Feast or Famine: Looking For Love Through A Keyboard
Famine days are upon me once again. For someone with specific and intense fears of conventional commitment, I spend a lot of time seeking the type of intimacy that normally leads to those commitments. There is always a small number of people I can contact with whom there is a mutual sexual interest, but the opportunity is often left untaken as I’ve begun wanting my sex life to merge with the romantic. The result is a lot of time spent on dating apps, which doesn’t yield consistent results. For a stretch of time, there will be nobody to talk to — no new matches, or none that spark any interest — followed by brief periods where three to five people who I have immense interest in will come my way. My loneliness morphs into excitement and stress as I juggle multiple love interests and wait to see which ones will naturally fall to the wayside. Inevitably, almost all eventually do. All eventually have. Then the cycle repeats. Feast or famine. There is no in-between.
The recent feast has ended. Five has become one, and that one is a dynamic and complicated one that may last another week or many months. I predicted this volatility from the start though, and it is not sourced in any negative aspect of our own connection, but rather in their connection with their long-distance, primary partner. (I am non-monogamous, as is she.) She and the others all entered my chats and my life at the same time. Two women fell of quickly following first dates that were extremely enjoyable but which either revealed differences in what we were seeking for a relationship or a simple lack of spark. Another showed promise, but I recently brought it to an end because I was not developing a strong romantic interest. But her communication skills were so on point, as was her maturity, that I wished I had felt something more. With one partner left who I have sincere feelings for — feelings I’m lucky to experience despite and because of the relationship’s predictable impermanence — it might be inaccurate to say I have once again reached a famine. But the stores are low, and depleting by the week.
I am back on my apps and looking for love through a keyboard, sewing the seeds that will reap my next feast. The cycle continues until it ends, only to begin again, each trough and valley as impermanent as my relationships. And yours, too. All relationships are temporary, some are just more temporary than others. Before I was polyamorous I feared the idea of permanence. A close friend commented that what I really want is commitment without restriction, which is an accurate summation of my desire for intimacy without a restraint on me or my partners’ personal autonomy. That need for autonomy was present before my previous, monogamous relationships, but was terribly exacerbated by them. I do not wish to possess or be possessed by someone, but to choose and be chosen by them. Love is no less valid when it exists beyond the confines of a two person couple. After all, we all love many people at any one time; friends, parent, relatives. For me the desire to possess someone would only be borne of feeling unsecure in their love, whereas the knowledge that we choose each other while also choosing others is a repeated demonstration that that love is secure.
Alas, love may last while relationships become impossible to maintain. When I leave to spend most of 2023 and 2024 traveling, no love I form now will be able to remain as consistently intimate. While away the cycle will continue, with love and loss, feast and famine, burning candles all the brighter because I know their wick is short. But that’s part of the fun. Life as I see it is to be a part of cycles; to fear impermanence or appreciate it. When the stores run low it, I am not being denied something I am owed. I have simply returned something which I was fortunate enough to be given.
