I understand the need some people have for exclusive relationships. That has to do with safety and feeling important and fears of loss or betrayal and one hundred percent, it's ok that some people just want things to work like that. Genuinely.
But one feature of a poly-friendly mindset that I'm discovering more and more is the... license to just like people.
I can be affectionate. I can have crushes and bursts of fascination and people I'm openly attracted to and FWB and kiss people (with consent) just because I like them. It's not even about being polyamorous. All these things can happen without the need to define me and another person as an item.
And I know monoamorous people can have that as well. And many do! But it's not the social script. Patriarchy defines relationships via vigilance and fear, not through joy. Wondering how much is too much should at its heart be about wanting one's partner to feel safe and loved, not this weird tension that borders on a war, and that I see so often.
(There's cross-pollination with heteronormative, cisnormative and allosexual-normative social scripts there of course, but that's a topic for another day)
Like... there's a reason monoamorous people often um, "joke" about marriage being a trap. That's primarily a Boomer thing (due to changes of social dynamics that generation experienced, notably the normalisation of divorce, which by the way was an unalloyed good), but by no means exclusive to them.
Like... patriarchy poisons things on so many levels.
In mass culture of the West, feelings towards a person are so often a problem to be solved.
We could do with having crushes on people who don't want to be our partners and still being happy about it. We could do with more dynamics where people love each other deeply, but don't want to commit in any way. We could do with relationships that start quickly, end quickly and that's FINE.
Yes, there's always risk of heartbreak and mismatched expectations and longing that hurts and people taking advantage of others.
But that's always going to be possible. It's part of the human condition.
This post is inspired by being told recently by multiple people that they have a crush on me, and me accepting it joyously. I am fond of everyone who told me this, and I am happy to be seen that way. I'm happy to be wanted.
I hope to be as good to those people as I can, and I hope their crushes on me make them happier. I think that's just... possible. I'll definitely do what I can to make them feel loved and valued, because I do love and value them, even if I don't reciprocate their feelings the exact same way.
And again... I think it's being polyamorous that shifted my thinking like this.
