Since I’ve been asked this question twice in one week?
I thought I’d give you a little history here.
I’m a traditional Evangelical Christian guy.
How did I end up polyamorous about romantic love?
There is much more than I can share in one blog post of course.
But let me take a stab here and give it a try anyway.
As I’ve mentioned before I’m not REALLY promoting polyamory here. I only promote one kind of polyamory because I believe it is conducive to romantic love.
It started in the winter of 2010.
I found out my long term partner was thinking of leaving.
We had never really connected emotionally or sexually.
She was feeling like it was time to move on.
So I started studying love.
Crazy right?
To think you could actually UNDERSTAND it!
Eventually I found pro-monogamy psychologist Willard Harley who spends his time helping people save their marriages. Unlike other psychologists though, he is also pro-romantic love.
He started helping me understand how love WORKS.
What builds it up and what breaks it down.
Based on his thoughts I began to try to turn my own relationship around.
Things went “okay” and my partner felt loved.
But it still didn’t result in us REALLY connecting.
Something else was missing.
That’s when I discovered the pickup artists and started learning about attraction. I especially appreciated the work of Athol Kay, who applies pickup theory to married life.
I started to believe that “love’s not enough.”
You need to build attraction in your partner as well.
But as Esther Perrel says, domestication kills attraction.
Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing.
Maybe it was just too late.
But I left my long term relationship still asking this question.
How can you DO romantic love so it doesn’t eventually die?
I started to realize if attraction dies a thousand deaths of familiarity, you are much better off not living together. Why add the complications of “wedded bliss” and allow that to destroy the love in your life?
But even the idea of “committed” love?
To be each other’s “one and only?”
This still allows attraction to fade it seems.
Because over time you still take each other FOR GRANTED.
To truly keep love alive?
You NEED to be polyamorous.
To have just a little sense of competition.
That your love isn’t a sure thing after all.
That sense of distance as Esther Perrel keeps saying.
When I came to see all of this about love and how it actually works and why it’s always failing, it was a no brainer to me monogamy had to go. It’s a high speed train headed nowhere.
So I’m actually polyamorous because I believe in romantic love.
I no longer believe in monogamy.
The only reason people still think monogamy works?
They’re focused on staying together.
Not staying IN LOVE like they ought to be.
Because I now know what I know, I also know it’s really okay to have a heart that’s truly open. To be responsive to the value I see in all the girls I experience in my life.
Nathaniel Branden helped me understand this too.
Love also isn’t just about attraction.
It is about VALUING your partner for who they ARE as well.
Wanting to share yourself because of what you see.
When that happens?
Love is the most natural thing in the world.
Why would you want to limit THAT to just one person?
There are so many beautiful people worthy of love.
Waiting to enjoy you too!
So what do you think? If a crazy Evangelical Christian like me can arrive at this conclusion despite an upbringing that would point him elsewhere, is there possibly still hope someone like you could come to see things a better way too?
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