When someone asks the question of whether I practice polyamory or monogamy, my answer these days is: neither, I practice relationship ecology.
In most contexts I exist in, relationship ecology is not a common phrase, which gives me the space to explain what it means to me. I find it useful as an opening for conversation, getting to wade deeper into the weeds around what we default to in the absence of determining for ourselves what exactly we are saying yes to when we choose to orient to the relationship norms that are handed to us.
It continues to astound me that when it comes to relationships, very few of us recognize that choosing the nuclear family as our ideal, is a strategy for meeting our needs just as choosing to live with multiple families is a strategy for meeting needs.
When we refer to relationship forms as an identity, a way we are meant to be in the world, a reflection of our preferences and values, I notice we can get stuck in the sauce of how people should identify rather than sitting with the nuances and complexities of what it takes for us to collaborate on family with each other.
When the choice of polyamory or monogamy is confused as what’s right or what’s wrong, we might be confused when that choice doesn’t genuinely meet us in our needs for safety. We might realize that the label doesn’t protect us from our fears, but only transforms into another lack that is revealed to us in the process.
It’s rare for people to see partnerships, relationships, friendships, spirit-kin, as a world building possibility. We are conditioned to relate to romantic and sexual connection as a place where we can get what we “want” in our lives.
To see relationality as our most powerful practice space for seeding the world we hope to co-create, we can see that the field of care we’re able to cultivate, the depth of vulnerability in which our ecology of relations can reach, the amount of shared risk we can take on as a collective, is one of the most powerful forms of repair in a culture founded on extracting the sacred, the feminine, the generosities of our earth.
How relationship ecology differs from monogamy and polyamory has to do with the divergence from describing the form I want in romantic relationships to describing the way I relate. When I say I practice relationship ecology, I am saying that the way I respond and hold all my relationships is of deep concern to me.
It is not merely my romantic partner that I want to attune to. It is the spirit of my home space, those who I am in daily sharing with, the people most important to my closest people, it is the home and the lands that my spirit kin tend to. Practicing relationship ecology is a way that I choose to expand my notion of response-ability, softly encouraging the edges of what I consider “mine” to release.
These shorter, personal essays that I write behind a paywall are where I hope to share a bit more intimately about my life and communities of practice. My long-form essays are a collection of stories, experiences, images, community wisdoms that over months and years of relational ups and down, have been woven and written into a visual journey.
Because they take me huge amounts of time and energy, I’d like to share more frequently by writing something between the size of a note and these long form (often 6+ page) essays, that can offer a bit more resource for those who want to deepen with relationship ecology. Your support really matters, and it has filled my cup to the brim to experience for the first year ever, being paid through writing!
You are part of the ecology. Thank you.
When I choose relationship ecology instead of monogamy or polyamory, I am wanting to awaken to the subtle cultural imprints and structures that use romantic partnerships almost as a “needs dispenser” that often leads to under-resourced burn out.
If we approach relationships to “get” something, even something as beautiful as a family, our satisfaction will only be as real as our perception of how close we are to what we want. If we approach our relationships as something here for my and the other’s spiritual growth, the mythopoetic meaning of our relationship reveals itself at each threshold of intimacy.
Wanting something from a relationship often looks like striving to get the other to change into the person we think they could be. Wanting our evolution through the key of our relationship means we’ll need to fall back into the arms of our relationship ecology to do the transforming work of a lifetime that requires a whole diversity of beings to reflect back to us the complexity of our wholeness that deserves to be seen in every facet of its longings.