I am to polyamory what water is to a sponge. I soak up love, connection and vulnerability like nobody’s business, and I find that my capacity for companionship is boundless—be it in the form of friends, lovers or partners. The fluidity is what really draws me in, knowing that there is room for growth, possibility and curiosity. A never-ending personal investigation into my wants, needs and desires. I like being able to tread down a new path if someone new excites me and see where things may lead. And even with all of its ups and downs, from not always knowing where you stand and never having enough time, I really love polyamory. And yet…there is one thing that still stumps me about the whole thing, and that I miss about monogamy: the future.
Growing up, I remember spending days by the pool with my cousins as they browsed wedding magazines, flipping through the pages and circling the dresses they wanted to wear down the aisle. At 8 years old, I joined in as my discoveries about sexuality, gender and relationship style were still about a decade and a half away. And, the idea of marriage is one that is so ingratiated in our culture that it starts early, like on the playground, playing house and posing as Mommy and Daddy. And as we grow up, we’re told that if we look hard enough, we might just find “the one.” A perfect soulmate. Our other half.
And though the American Dream of owning a house, marrying your significant other in a big white wedding, having 2.5 children and a white picket fence is far from today’s reality, one thing does remain, that monogamous people and their relationships are validated by nearly everything we consume. They have a general sense of their options and a future that doesn’t seem like it could be shaken away like a picture drawn with an Etch-A-Sketch.
Polyamory throws all of that to the side and offers a new perspective. One that rejects the notion of a traditional, normative relationship. It asks you to hypothesize about possibility and multiple outcomes and interchangeable parts. Those are the parts I really truly love about it. But instead of one solid path to the next ten, 15, or 20 years, polyamory is like cool, now try keeping your balance as the path splits into an unknowable number of directions. This knowable bridge to the future is the one thing that monogamy does offer, and I must admit, it’s something that I desperately crave.
