I recently watched this video produced by Refinery29, titled “What Being In A Polyamorous Relationship Is Like”. I follow Refinery29 and the video happened to pop up in my Facebook feed. I scroll past a lot of rubbish on Facebook, but this title caught my attention because I’m a proponent of polyamory and was curious about the content of the video. Although the material could’ve been presented in a more mature and informed fashion, I think the topic itself is relevant, and I’m glad someone is tackling these controversial subjects. The reality is I don’t often talk about what I believe because I realize a lot of my opinions might be unpopular or frowned upon. It’s taken me a long time to get to a place where I’m comfortable with my authentic voice. As a child I was aware that my thoughts and feelings did not exactly align with the world around me and I often felt like an outsider. In elementary school I had very few friends, and was bullied by the other children to an alarming degree. I dreaded going to school and felt a tremendous amount of angst around not fitting in. By the time middle school rolled around I started dabbling in drugs (for a variety of reasons) but the feeling of being on the fringes was definitely one of them. Somewhere along the way, after facing numerous challenges in my teen years, I decided I needed to get my life “on track” and I mistakenly equated “on track” with conformity. There’s a lot more to this story but for now I want to focus on the concept of polyamory, and since I’m not a fan of the connotations this might stir up, I’d like to employ the term “conscious non-monogamy”. For me this is not a trend, as Refinery29 spins it in their infomercial.