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Some non monogamy styles + terms
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CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:
Hello, I thought I would do installment umber two on non-monogamy and talk about some of the like terms and like words that are used in non monogamy commonly that you may or may not know about. So, here we go. So non-monogamy os like, obviously is like not monogamy. So let’s start off by saying, what monogamy is… monogamy, is what most of society expects of relationships that are romantic and/or sexual. So, monogamy is like, two people get together and they’re together and they don’t see anybody else, and it’s just them basically, in the relationship. This is like a very watered-down like, basic bones version. So, there’s, a term for the expectation of what monogamous relationships should be in terms of like the trajectory of the relationship. So, there’s this thing called the relationship escalator, which is… you’re probably familiar with it, you should know there’s a term, which is when two people maybe they have a crush on each other, and then they start dating, and then they move in together and get married and have babies and buy a house and live together, forever, and die together forever, you know, so it’s like that’s the relationship escalator. That’s like the Milestone goal post. The things that you’re expected to do in a traditional monogamous relationship, that’s called the relationship escalator.
I took the escalator all the way to the top minus the kids and buying a house and I realized, I don’t like this shit actually at all. So I stepped off of it. So non-monogamy is where your relationships are not necessarily following that script. Non-monogamy has many different ways that people can have relationships. And I’m not going to go over every single one because I have a limited experience with all of them. Like not, I don’t have experience being like in a Triad or something, so I’m not going to… but how do I go over this? Non monogamy is like the broad overall thing. If you think of it as an umbrella, non monogamy is like the top big broad umbrella and then underneath that there’s a lot of different kinds of non monogamy. There’s like swinging which you’ve probably heard of, I don’t have experience with that. There’s polyamory which you’ve probably heard of, which is poly means many and amory is love like amore. So polyamory is Many Loves, so you’re in multiple committed relationships. There’s solo polyamory, which is more along the lines of what I would consider myself which is where your primary, like, your main relationship is with yourself and then you also have relationships with other people, but you don’t put other people above yourself. Obviously, there’s like… if an emergency situations, I’m going to go help somebody but I don’t like prioritize any single person in my life other than myself and the Earth because I’m ecosexual. If you don’t know what that is and you’re like new here. I have a whole series of videos on ecosexuality in my YouTube I’ll put the link below if you’re curious, but that doesn’t really… ecosexuality is not really a part of this video conversation right now. So I’m just going to link to it if you’re curious and want to like dive into that.
(CLICK HERE FOR MY ECOSEXUALITY VIDEO PLAYLIST)
There’s also under the big non-monogamy umbrella, is relationship anarchy, which is the best way to describe the way that I do relationships, which relationship anarchy is where, basically, you tailor all of your relationships to people that are in them. So… and you also don’t like there’s no real hierarchy in terms of like… romantic and sexual relationships are more important than like platonic friendships and that kind of stuff, like there’s no… I don’t I don’t prioritize any relationship over another. They’re all equally important to me, whether I’m having sex or like, romantic with someone or it’s just platonic friends and we hang out like everybody’s equally important. And you just like… you build relationships based on what works for the people that are in them and to me, that’s, that’s perfect!
So relationship anarchy has this beautiful, wonderful, awesome thing called the relationship anarchy smorgasbord. And it’s basically there’s like a little chart thing. I’ll see if I can find it and put it in this caption below because it’s like, you pretend you’re at a buffet and there is like a whole bunch of different dishes that you can like, put on your plate and the plate is like your relationship with the whatever person you’re building the plate with… the relationship and you get to choose. Like, do I want romance? Do I want physical intimacy? Do I want sex? Do I want friendship? Do I want a collaborator? Do I want somebody that’s going to be kinky with me? Do I want to have somebody that I live with? Do I want somebody that I want to help like with caretaking? Like there’s all these different ways we can be in relationships with each other and we get to choose which pieces of the pie we want to put on our plate. So I super love that. I share the smorgasbord with a lot of people to see, like, are we compatible? Do you want the same things that I do? Like, what of these things are you looking for? and let’s build this relationship together.
What other kinds of non-monogamy are there? Those, I would say those are the main ones that I want to talk about because there’s a lot of like you can get into like detail things with a lot of this but I personally have only really have experience with relationship anarchy, solo polyamory and just like general non-monogamy.
If you’re curious, I will get personal with you, my current relationships… I have two people that I see on a regular or semi-regular basis and then I have three… three people that I see, like, occasionally, I would call those comets. This is another non monogamy term. A comet person or partner is, you know, how, like a comet you can see it only every once in a while, like it goes past us occasionally. a comet partner or comment like person in your life, a comet relationship is basically like when you see each other you’re together, and it’s… you connect and it’s great, but when you’re not near each other when you’re not together, it’s not necessarily like you’re keeping in touch all the time and all of that.
So it’s like when it’s possible then that’s great, but also there’s no expectation of like texting you everyday or seeing each other every week or things like that. Like I have there’s a comet in Illinois. Like I have a comet in Illinois. I have a comet in another part of North Carolina. Like I don’t really call them that, to them. It’s just the easiest way to describe it in polyamory terms because it’s not like a person that’s regularly in my life. It’s just a person that’s in my life when circumstances allow us to be in each other’s lives if that makes sense.
So, yeah, I have several people that are important to me. And then I have like a whole ton of friends that I super love a whole lot. And yeah, I so I guess, okay, here I am kind of sort of like putting a hierarchy in relationships, but I don’t think it’s hierarchy. I think it’s me trying to describe things to you in a way that you would understand. So the way that I’m talking, saying I have two people that I see on a regular semi-regular basis, and then I have like 3ish people that I see occasionally. I’m talking about like romantically romantically sexually like intimately and I’m not counting like the very many number of friends that I have that are platonic friends and that can be seen as like I’m prioritizing my like sexual romantic relationships, but I don’t see it that way.
I just see it as like, I feel like y’all would be curious about… I imagine most of you are monogamous or like mostly monogamous. So I imagine you would be curious about like the in terms of the depth of relationships that I have. And that’s the way that I can describe it to you because if I was going to like, count all of my friends, it would take a long time and be like. I’m forgetting people and I have like this huge list. So it’s just me the easiest way for me to be like, I have a few people in my life that I see intimately that are more than just friends. And I do also have a whole lot of friends that are like, equally important to me as the people that I see in a more intimate way. But friendships can be so intimate and like, not even require physical anything, or even like being in the same place. I don’t… relationships are hard to describe and name and I am not sure it’s really important to even have a label for everything because some things are just fine to be what they are without needing to label it, if that makes sense. That’s how I feel.
Relationships are great, people are great. I love making new friends, and I love not being monogamous because monogamy, feels like oppressive to me. It feels like as trying to shove me in this tiny box that I don’t fit in and trying to shove my relationships in a tiny box and I don’t fit in like, there’s no way that one singular person can fulfill all of my needs, and I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on another person to be that person. And I also don’t want that pressure to be put on me because I have done that before… putting that pressure on another person and had that pressure put on me when I was married, and it doesn’t work for me. It’s too much pressure and it’s like, yeah to me it’s no, that’s not how my relationships work. When they work for me they’re not like that.
Okay, I think I think that’s good enough. Like that’s that’s a, you know, we talked about photography and non-monogamy and comets and relationship anarchy and solo polyamory, and the relationship escalator. So you have like at least six different terms of things that we talked about today. So I want to make this video too long.
Yeah, non monogamy is great. If you have any questions, comment, and I will try to either reply in a comment, or maybe I’ll make a video to answer your question. Let me know! I love you!
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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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