Remember that post where I said that I could write a post on making exceptions for men within the context of polyamorous relationships, dating monogamous men who were willing to “make exceptions for me”?
That post is here, and that time is now. I didn’t forget to make that post. I was always going to.
From the time that I began outing myself as polyamorous (or, initially, non-monogamous) all the way to my refusal to date monogamous men, there were times when I dated monogamous men who were willing to “make exceptions for me” within the context of a relationship where they were clearly monogamous and not willing to date or be in relationships with anyone else other than me, but were — or at least made it seem, because it never looked like it was any different from my point of view — perfectly alright with me dating and being in relationships with other men (although, for the record, my “comfortable limit” of relationships has always been two, although I would not be opposed to three if I were in two and the right person came along… I like to remind confused monogamous people that they tend to have more than two close friends).
At first, I was fine with this as long as the monogamous partner that I was with was fine with this.
However, as time went on, I became increasingly less fine with this, because I felt like the dynamic of each relationship where this happened was tilted toward me in a peculiar way, even though the monogamous man stated — and sometimes insisted — that they were fine with this. A lot of the time, I felt like they were making this exception because it was me who they were dating, not because they would normally make this exception or consider this carte blanche. Even though I would never refuse to give someone permission to date other people or be in relationships with other people if I wanted that same permission myself and so always extended that permission, making it clear, the men who “made these exceptions for me” obviously never took me up on that offer, and they insisted that they wouldn’t because they “were willing to be monogamous for me”. It just eventually got to the point that I decided not to date monogamous men any longer, men who were more comfortable being monogamous, or men who “were willing to be monogamous for the right person” (hello, Kat Blaque) because I didn’t want to have to deal with the unevenly skewed dynamic that would always be there in the relationship even though they insisted “that things were alright”.
I started refusing to date monogamous men eight years or so ago and am still glad that I have done so.
