Polyamory Or Monogamy, Can I have both?

Freedom. 

Not freedom to do what I want.

Freedom for us to love each other beyond control and manipulation.

Freedom for the desires of our soul to always be heard.

Freedom to communicate all that’s happening within, without guilt.

From there we negotiate. Not from our fears and our mind prisons, that always think the worst.

But from our nervous system to meet each moment with grace and in connection.

Often I hear people around me becoming so caught up about whether they are doing polyamory or monogamy. My relationship to these labels and ways of relating, is that they are just there until we’re brave enough to live without them.

They are important, until they aren’t important at all. 

I’ve based my life experience on swimming to the deep end of both of them consciously and watching what happens in my system.

In the depths of polyamory I felt alive and fired up and excited by any given moment. I watched my relationship with my primary partner become more resilient as we tore back layers of our conditioning revealing to me the love that would always exist between us. What I was challenged by was the ability to find ways to keep the energy of our relationship contained and feeling chosen when I realised that nothing was sacred between just us and no one else. Our capacity to keep peeling back the layers of conditioning meant that we weren’t so attuned to what we choose to keep just for us and for the innocence of that. Our commitment to ensuring that the other followed their desires fully created a sense of sovereignty over synergy. Through these lessons we both softened into an understanding of the importance of negotiation without guilting one another. 

In the depths of monogamy I felt like I was finally able to swim at the bottom of the ocean, finding depths of pleasure and companionship I could of only dreamed of. The excitement was replaced with deep bliss and a sense of connection that allowed my body to open in ways I hadn’t experienced before as my body felt reassured by the consistency and quality of the attention I was receiving. After doing polyamory for so long I became fixated that my partner should only ever do anything from inspired action, and that inspired action was going to be about his desires. In opening to monogamy I began to understand the inspiration to want to do something purely because your partner desires that. A selfless act of time, energy and resources through the continual pouring of self into the same place. I watched how my teenage, feminist ideals of independence and empowerment softened into an embodied experience of devotion and sacrifice that went beyond it being about my partner. This devotion was dedicated to the mystery and love that was emanating out of our union.

On the topic of monogamy during this time period. We still had a few interactions with others as a couple in ritual spaces and for fun. Also I feel its important to share that my inspiration for monogamy/monogamish did not stem from the boundaries of my partner. They stemmed from my desire to discover where my actions were coming from, was it habitual? Was it accurate for the love and the kind of union we were curating? 

Throughout this time I was challenged and stretched to feel where I was stuck in what my identity believed was the ‘right’ way to live a soulful life and was led to engage with the notion that the love was showing me exactly what I needed to see. My discomfort to allow all my eggs to be in one basket in case I was let down, my challenge to feel the mundane and notice the quality of presence that I could bring to it, and my struggles to really trust that the union was guiding me deeper into myself and not compromising who I really was.

In those times it was hard not to feel that my partner was ‘making’ me change or that I wasn’t ‘loosing myself’ to the relationship becoming someone I’m not. Every time I’d watch those thoughts arise I’d come back to this African proverb that whispers to me every now and then, it says: “What you love is the cure.” I would find myself reminded that anything I loved could not be taking me in the wrong direction, and it wasn’t just the simplicity of loving my partner. It was every moment of love I experienced since opening to the mystery that our relationship was revealing to me. Watching the people in my life enthralled by the transformations and the massive improvements to my overall wellbeing that came with the experience of falling deeper into our love. 

I began to see the fortress of ideas and beliefs that I thought made me who I was, were actually just layers of protection holding me in a resisting pattern. When I finally softened and allowed myself to be inspired by everything this medicine was offering me I merged with love itself and let go of the idea that I needed to be anything or anyone or subscribe to any label. The moment I did that, there was a sense of being love, and when I am love there is no fear, only oneness, alchemy with the elements, the cosmos and the earth. A safety that rewarded me the freedom I’d looked so hard for in these labels.    

From this place there was something new. An opening to a deeper value system. One of great commitment to love and an understanding of how to follow eros and desire with such innocence, making space for sex to live as a form of medicine, magick, and conversation between bodies. Observing that when eros is inspired outside of the primary relationship I’m sharing with my beloved, I can create a space for it to be felt known, understood without blindly pursuing my desires and loosing the containment I’ve come to enjoy. In feeling my partners dedication to this love that has been inspired through our partnership I’m feeling in a deep amount of trust with my partner to follow his eros and sexual desires with others, trusting that those desires are in service to our union, freeing us up to trust our souls paths and feeling the tenderness of what it’s like to open to the mystery and how the nervous system of our relationship can be tended to with that.

The wisdom that is guiding my decisions is seeing that this union is emanating its own scent of mystery, and the revealing of that love is a guiding light, shining a beacon of possibility for our souls coming into their full potential. The love that has opened between us has become the vision, the initiator that’s propelling us both forward on our paths. 

It is asking for everything from me, and I’m devoted to giving it every breath of life I can offer.