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He explained that the opposite of the jealousy that feels like a stab to your heart and a stone in your gut is “compersion”—a sensation of excitement in witnessing your partner enjoy himself or herself while having sex with someone other than you. In the beginning stages with this new person, you might experience “NRE,” or new relationship energy—that rush of feelings and hormones and neurochemical changes that comes when you are connecting with a person sexually and emotionally and it’s all giddy and hopeful and passionate.
The best thing for gender equality and relationships will be for all the old people to die,”
Mischa Lin asked me, would we say of our children “One has to go. There isn’t enough room in my heart for two kids”? When we make a new friend, do we send the others packing with the explanation “Sorry, I only have enough energy and bandwidth for one”? We do not. And this is evidence enough for poly practitioners that love, lust, and feelings of connection are nearly endlessly plentiful, not finite, and can and do grow expansively, even exponentially, if we let them.
The less attachment security we have to begin with, the less connected we feel to our love object, and the more threatened and threatening others seem. The more attachment security we have, the more we have to give not just to one but to potentially myriad others. And the more we can tolerate our loved ones doing the same. In this rather startling reframing of non-monogamy, limiting ourselves to dyadic sexuality and romance is restrictive, stemming more from anxiety than from a moral or even pragmatic stance.
“do not experience any more jealousy in their relationships than monogamists do.” But
One source suggests that 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women in the US “reported sexual intercourse with someone who was not their spouse while married.” Asking
Is forming a tight bond with someone without ever having sex, sometimes called “microcheating,” actually cheating? Is
“Cheating is as common as fidelity…although society cherishes monogamy.” In other words, the baseline we cling to as the measure of whether we are healthy
Some data suggest that long-term, committed relationships are good for us physically and emotionally. But there is also research indicating that marriage brings health benefits for men, not for women. And one sixteen-year longitudinal study of a representative sample of more than eleven thousand adults showed not only that marriage has little impact on health or happiness but that any positive effects of marriage are likely attributable to a more positive evaluation of one’s life rather than improvement on concrete measures.
Being desired by someone whose desire for us is a given doesn’t confer the same thrill we feel when we get that lustful glance from a stranger on the street.
“Women’s arousal may depend on their erotic relationships with themselves to a greater extent than is the case among men,”
