If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you may have guessed that my husband and I are not exactly in a traditional marriage. Indeed, both he and I have had sexual encounters with people other than each other, and we have both participated in BDSM scenes with others as well.

The important thing to note here is that this is consensual or ethical non-monogamy. This means everyone involved is aware of the outside sexual and/or romantic activity and has expressed their consent for it to occur and to continue.

Right now, my husband has a long-distance girlfriend. He communicates with her by text frequently and has spent time in person with her as well. He sends me pictures of them together, and we have spoken by FaceTime. She is well aware of my existence and the primacy of our marriage over their relationship, and I am aware of his involvement with her and the extent of their activities. We spoke about the possibility of them developing their casual friendship into something more, agreed on boundaries, and maintain open lines of communication.

I do not have a boyfriend, but I have had a few dates with another man. We had dinner and sex, and then I came home and told my husband all about it. He was curious if my date had done anything that I liked that he might want to try, and he wanted to hear about the experience in general.

We also go to kink parties, where we occasionally participate in group sexual activities, including threesomes (or more), as well as scenes, he as a Dom and I as a sub.

It is an unusual lifestyle, but maybe not as unusual as you might think. According to recent surveys, as many as one in five Americans says they have participated in some form of consensually non-monogamous relationship.

There seems to be a prevailing idea in our culture that if you love one person, it is to the exclusion of anyone else. And it’s not limited to romantic love. For instance, many second-time parents are concerned that they won’t love their second child as much as their first, as though love is finite, a pie that must be sliced smaller and smaller the more people it has to feed.

But if you break it down, that really doesn’t make sense and isn’t a healthy outlook. Humans are more than capable of loving multiple people. You love your parents and other relatives. You love your friends. And many people retain some loving feeling toward ex-partners (depending on the nature and length of the relationship and the circumstances of the breakup).

Indeed, you love all of these people differently. Even among your romantic relationships, the type of love you feel for one partner might be quite distinct from the way you experience love with another. With one, it may be a fierce, hot, animalistic need, while with another it’s a quieter, comfortable desire to be near the other person. Is one type of love more valid than another?

So if we can love romantic partners differently one after another, can we also love them differently at the same time? And can we acknowledge that our capacity for love is not finite? We don’t need to ration our love or limit it. We can think of love as an ever-expanding bubble, encompassing all of the people we desire to have in our lives.

Beyond that, though, one of the advantages to some form of consensual non-monogamy is that if you have multiple partners, each partner can fulfill various needs. One may have particular kinks or fetishes that match yours, while another provides affection and physical closeness, and a third meets your need for someone to go to parties or events with. This relieves one person of having to do everything, and allows the things that do bring you closer to become stronger and more important than the things that frustrate you. Plus, if we feel safe opening up to our partners about our attraction to someone else, or our interest in exploring a sexual or romantic interest in another person, that eliminates the need to lie about or hide such thoughts.

This is not to say that non-monogamy is right for everyone. But it is also not wrong for everyone. And something that can benefit everyone, monogamous or not, is internalizing this notion that we are capable of loving more than one person at a time, whether we act on those feelings or not.

Of course, as with anything else in sex and in life, consent is key.

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Madison Barry writes BDSM-themed erotic novels and stories. Find her on Amazon, Smashwords, or your favorite ebook retailer, or check out her website at www.madisonbarryauthor.com. Subscribe to her Patreon to support her writing and gain access to exclusive photos and stories.