Sometime after college, during a tough breakup, I found the word “nonmonogamous” in an article. I never found an easy word for my sexuality — I’m somewhere between gay, pansexual, and fluid — so it was odd to feel seen by a label for the first time. That’s why language matters.
I knew this label was me, and I knew I had to be honest with myself. I could not do monogamy. Its attempts were too painful. Monogamy made me feel broken, incapable, maligned. I failed those I loved. Monogamy is considered the standard form of love, so it should be easy, right? If it’s natural human behavior, it should come easily.
It doesn’t. Experts like Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá — coauthors of — have proven just how hard monogamy is for humans and how little we’ve truly practiced it. Most animals are not monogamous. Our closest animal relatives, chimps and bonobos, are so sexually libertine that they rival gay men at Folsom. This is a reality I stressed in my past writings — defensively, unkindly, to say, “This is why
