor childhood behaviors came out in full force and completely shattered what was something otherwise beautiful. Imperfect, even sometimes annoying like all relationships, but beautiful. I didn’t accept my agreed upon role as secondary in this relationship, even though that was all I ever wanted, and then I set it on fire.

Regrets? Many. But, I learned, even if I sadly learned too late. But it hasn’t changed my mind about the type of relationship I want. In fact, not long after I did that, my therapist and I really started working on the why, so that I would hope to never enter ANY type of relationship with such impulsive, reactive, unchecked low self-esteem again. And I learned how to give love as much as I already knew how to take love.

I did try one more traditional relationship this spring and entered back into wifey mode, cooking and cleaning and gifting and “how was your day honeying” with my heteronormative partner. It was, at its core, good practice for me learning to give selflessly without swinging into extremes, so I was happy to see that confidence did shift in me. Despite that, weren’t a good match and it only lasted a few months, though I learned an immense valuable amount about myself during and after. We were too different. In fact, on our first date I told him the dynamics of my last relationship and he, very vanilla, asked me, “Is that something you still want?” “No,” I said, believing it at the time. “I think ENM maybe doesn’t love me. This is what I want.”

I didn’t. I don’t. Not just with him, but with any one person, male, female, nonbinary, trans, and so on. I’m a pansapio with ENM proclivities and that is who I want to fully and openly bring to the world — in a healthy, honest, balanced, consensual, respectful, trusting way — with people who get me.

This is my love story.

Source: The Good Men Project