Please don't set me on fire!

Wow. This is going to be a tough one.

I actually need advice.

Saying that in an INFJ forum is like saying 'Hey, Tornado...how about some Kansas trailer park?'

I've been in a relationship for 7 months. Actually, two relationships.

*runs behind the couch and tries to quickly explain in the face of flamethrowers*

I have two boyfriends. Both female to male transexuals. One is named Chris and he's a neurotic ball of love in Michigan. The other is Salem. He's a neurotic ball of love who lives with me. You're getting the theme here with my attraction to people? They're both INFJ's, so...yes, neurotic goes with the territory. I'm polyamorous, so both of them know about one another and are fine with it.

I could just be asking for advice to confirm what my intuition is already telling me.

Salem is BIG on commitment. Not my kind of commitment where you're endlessly loyal, either. The other kind. He's a flat out old-fashioned romantic.

He's married, after all. Not to me, thankfully.

Anyway...he's a romantic. I like that a little on the one side and on the other, I much prefer a relationship of mutual love, respect, caring, friendship, sexual satisfaction, emotional interaction, and intimacy to one of gestures. Still, romantic. He likes gestures.

He's also been in eight prior relationships with eight spectacular failures of human beings. I think I may maintain the record for highest bank account, longest maintained house, cleanest home, lowest chance of transmitting an STD, most stable income, and least plans for world domination and the enslavement of the human race to objectivist ideology.

He's vulnerable and he's...recovering as a person from his life in Florida since he moved in with me. His INFJ-ness is re-asserting itself. He's growing like mad. In eight months, I've watched him go from nearly shattered straight back to a collected, creative individual and he's still up and coming.

To date, the primary issue is that he's afraid. Terrified. Stricken. Thesaurus.

He's afraid I will involve with someone else and no longer want him in my life. That I'm already involved with two other people (I have a lover, aside my mates) seems not to bother him but the idea of me taking new mates, lovers, or pets at any point in the future really does seem to unsettle him greatly.

I know I sound kind of cold just now, it's...you know...I don't want to show how much this worries me. So just go with the cold distant voice.

I have met people I want to have more intimate relationships with. Emotional relationships or physical. I'm polyamorous because I am responsible enough to be. I'm honest as humanly possible with him and I'm more or less building up to sitting down and asking him how he really feels about this in a complete way. Maybe telling him how I feel, but that's...you know, you have to be careful and choose your moments.

Maybe I'm just making excuses. I don't want to hurt him, but flat out fact, monogamy or anything like it would ruin my relationship with him. Pure, simple, fact. I am not monogamous. Not because I can't be but because I think it's wrong for me to be. Morally.

I don't mean it's wrong for other people to be monogamous and I've certainly had monogamous relationships although I was still growing then. I think if I did it today...ugh...it would be as wrong as a gay woman marrying a straight man and lying to him just to avoid facing herself or the social consequences. She might love and care for him, but the relationship would be a lie.

Seeing Salem grow is so important to me...and I don't want to hurt him. I can feel it when he's in pain, even a little, and it's awful. Ceasing to be me would be lying to him, lying to my lovers, lying to my other mate, and ultimately lying to myself.

 

Thank you Shai. Useful, kind, and empathetic as always.

 

Thank you. I keep wishing I could address this in a sane way.

Why do you have sex with women? Or men? Why are you straight or gay? Why do some people find study satisfying and some people find adventure satisfying?

You're unqualified to judge me.

Monogamy, to me, represents slavery. It represents mistrust. It represents fear, insecurity, dominance, and ownership.

That is not what it may represent to you. It may be something completely different. It's not easy, listening to self-righteously uncomfortable, jealous moralists proclaiming my inadequacy as a human being because I don't particularly want to stick a leash and a chastity belt on my loved ones.

You try it one day. Try sitting in the hospital waiting room because somebody you have lived with for years, someone you held and loved, someone you slept beside, someone you gave everything for...YOU try sitting in the hospital waiting room not knowing if they're going to live and not being able to see them because you didn't get married because they were already married.

Try that and then you pass judgement.

So yeah, polyamory. Great. I do it for the social benefits and the financial benefits, right? I do it because I'm selfish, don't I? I do it because I'm not 'up' to shoving people out of my life because I get into a physical or emotionally intimate relationship with someone. Tell me how great it is to love 'just one person'.