Recently I was telling my therapist about a classic struggle faced by introverted polyamorous people like me – and, I suppose, also by polyamorous people who are too busy to date, or who have limitations or marginalizations that make it harder for them to date, or who are just not in the mood to date at the moment, or who are… living through a global pandemic. (Remember dating?!)
I’m talking about the struggle of feeling like you’re not dating “enough” to “earn” the polyamorous label. Whether you have one steady partner, or none, or just not as many as you had hoped or expected you would when you entered this lifestyle, it’s easy to feel that self-doubt start to creep in: Can I really call myself non-monogamous if I am, in practice, not currently non-monogamous per se?
As I talked about this mild yet persistent insecurity of mine to my therapist, I found myself doing what I often do in therapy: explaining out loud to myself why I’m wrong. This is one of the magical things about a therapist whose perspective you respect and who knows how to listen in just the right way – they can sometimes drag insights out of you without even needing to say anything. You work so hard to make yourself make sense to them that you end up talking yourself out of whatever absurd maladaptive cognition you’ve previously talked yourself into.
“That’s bullshit, though,” I said of my own polyamory inadequacies. “It’s like bisexuality. You don’t have to be dating people of every gender at all times to be a valid bisexual. So of course you don’t have to be dating multiple people at all times to be a valid polyamorist.”