Polyamory has been getting a lot of press. It basically means having concurrent relationships with more than one person. You might have one primary, but everyone you choose to be with is more or less equal in your affections. My preferred configuration isn’t actually that radical: ethical non-monogamy is basically a good old-fashioned open relationship. There would only ever be two of us in it, but I’d like to trust that person so implicitly, and value them so wholeheartedly, that if they slept with someone else it wouldn’t damage us. I’d like for the other person to trust and value me just as much so that if I did the same, we’d be able to look at it for what it is: a banal act that is fun or weird or intimate or exciting, but ultimately not a threat to our harmony.
“A sort of flexitarian approach to relationships,” I said to Sam. “You have a primary partner, and they’re the important one… ” He rolled his eyes, and I told him he was being too middle class about it. “Me just wanting a normal relationship, where you don’t sleep with other people? I’m not sure that’s quite Volvo territory,” he replied. [...]
“It’s quite a scary concept,” Wilby said. “Because we don’t like the idea of our partner being with someone else. But generally, it’s because we’ve been taught to believe this means that our partner will leave us. Of course,” she continued, “the key point of non-monogamy is that even though your partner might be with another lover, they’re actually coming back to you. And that extra joy and love and happiness might even fuel and rekindle the relationship they have with you. We’ve been conditioned to believe other people are a threat to our relationships, but what if they aren’t?” [...]
Maybe it’s not committed relationships that non-monogamists are rejecting, but the idea that those relationships have to end when the romantic part does. And isn’t that desire – to keep those crucial people in your life – deeply romantic in its own way?
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