We Are All Polyamorous: Why Not Love the Ones You’re With
How is your heart on this day that we celebrate love?
Are you feeling love or lack?
For many, Valentine’s Day can challenge our mental wellness, bringing loneliness and depression rather than chocolate, roses, and candlelit dinners for two. February 14th can feel like a day we celebrate one kind of love — a love we humans elevate and prize above all the rest — romantic love. The love of one. The one. Our one true love.
Sadly, it’s a day when many of us focus on the one we lack, the one we’ve lost, or the one we long for rather than celebrating the sea of love that we’re soaking in. And this day — a day that should be inclusive of love in all its forms — is one that has historically excluded large numbers of us, myself included as a queer woman, because our love doesn’t fit the restrictive, traditional definitions of romantic love.
In the absence of the one, we can end up feeling less than. It’s like we’re looking at love through a pinhole camera trained on what is often an unoccupied spot, a hole in our hearts that can feel like a vast, bottomless chasm. If only we had a zoom lens, we could expand our field of view to see the abundance of love that surrounds us.
