Monogamy mess up

As a young gay man eager to be in a relationship, I was an idealist. According to social norms, monogamy was the only answer, and I thought “true love” would make it easy. I’d heard of open relationships, and was completely horrified – even in the face of my own shortcomings. It went against everything I learned, and therefore seemed sleazy and shallow. If I truly loved somebody, he should be enough, right?

But my ideals were shot in the foot once I became guilty of my own indiscretions. I would eventually find out that nothing, especially sex, is simple.

I wasn’t the only person in this boat. With the high divorce rate and publicized slipups of politicians and celebrities, monogamy didn’t appear to have a great track record for most people. Almost all of my friends were breaking up over someone cheating. This didn’t mean we weren’t in love or were bad people, it just meant something wasn’t working.

After my second relationship ended, I decided to take a hiatus from dating and embark on an emotional dissection of sex. I asked a lot of questions, and allowed them to lead to more questions instead of trying desperately to find answers. I realized my thoughts didn’t quite line up with my desires.

With monogamy came monotony. While I got my most enjoyment from being with the man I cared about, I had to admit to growing curiosities and I eventually felt stifled and confined. Dedicating my tastes to one thing 100 percent of the time didn’t make sense for any other part of life – for instance if I have a favorite restaurant, surely at some point I would still be curious to try other restaurants, even if they aren’t as good. Why treat sex differently?

Food doesn’t carry the emotional ties that sex can, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that sex is purely emotional, either. It’s often far from it – it’s instinctual. We can make decisions about acting on our drives, but the drives don’t come from our intellectual minds, they come from hormones and express through our bodies.

Sex, if nothing else, is animalistic, and trying to frame a strict sense of human emotion around an animal desire started to look contradictory to me. Since emotions affect drive and vice versa, it makes sense that love and sex go hand­–in–hand, but it seemed naive to think they would always be an exact fit.

While I was single, I often had sex without being in love. Why, once entering a relationship, had I concluded that suddenly sex suddenly could <only> be for love from then on out? Even though I did have love, a desire for sex that didn’t need love still existed within me.

As much as I hated to admit it, that drive would erupt in unhealthy ways. The same seemed true for my peers. And while sex is different for everyone, monogamy itself started to seem like a broad setup for failure.

None of these things were excuses for my past behavior. Rather they were insights to help me figure out how to do things differently. More than anything, I wanted to regain a sense of control over my sexuality, and constricting myself to a black–and–white picture no longer seemed like a healthy route.

To some extent, I had to switch from being an idealist to a realist. This didn’t mean moving to the opposite extreme, a sexual free–for–all relationship, but perhaps something in the middle – kind of non–monogamy where rules are adaptable while guidelines and principles are honored, would be the answer for a long lasting and stable relationship with the right man.