After almost nine months in a polyamorous relationship, I’ve found myself increasingly interested in being a poly advocate. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to advocate for an “alternative lifestyle,” and how people tend to misunderstand the motivation behind such advocacy. As someone who has had plenty of confrontational conversations in the past on topics ranging from vegetarianism to natural childbirth, I’m well aware that those of us who choose to be outspoken about our unconventional choices are often accused of “shoving it in everyone’s face,” or of thinking of ourselves as more enlightened or more highly evolved. Sometimes, I question whether it’s worth opening myself up to personal attack. Sometimes, it seems like it would be easier to just quietly go about the business of living my own life.
It’s that business of living my life, however, that brings me back to the importance of advocacy. Yesterday, I was watching my husband and my boyfriend play Frisbee at my daughter’s birthday party, and I stopped and thought: my life is pretty amazing. A year ago, I wouldn’t have said that. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot to be thankful for. I had my totally awesome kid, great friends and family. I was entering my last year of undergrad after finally going back to school at 26, and I was starting to publish my fiction frequently. At the same time, however, I was also feeling confused and uncertain about the future of my marriage, aware that monogamy was never going to feel right for me but convinced I had no real alternative. Even though I knew about polyamory and knew that it was what I desired, it seemed like a pipe dream: some crazy, fringe thing that some other people out there in the world did. I did not believe it would ever be my life. In the time since, my marriage has become happier and stronger than it ever had been before, and I have developed a relationship with my boyfriend that far exceeds any daydream I ever had of what an additional relationship could be like. I am grateful for both of these men every single day. A year ago, I was ambivalent about so much in my life. Today, while I won’t claim there are never any ups and downs, I am the happiest and most fulfilled I’ve ever been. And yet, while watching these two smart, funny, loving men toss a Frisbee back and forth, the other thing I couldn’t avoid thinking was that most people would find my life utterly bizarre.
I’m not one to spend much energy dwelling on the past; I’m where I want to be now, and that’s what matters. But still, I can’t help thinking that I would have gotten here sooner if we did not live in a world where monogamy is presented as the only viable option. If we had more real-life, everyday, ordinary examples of people who are happily living with poly arrangements. And I also can’t help but think about the countless others who must be feeling stuck where I once was, knowing they want something different but not believing that anything other than monogamy is truly possible. I think about how different life could be for all those people if they realized that monogamy was just one possible choice among many, not the only or necessarily best way.
I don’t want to paint a picture of poly that’s all rainbows and sunshine or say let’s all go hold hands and frolic in a field of wildflowers together. Poly relationships have their highs and lows just like any other relationships. I don’t feel like I’m living in any kind of utopia. I feel, simply, like I’m living an ordinary life. It just happens to be a life that’s markedly better suited to me than the one I was trying to live a year ago. Some people find that monogamy suits them just fine, and that’s fantastic. But we all deserve to live in a world where we are free to choose whatever relationship structure suits us the best, without being made to feel that we are some kind of freaks or degenerates.
At the end of the day, that’s why being outspoken about poly matters to me. Not because I want to bash monogamy, but because I want to refute the notion that monogamy is the only appropriate way to live. I think that we all have some responsibility to do our best to create the world we wish to live in, even if we’re only able to do so in seemingly small ways. There is always the risk that being open about my life might lose me some friends, and the near certainty that it will make plenty of people think I’m crazy or immoral or both. But there’s also always a chance that it will make even a small number of people realize that happy, healthy relationships can take a variety of forms. I saw a button not too long ago that said “I’ll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy.” And I guess that pretty much sums up how I feel about being outspoken and confrontational when it comes to advocating for acceptance of poly relationships. If we reach a point where the social institution of compulsory monogamy has been deconstructed, where choosing a poly relationship raises no more eyebrows than choosing a mono one, I will happily step off my soapbox and go quietly about my wonderful-but-rather-ordinary life. As long as the sentence “I was watching my husband and my boyfriend play Frisbee” is still shocking and controversial, however, I think there’s a lot of work to be done. And if having the audacity to be honest about my romantic relationships is considered “shoving it in everyone’s face,” then I guess shoving is exactly what I’ll continue to do.
