My First Non-Monogamous Relationship
It wasn’t the non-monogamous marriage I’m in now.
It wasn’t my first and very short-lived marriage, in which my husband-to-be and I unsuccessfully cruised in singles bars trying to pick up women.
It wasn’t even my first serious adult relationship, in which my boyfriend unilaterally decided that we should be non-monogamous, spouted non-monogamy platitudes to defend doing anything at all that he wanted including ignoring me to chase other women, and then went into a weeping rage when I wanted to sleep with one of his friends. (Thus turning me off non-monogamy for some time.)
It wasn’t any of those.
It was when I was about eight.
No, you heard me right.
I had a boyfriend at the time, although in retrospect I don’t think my feelings about him were romantic, even in a childhood-romance way. We didn’t play Doctor or anything; we never even kissed. I think it’s more that we were friends—good friends, best friends, even—and at that age in that time and place, for a girl and a boy to be best friends was sufficiently unusual that it seemed, by our childhood logic, to call for a different word. So he was my boyfriend, and I was his girlfriend.
So one afternoon I went over to his place to hang out and read Richard Scarry books (he had Richard Scarry books and I didn’t, so that was a big deal), and he sat me down solemnly and said there was something he had to tell me. He took a breath, and with all the seriousness of a serious eight-year-old boy, he said, “I’m a playboy.”
I know. It sounds really funny. I’m not 100% sure that he even knew what it meant. And I definitely didn’t, except I figured it had something to do with those magazines my dad had. So I asked him: and he explained that he had another girlfriend, a girl who went to a different school, and he thought I should know.
My reaction:
“Okay.”
Which I meant.
It’s not just that I wasn’t jealous or upset. It’s that I didn’t see why I should be. I was actually very puzzled as to why he’d thought I would be. As long as we could keep being the way we were and keep doing the things we’d been doing, I didn’t see why this other girl should be a problem, or why she was even relevant to what he and I had.
And I still don’t.
I guess that’s not strictly true. If my wife sat me down and told me that she had another girlfriend, I’d be upset. We’re non-monogamous, but we’re not polyamorous, and while other sex partners are okay in our agreement, other girlfriends (or boyfriends) really aren’t.
But the basic principle is still very much the same as it was when I was eight. If my wife told me that she was sleeping with someone else, my questions would be: Does this affect me? Does this affect our relationship? Does this change anything between us? Does it take anything away from what we have?
And if not: Okay. I don’t see the problem. Can we read Richard Scarry books now?
This entry was posted on Thursday, 26 July 2007 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Saturday, 4 August 2007 at 9:30 pm Criss wrote:
In NYC Poly we called that “gender monogamy”. You have 1 girlfriend, you don’t need another girlfriend. Full polyamory is more of a “plenty of love to go around” type of thing, although the point and the terminology are arguable. The basic argument is that you can love infinitely, whether filial or sexual/romantic love. You have enough love for multiple children, not just for one son and one daughter. You have enough love for multiple partners.
Reality in polyamorous relationships is complicated enough to engender discussion groups :)