Non monogamy + why marriage doesn’t work for me
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CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:
Hey friends!! So I once again have a lot of things going on this month, so I want to get some of these videos done early. So here I am doing that because I love you and I want you to still get things from me. So I thought today I would talk about non-monogamy. Seems like it’s something that a lot of you are interested in. I’ve put the link to a survey out a few times. And most people are saying when they answer the survey that they’re interested in learning about non monogamy and like relationship anarchy, so, I thought I’d talk a little bit about that today. I don’t have time to do you like a whole, like, class on it, but I thought I would tell you about my personal experience with it and like what it means to me and why it’s best for me in terms of my relationship structure, so here we go!
So as many of you know, I used to be married to a person who has been in a lot of photos that are on this website. You probably know him as AD or antisocialdisposition, which is like his Instagram name. So I don’t want to talk to you badly about him because we’re still really close, and our relationship has changed a lot over the years, but we’re still both like important people in each other’s lives. So I’m going to tell you the story of how I became non monogamous and he could have done things a lot better and I could have done things a lot better, but that’s just that’s just this is my story.
So, we were already married for a few years. We got married in 2013 and I think it was maybe 2016 or 2017? Probably wither late 2016, early 2017 when he first brought up non monogamy/ polyamory and I was deep into compulsory monogamy at that point which, compulsory monogamy is like society and everyone expects everyone to be monogamous. So like most people don’t even know that there’s options other than monogamy. So I was like deep into that shit and I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as… things that were not the relationship structure that I had seen throughout my whole life. Like, my parents, my family, like every fucking TV show ever, all of the songs and movies and stories, everything is monogamous. I didn’t even know that there was a way to have relationships that was not monogamous and when he first brought it up I was really freaked out and scared and I was like, wow, so, you know, like do you not love me anymore? Am I not important to you anymore? Like am I not enough for you? Am I not good enough? That kind of shit was a big part of that beginning stages of learning about non-monogamy is like all the insecurities and like jealous kind of things. So I definitely went through that for a while.
I felt like… the way that he told me about how he needed to be non-monogamous it made me feel like I either had to become non-monogamous or like, let him have that relationship style, or I was going to lose him. Ideally that’s not the situation that people would be in when they’re starting non-monogamy, because that’s a really shitty way to do it. But neither of us knew any better about how to do things at the time, like, we were still learning and still non monogamy babies basically.
So, like, he didn’t know what he was doing, I didn’t know what I was doing and we were stumbling our way through it, and I loved him. I still love him. And I didn’t want to lose him and I still don’t want to lose him. So we I was like, okay, I guess we can do this, but let’s kind of start slow and figure it out and it was a lot of struggle. He started dating a friend of ours who lived across the country, so that was long distance for them. That was really rough because I was very insecure and still like shaking off all of the monogamous bullshit. I still have a lot of that, even though I’ve been non monogamous for several years now, but I like I feel really glad that we did this because now I know that non-monogamy is actually the relationship style that works best for me.
It was a rocky shitty start because it could have been done much better from the beginning, but I’m here where I am now and I’m really happy with the way that my relationships are structured. So it works… like it worked out, but I know it might not for everybody like some people might try non-monogamy and learn that it really doesn’t work for them. Like there’s no way to structure relationships that’s better than another like, monogamy is not inherently better than non monogamy. And the same in Reverse. Like, non-monogamy is not inherently better than monogamy. They’re just different people need different relationship structures. And that’s cool. And finding out what works for you is what’s important.
So, I guess long story short, it took awhile and lots of feelings and after several years… So we were married from 2013 to 2019. We started the divorce conversation in early 2019. That was a rough year, our divorce became official in 2020. We didn’t have much contact for about two and a half years. We had like minimal contact for two and a half years. and just in the last like six months actually less than six months. We started to reconnect and it’s been a really good actually.
It wasn’t non-monogamy that made us end our marriage. It was the fact that we were codependent and didn’t have any boundaries with each other and we’re like enmeshed in an unhealthy way. And we both needed the space to be able to figure out our own shit and like, become our own individual people before we could be in a healthy relationship with each other. So, I’m very glad that we’re not married anymore. I’ve learned that marriage is not for me! No way. It’s not for me.
We lived together for several years before we even got married. And it’s funny because like, I didn’t think that getting married would really change any thing because we already lived together and like, it would just be a piece of paper that says we’re married. But things did change when we got married, I think both internally and externally. For example, I felt like we had to spend all of our time together. I felt like we had to do everything together, like I also felt like the marriage made it feel like we owned each other. Like, we were the property of each other and like, we had this weird control over each other’s lives.
And I know that this doesn’t apply to all marriages, but that’s what happened for me personally is like, I felt like I had I don’t know, some weird like ownership control over him and he had over me. It was like, that’s the way it felt to me. Not into that. Yeah, and I also had a bunch of like, internalized bullshit that I put on myself. Like I felt like I had to cook and clean all the time and he had to go work like the whole like bullshit like, expectation of what a marriage is supposed to be between a man and a “woman”, and I’m not even a fucking woman, so like I didn’t know that at the time. Honestly, I needed… so I don’t think I would have been able to realize that I was non-binary unless we separated and got divorced and I had time to be by myself because I don’t think I would have realized it if I had stayed with him in the way that our relationship was structured. because it was like a man and a woman, and they get married and I lived together and are happy forever. And like, in that structure, there is no space for me to like, explore things that were not what was expected of me.
So yeah, that’s my story. I hope I told it well enough that you understand. There’s a lot of nuance and a lot of detail in there that like, I didn’t go through, obviously, because I don’t want to make this video like super long but yeah, I think I think non monogamy is wonderful. I’m glad that I had those experiences even though they were really fucking rough. And I still feel jealous and insecure a lot, but I have people in my life that are really important to me that I wouldn’t be able to be connected with all of them in the ways that I am if I was still monogamous. Yeah, I think non monogamy has enriched my life in a major way, and I’m thankful for it, even though it was rough road getting here. And we could have done things way better than we did. But I guess everyone has their like origin story and it’s not always pretty.
So yeah, it is possible to stay friends with and be in a relationship with an ex partner because that’s my life. Yeah, AD and I are reconnecting and it’s really great and we have way more boundaries now and we live in different states and that probably helps us have boundaries. And yeah, we’re able to have a much more healthy relationship now because we’re like intentionally… We’re doing things intentionally. We’re not just like assuming all of these things because we’re “married”. We’re like going step by step. How do you feel about this thing? How do you feel about that thing? How do you feel about this? What about this other thing? And we’re like building our relationship from the ground up in a way that works for both of us. So, yeah.
Okay, this is long enough. I hope that’s enough story for you to have a little bit of an understanding of non-monogamy from my perspective. Comment if you have questions. Yeah, I love you!
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