What If My Partner Wanted to Return to Monogamy? (Part Three)
TikTok video from 2022-03-07
Welcome to part three of this conversation on love, autonomy, and choice in long-term partnership.
If you’re just catching up: My husband and I have been married for over three decades. We’ve been practicing polyamory for six (now), and we date separately. The question that sparked this whole reflection was simple but profound: What would I do if my husband decided he wanted to return to monogamy—and I didn’t?
We’ve already talked about how monogamy isn’t the only meaningful framework for marriage. But in part three, I want to explore something that might feel a little radical to some: the idea that even if my husband wanted to be monogamous again—with someone else—I would still want to stay married to him.
That’s because polyamory, at its heart, works for us.
We’ve discovered that love doesn’t have to fit a single mold. And we don’t believe that marriage and monogamy are inherently tied together. If my husband met someone who deeply resonated with a monogamous structure, and he wanted to be monogamous with her—I would let him. If that brought him joy, if it fulfilled something in his heart, I’d want that for him.
The question wouldn’t be: “How could you do this to our marriage?” It would be: “Can our marriage still hold space for both of our truths?”
Would he choose to stay married to me while being monogamous with someone else? I don’t know. I would hope so. There’s no reason it couldn’t work—if we were honest, respectful, and aligned in our values.
As for me? I would still choose to be polyamorous. And I would still choose to be married to him—if that was something we both wanted.
Because love isn’t about ownership. It’s about freedom. It’s about choosing each other again and again—even when the path isn’t perfectly parallel.
That’s the beauty of what we’ve built. And it’s why this conversation matters so much.
(UPDATE: We chose to live apart for awhile because we’d lived together for so many decades already and knew we were good at that. I wanted to travel, and he wanted to stay put, so off I went. I knew I could live anywhere, and had many choices of friends to stay with while I explored. He had already been dating someone and with me gone, he found he really enjoyed (and preferred) managing one relationship at a time. So, while not monogamous, he discovered he was simply ethically non-monogamous. He’s happy. I’m happy. We’re married. We live apart. We love each other and we get to experience love the way it works best for us!)
