quizzical pussy

Laramy and I had a brief conversation recently about fucking other people. We decided early on that we’d keep our relationship fairly open, but it’s always good to communicate and check in about these things. Yep, still open. Glad we cleared that up.

I was thrilled when I first learned that Laramy wasn’t the jealous type, not just because it potentially meant MOAR SEX for little nympho me, but also because it was so new and completely divergent from my relationship history. I had dated guys who ranged from forbidding me to have male friends to being uncomfortable when I wanted to play wingman for my single friends but stopping short of  attempting to forbid it. This is the first time I’ve ever dated someone who didn’t even seem to be on the jealousy spectrum. It’s pretty neat.

The question of whether we as a species are capable of monogamy doesn’t capture my imagination. It’s just not all that mysterious. Some people seem to do fine with it, others fail every time they try. I think the more intriguing question is why it’s important (or not) to be monogamous today, and what motivates the choice to be or not to close a relationship.

When my dating adventures began, I was almost comically oblivious as to why I should mind what a guy was doing when he wasn’t with me. I now realize that it drove Reginald Sleeth crazy because he kept trying to make me jealous and it never worked quite like he wanted. Of course it was gratifying when he told me (obviously true) stories about how throngs of modelesque girls threw themselves at him and he told told them, “Narp, I’m in lurrrrrve!” but beyond that I didn’t really give it much thought. It didn’t occur to me to feel threatened or affronted that he was chatting up girls. Later, when I found out he’d cheated the deception wounded me, but I didn’t feel jealous, exactly.

But after some time, I found he’d trained me to be jealous. It was the weirdest thing. He’d pick huge fights over my lack of reaction when he talked about his run-ins with aggressive women or when he mentioned that female friends had propositioned him. He expected some kind of explosive sturm und drang from me, so I learned to provide it. And, just like how you automatically get happier when you force yourself to smile, eventually my displays of jealousy became more and more genuine. Of course I never came close to his impressive pyrotechnics (e.g. throwing me to the floor, holding me down by the neck and strangling me when a completely platonic male friend called me on my phone to see if I wanted to come hang out with him and his girlfriend), but in a few years I’d become about as jealous as the average monogamously inclined person.

Having been out of the hell that was my relationship with Reginald for almost seven years now, I’ve left a lot of those learned behaviors behind, and I’m much closer in a lot of ways to who I was when I was 17 than who I was when 22, or even 24 and still dealing with the aftermath of all the fuckwittage. I’ve come to realize that for me, jealousy is a direct product of insecurity. When I’m feeling down on myself I tend to feel like I’m inferior to everyone else on the planet, and in that mindset of poverty you really don’t feel much like sharing. But that happens less and less as I get more emotionally healthy. Go figure.

When it comes to someone I care about, I’m not wondering anymore how best to stop him or her from touching any especially fun body parts that don’t belong to me. Why the fuck would I want to stop someone that special from wringing every drop of joy out of life? As Laramy put it once, life is too damn short. There might be some remnants of “…does this mean I’m obsolete?” feelings when my boyfriend shows interest in someone new, but they’re manageable, and I’d much rather overcome them than entertain them.

This is not to say that if you value monogamy you have low self esteem or don’t want the best for your partner or anything like that. These are just things I’ve noticed in myself. Some people are wired for monogamy, some people excel at nonmonogamy. People like me, we can go either way. I’ve never cheated on anyone and I don’t need to sleep with multiple people, but I do appreciate and enjoy some freedom. The total lack of the control and pressure I’ve known in the past is one part of why I’m so thrilled with my current relationship. So, like, wanna do it?

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