Healthy Reasons to Explore Polyamory: Maintaining Personal Autonomy
Maintaining autonomy and prioritising yourself in your relationships benefits not only you, but also your partners.
Why are people polyamorous?
Some people argue we are born this way. Others say that it's a conscious decision. But whatever you believe, we all have our own reasons why we decided to 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: The desire for autonomy within your relationships.
The Lack of Autonomy In Traditional Relationships
Growing up, I never questioned the idea of being monogamous. I wanted to be in a relationship, and that meant being monogamous. That was just how life went. And it worked for me. In all the years I was in monogamous relationships, I had everything I wanted and never felt that anything was missing from my love life.
Except, that was precisely how I felt. I just couldn't recognise it.
What I was feeling back then is described perfectly in the iconic The Ethical Slut:
“Many of us feel instinctively that something is wrong with [monogamy]. But how can you dig up and examine a belief that you don’t even know you hold? The ideal of lifelong monogamy as the only proper goal for relationships is so deeply buried in our culture that it’s almost invisible: we operate on these beliefs without even knowing we believe them. They’re under our feet all the time, the foundation for our assumptions, our values, our desires, our myths, our expectations. We don’t notice them until we trip over them.”
- The Ethical Slut (3rd ed.), Janet W. Hardy & Dossie Easton (2017)
In all my monogamous relationships I thought I had everything you were supposed to want from a relationship, and so I subconsciously ignored any twinges of discontent. I buried them deep and ignored them because I believed that you weren't allowed to have doubts and any desires beyond the norm were a sign my existing relationship was in trouble.
But the truth was those feelings were there, and they existed because I didn't have full autonomy in my relationship.
And the insidious thing is, I honestly believed I did.
This is why some people decide to explore polyamory. Not necessarily because they have the desire to date multiple people but because they realise there are other options when it comes to relationships that they have never been free to consider.
Maintaining Autonomy in Relationships Isn’t Selfish
Embracing personal autonomy without relationships is hard because we have been conditioned to see doing so as selfish.
When you examine the predominant narrative about relationships, you see they are all about "settling down" and giving up part of yourself to fit cultural expectations. You stop being an individual and become a couple. You get a job, establish a home, have children, and raise them to do the same. We give up the idea of growing as an individual and instead focus on creating one form or another of the nuclear family. And if that makes us unhappy or leaves us with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, well, that's just part of growing up.
But here's the thing, maintaining autonomy in your relationships is not selfish. In fact, it's the opposite because not only is it better for us, but it's also better for our partners.
As relationship coach Ro Moëd puts it:
“The expectation that I’d do whatever it took to protect my partner from uncomfortable feelings, even at my own expense, made me feel I couldn’t be trusted to pursue joy respectfully and responsibly. In fact, I was rescuing them from their own personal work, enabling them to remain at the mercy of insecurities, but limited the depth of my other connections to appease them.”
By defending and developing our autonomy without our relationship, we encourage our partners to do the same. Rather than forcing ourselves into a relationship model that removes anything that might trigger our insecurities - both our partners and our own - we instead create a framework where we force each other to work on them while supporting each other.
Autonomy Doesn’t Have to Change Anything
One of the reasons people are scared of the idea of more autonomy in their relationships is because they are afraid it will bring about changes they don't want.
But this isn't necessarily the case. If we go back to the points I made earlier, nothing about becoming a couple, settling down, and creating a family is inherently bad. Embracing your autonomy doesn't necessarily mean you will make different choices. It's about knowing you had the choice to pick different options and got to decide not to.
And that fact is, exploring the idea of polyamory can lead to stronger, more intimate monogamous connections, as Ro Moëd explains:
“For many people, polyamory is as much about experiencing things as it is about being *free* to experience things. Being trusted to wield this power responsibility, to communicate and be considerate, does wonders for trust in a relationship.
Greater freedom creates space for greater self-discovery; the deeper our knowledge of who we are, the more we can allow others to see us. This, to me, is the foundation of true intimacy.”
Being polyamorous isn't the end goal of autonomy. The freedom to be polyamorous is. To find a place where you are allowed to decide what your relationships look like, rather than accepting what society tells you without even being aware there was a choice that was taken away from you in the first place. And when you and your partners have that freedom, being together becomes an active choice rather than an obligation.
The importance of autonomy isn't about making different decisions but being aware of those decisions and having the freedom to make the ones you want.
When Autonomy Goes Too Far
I can't, in good conscience, talk about autonomy in relationships without touching on a painful subject, the fact that it can go too far.
You will meet people in the polyamorous community who interpret freedom in relationships as "I should be allowed to do whatever I want". And, obviously, this is not the case. Reclaiming autonomy in our relationships does not mean we are divorced from our responsibilities. We have a responsibility to act ethically. We have the responsibility to ensure we don't hurt those around us. We have the responsibility to keep ourselves and those around us safe.
If you ever find yourself dating someone who claims you are not allowed to have a problem with anything they do because otherwise you would be impinging on their autonomy, then that person is not safe to date. But it's not always that simple. Not everyone who hurts someone else by only their autonomy and forgetting their responsibility does so on purpose, especially during the intoxication of New Relationship Energy or simply when we're too horny to properly think through our decisions.
As the saying goes, freedom isn't free. Autonomy comes hand-in-hand with responsibility; we must always walk that fine line between the two.
Every relationship involves compromises and agreements that involve giving up a portion of our personal autonomy. That's a choice we make to create something wonderful with another person. But when done right, it means we gain far more than we ever give up.
But that choice can only be ethical if we are free to make it of our own volition, fully aware of all the alternatives.
This is why wanting to maintain your autonomy in your relationships is a healthy reason to explore polyamory. Not because we necessarily want to live this lifestyle but because doing so allows us to build healthier relationships that put us and our partners in a place where we can grow as people rather than cutting away possibilities in return for a false sense of security.
And whatever relationships you choose to build in the future - polyamorous, monogamous, or somewhere in between - I am confident that you will feel a hell of a lot better knowing you have actively chosen what works best for you.
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