Can You Cope With Nonmonogamy?

I’ve been avoiding discussing this here.

Alex has expressed a desire - call it a need - to explore limited, specialized experiences with someone other than myself. Polyamory isn’t the right term because polyamorous relationships involve love and affection. Which Alex says she isn’t seeking.

I’ve called myself “biologically monogamous.” Yes, that is nonsense in a literal sense. Describing it as a genetic predisposition is a metaphor to express how my own sense of my affectional orientation is rooted in exclusivity.

To admit a streak of possessiveness and jealousy is not glorious. There’s no real ethnological or philosophical validation of monogamy. But individuals aren’t social or historical processes. One must live your life in terms of your needs, accepting that some of them may be irrational. But also ineradicable and unbreakable.

Technically and theoretically I’m seeking to embrace this end of exclusivity. To be the voice of empathy and reason. And really given that I value my needs I’d be a fool and a cad to pretend hers aren’t legitimate.

On a gut level: there are nights I feel like drinking a can of Drano.

I still love Alex passionately. The prospect of losing her hurts so badly. But I’ve lived through painful love before. What has it ever done but damage my life? There’s never been a reward. Instead I become less than I can be.

Diminution is one of the main legacies of my years with Charles. Not that striving to discover if I can cope with Alex’s needs has come anywhere close to that level of damnation.

I don’t want to lose Alex. But her needs may very well exceed my ability to adapt, my capacity to modify myself. But - call it insane selfishness - the time is coming when I will have to face what appears to be my limitations. To have the grace to accept that for Alex and I to each find fulfillment we must separate.

We change and evolve. The day sometimes comes when the happiness we seek is no longer something we can share with a particular person.

The only grace left is to accept this cleanly and decently. Without rancor, without anger.