I haven’t written in awhile and this is sorta ad hoc. I’ve been non-monogamous for like, a year now, having only been in monogamous relationships for my entire life, and being in lots of them. I didn’t really hate them, but after a certain amount of time I would get this sort of deep urge to run away or break free, and I would get into these cycles where I would desperately search for a soulmate that I could have kids with and enjoy my life, but around year 2? or 3? I just sort of fall apart. The level of commitment is out of this world and traditional married life scares me. Polyamory is very non-traditional, it is outlawed in marriage in most developed countries, and sometimes criticism or views about it feel really similar to the criticism towards any non-traditional activity like being gay or being transgender. Because, really, who cares what others do? isn’t that what alternative groups have been saying for decades? There isn’t a lot of active criticism towards it with the people I know but there is a consistent feeling of a
Similarly like me coming out I was afraid to become polyamorous even before coming to Columbia even though I liked the idea, because there is a large stigma attached to it. I will list some that live in my head.
i don’t know, nobody has ever told me these things to my face, but I worry about it, and sometimes I feel like people don’t take polyamorous people seriously. I think many people see me as a floozy. I think sometimes, monogamous people experiment with me knowingly but thoughtlessly, and assume that whatever they do with me won’t have a major impact. I think sometimes people don’t want to get close with me or write me off as a friend because they think I only have one thing in mind that im constantly searching for with everyone I find interesting; i know people who have lost friends entirely just over being polyamorous.
None of these assumptions are true! I love having friends and I don’t want to convert anyone. I connect deeply to people who share my views. I’m really not a hypersexual slut drenched in promiscuity. The sluttiest thing I do is kiss friends with no strings attached. I just want to live my life how it feels right to me. I want to be taken seriously; I don’t want to feel like a freak.
The level of irritation towards polyamorous people is insanely inflated considering how many people are cut out of the dating pool for them compared to the other way around. If I’m not mad at you for being monogamous, why are you mad at me for being polyamorous? You have like 95% of the dating pool available to you, everyone on earth shares your views. I don’t know. I won’t act like some people don’t treat polyamory as a free-for-all fuckfest but like so do “monogamous” people on tinder throwing away entire personal relationships every two to three weeks.
There’s so much to be said about being transgender and polyamorous, and mostly in that overlapping circle people have a stigma against it because so many trans people are poly. “I can’t do T4T because every trans person is poly.” It's both untrue and really not anything you should complain to the community about! You’re not changing anyone’s mind. Just deal with it like we do with the rest of the world. Go get together with someone from the large mass of trans people that try polyamory and discover it’s not for them. Go pick a random person from a crowd and ask them out, they’ll probably be monogamous. Just think of me like a normal person, please, I beg you, and not as a sexual deviant.