Monogamy Is a Mindfuck

How do we push past the conditioning to see what truly serves us?

It’s been a while since my last newsletter, and for that, I apologize! It’s been a month. It feels hard, sometimes, to collect my thoughts and feelings when they are all over the place, and to figure out exactly how much to share.

One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about is monogamy: Trying to understand and parse my feelings about it and distinguish those that are true and real from those that are rooted in social conditioning.

After I separated from my ex, I craved freedom — no more feeling tethered to one person, one set of expectations, one bed. I wanted exploration, novelty, and the space to discover myself.

For the most part, I found exactly that. Over time, I have become pickier about the men I choose to spend time with — turns out I prefer men who are kind, thoughtful, and respectful enough not to spit in my mouth without asking, who knew — but the desire to remain untethered never faded.

Then I met the energy healer.

It didn’t take long for feelings to ignite, catching me off guard. And suddenly, everything felt complicated.

Among other things, I quickly found myself wanting only him, and for him to want only me. I’d go on Feeld, but nobody there interested me anymore. I wondered what was going on. Was it normal to crave monogamy when feelings deepened? Was this just the intoxicating pull of New Relationship Energy, or had cultural conditioning silently nudged me back toward familiar patterns? How would I know whether I was someone best served by monogamy, or someone best served by non-monogamy?

I talked to a poly friend of mine about it. She said she thought of non-monogamy as more of a mindset than a practice. She considered herself non-monogamous in overall mindset, but sometimes, she said, she did go through periods in which she practiced monogamy. Sometimes this happened when she was first dating someone, and things were intense. Other times it happened when she was particularly busy with work. When she practiced monogamy, she still didn’t consider herself a monogamous person.

Recently, too, I started reading the book Open Deeply by sex positive therapist Kate Loree. She describes her approach to relationships as “fluid,” in that she sometimes practices monogamy, and sometimes doesn’t. Specific relationships may be monogamous or non-monogamous, and their structures can shift over time, too, based on what best supports the emotional and practical needs of each person. We can define our relationship structures based on what works best for us in that moment, and they can evolve over time.

Without explicitly discussing it, the energy healer and I had naturally slipped into a monogamous rhythm. Was this just situational, I wondered? Or was it what I really wanted long-term? I wasn’t sure, but soon enough my feelings started giving me hints. Our time together was limited, and often, when we finally connected, the energy healer was too exhausted for intimacy. He sometimes fell asleep while we were together, and I felt disappointed. I saw that this could quickly become a cycle of frustration, with my desires outpacing his capacity to fulfill them.

I decided to voice my concerns. I told him that I was worried that I wanted more energy, intensity and sex than he was giving me, and I didn’t know what to do about it. He listened, he validated, and he admitted that he wasn’t sure he could give much more than he was giving, at least not right now. To my astonishment, instead of defensiveness or withdrawal, he then suggested that maybe it would make sense for me to start seeing other people so that my needs could be met.

In that moment, I felt all the feelings. I was amazed that he could hear me, not get defensive, and choose to center my needs. He wanted me to be happy, and if that required my dating other people, he was open to it. It felt extremely generous and compassionate.

Yet I also felt the familiar sting of rejection.

As women, we are conditioned our whole lives to find our Prince Charming — the man who will sweep us off our feet, rescue us, and complete us. We are sold the ideal of the storybook romance, and it does not involve men telling us that they are okay with us sleeping with other people. Prince Charming would not have nonchalantly told me to go back on Feeld. Prince Charming would have promised to fulfill my every need and would rather have fought dragons than have seen me in another man’s arms.

When my energy healer didn’t fulfill this fantasy, a part of me wondered if it was because he didn’t care enough. His willingness to open things up felt an awful lot like indifference — even though, I realized, it was likely coming from a place of generosity. As Thich Nhat Hanh has famously said, “you must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”

My energy healer was setting me free. So why did it hurt so much?

It hurt because fairy tales never include partners who casually encourage us back onto dating apps. They teach us to equate love with exclusivity and possessiveness, creating the illusion that true devotion means restricting ourselves to one perfect person.

These fairy tales can be cages. They can make us want to sacrifice our aspirations and our needs for our relationships. But we can recognize their perniciousness, and still also wish for them. We can crave monogamy and storybook romances even if we know they may not actually serve us.

I’m not saying that women who choose monogamy or storybook romances are always acting against their best interests. Not at all. But I do think that we have to work to try to distinguish between relationship desires we have because we have been told our whole lives to want them, and relationship desires that reflect what will actually satisfy and nourish us in the long run.

I can now see that at this point in my life — a year after my decision to divorce — a serious, monogamous relationship is not what I actually want or need. Or at the very least, a serious, monogamous relationship with the energy healer is not what I want or need right now. Because even though his suggestion to open things up stung, I also felt an immediate sense of relief. So I told him that yes, it was probably a good idea for me to get back on Feeld, at least for now.

There is grief in realizing that the person you care about is not the magic elixir that will make you feel whole. But there’s strength, hope and excitement in that recognition, too — in being able to see the best path forward, even if you don’t know quite where it’s going to take you.