Everyone’s family is a lil quirky. Both my brothers got married in October 2023.
Weddings are fun. These 2 were stylized as two distinct yet equally enjoyable events. My twin had a super traditional gathering, in South Jersey where the majority of the guests were nearby. The whole shebang - fancy venue (same one where our aunt n uncle tied the knot some 30 years ago), classy dress code, a live band, photographers, gifts galore, and a priest officiate. My younger bro decided on a destination wedding. With approval from all of us, they basically eloped and invited everyone to be there. To Las Vegas - sometimes what happens there stays, and on occasion, what happens there follows you forever.
Between the two soulmate swears, I found myself to be an ideal sister at each event. It was my highest honor to be a professional poet and “Grooms-Girl”, a term coined for my role in the wedding party in Jersey. Standing on the side with the best man and groomsmen, I love moments or scenes where my pronouns are She/He. I wore a long black dress, the uniform the bride selected for me, and I looked cute but was restrained - the dress wasn’t really tailored for the way I dance, a purposeful plan I suspected was in place to keep the dance floor appropriate, guarded from my ravishing rave.
My bf at the time would, by my choice, not accompany me to this family function. Nothing about my story with him fit the mold of what this day represented. My aunt asked where my date was.
“We are polyamorous.” I declared with great pride, loud enough for eavesdroppers as curious to understand.
I am not one to diss monogamy at all, and actually express myself in conjoined values of both ways of relationships, debunking myths that people are either one or the other. I actually aim to revolutionize the styles we all go about relating to each other in. In the name of blending more love (self, platonic, familial, agape etc.) into society.
My aunt drew a blank stare. Obviously, there was a gap in logic between me having many loves, and appearing single here.
That is precisely my intention, yall. To get people to stop seeing poly as a cohort, and start esteeming individual persons with their respective reasons for partnership(s). I’m here to role model the best of what the lifestyle can be shaped into, and eliminate the worst of stigmas and stereotypes about it. No matter your mission, that’s our goal: to attune to our own values.
I discovered in my 5 years surrounded by self-identified polyamorists, much of their intention is to escape the rules of commitment, because their past experience was bad. I learned it is, sadly, many folks who transferred over from an abusive monogamous ex, lgbtqs who are on the run from their past straight status, casual daters, and friends with benefits. It is the rejection of a specific kind of partnership, rightly rooted in their personal lesson learned by negative outcomes, and the healing from it.
An open relationship is basically loose. Those involved aren’t into intensity, as what makes monogamy itself is the special exclusive intensity. People who’ve had their vulnerability trashed, trust broken, intimacy violated, are those happy in an open relationship. In open, one actually feels safe because it’s normalized to opt out whenever. It’s people who got smothered and trapped in a previous partnership, seeking an open relationship, strings unattached. Your open people care about you, will have sex with you, but intentionally never form a connection either of you would be hurt in walking away from. I can in my brain support their cause; but having never gone through a tragic breakup, I’m too lucky to catch myself in the heart fit for that style.
A poly relationship and an open relationship are not synonymous. Essentially, open means indefinitely, fluidly, casting new people; & poly is a closed team. Poly closed is the rule of monog, just with a select few people instead of only one. Can I throw a bit of shade?
An obvious stereotype is that poly ppl are looking for multiple sexual encounters. This to me sounds like trying to fill an emptiness inside triggered by one’s emotional unhealthiness. It’s from guys and dolls who couldn’t earn a true union if they tried. I know, they’re unsubscribing from the notion of spousal vibes, yet the dis-participation of such a sacred union (in just one or few) freezes your capacity to feel and bestow deep Love, stunting evolution. It’s guys and dolls you don’t see as classic couples; couples who look like a match, couples who evidence compatibility in appearance. Guys and dolls who are average-looking at best, and lowly rank their of self-importance, who really subscribe to poly as ‘a dynamic meant to support equality’... therefore, includes anybody, regardless of personality or physicality. While this perception is for some the core comfort of the lifestyle, it is the point that steered me distant from the group. Because for me, equality is subjective, and shouldn't be viewed as a grouping of similarities. Like, I don’t like a mentality, ‘we are all playing baseball so it feels fair’. I prefer division respectively, ‘it’s a pitcher, best batting average, the outfield, the shortstop, the waterboi’. Equality, imo, is specialized talents collaborating in the same picture. Not a unit operating in one way. Make sense, students?
Poly is quality vs quantity assessment, and preference choice. You can have a lot of little love spread out like jelly on a stack of toast, or a handful of a lot of love kept like juggling pins. I’m not saying either is superior but I am saying I actively rejected many people who wanted me as a dash of color and not the whole painting. I got mislabeled by signing on with my former bf. He’s open - he has numerous sprinkles on his vanilla ice cream cone. And exemplifies the very lack of Self-Love required to actually feel Love for others… the downfall of Poly as a concept, and the gateway to the stigma.
I’ve been confused in my pursuit of poly. For me, the kind of bond monogamy is known for is actually my style of loving. But it is not for 1 privately, revolutionizing the idea that intensity can be for more than 1 simultaneously, if and when a mutual agreement is lucky enough to exist. Open relationships can say they’re poly, but in my lesson, not vice versa. True polyamorists are lovers, period. A lover of themself; lovers of the world; lovers of gods and goddesses; we are the spirit of Love itself, connected in many ways. That’s the entity we wear. It’s more a philosophical practice, rather a line to drop for a hookup.
It is an egomaniac like myself, who would dismiss herself from a playing field wherein my uniqueness is hidden to conform to my “lovers”. Now, I say the term egomania lightly, and doesn’t entail brashness or absent empathy. I simply mean, a Queen personality type, a prideful poetess, with a natural setting based on the magnitude of romantic love, as an effect by seriously loving and respecting myself. Who thus, couldn’t quite match what the majority of polys mean. It was like showing up to a basketball game, but everyone on the court is playing soccer. My open relationship was talking to polyamorists turned off by my deeper desires discrepant from their offer, and talking to monogamists who would never consider my offer in relation to my other relations. I would estimate the characters built for Kitchen Table makeup about 1% of those out there. Because like i'm teaching in this essay, Kitchen Table falls into the category most are avoiding - very personal, very honest, and feels extremely tight-knit. Alas, what is meant for you will arrive in clarity, not confusion.
My twin’s wedding was a display of me marrying myself first, showing off my powerful woman status, and being a golden trophy in the Polyamorous Identity I’ve mindfully carved a life for myself in. I’m the polyamorist at this point in the story with but one sexual partner. I represent the mind of polyamorism. A lover of Life, with some credible cool cats baselining that fact. And, fortunately, I’m in a body that a few people would genuinely love, in an unreplicable fashion, based on our authenticities. I'm not mad at my ex for who they are; I'm rewarded by my experience and knowledge from that part of my life. Confidence has been a one way street for me, ever going forward and rising higher in all my chapters.
Traveling around the West Coast, you can see how my polyamory is patented, sheerly in the atmosphere. Towards the pacific ocean, my genes feel at home. I’m forever a JerseyGirl, my right side; I’m a BornAgain Californian, my left side. My old bf and I planned a 10-day vacay out there, 3 days in Vegas for the wedding, and a week in a rental car to Joshua Tree to Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz. He had friends with guest bedrooms along those towns, and I was in the off season of my job, having made thousands of dollars as a balloon artist on the boardwalk that summer, my autumn was calculated in savings setting me free.
It’s just freakin’ prettier! I'm used to Philly suburbs, it’s decent and I can’t complain, but the aesthetic in CA speaks as a culture dominated by my personal flavor of beauty. I wear my tree trunk well, with my branches and leaves grown in the open mind I carried with me into the strong sunshine. I realize in order to be the precise Poly i am, an absolute prerequisite is absorbing love in the many manners specific to my direct contact with it.
It is not an ideal formula, to be at a loss of love and then refill it; or even know love at a moderate level and then sustain or mimic that. A proper equation is my particular case, wherein somebody looking for love, early in their expedition, comes to see love in totality, and then receives a mirrored response by the universe that exact tonality. It is as though Agape (universal love, love of energy in various manifestations) is the ticket that leads to love’s demonstration inside human beings (Sexy). It’s the scientific and spiritual vibrational frequencies / the law of attraction, which workout, “I am in a state of love within myself and this planet, so physics and karma meet me here, in the form of personal people, now cycling together”. It’s gotta be super Woo to be super True.
In conclusion, this is one in many (pun intended) of my grade A memoiristic think pieces. And I am coming out with a new name for my book series! Once known collectively as Polyamourous Anonymous, I’m changing the name. Classic to my character, unsurprisingly. From today on, all writings on my expertise in the field of Love (etcetera) shal be known as: PolyGlamorous.
Because that’s it, chiefs! What was once known to be an open relationship of smoke and mirrors, with a population who are vaguely in relationships with a deficiency of serious love, has changed, due to healthy evolution. We’re transforming into my personal known partnership now, wherein anonymity can’t be the case, replaced by certainty, and that certainty shines over the shadows hiding intimacy, and upon the brilliant harmony inhabiting my soul shared by my mates. The intimacy felt by Lovers from within, many moons in the making. The lunacy which craves yours. Reclaiming the name of Poly at its purest & finest - a true portrayal of glamour radiating from a unity so distinctive, it is clearly our sole instinct. Ty <33;
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