September Writing Challenge — Day 23: Yours, Mine, and Ours

I challenged myself to writing every day through September and have, so far, only missed one day. At first, I tethered myself to a writing prompt generator because I recognized how the struggles from the summer were causing me to vent more than put something rational and useful into the blogosphere.

But, more often than not, the prompt generator generated really negative and angsty quotes. While at the beginning of the month, that helped me dive deeper into my own emotions and experience (and I’m grateful for it), now, it’s starting to feel like I’m wallowing rather than healing so, I’m ditching the prompt generator for a moment and embracing the spirit of taking up a writing challenge: The point being, that I’m writing every day.

“If you’re not with me, you’re against me.”

I know there’s a politically triggering aspect to that quote, but in non-monogamy, particularly if your couple is ‘swinging’ or engaging others for sex/romance as a couple or even as just a matter of social groups, there is a truth to the statement that should be explored.

Motive attribution-wise, hopefully you and/or your partner aren’t often trying to come against each other, but if they aren’t working WITH you, and/or you WITH them, you end up creating scenarios in which you are coming against each other.

Culturally, even in monogamy, we understand yours, mine, and ours when it comes to things like careers, interests, and hobbies. “We own a business together” or “We kiss each other goodbye as we head out the door to own jobs”. Similarly, we understand this dynamic with interests and hobbies. We often understand the boundaries and it’s fairly easy to respect them. We, generally, understand how to do the thing either WITH our partners or on our own and be a safe haven of support FOR our partners.

We don’t like to think of people as yours, mine, and ours, especially in non-monogamy as a philosophy. Except ignoring the pragmatic existence of those social dynamics will cause a tremendous amount of struggle in any context, especially in non-monogamy.

The most digestible way to illustrate the point of yours and mine in a secure attachment relationship is family. I may have my…