i have two lovers. i see them both regularly. i love and am loved by them both. they are both interesting, intelligent, loving, creative people and are very dear to me. they offer me similarly delightful yet entirely unique experiences of being loved and nurtured. my heart overflows with gratitude for each of them every day. i have rarely, if ever in my life, felt such bountiful love, pleasure, and delight. i feel like the luckiest woman alive.

this experience is also very challenging. i am not so keen these days on labeling myself, and don’t prefer the varying “poly” labels that many use to define their love/life choices. i don’t feel i owe an explanation to anyone, but as there is a tendency to assume that unconventional choices warrant explanation, i generally don’t share this part of my life. i have to remember which love i told which people about to minimize questions. i am getting better at being cagey.

i am meeting more and more people like me. people who reject conventional models of relating and are interested in moving into new ways of being. as we see the old models breaking down, it seems natural to me to reach for something different, something that suites us better. with the vast array of human diversity, everyone wanting (or needing) the same model of relationship is as unlikely as everyone having precisely the same nose, or experiencing music in exactly the same way. there is far too much (beautiful!) inherent variety within our species to ever achieve organic similitude.

daunting a task as it is to break down our social programming, i do believe it is key to being a happy and self-actualized person in this world. and considering the precarious state our world is in today, on so many levels, it is perhaps more critical to survival than ever before, to continuously and gently question our foundational values and beliefs, holding them with compassion and letting them go if they are no longer serving us.