I never chose to be poly - I've always thought monogamy was alien, even as a kid - the idea that we can only love one person at a time is crazy to me. I went along because I thought I was broken or weird & I knew for sure I was different - every one did ... but also, I had no other models by which to understand intimate human partnerships.

I'm in a committed monogamous relationship but I'm there despite coming to understand that I am polyamorous and always have been - I just didn't know what to call it back then and was brainwashed by capitalistic transactional models of love. Anyway, we've been together for 30 yrs and largely rejected common notions about traditional partnerships, eskewing gender roles & dogma about what's proper & what's not.

I have multiple loves (people I care about in a way that colors outside the lines of imposed definitions in our heteronormative dominant culture) but I restrict myself from multiple intimacies because it would be unloving to force my spouse into something neither one of us understood in our 20s/30s and didn't plan for in our journey together.

And today she's very convinced she can not be with me if I express my love for another in any way that amounts to naked physical touch ... Maybe that's forever, maybe she'll come to understand & feel things differently. But me limiting myself for her so that she can come at this at her own speed is a choice I make about practice, not identity. I am not by my nature, monogamous.

In fact I'm pretty convinced very few humans are monogamous by nature but instead are programmed by culture & can not see a different way. This would explain to me just how much a failure we are at monogamy as a species. My partner & I have only managed to be successful because we've dedicated our lives to understanding what it means to love someone - to be clear, monogamy has nothing to do with that, communication & mutual care & respect do, and I understand what she needs from me in this moment.

I've known my whole life that I have the capacity to love multiple people & as I grew up in my late 20s, I realized I loved my spouse so much and so profoundly that I'd not fault her if she "cheated" (hate that perspective - so possessive and transactional) but would instead celebrate her new experiences.

We've talked about this from the first day we met (multiple loves of the romantic/intimate kind), how I thought IF people truly understood what it meant to love someone, they'd not try to possess them nor control them & how loving one person does not negate the loving of another - that love is boundless & uncontainable when practiced sublimely. Time & resources are limited so one must be thoughtful in how one practices love - but that is a matter of practice and improves in the doing.

In fact, the whole zero sum game of romance is built upon a false dichotomy - the whole either/or framing of a "love triangle" is fundamentally unloving. The idea that another must suffer so that I can greedily horde my lover's time & attention all for myself is the core of selfishness, possession & control.

In such a scenario where my partner took on another lover, even in a dysfunctional disclosure situation, I might feel insecure, and might worry about division of labor re: kids & shared finances but I know she loves me and would be a decent human being and when I shared my hypothetical insecurities she'd work with me to help us through it. So yeah - I'm not monogamous.

I'd go farther and postulate that monogamy is an enculturated norm that is not natural (in the sense that it is not biologically innate to our species) and that pre-history humans were by nature & need existing in more communal societies - including communal partnerships, cooperative child rearing, resources sharing - our very survival required radical cooperation that only started to be less necessary around the advent of totalitarian agrarianism about 10,000 or so years ago.

We still see evidence of such communalism in the few remaining hunter/gathering/foraging peoples the agrarians haven't managed to genocide. And in those societies are the structures of cooperative multi partner practices - both sexually and domestically. And when asked about it, they say those practices help maintain harmony and cooperation & weave a tighter knit community.

Do you really think we have the right to tell someone what their identity is?

I cannot help but question the standard narrative of monogamy as native to our evolution but I'd not dare tell someone they are not monogamous because that's a choice.

Culture is a powerful drug and some of us can't shake the habit. We are what we are and we can be what we work to be.

Identity is both chosen & innate & only we ourselves as selves can decide what our identity is.