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Growing up, the '80s and early '90s were still very traditional times for relationships. My direct experience with my family was that I'd watch my parents show affection towards one another and say that they loved each other very much, and then it could also turn into screaming, yelling, and hostile behavior.
I was born in 1982 and I lived in the same house in Denver, Colorado from when I was two years old until I left for college. My parents still live in the very same house; we are your typical nuclear family.
A lot of the media during my younger years also portrayed relationships as eternal but from as early as kindergarten, I was constantly liking new people and I didn't understand why it was a problem. When I was younger, I'd tell my mom that I wanted to marry my friend who was a girl. My mom would say that I didn't understand how marriage worked because I was young. But I'd always ask: "Why can't I marry her? She's great."
Conforming with what others wanted
Up until the age of 17, I thought of myself as straight. It all began to change when I went to a gay club in Denver. I made a lot of gay friends and was able to start exploring what I wanted in relationships. During my junior year of high school, I came out as bisexual and began to realize that I actually liked having a lot of people in my life. I was also involved in a dating quad and the four of us went to prom together; it was very sweet.
But just before I had turned 18, my parents found out that I was queer, and that I had been going to raves and making out with different people. I was grounded for a very long time and it reinforced the idea that I would be punished for not being like other people.
So, at the beginning of my senior year, I decided that maybe I needed to explore dating monogamously because the culture around me was so restrictive. There were parts of me that were queer, fabulous, and sexual and there was also a part of me that thought if I wanted to be a grownup and do the "right things" I needed to settle down, get married, and have children.
So, when I was 21, I met a guy at a swing and blues dancing class. He was almost a decade older than me, but he was into me, which felt like such an honor because he was a nationally known dancing instructor. We got together quickly and were married in 2006.
Our marriage didn't last and we got divorced in 2008 because I felt that there wasn't space for me to be myself in that relationship. When we separated, it allowed me to reevaluate what I truly wanted in a relationship and who I wanted to be.
At that point, I had tried to be the person that I felt society wanted me to be, but that didn't work for me. So, I thought: What else could it be, and where else could I go? That's when I started significantly exploring non-monogamy, kink, queerness, and solo polyamory.
Exploring solo polyamory
I heard about solo polyamory in 2014 when I went to a workshop at Atlanta Poly Weekend, a polyamory conference. When I heard people talking about it, it sounded like such a cool way of doing relationships. I realized that in my previous relationships, I had been following a cultural script that reinforced codependence and merging of identities, rather than healthy interdependence.
For me, merging into a couple had often led to me sacrificing myself to keep the "couple" part of the relationship alive. So, when I heard that solo polyamory could be a way for me to have deep, meaningful, and long-term connections with multiple people rather than having a "primary" partner, it was a revelation.
The fact that I wasn't required to move in with somebody, share my finances with them, or have children to create a true or meaningful connection helped me. It meant that I could focus on my priorities and that a relationship wasn't doomed if I didn't make a big sacrifice to stay with the other person.
One of the things I love the most about being solo polyamorous is that I have so many deep, meaningful connections with people. I do have partners at times, just not right at this moment. But we can be whatever works for us: Partners, friends, lovers, or something else entirely. We care about each other deeply and we love each other in many different capacities. I don't have a great word for it, but they are really unique connections.
My solo polyamorous relationships
For example, I have two lovers who live locally in Philadelphia, although I haven't seen one of them in a while because of our busy schedules. I also have a sweetie who lives in Portland, Oregon, who I spend time eating food and drinking wine with.
My twin flame lives in Jacksonville and we have matching tattoos, they are a fantastic human who I met at Atlanta Polyamory Weekend in 2014. We were partners for a while, didn't speak for a while, and then found our way back to each other and love each other deeply.
My ex-partner is still one of my lovers. We lived together for a few months in 2015, but it did not go well at all. We broke up, we didn't speak for six months, then we became friends again. Now, we're going to live together again voluntarily, but as friends and lovers who also care deeply about each other romantically. Although it's like we're going backward, we're doing everything completely differently than we did the first time. Previously, I felt that we were trying to be more like how typical, monogamous people are and now we're being more clear about negotiating aspects of what to expect from each other and how we interact.
My best friend, Rebekah, is a part of my chosen family. She lives in Washington State, Seattle and her children are like my nephews even though we aren't blood-related. Every year, we wear matching Christmas pajamas on Christmas even if I am unable to be with them.
The common misconceptions of being solo polyamorous
The biggest misconception in solo polyamory is that people who are solo polyamorous may not want meaningful relationships or commitments, and that's not at all true. Most people I know who are solo polyamorous want deep, meaningful, connected relationships, they just don't need to have them with only one person.
I think that another big misconception is that solo polyamorous people may have commitment fears. That's funny to me because the solo polyamorous people that I know have been maintaining connections for years with several people.
Solo polyamory is also not the same as casual dating. To me, the phrase "just dating" implies a casualness that isn't present in my connections. When I am just dating someone, if they do not text me back, I'd be upset for a week and then forget who they are in a month.
If someone is your friend, they're not just "anything," they're deeply important to you. The connections that I have with people mean that they know about what's happening in my life; they're the people that I would call if I was going to the hospital, or if I needed support.
When I'm casually dating somebody, I may daydream about them because it's fun and interesting, but the person wouldn't typically be an intimate part of my world, or in my inner circle. They are not part of the foundation of who I am in this world. Whereas with those I see as relationships in my life, I have deep, meaningful, profound connections that are long-term. They just don't look the way other people expect they would.
For example, a solo polyamorous writer, Amy Gahran, describes what is known as the "relationship escalator," which represents how society typically tells us relationships should be. First comes love, then marriage, and then children. But the thing about an escalator is that it only goes in one direction and you can't stop on the escalator and stay in the same place; you also can't go back.
Solo polyamory is about saying that relationships are not typically like an escalator, but like a campground. Some people like to camp at the top of the mountain, some people like to camp next to the lake. Neither of those is better or worse than the other. I am not having less connected or less meaningful or less deep relationships with these people just because we're never going to get married. We're still deeply involved with each other. We still care about each other.
Improving as a society
I think that there has been more acceptance of polyamorous and gay people over the years. I'm someone who is queer, non-binary, kinky, and polyamorous and that may make me the devil for a lot of folks. But I think that there is more openness about it than before.
I'm a psychologist; research shows that people who are non-monogamous are more likely to be unemployed and underpaid. In America, there's no employment or discrimination protection for polyamorous people at work, which means people could lose their jobs for being polyamorous and not have any backing. These things still happen and I think it's so very dependent on location in terms of what is accepted and what isn't in society.
It's important to still keep pushing. In some states, There is typically no automatic inheritance benefit, or child custody granted if a polyamorous person dies in the U.S. In addition, if a partner is closeted about their polyamory, the people in their life may have no idea who their partners are which can make unexpected deaths more complicated.
For me, solo polyamory is a deep belief that we all deserve the freedom to define our connections; that we all deserve the freedom from other people's expectations and cultural narratives to figure out our own paths. And that freedom gives us so much more richness and so much more ability to connect with people.
Dr. Liz Powell is a sex educator, speaker, therapist, and podcast guest. You can find out more about them here.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Newsweek associate editor, Carine Harb.
Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com
