I am non-monogamous and have been for most of my sexually active life. For a while I thought I might be polyamorous, or some other word that made my lifestyle sound better, more positive, but I decided that it didn't fit. I call myself non-monogamous because the only constant and distinguishing fact about this part of my life is that I am not monogamous, I don't do things that way, the way that is expected; and after all if that weren't the expected way there would be nothing remarkable about me and this book would not exist. For reasons I still don't understand monogamy is not only the norm, but in spite of many changes in the way we think about sexuality is still almost totally unchallenged, and that's why what follows is a blatant piece of propaganda.

There are many, many ways to run your sex life and only one of them is monogamy, which is why I am surprised when people ask me why I'm not monogamous (well not surprised—I've had too much of it for that, but still taken aback) Surely the question should be about why they are? I have found, on the whole, that people don't actually want to know about non-monogamy. They are remarkably uninterested when I try to explain the differences between a committed open relationship and just living in the same flat as one of your lovers (a distinction they cannot comprehend) or between that and being single but occasionally, or often, having sex with friends or strangers (which many people can't see as non-monogamy at all, even though it's clearly not monogamy, either). What most people seem to want is not this kind of discussion. They want to know is why I'm not like them.

Of course the question of why isn't the worst one by any means, just possibly the hardest to answer because it takes me directly up against a whole slew of assumptions. I can take it as an honest enquiry from most people—many of whom genuinely don't have any idea where to start the discussion, and I will do my best to tell them about my beliefs and why I live the way I do. But what really gets to me is the endless succession of questions that inevitably seem to follow, and which show exactly how hard it's going to be to explain—the ones about don't I think that I might want to commit myself to somebody some day (yes, thank you, I already have) about isn't sex without affection a bit depressing? (yes, I had some of that, a long time ago when I was trying to be monogamous for a while, and yes, it was horrible). Don't you get jealous? (yes, sometimes, but I also get jealous of my partner's job, and I don't require they give that up); the question about ...well it all sounds quite fun (and what a lot of disapproval they can pack into a word like fun), but can you give me any examples of non-monogamous relationships that actually work?

This last is the point at which my questioners usually get stuck, and it took me a long time to work out why. At first I would try to answer it on their own terms by describing mine and some of my friends' relationships, and assuring my questioner that we were living a model life. I was lucky enough to meet a couple who had been together in an open marriage for twenty years and some men who had been living together in a gay threesome for eleven and I quoted their lives and those of other "successes" I had known with enthusiasm in all these arguments.

And then I began to give up.

Two things dawned on me about this argument was going nowhere. One was that I was arguing my case using their criteria for success (of which more later), and the other was that there are simply more of them than there are of us, and while this state of affairs prevails they will be able to keep asking us for examples until we run out. My married couple were dismissed as "swingers", and in any case they were straight and did I have any gay examples. The gay threesome was dismissed as being "merely promiscuous" (and this by people who had never seemed homophobic to me before). Anyway they didn't want to know about my model examples, they wanted to know about me. It's sometimes hard to tell genuine curiosity from prurient interest.

Even in the cause of non-monogamy I was unable and unwilling to disguise some of the real facts of my life at that time. And so I had it pointed out to me that my relationships were far from perfect and that I had been known to complain about my partners (so had they, of course). Finally when a friend's open relationship broke up and she decided to try being monogamous I was asked if I was going to do the same thing "to save my relationship". She seemed to have no doubt about which relationship I should save, oddly enough. I decided then that I was not going to try to justify myself anymore.

What I am prepared to do, though, is try to explain. And the reason I want to do this is that there are some things I really want explained to me: some things that bother me every time I see a monogamous assumption in action no matter how much I should be used to them (and I'm talking about monogamous assumptions, not relationships—it's the assumptions that get you every time). Maybe if I try to describe some of these things I might be able to let other people get a glimpse of what non-monogamy is like—for me...

What's it like being non-monogamous? One thing it's like is always being able to talk about people you fancy with people you are sleeping with. It disturbs be deeply when I see couples sniping at each other about this; even, or perhaps especially, when it's meant to be a joke. You know, the kind of "ha, ha, only serious" joke that upholds everyone's (presumed) values and leaves them feeling more secure. When I'm feeling skittish I enjoy sharing loud opinions about cute men with a boyfriend because it winds people up so much (on two counts). On bad days, though, I can be heard nagging my friends with, "What, do you really mind her fancying your mate? Don't you trust her? What if it were Brett Anderson? What if it were me?" This invariably achieves nothing.

Being non-monogamous means that an offer of sex from someone you care deeply about becomes a source of celebration instead of (as all forms of literature insist) an agonising decision about your current relationship and their current relationship and the beginning, in fact, of a hackneyed soap plot. Where would literature be without infidelity, anyway, or Eastenders? What if Grant had said, "No, of course I don't mind you sleeping with my brother while I'm in prison, or anyone else for that matter—after all, it's not as if I'm going to be any worse off—how about that Michelle? I've always thought she's cute." Yes, being non-monogamous can often be a lot like being invisible.

It's like that when I read questionnaires in Marie Claire and other such supposedly sexually advanced publications that ask me have I ever been "unfaithful". I found a survey recently that I diligently filled in because it gave me the option of being bisexual (a rare enough thing in itself) only to find that I had the options of being "unfaithful" according to their definition on paper or of actually being unfaithful to my girlfriend in my definition by failing to mention her at all. In a way non-monogamy is more invisible than bisexuality in that I honestly don't think that any of these magazines even realise there are people like me for whom words like "unfaithful" and concepts like "having an affair" are meaningless.

One thing non-monogamy is not like, sadly, is having an endless succession of lovers. Obviously it helps your score, in the crudest sense, to not have to turn people down just because you've got one lover already (in fact I was once told that the reason I was "easy" was that I was so ugly that I had to take every shag going). But not being single (another word that needs redefining) can make you a distinctly unattractive proposition in some people's eyes. Many bisexual women can tell of lesbians whose first reaction to women with male partners is not one of sisterly acceptance and while some men's attitude to a woman with a girlfriend is more enthusiastic, it's not necessarily the sort of enthusiasm I want to have to deal with. Threesomes are fine and good; the assumption that a threesome is all you're looking for, or that your consent includes your partner's, isn't.

Other, more well-meaning, people ask me repeatedly whether my partner will mind. This has been known to go on right up to, and into, bed, so that sometimes I wish I had had the foresight to get a signed statement to that effect. I doubt it would have helped, though, since this is essentially a guilt ridden litany and has to do with the fact that it is hard for people to believe that they are taking part in a fair and consensual situation instead of one of the soap plots mentioned earlier (it's hard to blame them, when that's all most people have ever been allowed to see). This disbelief is evinced by some of the bizarre qualms they come up with. We shouldn't do it in "his" (read our) bed, under "his" (read my) roof, when he's in town (he might come back), when he's not in town (because his backs turned), if my potential lover works with him (she'd have to face him in the morning) or if my date gets a sudden, irrational fear that it might all go horribly wrong.

I don't want to give the impression that I never get any lovers, though. I have had quite a few. Not as many as some people would like me to have had to prove either my bisexuality or my non-monogamy, but many more than some people—especially, but by no means exclusively, my parents—consider right. I do know that I have slept with more people than I would have done had I been monogamous and that, incidentally, my non-monogamy has "saved" more than one of my live-in relationships from ending sooner than it did, and more importantly saved me from what might have been disastrous moves to join the lust object of the moment on the grounds (from the gospel according to monogamy) that whoever your libido pulls you most strongly towards must be The One For You. (I know some monogamous people would deny this, but I'd like to know what else they mean when they say you "just know".)

There have been long periods when I haven't had any other lovers, though. Either through none being available or through my own disinclination to do anything about it. These have been times when I have found it particularly hard to explain to others that I am still non-monogamous. To me non-monogamy is a potential; admittedly, like bisexuality, it is a potential that I enjoy acting on often, but it is certainly not something that will atrophy through disuse. Even at times when I feel less inclined towards sex it hasn't occurred to me that I either should be or somehow already am monogamous. This is partially because I know that I am bound to want other lovers eventually, or that my partner will (and I don't see any need to limit their options just because I don't fancy anyone else at the moment); but it is at least as much to do with the many other less obvious advantages that non-monogamy offers. Many of which are to do with the way we think about sex.

Non-monogamy is about taking sex down from the pedestal that most people keep it on and bringing it into the realm of reality. And as soon as you look at sex as a real activity instead of a mythical quality you begin to ask what makes it so different from activities like eating and conversation. Why should sex of all things be the thing that breaks up relationships and causes such jealousy when a good conversation can go deeper, TV can steal more of your attention, and chess (as I found towards the end of one relationship) can take your lover away from you for longer. The answers are less than obvious. Sex seems to be treated in such an odd way in this society that people are endlessly tying themselves in knots simply trying to describe their own beliefs about it. On the one hand it is considered sacred (else why cement your agreements about who to have it with in church?) and on the other it is so dirty that half of our "dirty words" refer to it We are forever being hyped as a "naturally monogamous" species, and yet our monogamy is hedged about with regulations and suspicions of failure as if it were the most difficult thing in the world to achieve. Sex is supposed to be no fun without True Love and yet obviously people will do anything for more of this sad experience, as we treat our sexuality like a train that is about to run away with us; out of control and wrecking lives as it goes.

There is one more thing that non-monogamy, or my constant defense of it, has taught me, and that is about the success of relationships. This actually came to me after running a workshop on non-monogamy where out of 30 people, at least half said that they had tried non-monogamy once, "but it had failed". This phrase got stuck in my mind until I had to work out what was wrong with it. What did they mean by failed? What does anybody mean by the word when they're talking about relationships? They mean the relationship ended. Which is very odd when you come to think of it. If a meal is a failure it is because it doesn't taste nice, not because you ran out of food to eat, but a relationship can fail even if it's fun all the way through, because a meal isn't supposed to last forever and a relationship is if you're monogamous. But if you're not monogamous this just doesn't work anymore. In order to make the model fit you first have to take one of your relationships and call it the central one (and this is only true of one sort of non-monogamy), this is the one that's supposed to last forever. But that would mean, unless you plan on living in quite literally an eternal triangle (or polygon of your choice) that all your other relationships and sexual encounters are failures because they can't last as long. Not only that, but that they are planned to be failures. Why would anyone do that? Either all non-monogamous people are deep down trying to punish themselves for past sins, a theory belied by the amount of fun some of us are having, or our definition of failure in relationships is broken.

I recommend that non-monogamous people abandon longevity as the sole measure of the success of a relationship, and instead turn back to quality (of which longevity may be a part, since more of a good thing is often good), which is good enough for meals, parties, and works of literature . That way we can allow more than one of the relationships in our lives to be a success and we stand in no danger of having our successes re-written as failures the moment they are over. We are also then a little safer from the monogamous world which demands success as a proof of the validity of our lives. After all, if a monogamous relationship fails it is because the couple weren't right for each other, but if a non-monogamous pairing comes to an end it is the fault of non-monogamy itself. It is because we are not monogamous, because we are not like them.

For myself, the joys I have found in non-monogamous relationships are often independant of duration. For short relationships and "one night stand" there is the simple pleasure both of the sex itself, and of the knowledge that sex can be part of how I relate to people without "spoiling a beautiful friendship". In longer relationships I find it reassuring that my partner is staying with me even though they can and do seek other people. I enjoy group sex and I enjoy talking to all my friends, including my partners, about their sex lives and who they fancy this week. And I enjoy most of all the feeling, after a Catholic upbringing that encouraged me to feel ashamed, that my sex life belongs to me, not to the law, not to the church and not even to my partners, except incidentally. My ethics, and my promises, are mine to make and to keep.

Last updated 12th March 2000