My first years of non-monogamy were, if I’m being honest with you, exhausting.

DM slides, dates and dancefloor pashes collided in that fun-but-slightly-strung-out way that you only really notice when you stop for a minute and realise the room is spinning.

Image: Annie Spratt

When exploring a new connection, the story is familiar for a lot of polyamorous people: an oft-flurried process of experimentation and elimination, in service of deciding if the pieces click and if the pros are worth the cons.

For those with whom it fits and feels good, we gradually learn the preferred shape of our connections and the words we use to describe them.

Over years of practicing, I felt relatively at home in the articulation of my experiences and desires as a non-monogamous person.

So, a few years into the pandemic, having recently separated from someone and finding myself for the first time without romantic partners – and not seeking them out – a friend threw me when they challenged my ongoing self-description as “non-monogamous”.

“It’s a relationship practice, Liz,” they said. “You’ve got to at least desire relationships to practice it.”

The conversation left me with a sense of combativeness.

Something I felt strongly about had been called into question, and so I sought the proliferous and dubious wisdoms of the professionalised poly mediasphere. I quickly found that, true to my friend’s provocation, there was little to back me up.

All the go-to blogs, pods and books have a lot to say about solo poly (the practice of having multiple relationships without strict or defined hierarchies), but less on how far the label can stretch beyond being a practicing non-monogamist.

As I read, I saw the common sense: in its broadest sense, non-monogamy is often described as the practice of multiple intimacies, but I still couldn’t shake the sense of feeling non-monogamous, even as I perhaps wasn’t technically doing it.

I shared my ramble of thoughts over several rounds with another friend, and they posed a question I had been rubbing against this whole while: is non-monogamy something I do, or is it part of my identity?

Identity is an imprecise thing at the best of times.

The word itself has multiple, conflicting meanings, which can make seemingly simple questions of what or who we are explode into countless ideas, possibilities and complications. It’s a friction that appears – like so many frictions of the self do – in the soft junction of who we are, what we want and what we do.

As often as I see identity framed as what we are, it also is described by what we are not. The casual (and honestly annoying) popularity of describing things as being for “not-men” or “not-cis-men” is a common example, but I understand the reach for this imprecision.

Thinking back to that first friend questioning my non-monogamous labelling, I realise that a specific term is less important to me than the assumption that I’m monogamous. 

Maybe I need to find a way to flag: something akin to the two short nails on a set of wicked acrylics or not being able to sit on a chair properly, but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t accidentally give brutal, “We saw you from across the bar“.

I recently talked all these new feelings through with another friend, who was having some difficulties with one of their partners.

They reflected to me that connection and support is key for them: that regardless of my being single, they were talking to me because of my experience with non-monogamy.  Saying, “I got this advice from a poly friend of mine” holds a different currency than advice without that context.

As we spoke, I thought of the web of connections that led me to a place where they trust my experience.

With all of my relationships informing who I am – not just romantic, but platonic, casual and familial – what if the word that makes the least sense is single itself?

The one piece of poly media I find on the subject is an episode of the Multiamory podcast.

The host, Jase, states: “If we stop thinking that there’s this one category of relationship that’s special… and instead say, All of my relationships are equally special and I’m the one who gets to choose how much effort I put into those, how important they are to me or what’s rewarding to me about them… All of a sudden I feel like it makes ‘single’ kind of not exist.”

As that friend and I approached saying our goodbyes, they asked me one last thing – a question I realise I’ve ignored all along.

“You’re trying to figure out how non-monogamy fits into being single,” they said, “but why are you so attached to the word ‘single’ in the first place?”

It felt like they were shorting a circuit that had been running all this time without my realising: I don’t even think that I am single.

We always arrive here – by which I mean I always do: stuck in my head and my thesaurus, eventually feeling like a fool because of it. It’s the words again. They’re not full enough to describe the realities we entreat upon them.

Every time I try to find a way of cleanly stating what I am, I meet all of the parts of myself I must ignore to do so.

So, can you be single and non-monogamous? Sure, in theory I guess, but also, why would we be?

We unpack all this language into functional tools, but we also need to admit it can’t always hold what we want it to. We need to think a bit bigger – that’s kind of why we’re here doing these unconventional, delightful relationship practices in the first place.

For those of us who are engaging in intentional and healthy relationships – or are trying to, at least – we have all of these words, feelings and expectations. They sit, unnoticed, until the baggage becomes suddenly apparent – often at the moment that there’s no extra space to carry it.

When I think back on each of the friends I’ve mentioned, and the many I haven’t but have talked and argued and loved with, I see us doing the intimate work of opening up with – and for – each other.

I see us finding these points of tension and preconception, and working through them. Not necessarily packing lighter as a result, but being better prepared for the road ahead.

Maybe it’s just this easy: how could we be single, when we’re together?