The same month I turned 29, I started going through some huge, life-altering transitions. The first one was my faith deconstruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been an Evangelical Christian (sometimes called non-denominational, or more broadly, Protestant) for my entire life. I was baptized first at the age of 12 and then again at the age of 18. As a little girl, I believed in the huge importance of sharing the Gospel with others so that they wouldn\u2019t burn in hell forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I became an adult, I began to understand and accept myself more, as one does. I\u2019d always been a more quiet, introverted type and as an adult I finally was able to love that about myself and embrace it. I realized that there\u2019s nothing wrong with being an introvert, or being more of a listener than a talker. It didn\u2019t make me unfriendly or unappealing to be around, it made me a great friend, a kind and gentle soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With that acceptance of myself, I began to pull back against the idea that I needed to tell everyone about Jesus and evangelize in that way. I embraced the idea of showing Jesus\u2019 love to others by my actions more than my words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were other things about the Evangelical American Christian Church (or EAC) that began to bother me more and more as I got older, though. The biggest one at first was their treatment of the LGBTQA+ community, which I found incredibly ignorant, unloving, harmful, and antithetical to the ways of Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As culture shifted with movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, and as we went through the polarizing years of having Trump as president, and as we went through the worldwide Covid pandemic and the insanity of anti-maskers and then anti-vaxxers, I became more and more disenfranchised with \u201cthe Church,\u201d and in particular the way that it handled these huge cultural events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Again and again, the EAC met these important issues with either ignorance, or blatantly unloving and ungodly responses. Women and POC were not supported, but scolded. Trump was held up as a beacon for Christian values (what? how?). Churches were often at the forefront of anti-quarantine, and then anti-mask and anti-vaccine campaigns. Again and again, I have seen selfish and bigoted behavior as the main fruit of the Church, and it came to a point where I could no longer accept it and continue to be a part of the organized church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My husband and I left the church and began our deconstruction at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me, deconstruction has meant re-thinking a lot of what I was taught as a Christian. I\u2019ve reconstructed my beliefs about who God is, the Bible, Heaven and Hell, what church is, what worship is, and so much more. One of the things that I reconstructed that has had the biggest practical effect on my life was sexuality, and specifically monogamy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spiritual deconstruction led me to learning about sex positivity, and from there I learned about the existence of polyamory. As soon as I heard the word and learned what it meant, it resonated deeply with me. I knew I wanted to live that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, I was nervous to ask my husband about it. I didn\u2019t want to hurt him or scare him. I broached the subject casually a few times before outright asking if he would ever consider it. Fortunately for me, he felt the same way I did. We talked about it, and decided we were going to open our marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like most of our huge life decisions, we made this one very quickly and decisively. We jumped in and made dating profiles on a poly-focused app together. Things happened pretty quickly from there, for me. Being a woman, I have found that there are a huge number of fish in the sea!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, for my husband, it has not been as easy to find connections. That, in addition to a lot of culturally ingrained beliefs he\u2019s had to work through about monogamy and jealousy, has made his journey much harder than mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are now about a month and a half into our poly journey, and we are in a great place. My hubby still struggles with ups and downs, insecurities, jealousy, and envy\u2014all normal emotions and expected for couples opening up a previously monogamous marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me, being poly has felt very natural. I think poly is something I have always been, and now I\u2019m just able to express it. I feel more myself and alive than I ever have before. I feel free, and full of love and joy about life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll end this post by sharing my \u201cpoly mission statement,\u201d which is my goal for my poly dating and love life, and my poly philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My poly mission statement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to have fun by going on dates, hanging out, and enjoying sexual adventures with guys I trust, who are respectful, who turn me on, and who are into me emotionally and physically. I want to fall in love with at least one of them, a secondary partner, and have those feelings reciprocated and maintained long-term. I am also open to enjoying less serious tertiary connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My poly philosophy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People are not property, and love is abundant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\ude0a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The same month I turned 29, I started going through some huge, life-altering transitions. The first one was my faith deconstruction. I\u2019ve been an Evangelical Christian (sometimes called non-denominational, or more broadly, Protestant) for my entire life. I was baptized first at the age of 12 and then again at the age of 18. As… Continue reading This is the story of how I became polyamorous.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abundantandfree.love\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}