Hey everyone!
So if you've seen a few of my videos or follow me on social media or anything, you
probably know that I have a girlfriend named Fiona who I really really love.
We've been together for over two years, we were long distance but now we live together,
and we are super happy together.
For all intents and purposes, we're in a committed, longterm, healthy, stable relationship.
Fiona jokingly calls me her wife all the time and makes terrible jokes about divorcing me for petty things.
But, you may also have noticed that we're both very open about the fact that we are
not monogamous, and our relationship itself is not monogamous.
I personally identify as polyamorous because I know that I have the ability to happily
have romantic relationships with more than one person.
So while we are each other's main partner or primary partner or however you wanna call
it, we both see other people.
And this seems to perplex a lot of monogamous people because they've been raised to believe
that commitment equals monogamy, but that's not true.
I hateeee when I tell monogamous people about my relationship and they say, "Well, I'm
just too *committed* to my partner to do that," because like, what the fuck, so you're saying
I'm not committed to my girlfriend? Of two years?
Who I love and cherish and moved to the other side of the world to be with?
Nah that's not how that works.
You can be in a super committed non-monogamous or polyamorous relationship, or you could
be in a not-so-committed monogamous relationship.
Just because you are committed to someone doesn't necessarily mean that you're monogamous with them.
I think people often interpret "commitment" as meaning "commitment to monogamy", but
commitment itself is a much broader term.
You can be committed to a relationship by actively putting your time and energy into
it, by promising to stick around for a long time, by showing up for your partner when
they need you, and by supporting and encouraging your partner to be the best version of themself.
None of that necessarily has to do with monogamy.
You can be committed to your partner in all those ways and still think that someone else
is cute and want to kiss them sometimes.
In this case, I think it's useful to use the analogy of friendship.
Say you have a best friend who you're super committed to.
You both hang out all the time and share everything with each other and are generally closer to
each other than anyone else. That's awesome!
But if you hang out with another friend every once in a while, does that diminish your relationship
with your best friend? I don't think so.
If you find someone who you and your best friend really like and you invite them along
to hang out with both of you, are you no longer best friends? I don't think so.
Romantic relationships can work in a similar way.
For example, you can have one partner who's your primary and others who are secondaries,
or you can have two partners who you devote equal time and energy to.
Those aren't the only kinds of polyam relationships, but they work the easiest with the friend analogy.
The thing is that we've put arbitrary cultural boundaries around romantic and sexual relationships
that we haven't really with platonic relationships, even though at the end of the day, they're
all very similar -- even in terms of stuff like jealousy.
Sometimes, friends get jealous of other friends.
But that doesn't mean you can only have one friend.
It just means you have to learn to deal with your jealousy and process it in a healthy way.
I just think that in the same way that you can have multiple meaningful friendships,
you can have multiple meaningful romantic or sexual relationships at the same time.
And it's up to you and your partner or partners to figure out how committed you want those
different relationships to be.
One good thing about polyamory is that it forces you to communicate about your boundaries
because there aren't as many established norms as there are for monogamy.
So it's entirely up to the people in the polyam relationship to work out what level
of commitment they're both comfortable with.
Often times, but not always, polyam folks find other polyam folks that they love and
wanna be around for a long time.
So they communicate that to each other, and they make it work.
And as I'm sure you know, sometimes monogamous relationships are not great.
Oftentimes, monogamous people cheat or have brief short-lived relationships, and neither
of those things seem very committed.
Obviously, some folks have long happy monogamous relationships, but there's nothing inherently
"committed" about a monogamous relationship.
Calling someone your girlfriend or boyfriend for a couple weeks before you break up over
something minor isn't really the mark of an extremely committed relationship, even
though it would be monogamous.
Meanwhile, polyam people could be out having dates every other day and still coming home
to their primary partner in the evening for the rest of their life.
That seems far more committed to me.
Basically the point of all this is: you can have longterm, committed, loving polyamorous
relationships that end up outlasting tons of other shallow or uncommitted monogamous relationships.
And that's not to say that every polyamorous relationship is super committed.
Some people just don't want a huge level of commitment, and that's fine too.
The point is, commitment doesn't equal monogamy.
You can be any level of committed to your relationship regardless of whether it's
polyamorous or monogamous.
And it's totally okay if polyamory still doesn't sound appealing to you!
You're 100% allowed to be monogamous!
Different things work for different people!
I'm not trying to convert you or anything!
But don't say you're too *committed* for polyamory because that's just not how it works.
All I'm asking for is a little respect for all the folks in committed polyamorous relationships
out there, myself included.
Anyway, that's all I had for today!
If you watched my last video all the way through, you probably already heard me talk about my
Patreon, but in case you missed that video, I'm gonna talk about it again -- so I'm
sorry if this is repetitive for you!
The thing is, without going into too much personal stuff, I need to be making more money
to cover all my bills like rent and food and everything.
After my last video, a bunch of ya'll went over to support me on Patreon which I really
really appreciate -- thank you so much!
But I've still got a ways to go.
So if you have a few bucks to spare every month and you would like me to keep making
videos like these, it would mean the world to me if you could support this polyamorous
queer chick on Patreon.
I'm so sorry that I'm going to be annoying about Patreon for at least the near future,
I'm just really trying to pay my bills.
Anyway, you can visit my Patreon either by clicking over here, or by using the link in the description.
You can also subscribe to my channel by clicking over here.
Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
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