I feel like I was born to get married. I remember reading Harry Potter when I was 12 and rooting for Harry and Hermione. As I went through the books, I also started to want her to be with Ron. I remember at one point I asked my mother why she couldn’t just talk to them both and be together. They both seemed to reciprocate her feelings and it wasn’t right to force her into a decision. After all, giving someone a choice between friends, pets, or anyone else you love is stupid. I couldn’t understand how society thought it was appropriate to have many marriages in any area of life except romantic ones. When I asked my mom why Hermione couldn’t be with Ron and Harry, she told me it was disgusting and unrealistic. So I suppressed my feelings and never spoke about it again. A year later, I fell in love with my best friend who lived an entire state away. We talked every night and our feelings were mutual, but neither of us wanted a long-distance relationship hid my relationship with my girlfriend from my partner and felt terrible about it. I was shunned when I mentioned it. I pretty much stopped talking to my girlfriend and pursued marriage. When I got married, my boyfriend contacted me twice a year, but he still had feelings for me. It took me a year of my love marriage before I confessed my feelings about monogamy to my husband. He told me he felt the same about monogamy and that he always felt a monogamous relationship was “not right”. We discussed how being open about our love marriage would affect our relationship, how we thought about the rules, the rules that we thought made sense, and other things
Opening up my love marriage
When I finally came out about my love marriage and we had our first date, I felt relieved. No longer did I have to sneak around and pretend I didn’t feel “gross and gross,” as my mother so elegantly put it so many years ago. Unfortunately, I was still “in the closet” from my friends and family. Coming out to them was the biggest obstacle my husband and I had to overcome. We spent endless energy keeping our lives secret, figuring out how to explain my lack of dating, and hiding the partners I was in love with. It was awful. Not only did I lie to my friends and family, but I hid the people I cared about to make myself feel good. When my husband and I came out, we received a mixed response of “Marriage, I support you”, “What’s the point?” and, unfortunately, “You’re going to ruin a love marriage with your lack of commitment”. Those who supported us thought it was a decision. Even though I grew up in a monogamous society, many didn’t understand that my mind, heart, and soul was and still is about marriage. Five years later, some still can’t understand. Not everyone chooses to live a life different from what society defines as normal. Some of us are born different. And that’s okay.
I don’t want to be criticized for loving more than one person at a time. I don’t want to be scorned, hated, and prejudiced just because I was born to love being married to more than one person at a time. Why would anyone live a life of hatred, judgment, and intimidation, even if it made them happy? It’s hard to go against the trend of society, but I do it because it’s easier than hiding the fact that I’m married. I do it because other people need to know that they’re not alone.
