I grew up in an environment where I was outside of the norm.  The majority of my friends lived with their mother and their father, where as I lived with my mother and my step dad.  The natural inquiry was always to ask where my real dad was.  And I would answer that I lived with my dad, and I did not know where my biological was.  It made a complex situation a little clearer, as the idea of having two male figures was not accepted by either my friends, and sometimes even my family. It was not until my grad banquet from high school that I even officially “came out” so to speak as to having two fathers.  And I did it in a symbolic way, by dancing with both of them together during the father daughter dance.  It was not the most co-ordinated dancing, more of a ring around the rosy time event, but it certainly made an impression on many of the catholic parents that were watching.

But in my mind, growing up, I always felt like an outsider.  That my family was just not like everybody else’s and that I needed to keep quiet about what my home life was really like.  As I do more and more research into different relationships types it is becoming clear that monogamy has a mystical quality to it.  Monogamy is more of an illusion rather than a natural norm.  It is a pedestal that humans really do not ever get to stand on and yet publicly most say that they do.  But what if more of us became brave and started questioning what monogamy has really done for us.  What real benefits does it provide?  Are you happier having to stifle and suppress your mutual lust for that person you see every year at that convention?  What is normal about containing feelings of happiness in order to fit into society and keep sex for only one person until the day you die?

I think there is a trick that we play on our minds to reward us when we stay away from temptation.  That conviction that we are better and stronger for avoiding that amazing piece of strange, and somehow overcome our baser instincts for even a moment.  I do not mean to imply that you should sleep with everything that gives you a second glance, but I am saying that the feelings of guilt that arise from temptations are just not healthy.  I was a victim of this mentality for a very long time, in fact I took monogamy so seriously that it would even play a role in my fantasy life.  If I was thinking about sleeping with someone other than my ex D, I would actually have to first create a premise whereby he died, or somehow gave me permission to fulfill my fantasy.  There were monogamous restrictions within my own mind, and daydream world.  How can that possibly be healthy?  Or the other extreme whereby you can think and do any number of sordid things in your imagination, so much so that you are not really present when having that vanilla sex that you deem acceptable to society.

I struggle to understand why our society tries to tell us that feelings that are good are bad, and feelings of suppression and submissiveness are good.  The idea that our base instincts are thing that need to be overcome, rather than enjoyed and explored.  Media is constantly persecuting celebrities and people in power for having affairs, and trysts outside of their marriages.  These people are publicly shamed for having consensual sex, and families are destroyed in the wake.  I have yet to see a wife stand up and say that they were in an open relationship and she has some strange on the side too.  When that day happens some real ground will be made.  And there will be a positive movement to breaking the restrictions and guilt that coincide with monogamy.  Monogamy is a freedom, and should be mutually decided by two people, and not the expectation.