Loving More Than One

Society teaches that intimate relationships are meant for two people. You meet, fall in love, get married, have kids, and spend your lives together. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn’t, and you divorce and move on with other people. I never viewed love and relationships in this narrow-viewed mindset. Growing up as someone who often experienced connections to different people at the same time, regardless of gender, I always felt like something was wrong with me. There were never any books or movies I could connect to because they always portrayed a person who loved more than one as a cheater and villain. I felt ashamed that I could love more than one person at a time in a different way.

When I was 13 years old, I discovered that my best friend had a crush on my boyfriend. I did not see a problem with it. I wasn’t upset or angry with her, instead, I told her that we could ask him if he liked her too, and if he did, we could share him. She looked at me shocked but intrigued by my offering to share my boyfriend with her. We went to my boyfriend next, where we told him she liked him and asked him if he had feelings for her. He looked at me like I was trying to trap him with a loaded question and nervously fumbled trying to figure out how to respond. I told him that we both had feelings for him. Our resolve had been to share him if he had feelings for both of us.

It took a lot of explaining and reassuring for him to realize that I was serious and not upset or angry, not even slightly. There was no jealousy and that began my first polyamorous…