Healthy Reasons to Explore Polyamory: Fulfilling Your Needs
When our needs don’t align with our partners, there are many more options than just giving up want you want or breaking up.
Why are people polyamorous?
Some people argue we are born this way. Others that’s it’s a conscious decision. But whatever you believe, we all have our own reasons why we decided to first explore this lifestyle.
And while it’s important to recognise that there are many unhealthy reasons to begin exploring polyamory, these are outweighed many times over by the valid and healthy reasons there are to start this journey, either alone or with a partner.
So let’s take a look at one of the many reasons to explore polyamory: Fulfilling your and your partners’ needs.
How relationships fulfil our personal needs
What are your personal needs? What do you need to be your happiest, most fulfilled self within your relationships?
Do you need art in your life? Do you need people who are practical and self-reliant? Do you have an explosive sex drive, or are you a once-a-month kind of person? Do you want someone who will go to a football match at the weekends, or do you prefer to curl up and binge an entire box set? Do you want to travel, or are you a homebody? Do you want children? If so, how many? Are you close to your family or a loner?
We would all like to have every one of our needs fully met. But unfortunately, we live in the real world. And as with everything else, relationships involve compromise.
When we first meet someone and find ourselves in the throws of New Relationships Energy, it's easy to only see all the ways you and your partner. match. But as you grow to know each other, that energy fades, and you start to see the differences. While it's inevitable that you and any long-term partner will have a lot in common, the idea that they will be a perfect match is simply unrealistic.
A lot of our needs can be met with platonic friends. But what about needs that "traditionally" are only allowed within romantic or sexual relationships? If we have something we crave that our partner cannot or will not meet, do we have no choice but to give them up forever?
Using polyamory to satisfy your unmet relationship needs
There are many people in the world who find their romantic and sexual needs are met by one romantic/sexual partner. Who, if anything is missing, doesn't consider it important enough to feel they are missing something important to them.
But that isn't true for everybody. And too many people have been taught that feeling otherwise is somehow a failure or a betrayal of their relationship.
What if one of you has a much higher sex drive than the other. Or one of you has a specific kink the other has no interest in or actively dislikes. What if one of you is asexual? Does the other have to give up sex forever as the price of falling in love? Of course, these are just a few examples. Sex isn't the only important thing in relationships. Your need might be more aligned with making emotional connections.
These needs might not even be a problem at the start of your relationship. Plenty of polyamorous people were happily monogamous together for years, only to find as they grew older, they developed a desire to explore new things.
What's more healthy for a relationship at this point? For one of you to be forced to accept that you will never get to fulfil your need? Or to explore ethical non-monogamy?
Your needs don’t trump other people’s feelings
Now, I need to address something here. Yes, it's important to be free to explore your needs within relationships. But your right to do this does not mean you don't have to take other people into consideration.
If you are in a relationship, or creating a new one with someone you have just met, you don't get to unilaterally demand your specific needs must be met no matter what. That's not how ethical non-monogamy works. Like everything else, working out these things is a discussion between you and your partner. And sometimes, that means reaching an impasse.
When your needs clash with a partner’s
Creating a new relationship or negotiating a change in an existing one is a discussion. Both parties get to state their needs and boundaries, and any clashes must either be worked around so everyone is happy, or you have to face the fact the relationship cannot work.
And that's the scary part, isn't it? It's what holds a lot of people back from expressing or admitting their needs, even to themselves. The fear that doing so will be something that brings about the end of an otherwise wonderful relationship.
And this is why knowing that ethical non-monogamy is an option is important. Even if it's not something you've ever been interested in, it opens up a new door. A way to adjust a relationship so it can adapt and survive rather than end simply because you and your partner don't see eye to eye on a single point.
We all have desires and interests that we cannot be happy without exploring. This is just part of who we are as human beings. And sometimes, it's impossible to find a way to make these fit within the traditional restrictions of monogamous relationships.
But there are more options available to you than; (a) learning to live without something you need, or (b) ending the relationship outright. This is where exploring the idea of polyamory, or any other form of ethical non-monogamy, can be a healthy option. Because it places a whole pile of options to allow you and your partner to keep the wonderful connection you have found by creating the relationship model that works around you.
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