I have spent a rather excessive amount of time over the past 15 years on parenting websites. Every parenting website likes to give relationship advice as well and I find it pretty fascinating learning what other people think relationships require. It’s worth mentioning that for the simple majority of that time I have been sexually monogamous (not all of it, but we are on our longest monogamy stretch at this point). I was told with great fervor that regardless of who I was or wasn’t fucking I wasn’t actually a good wife.

Let me explain.

My lovers and partners are still massively important to me. They are my friends before any of the other shenanigans are considered. I will do quite a bit for these people. I have former lovers I speak with nearly every day. We talk each other through the challenging parts of being regulated in our lives. We talk about parenting practices and experiences with our respective off-spring. I ask them for advice and they ask me for advice in our primary partnerships. I trust these people to have my best interests at heart. They are equally as likely to say, “Ah Krissy, you are fucking up. You can’t do ____.” as “Noah shouldn’t have done that. How are you going to talk to him to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

If you stop fucking someone but otherwise your relationship changes very little… did you break up? Does that count as monogamy or is it an emotional affair!?!?! Then picture a horror movie scream/gasp and clutching of pearls. (This is where the parenting boards think I am a horrible wife.)

I find it fucking appalling that Straightlandia thinks you need to cut off all contact with former partners in order to prove loyalty to your current partner. That’s not proof of loyalty, that’s weird and fucked up and controlling in a bad way.

I think it is part of weird pussy ownership stuff. There are weird hang ups on the pussy owners side that strike me as being very similar to internalised homophobia/misogyny. Quite a few dick-owners out there really like to believe that they are the only one who is allowed to even think about using a given pussy. Uhh, naw dude. I carry my history with me from now until the end of time. No one owns my pussy but me. I will not cut off the people I have known biblically, regardless of their genitals, just because I am fucking someone else right now.

I’m not doing a full Black Mirror style graphic reliving in my head all of the amazing play and sex I’ve had with other people while I’m with my husband. I think that would be kind of weird. Strangely enough we do far more talking about my rape experiences/my really bad sex experiences during our sex life because pushing those buttons is hot. (are hot? is hot? That sentence just kinda sucks.) When I am falling asleep sometimes I do go through my mental rolodex and think about all of the reasons I love you, and you, and you, and you. Sometimes these memories do involve scenes or sexual encounters but I don’t masturbate thinking about them. I just allow myself to re-feel the oxytocin of that moment. I love you and you love me. Not all love is the “I want to marry you and make babies with you” kind. I have shared connection with many people. I don’t see most of them very often or at all any more. Even so, that connection is still present in my heart and I want you to feel joy and connection and happiness and an overflowing of love in your life.

I am someone who falls in love very easily. People are my religion. I am overawed by how people manage to change the reality they live in and cooperate to change whole societies. I find that awe inspiring and very easy to worship and adore and love. In order to stop me from falling in love with people you would have to perform trepanation or maybe a full frontal lobotomy. I don’t think you would have an easy time drugging it out of me. It’s easy to give me drugs that make me not want to have sex. I have never experienced a drug that stops me from feeling love for people.

Straightlandia tries to place some sort of boundary between “friend” and “person I have had sex with” as if once the boundary is crossed the person cannot be a friend later. That’s kind of silly. Why would I want to say that someone cannot be my friend if they love me in many, myriad, complex ways? It’s supposed to be a simple, basic, uncomplicated love between friends? I don’t think I know how to do that. My feelings are always complex and multi-layered and intense. Even if I had to only talk to people I have not had sex with… you think I wouldn’t develop that emotional relationship with deep complexity again? Only if you put a muzzle on my mouth and duct tape my fingers so I can’t type anymore.

I am going to fall in love no matter what. It doesn’t matter if I am sexually monogamous or not. I am going to have deep, complicated, messy relationships. Just because I haven’t fucked you yet doesn’t mean there is a lack of tension and allure there. Given the right circumstances there aren’t very many people I would be completely unwilling to have sex with. I am not wired to be very picky about who I find sexually attractive.

I am, however, a grown ass woman who understands that I need to be careful about the agreements I have made. Once upon a time in my marriage our agreement was, “We will be monogamous for a while and then we won’t be again.” It turns out that was a poor agreement for us to have. And we had other issues blow up all at the same time. So we did break our sexual monogamy in the marriage. The result of that difficult period is that I don’t ever get to ask to break sexual monogamy again. Every relationship has agreements and some are more strict than others.

My husband is not stupid though. He knows that asking me to control when and who I have sex with is not even on the same planet as asking me to stop being in love with people or to stop carrying on the relationships I have with former partners. He knows that trying to isolate me from the connections I have built would do a lot to wreck my mental health and he does not want that for me. He knows that a lot of the reason I have a full bucket and enough to give to him and our children is because of the love that freely passes back and forth between me and my constellation of friends and former lovers. My relationships are deep and intense and long-lasting.

He loves that about me. He says it helps him feel secure that I am very unlikely to ever stop loving him. I can clearly carry love for a very long time even through a connection that has winnowed down to a tiny spider thread.

I am a fervent and devout follower of my faith. I love all of you, even those I don’t.