Site Presented By
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2008
Call it what you will, our version of polyamory is both freeing and anxiety-producing.
Jan 23, 2002 | To many young people, at least in San Francisco, the term "body-fluid monogamous" -- with its mellifluous, lilting scansion -- is a highly romantic catchphrase. It implies not the more traditional, sexual monogamy, but rather an almost heartbreaking trust in a cruel and dangerous world of sexually transmitted diseases. It means that you trust your partner enough to believe he'll always use a condom when sleeping with someone else (and vice versa).
The term "polyamorous," while also indicative of a relationship that permits multiple sexual partners, is fraught with threats both physical and emotional, and for me it's a much more difficult word to negotiate.
But I try. My current relationship is both body-fluid-monogamous and polyamorous, and I lose a lot of sleep over it (and not for any good reasons). I don't always know if I want an open relationship, or if I just want to want one. Ideologically an open relationship is in tune with my belief in personal freedom (which I chalk up to way too much Ayn Rand at a delicate age), but my emotions, often irrational and illogical, have been known to trump my ideological idealism.
My "partner" (more on that term later) and I have been together, in one permutation or another, for more than a year now. I'm a 27-year-old graduate student; he's a 36-year-old, out-of-work computer programmer. We have a true connection intellectually and emotionally; a shared sense of humor, aesthetics and love of words -- and fabulous, adventurous sex.
Sexual freedom is very important to both of us, in different ways. As I said, for me it's more abstract. For him, it's an inalienable right, whose theoretical allowances are far more important than any one girl -- or all of his potential other lovers -- could be. I've heard him cite "Out of Africa," and its credo of personal freedom for lovers, so often that once I finally lost my patience and snapped at him, "You're no Robert Redford."
"I don't care," he answered.
"Haven't you ever seen 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'?" Two can play this classic movies game. "A fear of constraints is sometimes a constraint in itself. Freedom isn't always the most important thing."
"But this is what I want."
"This" is the freedom to have casual sexual partners. Unlike some polyamory addicts, he's not looking to actually have a serious emotional involvement with other women. He just wants sex, plain and simple: a one-night stand following a fortuitous bar encounter, a booty-call arrangement that lasts longer but doesn't go emotionally deeper.
"You have nothing to worry about," he assures me. "None of this could ever threaten what we have."
I do believe him, actually. With his swaggering sexuality, Ryan is the type of man who loves sex but can distinctly separate it from love. In fact, he's only been in love twice in his life, and I'm the second honoree. With odds like that, do I worry that he'll develop a serious emotional attachment to these other women? Not really.
Do I worry that he'll think one of them is prettier or more sexually gifted than I am? Definitely. I'm only human, and rather insecure at that.
I go back and forth. While flirting with someone else at a party, having an occasional sexual encounter with a woman (and if I can, why can't he?) or in the moments following an orgasm with Ryan, I feel invincible, like we're partners-in-crime avenging a sexually repressed Gotham. Then it's suddenly gone, and I feel all Sylvia Plath again, in need of constant reassurance of his love.
Get Salon in your mailbox!