Get Your Ethical Non-Monogamy Off My App

Pairs well with: Untouchable Face, by Ani DiFranco

Alternate title: The One Where I’m Conservative

“I have a girlfriend. But we date other people.”

At first I thought it was something about me that made guys only want me as their side-hustle. Then I came to realize that there’s nothing special about me, this is just something guys do now. They have girlfriends, but date other people. I think we’re all defining this shit wrong because if you date multiple people, that’s just what you do. She’s not your girlfriend, she’s just one of those people you date. Otherwise you’re a giant walking insult to all the “other” women in your life who obviously know they’re not now, nor will they ever be, number one. You don’t live in the Playboy mansion, asshole, you live in Bushwick.

I’m liberal. Lefty. Welcome everyone, discriminate against no one, civil rights and equal pay and liquor on Sundays before noon. The only time I veer toward the middle is when we’re talking money or the economy. Regarding social issues, the right can’t even see me on the horizon line. I’ve always thought this open approach to society extended well past politics. Relaxed rules, deadlines, sure we can fit one more at the table, easy. I try to adopt a relaxed attitude toward most things. Unless of course you’re not punctual in which case you are, as we speak, infuriating me. Late people don’t respect others and they must be destroyed.

I certainly thought my liberal attitude extended to sex. Whatever you’re into, as long as it’s not kids or rape, enjoy yourself. The existence of quirk or kink doesn’t bother me, but rather inspires me to be more myself, more creative, less inhibited. I don’t need to be tied in ropes, hung upside down, and beaten, but if that’s what does it for you, cheers. Enjoy being watched by others? Good for you. Turned on by Wheel of Fortune? Not my gig, but buy a vowel. We’re all adults here, and much like everyone has a favorite flavor of gelato, so too do we have varying sexual tastes and tendencies.

Then I found one baffling sexual practice that called me to arms, not because of any moral yay or nay, but instead because of the actual logistics, and further the insertion of those logistics into my life. It is ethical non-monogamy, and I’m calling bullshit. Not that I don’t think having multiple sexual partners is just fine when consensual. Again, do what you want. (I can’t even let you think I’m judging you even for a moment, even given what I’ve decided to title this one. Why do I care if you like me? I don’t care if you think I take an Amish milkmaid’s approach to sex — I don’t participate in ethical non-monogamy in my dating life and I’m not a big fan of people who do. I can see it being totally chill if you’ve been married for ten years but I think that’s another story if not another book). Fuck’s sake. Let’s continue.

What I’m really getting at here is greed. Because I’ve only ever encountered ethically non-monogamous men in one situation and one situation only: app dating. I’ve never met one in public, never worked with one (that I know of), never sat next to one on an airplane. I’ve never met one in the casual ways people meet other people, the ways in which you’d think the desire to have sex with someone other than a primary partner might naturally arise. I’ve only come across them when they’ve placed themselves in a dating app on purpose. Meaning not only are they not monogamous, the actively try not to be.

If you’re ethically non-monogamous, my thinking is that you don’t want to be limited to sex with one person. Should a person come into your life that you feel a sexual connection to, or desire for, you don’t want to be restricted by invisible handcuffs to your primary partner, when you have no intention of harming or leaving your primary partner with a simple sexual act. Apparently I’m wrong, because I see a lot, a lot y’all, of non-monogamous men on various dating apps. Where once I thought it was a safeguard, now I know it’s mission. The active pursuit of more sex than you’re currently having, even if you’re currently having sex. In my single life sexual activity has been at starvation status for years on end and I think you greedy motherfuckers need to get out of my phone.

Logistics-wise, how does this work? When I really think about it, it actually makes me laugh a bit. Are you sitting on the couch with your primary partner watching Game of Thrones when suddenly your phone lights up with a new match just as Daenerys feeds a human being to a dragon? Do you talk to this new match? Right then and there? I mean you’re in an ethically non-monogamous relationship, right? She doesn’t mind if you take time out of your evening together to make plans for an evening with someone else, right? How does this work?

For those of you with families, how do you find the time? The energy even? Are you dropping your kid off at little league practice and then meeting a Tinder match at a coffee shop down the street? Are you going back to her place and fucking right before you hit up Whole Foods for organic fruit snacks to put in your kid’s bento box lunch in the morning before you Instagram it? Where do all of these extra, non-monogamous partners fit in?

Honestly, how much sex does one person need to have? How many partners are required until one feels satisfied? Is it a continuum? A treadmill of tail, if you will? While I fully appreciate that many grown adults use online dating strictly for hook up purposes, and have been one of them and certainly might be again, this is something different entirely. This playing field is uneven. While I’ll typically be put off by men obviously searching for a no-frills, if not no-names hookup, this next-level hunting for women when you’ve already got one at home is insufferable to me. I don’t want you here. This isn’t for you. This is a world for single people. For lonely people. For people with nothing to find something. You have something and you’re hoping to find something more. You are greedy. And your greed is invading my lonely person space every time I see you on an app. You can’t satisfy my need for company. You can’t even satisfy a momentary need for human contact, because a one night stand that is this uneven isn’t satisfying for me. It’s demeaning. We’re not going into it with the same mindset. I haven’t had sex in six months and you haven’t had sex since 6am.

I thought you just wanted freedom, you don’t. You want more than freedom to have sex with new people you encounter during the everyday course of your life. You want more than even that. You want to pursue attraction where it hasn’t already inserted itself into your life. You want to hunt. To gather. If it was real ethical non-monogamy, you’d fuck your friends. I know you have them. But you can’t fuck them, because that might really test the limits of you and your girlfriend’s sexual nonconformity. She might get jealous. You might get jealous. Something might happen to add too much weight to the whole teeter-totter of free romping the two of you have so maturely arranged for yourselves. So you fuck strangers, people that don’t matter to you.

And I’m sure you find what you’re looking for. Constantly. There are enough non-monogamous men on online dating to tell me that at least some truly single women are reinforcing this behavior. You’re seeing success and you’re coming back to repeatedly win, like pool sharks. So you think women are using this site or app just for sex too, and you probably don’t feel too bad about what you’re doing. Allow me to be the crumbs in your cream cheese. Don’t act like you don’t know a colossal quantity of women are here to actually meet someone to start a relationship with, you are not that stupid, young man. Don’t present yourself as an offering in this human being buffet when someone’s already nibbling at your corners. Don’t pretend to be available, you’re not. You want to give me real ethical non-monogamy? Show me the situation where your girlfriend stops being your girlfriend because you liked one of your non-monogamous partners just a wee bit more. Don’t approach my online dating app telling me up front and center that you have a main bitch and you’re just here for a little side bitch action. Level the playing field and we’ll talk.

Before you start a new blog just so you have a comments section in which to yell at me, I know that there are plenty of (actually) single men on online dating who are also not “available.” They’re emotionally unavailable, or they reject relationships entirely, any number of reasons make them total shits, too. But they’re not double dipping, and you are. When I have a one night stand with them, I know it ends similarly for both of us. We go home to empty beds and quiet apartments while you go home to snuggle and have someone you actually like make you scrambled eggs. Who are you?

What then, you judgemental, bitter single 30-something woman, is a heterosexual non-monogamous male in search of so much more sex supposed to do? Simple. Make your own goddamn app. Get out of ours. Join a community of other non-monogamous people of the same mindset and life status as you and stop using single (really single) women as playthings for your insatiable sexual appetites and desires to avoid boredom with just one woman. I think you’re greedy, I think you’re wrong. And I don’t think you belong here. Call me conservative.