Part 1: The Current State of Affairs (of the heart)
I am, and have always been, polyamorous. I’m defining it as the capacity and orientation to have more than one love relationship at the same time. There are other definitions, but the ones that focus on sex I think best describe what one of my lovers calls “non-monogamous”. I was reminded by one lover, who I have reconnected with after decades, that in high school I sat on her couch crying after another girl broke up with me for seeing her (this lover) also, and saying “Why can’t they all just understand I love them all the same?”
I was married and monogamous for almost 3 decades, I was living a lie and I was terribly unhappy.
I’m convinced poly is an orientation as much as LGBTQ identities are orientations. You’re free to disagree, but I’ve always known myself to be this way, even before I had the language to describe it, even when it was called “cheating” by my loves.
When writing seminary papers we were required to include a prologemena, a statement of our own social locations and bias. So that’s what this post is.
I am white, middle class, male, from a middle-class, well-educated family. I’m advantaged and know it and not always aware of how that shapes my perceptions. I have three Master’s degrees. That’s not bragging, just part of my social location. I am currently working for a church but not as the pastor.
I have three deep love relationships at the moment with three amazing women, all very different, one of whom I have known since high school and been in love with off (more than) and on for all that time, and three other relationships of varying closeness, two of whom live very far away.
That’s me, the SOTC (slut of the cloth).
Slut of the Cloth 