kutv.com - Polyamory: A Twist On Polygamy

kutv.com - Polyamory: A Twist On Polygamy: "Polyamory: A Twist On Polygamy"

This was a pretty good, if short, article about the other side of Polygamy. Usually, when we hear about multiple relationships on the news, or anywhere in our normal lives, its to do with communities where women are forced into multiple marriages, communities like Colorado City and Bountiful, BC. Such arrangements are very damaging for the people involved, and anytime coercion or force is in play, there are severe issues that need to be looked at.

However, such communities are only a small part of 'polyamory' and give most of the larger poly community a very bad name. For people outside of religious communities, polyamory is a lifestyle choice about including everyone in your circle of love, instead of limiting it to a single partner. Its almost never misogynist in the way traditional polygamy is, and its focus is always to include rather than to exclude.

For the past 4 years, I have been living a polyamorous life. I've been poly my whole life ... my 2 failed marriages are a testament to promises made that I could not keep. I wish I understood myself better before those relationships ... it was unfair to monogamous wives for me to try and promise monogamous fidelity. Those marriages failed because I wasn't able to keep promises I had made ... had I known myself better at the time, I would have known they were promises I could never make.

I've known my whole life I was different from other people. I crave relationships, but I've never understood the exclusiveness that ensues. To me, love is love ... romantic love should be no more or less exclusive than familial love is. When parents have 2 children, the second child isn't loved any less, nor do parents have to take love from child 1 for child 2 ... with a new child, another whole 'bucket of love' is created that is wholly for the new child, and wholly unaffected by the other child.

This is how I feel about romantic love. Loving one person doesn't negate the possibility for me to love others. Adding a new relationship doesn't take love from my others ... its a whole new bucket of love. I don't have to take love away from existing relationships for the new one, any more than a parent has to take love away from an older child for the new one. One is wholly separate from the other.

I know this life isn't for everyone. It has reduced my dating pool fairly dramatically. But I've found myself to be far more content in the relationships I do find, because I am being honest with myself, and starting things off on a note of honesty, with promises made I know I can keep. Two failed marriages, failed for the reasons that I felt trapped in a situation where my love was constrained, was plenty of proof that monogamy isn't right for me ... I don't think polyamory is right for everyone either, but I know for myself, continuing to delude myself that I was monogamous certainly wasn't the right solution for me, or for the women I met.