this is something I have been struggling with for a long time, and I would appreciate any thoughts on this.
It's been about four years since I've realized that I'm not a monogamous person and I don't want to be, and there are quite a few non-monogamous people in my communities. But lately I've been extremely confused with my self-image, and my feelings towards my relationship-dynamics.
A lot of this comes from the fact that, while I have always been very communicative about my view of relationships, and I have always made it clear at the beginning of every romantic(and otherwise) involvement that I want everyone involved to be free to act on any of their feelings, almost all of my more intense of more long-term lovers have been monogamous towards me.
Aand, although maybe not directly connected to that, quite a few times someone got emotionally hurt at the end and it was almost never me.
Usually this happened because our needs didn't match. But I've been struggling with this confusion, because one one hand,
I know that I still have a lot of internalized monogamy-socialization inside me and a lot of guilt and self-hatred associated with that,
and at the same time I know that I'm not perfect and that just because I'm communicating honestly doesn't mean that I don't fuck up,
and that not always when someone gets hurt it's anyones fault and that fault shouldn't be the point.....
but now, I'm at a point where I dread the moment I do feel jealous of one of my lovers, because somewhere deep down I feel like "after everything i've put people through, I don't have the right to feel that" and that it would make me an asshole and a hypocrite.
Even though I never blamed anyone for their jealousy, and I've almost always taken lots of time and energy to talk about it, and try to work through it, and I've never given anyone false hopes.
And I hate it, because my feelings on non-monogamy and freedom of human relationships is one thing I am absolutely clear on and certain about, and yet I know that somewhere inside of me a part of myself feels like it's a "bad thing to do/be". And it makes me hate myself.
Now, some of my lovers have actively made me feel bad about it, have berated my ability to love and whatnot, but most of them have been really accepting and open and some actively enthusiastic about it.
but even in the best cases, simply the amount of times people I have loved have felot bad about the way I am and feel, even if they said that it's not my fault and even if we did work through it and they did learn to feel better about it... it still accumulates into a really shitty feeling.
And most importantly it makes me feel like I cant possibly ask for support or consideration of my feelings if I, myself, end up feeling jealous, insecure, posessive... and this, in turn influences my ability to trust people and let myself go emotionally. Because, what if....? After all, "I'm an asshole and I've hurt people"....
As if there is some kind of credit account for how many times you can have other lovers, and if your lovers have other lovers in turn it adds to your "allowance", and I'm in a minus and should make up for it. What a load of freedom-negative bullshit. But there's the words "fairness" and all the comparing and all the guilt, and........ I just don't know anymore...
help? thoughts? insight?
& thanks for reading...
It's been about four years since I've realized that I'm not a monogamous person and I don't want to be, and there are quite a few non-monogamous people in my communities. But lately I've been extremely confused with my self-image, and my feelings towards my relationship-dynamics.
A lot of this comes from the fact that, while I have always been very communicative about my view of relationships, and I have always made it clear at the beginning of every romantic(and otherwise) involvement that I want everyone involved to be free to act on any of their feelings, almost all of my more intense of more long-term lovers have been monogamous towards me.
Aand, although maybe not directly connected to that, quite a few times someone got emotionally hurt at the end and it was almost never me.
Usually this happened because our needs didn't match. But I've been struggling with this confusion, because one one hand,
I know that I still have a lot of internalized monogamy-socialization inside me and a lot of guilt and self-hatred associated with that,
and at the same time I know that I'm not perfect and that just because I'm communicating honestly doesn't mean that I don't fuck up,
and that not always when someone gets hurt it's anyones fault and that fault shouldn't be the point.....
but now, I'm at a point where I dread the moment I do feel jealous of one of my lovers, because somewhere deep down I feel like "after everything i've put people through, I don't have the right to feel that" and that it would make me an asshole and a hypocrite.
Even though I never blamed anyone for their jealousy, and I've almost always taken lots of time and energy to talk about it, and try to work through it, and I've never given anyone false hopes.
And I hate it, because my feelings on non-monogamy and freedom of human relationships is one thing I am absolutely clear on and certain about, and yet I know that somewhere inside of me a part of myself feels like it's a "bad thing to do/be". And it makes me hate myself.
Now, some of my lovers have actively made me feel bad about it, have berated my ability to love and whatnot, but most of them have been really accepting and open and some actively enthusiastic about it.
but even in the best cases, simply the amount of times people I have loved have felot bad about the way I am and feel, even if they said that it's not my fault and even if we did work through it and they did learn to feel better about it... it still accumulates into a really shitty feeling.
And most importantly it makes me feel like I cant possibly ask for support or consideration of my feelings if I, myself, end up feeling jealous, insecure, posessive... and this, in turn influences my ability to trust people and let myself go emotionally. Because, what if....? After all, "I'm an asshole and I've hurt people"....
As if there is some kind of credit account for how many times you can have other lovers, and if your lovers have other lovers in turn it adds to your "allowance", and I'm in a minus and should make up for it. What a load of freedom-negative bullshit. But there's the words "fairness" and all the comparing and all the guilt, and........ I just don't know anymore...
help? thoughts? insight?
& thanks for reading...