Learning to love: from monogamy to polyamory

On being and becoming... polyamorous

Snuggling snails outside my house, at choice to form the relationship they want

Today marks the beginning of the global Week of Visibility for Non-monogamy. So I want to take a break from the darkness—authoritarianism, cruel legislative action, metastasizing police state—to write for the first time in this forum about my own journey letting go of monogamy… and allowing myself to love and be loved in the way that has always felt true to me. I want to share about what it has felt like to finally live and love more authentically, to acknowledge to myself—and others—what I have always known: that I am polyamorous.

This will be the first of two posts: I want to start by sharing my own story and journey. This feels vulnerable to me, and important: I feel a deep yearning to speak my truth, and to be seen for who I am. This is part of how I understand what it means to belong.

In a future post I want to take a more explicitly political stance. The growing discourse around nonmonogamy that is currently edging into the mainstream is too often the “white feminism” equivalent of the radical potential that lurks in re-imagining our relationships outside of patriarchal structures: I am drawn to the more liberatory potential of what Roy Graff calls “open relating.”

I imagine this topic is new to many of you: or at least, a firsthand account may be. As you read, I encourage you to pay attention to your body and what is coming up for you. What do you feel yourself curious about, or drawn to? What do you feel yourself repelled by, or resisting?

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I’m doing my best to speak here from my experience. But of course I can’t talk about my relationships without implicating others, and my wife in particular. I’m working hard not to speak for her in this post, though she is in my mind and heart throughout. We have discussed my/our coming out process at length, and she has seen and consented to me publishing this post. I feel grateful for her support and her willingness to stretch to support my desire to be more fully seen and to create space for this public discourse, even where her natural inclination is toward more privacy.

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I want my two lives… to be one life

Over the last seven years I have gone on a deep intentional journey to reconnect with my erotic self, as part of a broader commitment to lead a more integrated and embodied life. Over the last four years that has included practicing ethical nonmonogamy (ENM). For me this meant opening what had been to that point a 15-year monogamous relationship (including 13 years of marriage).

[Explanatory sidebar: ENM and CNM, for consensual nonmonogamy, are terms that emerged to distinguish our practice from one of the most visible failures of monogamy—cheating on monogamous partners as an example of unethical or nonconsensual nonmonogamy. I prefer “ethical” because I think you can have consent and still not be ethical, though which term to use is a live debate in the ENM/CNM community. Both terms are intended to be an umbrella for a diverse spectrum of relationships that are not monogamous: everything from polyamory (multiple loving romantic relationships) to swinging (usually mono-romantic, but poly-sexual) to what Dan Savage calls “monogamish” relationships. I think ENM is a useful heuristic, though I also like the idea from Roy Graff that the prefix should also be applied to monogamy… since so much of monogamy as presently practiced is neither consensual—which implies meaningful choice—or ethical, given often-unacknowledged patterns of control and coercive power. For a curated list of resources I have found helpful in my ongoing journey, see here.]

So why am I writing about this personal—even private—journey, in this very public forum?

First, everything about this journey is an expression of my own quest for belonging, and my deep commitment to living an integrated life. This process of becoming for me is inextricably connected to my political commitment to co-create a world where everyone belongs. The radical act of trying to attune to my desires, to act on my deepest truths, and to do so from a place of intentionality and care for everyone involved… is not just personal for me. As early feminists remind us: it’s also political.

For me exploring the erotic and ENM (separate explorations, but in my case connected) was precisely about refusing to hide/deny pieces of myself, about refusing to allow myself to be fragmented by the systems of oppression that keep us from full belonging. It feels incongruous not to write and share about the aspect of my life most deeply connected to belonging that is affecting how I show up day-to-day, and contributing to my ongoing transformation. I want to express myself as fully and interdependently I can. But not only to express: to be witnessed. Seen. Supported, and loved, for who I am.

And it turns out, part of who I am is polyamorous: I have experienced ENM and my first deep polyamorous relationship as a coming home to myself. A felt sense of being fully free—and fully me—for the first time. As I have acknowledged that truth to myself, I have become less willing to hide that piece of who I am, the ways I relate, and those relationships that matter to me. This is not about my sex life: for me this is about what it means to be human, to relate, to practice interdependence… to belong. I teared up watching Colin share his own struggle about coming out (in the context of homosexuality) on Ted Lasso:

But there is a second reason. I am committed to building a world where everyone belongs, and to doing the best I can to dismantle the systems of oppression that prevent us from belonging. I think the intentional exploration of how we want to experience and express intimacy; how we want to explore and experience the erotic; and the intentional inquiry into what kinds of relationship structures best serve us is absolutely foundational to dismantling patriarchy and the other systems of oppression that keep us separated from ourselves, our deepest longings, and each other.

I want to destigmatize the erotic, and our right to pleasure. I want to destigmatize nonmonogamy. I want to create space in our cultural discourse for diverse ways of loving and being loved: to encourage everyone to attune to their own desires, and to strive for interdependent relationships. And I can: I’m a heterosexual, class-privileged, white American, and am read as a man. There are many others (Black, femme, queer, trans, economically precarious, living in rural or religious or conservative communities) who don’t have the option to be “out.” My primary risks are judgment and social ostracization (both of which I have already experienced); others risk their livelihoods and physical safety.

I strive to live my life as an embodied invitation: to encourage others to live their fullest truths, stretch into their deepest sense of belonging. I want to do for this topic (in this post and the one that follows, whenever I get to it) what I try to do with all my writing: share as honestly as I can what I am learning; and curate resources to support others in their own journeys, to find reflected in my story and learnings aspects of themselves and their own perhaps-not-yet-named inquiries. And to invite connection, deeper inquiry, and accountability: to help me practice in integrity.

A journey of becoming

I was fourteen years old, a freshman in my Catholic high school (before I had any interpersonal sexual experience at all) when I first encountered what struck me at the time as a simultaneously radical and obvious idea from Dan Savage: if in conflict between marriage and monogamy, choose marriage (if you’re already married… let go of monogamy and maintain the marriage). Even at that age it made intuitive sense to me.

Evidently I brought that mindset into my first serious relationships (which were monogamous, because I didn’t know there were other options). In a recent conversation with my first serious girlfriend—from freshman year in college, over 20 years ago—she laughed at my polyamorous revelation and said: “I could have told you that!”

After several significant monogamous relationships in/after college (I half-jokingly called myself a “serial monogamist”), I was bound and determined to remain single and non-exclusive for an entire year. At age 23 I defined for myself a set of goals for the kinds of relationships I wanted to pursue, and unwittingly described polyamory—though I didn’t have language for it at the time. I wanted to date multiple people; to explore whatever forms of sexual and/or romantic intimacy felt true between me and my partner(s); to be fully transparent with everyone involved; and to the extent possible try not to hurt anyone’s feelings (or at least to hold care for the feelings of everyone involved).

That lasted about six months… until I met the woman who would become my wife. I felt absolute clarity—a fact that still surprises me to this day—that this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And I remember feeling sad that I would have to end the other sexual and romantic relationships I was in (not because she asked; I didn’t even consider that there might be other possibilities).

We dutifully followed what Amy Gahran has aptly called the “relationship escalator”: a set of largely-unquestioned mono-normative (and amatonormative, the idea that romantic relationships take precedence over other relationships) cultural assumptions that structure our relationships. We committed to sexual and romantic exclusivity (this is often the unstated assumption about what it means to become boyfriend/girlfriend); met each other’s families; and I asked her to marry me the following summer: she said yes!

We had a “state of the union” conversation while planning our wedding, and I confessed my two truths: I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and the idea of monogamy scared the hell out of me. I took comfort in the fact that we were able to have that conversation, and we returned to it over the years as we got married, moved across country, and had two children.

The courage to choose integrity

For me it came down to a question of integrity… and belonging. I was doing so much work in other parts of my life—professionally in particular—to live a more embodied and integrated life… and yet this piece of myself felt out of integrity. It was less about the relationship structure, and more about my commitment to feeling and expressing my authentic truth.

The fact is: I love deeply and expansively, and always have. And in every other domain of life I am free to act upon that love, and express it freely—except when it comes to romantic or sexual intimacy. I experienced monogamy as a restriction on my freedom: a constraint on what it means to be me. I felt a call to become more connected to my erotic relational self: to better understand my own sexuality, desires, and ways of loving, being loved, and sharing intimacy.

I love hard work: I appreciate a challenge. My friends have observed about me that I tend to thrive on a degree of difficulty. And yet: it is difficult to overstate how hard it was for me to (a) be honest with myself about what I was longing for (b) admit that it was not an idle longing but a foundational need (c) ask my life partner to support me in pursuing that need, fearing that she would experience suffering as a result.

Ultimately, it wasn’t my own courage that helped me do what I needed to do. Rather, I sourced inspiration from outside myself. From people in my professional circles who I saw boldly stepping into their own erotic power, and women of color in particular: people like adrienne maree brown in Pleasure Activism; Sonya Renee Taylor in The Body is Not an Apology; Kim Tallbear’s work on decolonizing sex (and others cited in this post from five years ago, documenting my journey to that point, before we opened our marriage).

And closer to home: I felt like I was failing my children. I was denying myself and my deepest truths for fear of the impact it might have on others… something I would never encourage or ask them to do.

It was those two factors that finally pushed me to do what I had been too afraid to do for my own sake: after 13 years of monogamous marriage, to ask my wife for her consent to explore ethical nonmonogamy. For me the moment Dan Savage named almost 30 years ago had finally arrived: I could not stay in my marriage and stay monogamous. Something had to give. I felt clear that I wanted to stay married to my wife… but I knew I had to let go of monogamy.

The willingness to lose… in order to gain

At my request, my wife and I formally kicked off our ethical nonmonogamy (ENM) journey in the fall of 2021. Though I didn’t fully understand it as such at the time (she did!), it meant the end of one relationship… and the beginning of another. As Roy Graff notes:

Transitioning from monogamy to polyamory when you are partnered, involves consciously letting your old relationship end so you can create a new expansive relationship with the same person.

This was the hardest part: I had to be willing to lose the thing I valued most—my loving relationship with my wife, possibly to include the end of my marriage—to live more authentically. As Dan Savage put it on Ezra Klein’s podcast:

You can’t ask for what you want if you’re not willing to lose what you have.

Oof. The truth is… at the outset I wasn’t fully willing to do that. The foundation of our relationship felt so strong, we were excellent in so many other ways, that I couldn’t believe that we couldn’t find a way to make this work. Couldn’t we choose marriage, and let go of monogamy? Part of my/our journey to this point was me accepting this truth and being willing to let go: to surrender to what our authentic truths might be, whatever that might mean for our relationship.

Ironically, for me this felt like a return to our wedding vows, all those years ago, where we read from Kahlil Gibran: “the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” The goal for me has always been interdependence: finding ways to thrive without losing ourselves or each other. This to me is the beautiful invitation in Prentis Hemphill’s definition of boundaries: trying to find the distance at which I can love you and me at the same time.

Interdependence begins with “i”

Here’s the thing: it is incredibly difficult to stay connected to yourself and connected to your partner at the same time… especially when you may want different things. It’s also deeply gendered under patriarchy: men are socialized to be independent (selfish); women to be codependent (selfless). But of course we want both: self-ful and connected. This is the tantalizing promise of interdependence. Esther Perel explains the challenge:

The core question is how do I stay connected to myself while I connect with you, and how do I stay connected to you without losing touch with myself?

As Brad Reedy reminds us, there are (at least) three dynamics we were/are working on at all times: me and my inner work, her and her inner work, and then us and our relational work. For the “us” to work we each have to be autonomous, self-sovereign, and open: we have to own what is ours, allow our partner to own what is theirs, and to work (and play!) together where our two selves intersect in our relationship.

There is a sequencing in the dance of interdependence. It has to start with the “I.” This is both obvious and radical: of course “I” is part of “We.” And yet, as Martha Kauppi, a therapist who recently published a book on how to support people in nonmonogamous relationships, explains:

Some people haven’t yet given themselves permission to get in touch with what they want.

Yes, that resonates. We are all socialized to internalize dominant culture desires: a very patriarchal heteronormative and objectifying view of desire. I grew up knowing what society wanted me to want… which did not resonate with me. Yet I had very little social/cultural support to identify what I actually wanted (much less the relational skills to communicate those desires, even if I were in touch with them). This is doubly true for people socialized female, with the attendant burden of a cultural expectation of people-pleasing, and in particular the pressure for heterosexual women to cater to male desire.

I want you… to want me

This is about boundaries: knowing (and being able to communicate!) what we need to feel safe, to feel like we are able to be our full selves. But it’s also about attuning to our desires, which I actually think is much harder (I tried to unpack these concepts in the context of nonmonogamy here). Martha puts it bluntly:

These are not behavioral skills, these are developmental tasks.

Yes! One of my main takeaways from this journey: this work is not optional for anyone who wishes to be in loving relationships, regardless of what structure you may choose.

This is what I’ve always wanted (maybe what all of us have always wanted?) I want you—your autonomous, boundaried, beautiful self, centered in your own desires—to want me. To want the authentic, vulnerable, autonomous, and expressive self that is me. But I can’t trust that you are acting from choice if you haven’t first done the work to center yourself and get in touch with your desires and boundaries. From that grounded place—and only from that grounded place—can you then express authentic interdependent desire for me. As adrienne maree brown wrote in Pleasure Activism:

The first step of consent is tuning in to your own desire.

This for me was one of the epiphanies of polyamory as a relationship structure: it makes me feel safe. I realize this sounds paradoxical; most people find safety (or at least the perception of it) inside monogamy. But for me monogamy always felt forced: how could I be sure my partner was choosing me, and not defaulting to me because the structure demands it?

This is part of my wounding as a large White male-bodied person under patriarchy: my life experience has taught me that I can’t fully trust the “yes” of people with less social/structural power, because the very conditions under which we are engaging are rife with oppression that make it difficult—and can feel unsafe—for people to be honest with me about their truths.

ENM relieves me of this burden. I know each day that my partners are choosing me… because they don’t have to. They could be with anyone… and still choose to be with me. That for me is security: I can relax into knowing that I am chosen, and loved. As this random Twitter user put it:

Opening deeply: the power of choice

This is actually what it’s all about (with a nod to Kate Loree for her recent book with this title). Polyamory is my truth; monogamy may be yours. Both can be beautiful ways to relate: provided we choose those structures from a place of agency and desire as expressions of our deepest truths for how we choose to love and be loved. I love this definition of “open relating” from Roy Graff:

Open Relating is about creating and maintaining conscious, connected and autonomous, expansive relationships, regardless of their dynamic and how many people are involved. Doing so requires first an honest unflinching look at our own vulnerabilities, fears, needs, wants and desires.

Yes. That’s what I’ve always wanted. I’m encouraged by the movement toward concepts like “conscious monogamy” and “radical monogamy” and even the paradox of “open monogamy” (which seeks to expand the definition of monogamy to include nonmonogamy, eye-roll emoji). Like my embrace of polyamory, it’s about doing the hard work to get in touch with your desires, and to co-create with your partner(s) a relationship structure that enables interdependence. As Marie Thouin notes:

Monogamy from a place of freedom is absolutely wonderful! But “default monogamy” from a place of social pressure is a choice made on your behalf—and that breeds all sorts of trouble. Freedom isn’t a relationship style: it’s the sovereignty behind it.

And it need not be sexual: many asexual people prefer polyamorous structures where there isn’t so much pressure on one person trying to fulfill all of your needs.

I’ve loved the radical invitation to really feel into what types of intimacy I seek in my relationships, and have been inspired by the Relationship Smorgasbord. The tool invites us to think about what forms of intimacy we wish to share in any given relationship, and to be explicit about that. I think this tool can also be hugely helpful for monogamous relationships, to help step off the “relationship escalator” and be more intentional about the kinds of relationships you want to create: I wish I had this during my monogamous years.

I particularly appreciate the provocation to distinguish between emotional and romantic intimacy, and physical and sexual intimacy; and I love the idea of keeping the categories of kink and power exchange separate from sexual intimacy. It’s been hugely helpful for me in distinguishing between the kind of intimacy I seek in ALL relationships (emotional and intellectual, yes please!), and the specific forms of intimacy I seek in specific relationships.

Learning (and un-learning) how to love… and be loved

In a future post I want to explore more fully some of my learnings from this journey to-date, and what I see as the fractal implications for the world (beyond the narrow I/We that is my practice ground). But I want to name three things that I have appreciated most about this journey. To be clear, I think most of these benefits are accessible inside of monogamy: it just requires that much more intentionality to combat the mono- and amato-normative patriarchal culture we are conditioned into.

1. There is no place to hide. As someone who loves self-growth and shining light into the shadows, this is one of my favorite things about ENM. The very nature of the structure demands that we upskill our capacities if we want to be successful, especially around communication and processing feelings. To give one example: jealousy is a common issue (in all relationships, but in nonmonogamy in particular). In monogamous relationships, a common way people deal with jealousy is by removing the perceived “threat,” often by limiting freedom. I feel jealous when you hang out with your attractive coworker after work; please stop doing that. In nonmonogamy, we are invited to do the deeper work to understand what the jealousy is trying to tell us. Is there some deeper attachment wounding there? Fear of abandonment? Insecurity about our own appearance or self-worth? Is it actually envy (wanting what someone else has) rather than jealousy? Is there an unmet need or longing that hasn’t been voiced? That deeper inquiry to me is what it’s all about: better understanding myself and my partner(s) is the hallmark of intimacy.

2. The erotic is the best playground for embodied interdependence. Interdependence is difficult under normal circumstances: it’s incredibly hard in the realm of the erotic. In our patriarchal sex-negative culture, the whole enterprise is cloaked in shadow. We have to peel back layers of shame, social stigma/expectations around body image, around performance, about self-worth, about our right to pleasure, about identifying, naming, and negotiating our desires. I love to play Betty Martin’s 3-minute game with new partners, because it’s such a radical practice: to set a baseline foundation of consent, and on top of that foundation to reach for desire… is transformative. And: to intentionally explore the erotic requires me to get out of my head and into my body... to allow a different part of myself to lead. To stay in my body means I have to slow down, to listen carefully, to pay attention. To be in dialogue not only with my partners’ bodies but also with my own, and to extend equal care to each.

3. I am a different person with different people. More accurately: different people reflect/refract back different pieces of myself. And there is something about the subtle dynamics of intimate relationships—and sexual relationships in particular—that brings a lens not present in platonic or familial relationships. In monogamy I only had one partner with whom to gain insight about myself in that sphere, so it was hard to discern what was about me, what was about her, and what was about our unique interpersonal relationship. With multiple partners, it becomes much clearer: oh. Turns out that’s a pattern I need to look at, and it’s not about my partner at all… I’m the common denominator here. Or: oh, that’s a function of patriarchy and the system, not any particular person. Feedback lands differently when I hear it from multiple people. It’s also a great invitation to celebrate what is unique and special about each relationship: to see them as positive sum and abundant, and not in competition with each other. To honor that I get to express different aspects of myself (and so do my partners!) in different relationships… and that I (and therefore We) are stronger because of it.

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I will stop here for today. There is so much more to say, and so much that feels difficult to put into words. I feel so grateful to my wife, for her support and understanding, and all the work she has done and is doing as we continue to evolve our relationship and co-navigate uncharted territory.

I feel grateful to those who have lent a supportive ear or held space for me, especially my sister Trina and my friend Lauren. To the many trailblazers and content creators who continue to influence and shape my journey, and offer an invitation for what a more embodied and integrated erotic life might look like. To the partners I have been fortunate to learn, grow, and practice interdependence with on this journey. And especially to my partner Leela, who has helped me feel and embrace my polyamorous identity, and continues to push me to be a better version of myself.

I’m so proud of the work my wife and I are doing, and the example we are setting for our children. I am excited they will get to grow up in a household where they feel fully at choice to form the types of relationships that work for them: to expect consent and reach for desire. This is hard work, and it’s deeply liberating.

In a future post I will continue to explore nonmonogamy as a lens into cultural change, exploring some of the themes that I see as most relevant beyond the narrow boundaries of interpersonal relationships (moving from I/We to World). I welcome any thoughts and reactions, and am happy to answer questions (if there’s interest, I’m willing to host an Ask Me Anything using the Substack chat/thread feature, for example :-)

In community,

Brian