Dating : 3 Assumptions About Polyamorous People That Are All Wrong

Being an openly polyamorous woman in a world that believes monogamy is the only legitimate way to have a healthy romantic/sexual relationship is tough, let me tell ya. Thanks to the constant misrepresentations of polyamory in pop culture (can we please, once and for all, educate people about the difference between polyamory and polygamy?) and virtually no positive examples of polyamorous relationships in our storytelling, people feel entitled and obligated to come to me with all of their opinions about my relationship orientation. I’m pretty sure that my family would’ve staged an intervention by now if they weren’t so scattered and fractured. Everyone has a problem with me doggedly insisting that monogamy ain’t for me. Everyone. Family. Well-meaning friends. Total strangers. It’s fun!

But let me quit my whinging for a moment — truthfully, I have it pretty good. I’m here today to hopefully help you understand better the truths and lies surrounding polyamory, what it is and what it is not, and what common implications cannot be (but usually are) automatically drawn about a person who identifies as polyamorous.

Let’s start with my absolute favorite.

Polyamorous people are afraid of commitment.

The classic trope around polyamory is that it’s a way to keep all lovers at arm’s length, either in order to protect the poly person from being hurt, or in order to prevent the poly person from hurting someone else. After all, if you’re not monogamous, you must be fickle, inconsistent, and unreliable — an emotional death trap for any poor monogamous victim who stumbles into your mercurial orbit.

There’s an underlying assumption here around the word “commitment” in the context of romantic/sexual relationships. People believe that “commitment” must always include a promise to be with another person exclusively for the rest of your lives, and they further believe that it’s impossible to make and keep commitments to people without the structure of lifelong monogamy. There’s usually no thought or consideration given to other kind of commitments, like a commitment to loving someone unconditionally, being available as an emotional support in times of crisis, and supporting and celebrating each other’s successes. None of those commitments require sexual or emotional exclusivity or cohabitation, but still, when folks think of “commitment,” it’s usually tethered to the concept of marriage, cohabitation, and family-building.

Even though I am fully married to another human person who I live with in a house we own, I still deal with people who labor under this false belief and need me to know it. My own mother questions me ad nauseam about my commitment to my partner every time I mention one of my other lovers. “But what about your husband? Don’t you love him?” she’ll intone, as if she’s caught me in a trap, as if it’s impossible to love and be committed to my spouse, and also to love and be committed, in a different way and with different parameters, to my lovers.

If anything, my ability to commit to a relationship — whatever that relationship’s parameters might be — has proven to be far more advanced than the majority of monogamous people I know. I would never, for example, cut off a lover immediately and eternally for having sex with someone else, but all these supposedly committed monogamous people feel both entitled to this behavior and proud of acting it out. I find that willingness to throw people away bizarre and extreme.

Poly people are just as capable of commitment as everyone else, and possibly even more so than your average mono-bear. We must be skilled at making and keeping a wide variety of commitments to our partners as part of creating healthy, secure relationships based on trust and communication. It’s the only way polyamory works.

Polyamorous people are emotionally damaged and afraid of intimacy.

This one is actually pretty hilarious to me, because the whole point of polyamory is to enjoy more emotional intimacy. More love. Hence the term, “polyamory.” It literally means “many loves.”

Anyone who claims to be polyamorous but can’t allow themselves to experience emotional intimacy isn’t truly polyamorous. Polyamory is about love, and you cannot enjoy healthy, stable love without emotional intimacy.

In my dating experiences, I’ve actually found again and again that I am far more available for emotional intimacy than most of the monogamous people I’ve been in relationships with, and it’s because I’m poly. Accepting that I am capable of loving multiple partners consistently and indefinitely has made me fearless when it comes to emotional intimacy. No heartbreak will ever change my inherent value or ruin my life, so I am free to love as fiercely as I can. Heartbreaks will happen, but they will not end me. I labor under no fear of dying alone or never finding love. I have so much love in my life already, and because of who I am and how I show up in the world, I know I always will.

Most people aren’t secure enough in their relationship with themselves or others to allow emotional intimacy in a romantic/sexual relationship without the artificial safety structure of monogamy. There are a lot of reasons for this, and it’s not anyone’s fault or a sign of emotional weakness. We were all brought up with belief systems around monogamy that latch on to our basic human need for connection and intimacy. Because of that, moving outside of the comfort zone of monogamy is perceived by many as a threat to their survival, which then handicaps or disables their ability to experience emotional intimacy in any kind of nonmonogamous relationship.

From there, it’s an easy bunny-hop to projecting this fear of intimacy onto people who identify as polyamorous. It’s the brain saying, “Well, I feel really unsafe with this whole nonmonogamy thing and unable to fully reveal myself, so that must mean these poly people are the same way. They’re just unwilling to be emotionally intimate. Therefore, I shall refuse to be emotionally intimate with them in order to protect myself. Huzzah!”

Do you see the irony here? We poly folks are not the ones who are afraid of emotional intimacy. It’s all you cats out there who believe that romantic love is finite and must be jealously guarded that are making love harder than it needs to be. Love is easy to find, and it’s everywhere. It just doesn’t always come in a tidy little package with a lifetime guarantee and an exclusivity clause.

Polyamory naturally cultivates within us an ability to experience emotional intimacy at the deepest levels, with no restrictive conditions or the need to conceal the fullness of who we are. My partners enjoy my love and support no matter what the parameters of our relationship, and there’s no need to hide our relationships with or feelings for other people.

Conversely, monogamy, and the belief that romantic love is finite, requires that we hide large portions of ourselves from our partners in order to protect their feelings.

Think about it. If you can’t comfortably tell your partner about your work crush without it creating tension and discord, are you truly showing your full self in your relationship? If you find yourself cutting off warm friendships with ex-lovers because it distresses your current partner, are you really being true to who you are?

What if your attractions or feelings for others weren’t automatically interpreted as a lack of love in your central relationship? What if your love wasn’t conditional? What kind of emotional intimacy could you have then?

Polyamorous people are really just sex addicts.

I get why people buy into this one. I’ve encountered enough people who claimed to be polyamorous but were really just brazen sluts using the term as a euphemism for their brazen sluttiness.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with being a brazen slut! I love me a good brazen slut! I’ve been a brazen slut many times, and it was quite enjoyable!)

But there’s a difference between wanting to have lots of sex with lots of people and being polyamorous.

Once again, polyamory is about love. Sex is obviously a part of the human expression of love, at least in the romantic/sexual sense, but for poly people, sex is not the main reason for wanting to eschew monogamy.

Love is the main reason — the ability to love and be loved by more than one partner, and knowing that life is fuller and richer because of these diverse connections.

Enjoying sex with sexy people that you love is some yummy icing, though! Wink wink.

Personally, I can’t participate in sex that comes with no emotional connection at all. No judgements on people who enjoy sex for the sake of sex; it just doesn’t have any fire for me.

That being said, there are degrees of emotional connections, with some being more passionate, more romantic, or more intense than others. Some of my relationships are solidly platonic with a hefty dose of wholly unromantic sexual attraction, and some are wildly romantic and sexually charged, but we chafe when we try to be friends.

The one constant: All of my relationships are based in love.