Hey everybody! My name is Dana Mooney, licensed mental health counselor with
Inner Trek, LLC. And welcome to Therapy Questions. This is episode number five.
This is a little series where I answer your questions that I get about therapy.
So the last couple of episodes have been about polyamory and different forms of
consensual non-monogamy. And I got a question off of one of the last videos.
So we'll kind of keep it on that topic for this episode. The question I
got was, "What are some of the main reasons people open up their
relationships? I think my assumption is that maybe they're just bored in a
monogamous relationship, but maybe that's not correct or fair." Okay so this is a
really great question. I think that there are a lot of different ways that people
get into consensual non-monogamy and I want to talk about things in kind of two
categories. So first category we've got people who feel like being consensually
nonmonogamous is part of their identity, and then we've got people who view it
more as like a relationship choice. So and then of course there are people kind
of in the middle as well that view it as both. And so we'll talk first about
identity. Okay. Ao I've heard this story quite a bit and
it comes in different forms so I'll just mash all the stories together to do
like one homogeneous story. The story I hear is: "Growing up I had a really really
hard time being in relationships because I would always find myself attracted to
more than one person, and then feeling guilty or bad about having those
feelings, or not wanting to tell my partner about them, or I would fall in
love with two, three people at once and not know what to do about that. Or I
would cheat on my partners and then just feel awful and destroy relationships
because I have this tendency. Or I have this desire to do this and I don't I
never knew what to do until I found out about polyamory or until I found out about
consensual non-monogamy. And then I figured out that there are other ways to
live where being myself isn't awful and isn't looked down upon and isn't shamed.
And I just I will never go back." And so I've heard this so many times
in various different forms and this is because there are a lot of
people that feel that this is a tendency that is a stable trait for them across
time. As long as they can remember they've been attracted to more than one
person at a time. And so yeah that's part of their identity. I also have noticed an
interesting trend as more information is coming out publicly about different
forms of consensual non-monogamy, like there are I think there are even shows
about having open marriages and polyamory, and teens and adolescents are
getting more exposure to different types of lifestyles, they're realizing that
there are different choices. And so we're coming into an interesting phenomenon
where there's a new generation of people who, maybe they never get into a
monogamous relationship. Maybe they decide that they want to be in
polyamorous relationships or open relationships and from the get-go. And so
I think that that's a really interesting kind of new thing that's happening I do
want to talk about for those people that are that have an identity as like, "I am
poly" or "I am consensually nonmonogamous at at my core." A thing that I have seen
some of is people's relationship might change or somebody's circumstances might
change or maybe even they might change as a person, and then at some point it
becomes, it makes more sense to them to be in a monogamous relationship. And
sometimes when that happens it can cause a lot of feelings of confusion if
they've attached consensual monogamy to identity I've seen it bring up feelings
of guilt and feelings of failure almost for kind of going back to monogamy. And
if that's a place that you're in or if you know somebody who's in that place I
just want you to know that that's okay to change. There's nothing wrong with
monogamy inherently. It works for a whole lot of people, and it's okay
for things to change to where monogamy makes sense for you and there's nothing
absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's totally normal for identities to change
it's totally normal for circumstances to change and it's totally normal for
preferences to change. So however makes sense for you to be at this time is
totally fine and acceptable. And go for it. You're doing the right thing for you
so I want to kind of move over to the relationship choice people. And there's
like a couple of different iterations that I want to talk about.
there are people there are many people that who would be happy in any style of
relationship as long as it made them happy in that moment. So maybe they'd be
happy as a monogamous person, maybe they'd be happy as a poly person
Whatever just what makes sense for them is what they like. There are also people
who get into consensual monogamy because maybe they fall in love with somebody
who's poly and they decide well this is something that I want to try to make
work so I will give it a shot. That's how some people get into it. There are also
people who like a consensually non-monogamous style because they're
more able to explore their parts of their sexual orientation that they can't
explore with just one person. Or maybe they are wanting to explore parts of
their sexuality that they can't explore with their current partner. This happens
sometimes when people are interested in different types of BDSM or maybe
different fetishes that their partner just isn't interested in. And so
they say, "Go ahead and explore that. Like I support you
in doing that with other people because I don't want to." There are also
people who view consensual non-monogamy as almost like their philosophical
leaning. And so what this means is many people think about their
relationships as not wanting to have rules on them or constraints. And so
things like, "We are in this monogamous relationship or we are in this marriage."
kind of give a person or a reason to be in it. And so they want to take away
those reasons for a person to be in it just because they agreed to do it and
they want to allow or encourage their partner to be their authentic selves and
actively make the choice to be in that relationship every day, rather than just
because they decided that they wanted to do it five years ago, and that's what
they agreed to. And so in that way they kind of want to actively encourage their
partner to explore themselves and become their most authentic selves and
maybe that authentic self doesn't involve this current relationship or
maybe it does, but that way they'll act they'll know that their partner is
choosing that relationship on purpose, which is important to them. So I think
that that's kind of like the broad categories and I'm sure that there are a
lot more different reasons that people get into non-monogamy. And if I didn't, if
I missed anything please please send me a message or put it in the comments. I'd
love to hear about your experiences. And if you have questions for me or that
you'd like to answer you'd like me to answer on Therapy Questions you can put
them in the comments. You can send them to me in an email at InnerTrekLLC@gmail.com
or you can put them in the submission form on my website at
InnerTrekLLC.com. Thank you so much for watching and I hope that was helpful!
Be well!
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