OR Would Some­one Polyamorous Ever Date Some­one Who Was­n’t

Ques­tion: If some­one non-monog­a­mous want­ed to date a monog­a­mous per­son, would they con­sid­er it? Would YOU con­sid­er it? 

Short Answer: Not real­ly. Unless you’re ask­ing me out. But then, actu­al­ly, prob­a­bly not. Unless…  👀

Longer Answer: Okay, so it turns out that this is a place where there’s like a 99% answer, and then a bril­liant rain­bow of nuance in that 1%, so I’m going to drill down a lit­tle.

Let’s get the obvi­ous out of the way first. I can­not pos­si­bly speak to what every non-monog­a­mous per­son would do. There are mil­lions of us—even out­side of Port­land. There are so many approach­es to non-monogamy that even if you take out the com­plete­ly uneth­i­cal ones*, what you have left is a vast vari­a­tion of motives and inten­tions. From casu­al sex out­side of a dyad that would have no prob­lem with a sex­u­al encounter with a monog­a­mous per­son (as it would be a one-off and/or involve no emo­tion­al strings), to a mar­ried cou­ple where one per­son is wild­ly unful­filled and has a rela­tion­ship that is not asked nor told about… and yet, they both kind of know, to the unfor­tu­nate­ly-all-too-com­mon uni­corn hunters who attempt to cre­ate a closed tri­ad by bring­ing a monog­a­mous per­son into their rela­tion­ship. 

And this can even involve a clear, open, hon­est con­ver­sa­tion with some­one who is monog­a­mous about what the bound­aries will be if they start to feel jeal­ous, pos­ses­sive, or inse­cure. (“I will date you, but I am not monog­a­mous, so if you start to get jeal­ous, you’re on your own.”) Per­son­al­ly, I couldn’t do that to someone—just stone-faced tell them that their emo­tion­al dys­reg­u­la­tion is not my prob­lem and that I told them it might hap­pen if they dat­ed me—while they white knuck­le the rapids of their emo­tions. So I tend to avoid the sce­nario alto­geth­er.

But some peo­ple can, and some do. I can’t speak to what­ev­er haz­ing process they have to gauge the emo­tion­al intel­li­gence of their poten­tial über­peep or if they even have one. (Most don’t—they just leave a swath of emo­tion­al destruc­tion in their paths. But you can’t say they didn’t warn you or you didn’t know what you were get­ting into.) I have insight, my own approach, and over­lap with a lot of polyamorous folks, but I can’t speak for every­one.

[*Uneth­i­cal in this case can include cheat­ing, of course, but it also might include try­ing to lure some­one monog­a­mous into a non-monog­a­mous sit­u­a­tion to “con­vert” them even though that’s not what they’re look­ing for. Any dis­hon­esty about moti­va­tions would also fall under this—in the polyamorous com­mu­ni­ty, we talk a lot about peo­ple who want to get with a non-monog­a­mous per­son and then whee­dle out their oth­er part­ners through var­i­ous manip­u­la­tions until they’re monog­a­mous (“cowboying”/“cowgirling” it is often called), but what we don’t spend a lot of time dis­cussing is how some­times that uneth­i­cal behav­ior starts on the polyam/non-monog­a­mous side with some­one who is act­ing like they want to be “poached” and might even hint around that they would be monog­a­mous for the right per­son in order to get with that monog­a­mous per­son, but they actu­al­ly have no inten­tion of doing so. (Or they do have that inten­tion, and are being com­plete­ly uneth­i­cal in a dif­fer­ent way.) Or per­haps they claim to have vast emo­tion­al avail­abil­i­ty for a rela­tion­ship, but real­ly they have every oth­er Thurs­day open and will be shit about answer­ing texts. “Uneth­i­cal” in this case can also include drop­ping the fact of being non-monog­a­mous well after the time to talk about that has passed. And you can, of course, have the same cal­cu­lat­ed obfus­ca­tion of inten­tions as you do in ANY relationship—including monog­a­mous ones—where some­one is pre­tend­ing to want sex to get at love or pre­tend­ing to want love to get at sex. And the VAST major­i­ty of uni­corn hunt­ing is uneth­i­cal for one rea­son or anoth­er (prob­a­bly my next FAQ ques­tion for non-monogamy). I’m only even scratch­ing the sur­face on ways that a non-monog­a­mous per­son try­ing to date a monog­a­mous per­son can be UNeth­i­cal.]

But even stick­ing to the eth­i­cal ver­sions, and lim­it­ing my answer to the one per­son I can cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly speak for (myself), there’s still a lot to unpack. Why is mono-poly so rare and some­thing many non-monog­a­mous vet­er­ans avoid?

The prob­lem with these two groups of peo­ple is that MOST OF THEM (which doesn’t mean “all of them,” and to hope­ful­ly head off a tire fire in my com­ment sec­tion, absolute­ly may not include YOU per­son­al­ly) are fun­da­men­tal­ly view­ing rela­tion­ships in dif­fer­ent ways. In monogamy, the pair bond is placed as the cen­ter­piece of any roman­tic/non-pla­ton­ic life, and oth­er rela­tion­ships are either out­side that romantic/sexual cir­cle or they are per­ceived as threats. (Or both if you’ve ever seen jeal­ous peo­ple get wigged out over their part­ners’ friend­ship to some­one.) If you kiss some­one, it’s “cheat­ing.” If you fuck some­one, it’s a betray­al. Talk to some­one too long whom you find attrac­tive, and they might be clocked as a threat. Monogamy can feel very secure, deeply inti­mate, and sta­ble (and involves much less calendaring—or typ­i­cal­ly even the need to turn the word “cal­en­dar” into a gerund). Although in the same way that non-monogamy is no pro­tec­tion against cheat­ing or jeal­ousy, monogamy isn’t any sort of guar­an­tee against feel­ings of inse­cu­ri­ty or insta­bil­i­ty.

I don’t think non-monogamy is more “evolved,” and I’m not going to drag the val­ue sys­tems of folks who are monog­a­mous. Angels and min­is­ters of grace save me from the peo­ple who think they are high­er forms of life because they have three rela­tion­ships and fuck every­thing that moves. But here is what I will say about the way that I view rela­tion­ships that tends to be fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent than the main­stream cul­ture around me. I hear a lot of pos­ses­sive lan­guage in monogamy that is anti­thet­i­cal to how I view life, rela­tion­ships, and oth­er peo­ple. (Every­thing from “you’re mine” to “stay away from MY woman.”) Some of it is roman­tic. Most of it is tox­ic. Often, it’s in a strange lim­i­nal space where it is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly both. But it all seems root­ed in this idea that once you pair bond, that per­son is in some fun­da­men­tal way “yours” until you un-pair bond (divorce or breakup) or one of you dies. Even just the idea that being with some­one else for any rea­son ever is “cheat­ing” betrays that per­spec­tive. 

“Cheat­ing” in polyamory involves break­ing agree­ments. Whether that agree­ment is to dis­close STIs after swap­ping flu­ids with some­one, use a con­dom, or keep Fri­days open for date night. Cheat­ing in this con­text is tru­ly step­ping out­side the preestab­lished agree­ments and doing some­thing (or not doing some­thing) y’all said that you would not do (or would do). “Cheat­ing” in monogamy involves this idea that some­one did some­thing out­side the cou­ple that “belongs” only between the cou­ple.

And I don’t want this to sound like I’m talk­ing about own­ing people—I just mean that romantically/sexually, there is an under­cur­rent of pos­ses­sion and code­pen­dence in monogamy. Not every sin­gle monog­a­mous per­son (and some won’t hear this no mat­ter how many times I say it) is pos­ses­sive and code­pen­dent, but lis­ten to a radio sta­tion for five min­utes, and it’s hard to deny that this way of view­ing rela­tion­ships… at least… uh… exists.

Now before you oil up that torch hes­s­ian and sharp­en your pitch­fork tips, tox­i­c­i­ty exists in non-monogamy too (boy howdy) so it’s not that ENM is BETTER. It’s that ENM is dif­fer­ent. If you ever want to see a group of peo­ple with a high­er than aver­age num­ber of folks who look to roman­tic love for per­son­al val­i­da­tion, or who try to fuck around like they’re catch­ing all the Poké­mon, look no fur­ther.

But it is dif­fer­ent.

I view peo­ple as sov­er­eign and rela­tion­ships as flu­id. I am more inter­est­ed in auton­o­my, in choice, in free­dom, and in some­one being with me because they’ve active­ly cho­sen me in that moment and not because they’ve com­mit­ted to hav­ing no oth­er options for life (or until we go through some hor­ri­ble breakup). I want rela­tion­ships to go where they go—some nev­er go beyond pla­ton­ic, and some are roman­tic but not sex­u­al, and some are sex­u­al and not roman­tic. I want a friend I bang because we’re both into that, and an anchor part­ner who doesn’t have the pres­sure of try­ing to be every­thing to me. I want a pla­ton­ic friend I cud­dle (in a way that would freak out 99% of monog­a­mous part­ners), and I want to be able to chase an instant con­nec­tion to romance if that’s where it goes, and not have that be some­thing that is for­ev­er closed off to me because some­one else got to me a few years ear­li­er. 

And all those rela­tion­ships find their own space and dynam­ics. Deep inti­mate friend­ship is not off the table, cud­dling is not off the table, sex is not off the table, one-day entwin­ing lives is not off the table. Com­mit­ment is not off the table. Cohab­i­ta­tion is not off the table. Rais­ing kids is not off the table. (Although I sup­pose rais­ing MY kids is off the table, since I’m snipped.) Sup­port­ing each oth­er in old age is not off the table. The uni­verse is our oys­ter, and we cre­ate our world as we go instead of using the hand­book giv­en to us by a patri­ar­chal world. 

And just because sev­en­ty-five dis­claimers is nev­er enough, if two peo­ple keep on con­scious­ly choos­ing each oth­er and don’t want any­one else, that’s awe­some. My only issue stems from a world where most are not tru­ly pre­sent­ed with an alter­na­tive. Even if they know it exists in the­o­ry, there is a clear path of least resis­tance. Most peo­ple will sort of leave you alone, but not every­one will, and it’s def­i­nite­ly a world built for cou­ples. If peo­ple choose each oth­er (and ONLY each oth­er) over and over again, I want it to be because that is a viable choice for them to make among many.

Any­thing is pos­si­ble once that logis­tic is cleared—once you start writ­ing your own rules for life, you might change all KINDS of things, includ­ing your rela­tion­ship. Your life might not look par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ven­tion­al, but it’s up to two or more con­sent­ing adults to cre­ate their own ways of con­nect­ing. And the peo­ple they con­nect with will all have their own rela­tion­ships that find THEIR own space and dynam­ics. My longest-run­ning rela­tion­ship was liv­ing with a woman who was mar­ried. She loved us both. They had kids. I lived with them. She dat­ed oth­er peo­ple and all those rela­tion­ships found their own ebbs and flows that didn’t have a thing to do with her and me. 

And at our core, non-monog­a­mous folks under­stand that one relationship’s dynam­ics do not nec­es­sar­i­ly imper­il another’s. (They some­times absolute­ly do, and non-monog­a­mous folks have not tran­scend­ed jeal­ousy or inse­cu­ri­ty or evolved into beings of pure ener­gy or any­thing, so this often takes a lit­tle inner work and a lot of faith to be chill about in the face of Shit Actu­al­ly Hap­pen­ing™, and some peo­ple with anx­ious attach­ment are VERY much works-in-progress.) If Rhap­sody wants to spend a week­end with anoth­er lover, I love that for her. I might get lone­ly. I might even have to process some uncom­fort­able feel­ings that I’m being replaced, but it is more impor­tant that she do that and choose me when she does than I try to con­trol her. (And on a side note, she has cer­tain­ly dealt with enough sexy­time week­end get­aways from me, so fair’s fair.) That core val­ue of her per­son­al sov­er­eign­ty, auton­o­my and independence—and mine—is more impor­tant to me than my tran­sient wib­ble feel­ings.

So are there monog­a­mous peo­ple who don’t view rela­tion­ships in this way and could be with some­one who was not-monog­a­mous? Sure. They’re very very very much (maybe like three more “very”s in there) the excep­tion and not the rule, but they exist.

Maybe they’re super-duper busy—only time for some­thing super small—but they can’t/won’t put that sort of lim­i­ta­tion on the oth­er per­son. Maybe they don’t like sex very much (or even at all) and they want their part­ner who is hyper­sex­u­al to be hap­py. Maybe they’re just look­ing for sex (or cud­dles or a climb­ing part­ner) and do not want to invest in a whole-ass rela­tion­ship, so some­one who can only hang out with them once a week is per­fect. Maybe they’re Welsh. Many non-monog­a­mous cou­ples go through peri­ods of one per­son being monog­a­mous just because they don’t have the time or ener­gy to date. (It’s SUPER com­mon dur­ing preg­nan­cy, for exam­ple.) They aren’t monog­a­mous… they’re just sort of func­tion­al­ly monog­a­mous in prac­tice for a while.

There are also emo­tion­al rea­sons for a rela­tion­ship to be mono-polyamorous. Maybe a per­son has come to the con­clu­sion that their needs for a part­ner are very small, and are eas­i­ly met by a sin­gle per­son, so they don’t need or want more than one per­son in their lives, even though THAT per­son needs more. Maybe deal­ing with the social ostra­ciza­tion placed on non-monog­a­mous folks is just too much so they only want to be seen by the world in one rela­tion­ship. Again, maybe they’re Welsh. But for what­ev­er rea­son, the emo­tion­al land­scape of a non-monog­a­mous part­ner tru­ly doesn’t both­er them even though they, them­selves, aren’t look­ing for that.

These rea­sons are gen­er­al­ly prag­mat­ic, though. They do not come from a fun­da­men­tal par­a­digm dis­agree­ment or deeply dif­fer­ent val­ues about how to hold con­nec­tions. If some­one were “monog­a­mous” because they were super busy, and one day they fin­ished grad school (or what­ev­er) and were NO LONGER super busy, and want­ed to bang the entire Bay area to make up for lost time, that would be on the table. In my case, I would make sure our STI safe­ty pro­to­cols were reviewed and wish them hap­py hunt­ing hunt­ing. Also, it is just as impor­tant that peo­ple I am with do not view me as a pos­ses­sion and all of my oth­er rela­tion­ships as “threats” as it is for me to do so towards them.

So if some­one want­ed to fuck, that could hap­pen. I might be some­where on the demi­sex­u­al spec­trum, so I don’t real­ly do casu­al, but as with most peo­ple, that is a descrip­tive obser­va­tion of how things most­ly go most of the time, not a pre­scrip­tive rule that I shack­le myself with. I have been in sit­u­a­tions where enthu­si­asm has gone a long way.

It gets trick­i­er if this monog­a­mous per­son doesn’t just want to get railed in a sun­dress, but actu­al­ly wants to date/be involved/get seri­ous. I’m NOT going to change for such a per­son, so usu­al­ly they’re try­ing to tem­porar­i­ly ame­lio­rate feel­ings of lone­li­ness (or horni­ness), which is a lit­tle unfor­tu­nate because it’s usu­al­ly monog­a­mous folks who need the rela­tion­ship to be in the ON or OFF posi­tion, and I work way more on a dim­mer switch with a col­or wheel. (“What do you want this rela­tion­ship to be, and how much of it do you want?”) Gen­er­al­ly, I would love to hang out with my friends, bang it out a few times, and then gra­cious­ly step aside when they find some­thing a lit­tle clos­er to what they’re look­ing for. But that’s not how monog­a­mous peo­ple TEND to oper­ate. Also def­i­nite­ly in the vast major­i­ty of monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships, hang­ing out with some­one you used to have sex with (like…last month) is a big no-no, and I’d rather stay friends.

Can it hap­pen out­side of “I would be poly if it weren’t for this thing”? If there’s a shock­ing amount of hon­esty, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and align­ment of val­ues around rela­tion­ships. DOES it hap­pen? It’s rare. It’s very rare.

Also… over twen­ty years, I’ve learned a sad fact about dat­ing the folks who DON’T share those val­ues and skills: peo­ple who are monog­a­mous tend to be the ones who break my heart. Crush it. Frappe that lit­tle guy into a smooth­ie. They leave for some­thing “real.” It’s all the non-monog­a­mous peo­ple who tend to “de-esca­late” and find a NEW rela­tion­ship dynam­ic that works bet­ter because they were not fet­tered to that “On/Off” switch from the begin­ning. Yes, polyamory has breakups that are real­ly BREAK ups, but monogamy doesn’t often have the kind of breakups where the peo­ple stay fast friends and enjoy group sex scenes at play par­ties.

Or said monog­a­mous peeps get real­ly pos­ses­sive and jeal­ous in a way that they become com­plete­ly dys­reg­u­lat­ed and put that on me. They view my estab­lished rela­tion­ships with dubi­ous sus­pi­cion and per­haps a tall glass of envy and go pos­i­tive­ly apeshit if I start any­thing new. It’s a train­wreck and it’s always the same kind of train­wreck. Jeal­ousy, anger, accusations…blender sounds.

So I tend to stay away.

I don’t even usu­al­ly like to date peo­ple who are NEW to non-monogamy. Monogamy isn’t bet­ter than non-monogamy. They’re just dif­fer­ent. Like Star Trek vs. Star Wars. Uh… okay, like Android vs. iPhone. Hmm­mm. Okay, like enjoy­ing pineap­ple on piz­za. Hang­ing toi­let paper? Milk before or after cere­al? How to load the dish­wash­er? Huh… this is hard­er than I thought.

Okay, let’s do this: it’s like win­dow seat vs. aisle seat. Nei­ther is bet­ter. Both have ben­e­fits and lia­bil­i­ties. It’s a per­son­al pref­er­ence whether you like to be able to see the plane take off and land and con­trol whether the solar laser will be blind­ing every­one in your aisle, or whether you don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like ask­ing per­mis­sion from two gate­keep­ers every time you have to pee.

Your choice.

But monog­a­mous peo­ple (I’m try­ing very hard not to call them Monogs, y’all) are VERY dif­fer­ent. And non-monogamy has a set of tools that are just like any skill set: they take time to prac­tice and years to mas­ter. Rad­i­cal hon­esty. Active lis­ten­ing. Acknowl­edg­ing and work­ing through what are some­times VERY uncom­fort­able feel­ings with­out expect­ing the oth­er per­son to “fix” them. Bound­aries, bound­aries, bound­aries! It’s absolute­ly pos­si­ble for some­one monog­a­mous to have these skills, but it’s prob­a­bly not BECAUSE they’re monog­a­mous. Maybe they own a taco truck in Den­ver or some­thing. On the oth­er hand they’re kind of like sur­vival skills in non-monogamy—you meet some­one who’s been non-monog­a­mous for a while who isn’t at least pass­ing­ly famil­iar with how to do this stuff and you are bound to won­der, “How the hell have you made it THIS far?” And just gen­er­al­ly, these don’t tend to be tech­niques par­tic­u­lar­ly well honed or sophis­ti­cat­ed in some­one who is just “will­ing to try it out” in order to get laid while they look for some­thing bet­ter.

And it kind of leads to this VERY pre­dictable implo­sion of hurt feel­ings, unvoiced expec­ta­tions, jeal­ousy, enti­tle­ment, and resent­ments… blender sounds. And every­one thinks they’ll be the exception…but only a very very few ever are.

It also means that in gen­er­al, most monog­a­mous peo­ple lack the sort of for­ward, direct honesty—and self-honesty—that some­one would need to say, “I real­ly want some­one to cud­dle and watch scary movies with and maybe fuck a cou­ple of times a week to use as self-esteem spack­le while I look for some­thing that bet­ter match­es what I’m look­ing for long term. And if I find that, then we imme­di­ate­ly de-esca­late to friends. Are you up for that?” Which is, iron­i­cal­ly, exact­ly the sort of thing some­one would need to say for me to mod­u­late my expec­ta­tions and pro­ceed with­out being afraid that one or both of us were going to catch feels and the whole thing would become a train­wreck of heart­break and blender sounds.

So that’s the answer. And it’s the answer for a LOT of polyam folks (though I can’t speak for them all), espe­cial­ly the ones with expe­ri­ence.

Yes, it’s pos­si­ble. No, it isn’t like­ly. Both the par­a­digm of how to look at rela­tion­ships and the tool set to be good at nav­i­gat­ing the par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges of non-monogamy are rare to authen­ti­cal­ly find in peo­ple who aren’t already non-monog­a­mous. So gen­er­al­ly, for me, it’s best to just leave that whole thing alone.

Unless they’re REALLY cute…

**blender sounds**