Day 13 - new content - an important note about monogamy and nonmonogamy

I am frustrated somehow by this book still. but no matter

some notes handwritten from last night

this is important

alright so monogamy. even if you’re not married, if you’re in a monogamous relationship, you know you’d been “chosen.”

throwing it away is pretty high stakes

somebody, literally for some amount of time, has decided that you are the person that they want to focus on and put all their eggs into

you are the best person they’d met to date

or at least the best person they met up to this time

you are currently the #1 person in their running for person who they might want to spend the rest of their entire life with, to the exclusion of all other people and the potential of doing this with literally any other human being on the earth

if you are not married, they haven’t fully decided this yes. and even if you do get married, they can undecide this, or cheat, or leave you, or just decide they’d rather be alone.

but anyway

that’s the idea

so that’s high stakes. what does it mean about you if you break up with them? That you are just throwing all of that commitment away that they are devoting to you? You are throwing away all this love they have for you

so that’s pretty intense

Now. Polyamory.

This person has chosen to accept you. They do not mind that they are not your only, and you are not their only. They want to be with you so much for your authentic being without strings attached that they just want to be around your aura. They just want to spend their time with you and get to know you as much as they can, for as much as your are willing to give.

Now that is pretty intense too.

What does it say about you to reject this kind of authentic affection?

The truth is there are relationships that are on shaky ground regardless of the gifts that the two people want to give each other.

You should be able to say, “I want to be monogamous, but not with you.” or “I want to be polyamorous, but not with you.”

Neither monogamy nor polyamory should be permissiveness around incompatibility

both need a schema other than “wow this person is so into me that they are willing to do this relationship structure with me” in order to check for compatibility

I feel like monogamous people fall into this trap more often, in part because polyamorous people usually have had to grapple with some stuff around a relationship not necessarily meaning that the relationship comes with all the things you might want from a relationship

Sometimes it comes with cool things that you do not plan on using or doesn’t come with things you assume a relationship package comes with.

and then polyamorous people usually have more tools around “not throwing away” the relationship, or not going super super deep into a relationship without asking certain questions or having certain conversations about expectations.