Polyamory: What is it, How to Practice it, and Why People Love it
Polyamory is an intentional lifestyle choice. It’s for people who want to have their cake AND eat it too. It’s complicated, it’s messy, it’s hard, but it is also very rewarding and offers so much personal growth to those who participate. Polyamory is also known as Consensual Non-Monogamy (CNM) or Ethical Non-Monogamy (ENM), but all these things mean that everyone is consenting to exploring new potential connections, both romantic and emotional, with transparency and honesty.
At its heart, polyamory requires emotional maturity and self-awareness. It means learning to communicate openly about your needs, desires, and boundaries with multiple people. It involves confronting feelings of jealousy and discomfort head-on, without running from them, and instead offering yourself the care and regulation needed to stay balanced.
Polyamory means doing the work to be the best at it that you can be, especially since the media lacks healthy representation and modeling. It means a lot of self-educating and unlearning monogamous scripts. There are books you can read (Ethical Slut, Polysecure, More Than Two), podcasts you can listen to (The Ready For Polyamory Podcast), content creators you can get helpful advice from on social media (Remodeled Love, Polyphiliablog, Polyampoppy, Chillpolyamory, Decolonizing.love) to name a few. Consider those just a jumping off point because you really determine your own level of involvement and there is no excuse for not trying. In fact, a lack of trying potentially means you will hurt yourself others.
Polyamory is regular full panel STI testing and being able and willing to discuss STI status to protect yourself as well as your polycule. Polyamory is finding a poly competent therapist who has experience and is knowledgeable in treating poly folks. Not every therapist understands the complexity and nuance, and some are straight up bias against it. I had to interview several before I found one that I felt comfortable with, and it has made all the difference in my own journey.
Building a supportive community is another key aspect of polyamory. While your monogamous friends may not fully understand your experience, having a network of people who share your values and challenges can make all the difference. Cultivating this community is vital for emotional support and growth—without it, you’re doing yourself a disservice. You deserve to feel understood and supported!
Polyamory is no different from any other challenging life pursuit; it’s about growth, evolution, and learning from mistakes. When you make a misstep (and you will!), the key is owning up to it, apologizing, and making an effort to do better. Time management is also essential—balancing multiple relationships requires clear communication about how much time you can realistically devote to each person. Some relationships may be more frequent, others more occasional, and some might even be long-distance. Whatever the case, being intentional about your time helps you manage your polycule effectively.
With all these tools in place, polyamory can be an incredibly liberating experience. It’s about the freedom to form new connections, learning and growing with others, and discovering opportunities you never imagined before. It’s about fun adventures with your partners and metas (your partners’ partners), like shopping together for a birthday present or forming a group to play Dungeons & Dragons. Polyamory allows for endless possibilities—more people to laugh with, new relationships to explore, and richer, more varied experiences to enjoy. It’s about abundance, and the options are limitless!
