Anna, I can see you’ve thought about this long and hard and this piece is very, very good and beautifully honest. So, what’s wrong with just not being polyamorous? Polyamory definitely isn’t for everyone, some of us are better at shaking the cultural norms than others, and some of us have significantly different emotional tolerances than others, including tolerance for jealousy-inducing or unsafe-feeling situations, so, why not just stick with monogamy and be happy with it? Set out that as a boundary before each relationship and stick with it. A big draw of the idea of polyamory is that it’s always felt like “home” every time I’ve done it, no matter what the dynamic looked like (me and other women vs. a woman me and another man, etc.) the results was always the same, something a little more natural-feeling and safe. If you’re not finding these benefits, I ask, as a poly person myself, why even do it?
I’d also like to suggest that the cultural conditioning you speak of, about women being less sexual creatures and men being basically taught to chase after everything with a skirt and mate with it, not only IS NOT a biological imperative that’s encoded in our DNA or some such, but it’s not really culturally conditioned either. I was never really taught to sleep with as many people as possible, in fact, I think the patriarchy bombards us with unhealthy messages in the opposite direction, the idea that there’s The One and guys must go through some big challenge and rescure her and then basically possess her until the end of time, her having no life without him, yada yada. You see this on Disney movies all the time and it creates extremely possessive men who refuse to respect boudnaries because they think they’re working towards some master plan of Happily Ever After. I think this is pretty dangerous, a pretty bad message. Anyways, hope this brainstorming helped, here. You don’t need to do polyamory, just be up front with it and you should be golden, and don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you need to have multiple partners.
All in all, the standard model of “Men aren’t choosey and women are highly selective because they have limited eggs,” is totally bogus, it’s been proven wrong through science in recent years, it was an outdated Darwinian notion left over from Victorian England that, sadly, people still believe. This book discusses it at length, called Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What That Means for Modern Relationships. Top-notch book and yeah, it’s an affilliate link, so my wonderful self makes a small commission from the proceedes. Here are some of my works on the subject that might clarify my view a bit that I think you’ll find appreciable. You could also visit the work of Elle Beau for plenty on the subject. Good luck.
