@JoshuaDolin
Polygamy means having more than one spouse or mate at the same time. Monogamy means having only one.
They are both different forms of relationships, but they share one thing in common: they are clearly defined.
But “monogamish”? What the hell does that mean?
I had been texting Phillip every day for the past week. We had lunch, got drinks and saw each other quickly over the weekend. Things seemed great because we got along effortlessly, but he still had his long-distance boyfriend.
So one night I went to get drinks with Stephanie when Phillip texted me asking my plans for the evening. After I told him that I was going to go to a party, he responded by saying, “Oh I wish I could come because you are cute and stuff, but I am in Santa Fe.”
“Cute and stuff?” I said. “And stuff? What stuff?”
Our texting had been flirtatious, but I knew that was the right time to ask him about his boyfriend. I texted him back and said, “I think you are cute also, but don’t you have a boyfriend?”
His response: “Yeah, but we are monogamish. So we play with other boys.”
There was that word — monogamish. So from my understanding it means that they are dating, but allow each other to have sex with other men during their relationship.
“Monogamish?” Stephanie said. “Is that seriously a real thing? I’ll drink to that!”
This term seemed too bizarre to be real, but I looked it up and it is actually a term used to describe relationships now.
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Ashley asked the obvious question once I told her.
“Then why even date in the first place?” she said.
That was my thought exactly. If you are going to date someone, doesn’t that mean you like them, perhaps even love them and want to be with them and only them?
“He has a boyfriend, and also dates multiple other guys at the same time. He is a dating multi-tasker!” I said.
But has our generation gotten so good at multitasking that we can’t be happy having one boyfriend at a time?
And I want to know if they tell their boyfriend about it. How awkward of a conversation would it be to tell your boyfriend about the great sex you had with another guy last week? And they would be ok with this?
And then the next question is, “Do they actually love each other?”
Phillip said that he had been dating his boyfriend for almost three years, and this monogamish system worked well for them. Is there ever an end to it though? Once you get married does it stop? And what would be the point of getting married if you aren’t going to be faithful to each other?
“I could never be monogamish,” said Collette when I called her that night to tell her. “If I am dating a guy then that means we don’t share.”
I agreed completely with Collette. The entire point of being in a relationship is to be exclusive. If being monogamish meant that I was suddenly on a gay version of the “Sister Wives,” then I wanted nothing to do with it.
This now meant that I could hang out with Phillip, and even have sex with him if I wanted to, and it would all be allowed. It would be a friends-with-benefits arrangement, but is that actually a good thing?
My sisters Ashley and Alice did not approve of Phillip or this arrangement. “It just seems so heartless,” Ashley said. “It isn’t healthy and it is just a heart waiting to be broken. There is no love there, Josh.”
I knew that Ashley was right, but sometimes it just feels so good to have someone that likes you; to have that moment when your heart stops every time they text you. And sometimes it feels so good that we forget about what is really good for ourselves.
Alice was much more straightforward with her opinion on monogamish relationships. “That’s just stupid,” she said. Alice had been with her boyfriend for the past few months and was very happy. “You will find someone who wants to be with you and only you,” she said.
Friends with benefits is not the relationship that I want. I want true, old-fashioned, traditional, gay love.
Yet still, I had not found someone that I liked since Bradford and I enjoyed my time with Phillip, so I continued to see him.
Even while I saw him I couldn’t help but ask myself what I was doing. This friendship wasn’t going anywhere and it was just wrong.
Everyday I would stop and ask myself, “What is my life my right now?”
Maggie understood that even though being monogamish isn’t something either her or I want, it could work for other people.
“If some people like to be monogamish, then they should do whatever helps their relationship most,” she said,
I never want to be in a monogamish relationship, but is there any harm in continuing to see Phillip just a little bit longer?
For now I am not sure, but it’s good to know that we can be lenient with relationship titles. Personally, if I am going to date someone then I am going to just date them. But if this set up works for Phillip, maybe it can work for me also right now.
It has been said that our generation, Generation Y, is the “need to have it now” generation. So does that mean we need to have multiple boyfriends to keep our interest? Do we actually even need to have labels for relationships? Or, can we continue to make up different arrangements like #monogamish?
