I’m Not Polyamorous Because I’m A Slut
Once more for the people at the back: ethical non-monogamy isn’t about sex!
I’m polyamorous because it feels natural to me. I don’t believe being in a committed relationship should mean closing myself off to other potential connections. Whether those connections are emotional, sexual, or some mixture of the two, they should be something I’m allowed to explore. And I believe that my partners should have the same freedoms.
It’s not about being able to sleep around with as many people as possible.
Right, have you all got that? Do you understand my point?
Great.
On a totally unrelated topic, I enjoy sleeping around with as many people as possible.
Sex is great.
I mean, have you tried it? Okay, it can be rubbish, or even damaging, when it’s done wrong. But done well? And with the right partner(s)? Well, that can make the earth move.
Of course, not everyone agrees with me on this. I’m not here to push sex on anyone. There is the asexual community, for example. And some people choose celibacy as a lifestyle. A famous example of this was Stephen Fry, who, due to mental health issues, spent 17 years celibate.
What I’m saying is, it’s okay to not enjoy sex, and it’s okay to not want sex.
But we’re not talking about those people at the moment. We’re talking about me. And I think sex is great.
I don’t know if this is simply part of who I am. I always knew I wanted to have a sex life, but then what teenager doesn’t? But, like so many other things in life, it’s something we just assume we want even if we don’t. But once I finally found myself in my first sexual relationship, I found I took to it rather quickly.
But this didn’t mean I got a lot of it. Wanting sex and getting sex are two very different things.
Correlation does not imply causation
A desire for more sexual encounters without any emotional involvement played a large part in my decision to explore ethical non-monogamy.
My partner and I met when we were 21, and both of us had enjoyed only limited sexual experiences before settling down together. So when we began discussing opening our relationship, we both agreed we didn’t want this to be something we regretted in later life. We didn’t want to lose each other or the relationship we’d built, but, at the same time, we both wanted to explore sexuality with other people.
“Ah-ha”, I hear you cry, “So you admit you only began to explore ethical non-monogamy because you wanted to have sex with people! The title of this article is a lie!”
Firstly, well done for paying attention.
Secondly, as any good scientist will tell you, correlation does not imply causation.
At this point, neither of us were looking for any additional emotional connections. Or even anything long term. We opened up our relationship because we wanted more sexual experiences.
But over time, we discovered all the other wonderful options that ethical non-monogamy offered. We decided that while sexual openness was great, that wasn’t enough for us. We had discovered that we also wanted the emotional connections found through polyamory.
So yes, sex was our entryway to ethical non-monogamy. But it wasn’t the reason we were polyamorous.
Of course, this was just our journey. You can come to the same destination from a lot of different routes. Some people know they are polyamorous far earlier in life than we did.
You enjoy sex without love. You can be in love without sex.
It can be hard to disconnect sex and love in their minds because that’s how we’ve been conditioned to think.
In our society, we’re taught that sex is something to be contained without a committed relationship. And while there is more openness around this today, once a relationship forms, we’re expected to become “exclusive”. All other sexual connections must be shut down. Even if you’ve never been directly indoctrinated, you’ve still grown up in a society where these ideas are deeply ingrained. I would have always said I was open-minded, but until I started really working on myself, I hadn’t realised exactly how mainstream most of my subconscious opinions were.
It takes conscious effort to break free of ingrained ideas.
Sex and love are different. While they might be connected, that connection isn’t automatic. It’s forged by society. And while choosing that way of living isn’t wrong, it’s also not the only way to live your life. One doesn’t come packaged with the other. You enjoy sex without love. You can be in love without sex.
It’s that simple.
I could enjoy sex without being polyamorous.
I could be polyamorous without ever having sex.
As it is, I do both. I’m polyamorous, and I enjoy an open sex life. But these are two separate decisions.
