It’s actually a while since I talked blogged about dipping my toes into the world of polyamory. At least, according to my blog it is – I feel like it it’s only a week or two since I talked about how I want a relationship style that allows me to fall in love every day and wrote about my struggles to decide what to wear on a date with my crush to see if I could, hypothetically, tempt them to fuck me.
Maybe it feels like it’s only been a handful of days because I’m not sure I’ve stopped thinking about polyamory, even while I’ve been writing about other things. As I’m writing this, I’m talking to a friend about the tangles of a poly relationship, and how if love was easy anyone could do it. I haven’t yet figured out how – or even if, I suppose – I want to do polyamory, but I like thinking and talking about it, trying to find the words to describe how I want to do relationships.
One of the reasons I’m writing this is because I’ve finally managed to put into words something I’ve been trying to articulate for a long time. After a year or so of knowing the words I’m using to talk about how I feel about dating cis men are clumsy and inaccurate, it feels wonderful to be able put it so clearly and concisely, with such confidence that I know exactly what I want.
What I want right now, anyway. I keep having to remind myself that it’s ok if I change my mind. It’s totally fine for me to not know how I want to do relationships, or how openly (or aggressively) out I want to be, or if I ever get married if it will be in a wedding dress or a suit. There’s a balance between knowing I know myself and still being open to still learning more about myself. For example, I am emphatically certain that I’m never going to have children, but I can easily believe that I might question my gender identity in the future.
With the caveat of ‘for now’ duly stated, are you ready for my new relationship-related-revelation? I currently can’t see myself ever being in a monogamous relationship with a cis man. I can remember how good it said to say those words aloud for the first time, testing them with my tongue and being more certain of them as I hear them spoken.
I am certain of them, because I have spent so long trying to find words to articular what I mean. I’ve tried out variants of it while talking to potential play-partners or close friends, always knowing that the words aren’t quite right. I can’t see myself in a serious relationship with a man, I’ve said before, and then proved myself wrong just a few months later when I discovered that I have just a bit of a Daddy kink. I would like to try a D/s relationship with an older guy – and to me that would be a serious relationship, with vulnerability and feelings involved.
The same thing applies to I can’t see myself in a long-term relationship with a man because I can see myself dating a Daddy dom, or having a couple of male fuck buddies as a casual but consistent presence in my life. There currently are guys in what I shall tentatively call my poly-constellation, I am not sure one of them would ever be my primary partner – even if I wasn’t drawn to the idea of solo poly. I think I’m too stubbornly gay to ever give up flirting with pretty girls, no matter who I was dating… which definitely suggests that polyamory how I’m going to do relationships.
All of that would bring me to the conclusion that I can’t see myself in a monogamous relationship with a guy, right? Then I thought of one of my Twitter crushes, and realised that I maybe can see myself in a monogamous relationship with a trans masc guy – though the gay boy in question doesn’t do monogamy and I’m pretty sure that particular crush will never go anywhere. It makes more sense to my queer little heart to add cis in there though, because I’m pretty sure any monogamous relationship I end up in will involve some form of gender-fuckery.
A week or so after this revelation, I was watching a film that had pretty bi boys enjoying an Italian summer with a friend. While we were discussing kink and relationships, I mentioned to her that I’d figured out something new about my relationship style and shared this with her. I was completely surprised when she told me she’d thought I’d known that before. Apparently while I’d been struggling to find the words to express what I meant, the people who’d been listening to me had understood exactly what I meant.
I wonder what else I just haven’t found the words for yet?
Image sourced through Pixabay. When I opened the draft for this blog post, the picture I had chosen was of someone licking an ice-cream: if you understand what Quinn-of-two-weeks-ago was thinking with that, please let me know.
Quinn Rhodes (he/him) is a freelance journalist, sex writer, and professional transsexual. His work focuses on dismantling shame and queering sex.
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