I recently read an article titled "In Today's Relationships We Cheat on Each Other Every Single Day" that really got me thinking. Thinking about monogamy, about polyamory, about my relationship with my boyfriend/partner-in-crime, and about my other sexual relationships that I've had. I won't get into the latter points of that list but what I do want to talk about is the way we conceptualize both monogamy and polyamory.

Monogamy is the idea that as a sexual person you only engage in one singular sexual relationship at a time over a long period of time. What tradition has taught us is that the act of only being sexual with one person leads to being that person's one and only, true love, life crutch? And vice versa, that person becomes that for you in healthy monogamous relationships.

This article amplified that: "if you are in a relationship you must set your priorities straight -- the number one being the person you are in a [monogamous] relationship with." The application of monogamy is to get tunnel vision on your partner, believing that your partner is the end-all be-all of the universe.

Enter the practice of polyamory. Defined as "the philosophy or state of being in love or romantically involved with more than one person at the same time" by Merriam-Webster, it is truly the ideal opposite of monogamy. Every single relationship that exists is different, so to ascribe a one-size-fits-all idea of how every relationship should exist is ludicrous. Polyamory allows and advocates for the enrichment of your life by multiple people. And Millennials (I know, right?) are starting to realize that maybe that is a better way to be.

This article was absolutely monogamy to an extreme. Advocating that we are all "cheating" on our partners because we were texting them instead of getting in our cars and driving to their apartments and having long deep intellectual conversations with each other. Now let me clarify, I know not all monogamous relationships look like the one in this article. But if the extreme of monogamy is something so toxic that it destroys the humanity of the relationship while the extreme of polyamory is something that looks like the sharing of love between an infinite number of people, I think I'll go with the latter.

Monogamy is making a small hole in the dam that holds the infinite lake of our love for others; polyamory is the complete destruction of that dam. You can read the think-piece that inspired this think-piece here. Let yourself be open to all the different forms of love from all the different people of the world. Your partner(s) are there to enrich what you experience, not to become everything you experience.