I read an interesting post on facebook recently about poly-relationships and how this person feels we are moving away from monogamy, and traditional love, and false ideas of soul mates into more polyamorous relationships.  This person described what he would like: a loosely defined group of guys who come together  based on friendship and shared values, and who are also intimate and sexual with each other.  He said that as he gets older he realizes that romantic love and all its entanglements is an illusion: a made up fantasy.  He wrote that he felt moving away from romantic love and traditional coupling was part of society’s natural evolution, and that monogamy and traditional marriage are a part of our past: cages that enslave our sexuality.  I feel pretty strongly about this: meaning, I think it is bullshit.  I am in a triad. I started out in a traditional, monogamous-ish relationship with my now husband (monogamous-ish is what we called our relationship, meaning we could fuck anyone we wanted as long as we did it together: three, four, six, whatever.  We were in it together and enjoyed it together.  This, for me, has allowed us to have a pretty amazing sex life: there is nothing hotter to me than watching my man fuck another guy, suddenly the man I’m living with and paying bills with and dealing with all the small little aspects of domestic life with is this huge stud.  It changes him.  Makes him more than just my partner: we become sexual beings to each other.).  We met Jon two and a half years into our relationship (you can read all about it in my continuing story “The Story of Us”).   What has amazed me about being in this kind of a relationship is the way love expands, it grows, it does not feel limited in its ability to be expressed or to be felt.  And that is beautiful.  What is also beautiful is watching my husband, Alex, fall in love with our boyfriend.  Watching Jon fall in love with Alex.  Watching them kiss.  Make love.  All these  things are sexy and hot and beautiful.  And sometimes they are painful and full of jealousy and things that must be worked through.  But none of them negate romantic love.  None of this negates the idea of a “soul mate”.  It does, as far as I can tell, quite the opposite: it expands these ideas, enlarges them.  I believe in true love.  I believe in a huge, romantic, spiritual kind of love.  For me this has taken on a poly-triad aspect.  For others it appears as a coupling in a monogamous relationship.  Neither is more evolved than the other.  Being open is not more evolved than being monogamous.  Both have challenges and both have freedoms the other doesn’t.  I believe a truly evolved or enlightened person would allow for all aspects and all angles: instead of imposing their way as THE way.  Relationships are hard.  Whether they are between two people or ten people.  There is a lot that is amazing and wonderful about my relationship with these two amazing men: and there is a lot that is really hard about it.  I still struggle to find my self and my space and my own identity within this.  I still struggle with jealousy and insecurity.  And I find an amazing love and wonder and friendship.  I have no idea where this adventure will end up.  But I do not believe that a poly-relationship is more evolved or more enlightened than a more “traditional” couple.  I do not  think any of that matters: what matters is that we find love, and find a way to express love.  I am lucky.  I feel that I have found an amazing support in these two men to help me through life: that is what, in the end, I always wanted from a  relationship (that and really hot sex! I’m not kidding.  I think sex matters.  A lot.  I think having sex with the person/s you are in a relationship with matters.  I think a lot guys give up on this.  It takes work, and we have to find ways to keep it hot, but so far we’ve been successful.).  Life is hard alone.  I don’t have to do it alone.  But that takes sacrifice.  And it takes work.  But the pay off is amazing.