According to the mainstream view of relationships we’re supposed to be stuck in a bubble with one person to meet all of our security needs. Of course that’s scary! Society teaches us that we’ll feel complete and less lonely once we find “our one” and get in our bubble with them. The truth is, however, that the narrative of coupledom is often quite isolating. When we visualize coupled people being in a bubble that separates them from connection with others it’s easy to see why that’s the case. Perhaps what we actually need is to pop those bubbles and look beyond them for our senses of belonging.

By letting go of the cultural myth of our “one true love” we can shift our energy to finding our many loves through community - whether we’re non-monogamous or not. Breaking free of those couple bubbles can allow us to foster consistency, availability, reliability, responsiveness, and predictability in our lives through a network of love that can be stronger than the support any one person could ever offer. Expanding our support systems in this way can benefit us all by allowing us to settle into feelings of security in our lives that aren’t fully dependent on our romantic relationships. If we can feel assured that we’ll be held no matter what we can navigate our adventures of love with more steady and less fearful strides.

Through fostering strong connections with community we can actually attain both higher levels of freedom and higher levels of security at the same time. When we know we’ve got loved one’s out there who can catch us if we fall we can feel more free to fly. We can take big risks, go out on limbs, and explore with our whole hearts if we feel confident that we have a network of support we can lean into if those limbs or our hearts get broken. We can also show up for others to be that support for them with less pressure if we know that we can tap out and step up as needed with confidence that our loved ones will have support either way. There’s a reason people say “it takes a village”. It’s because it does - and that’s true for nurturing us humans of all ages!