I quit monogamy – and found a romance I never expected

If you asked me a few years ago whether I’d ever quit monogamy, I would have laughed in your face. I identified as a classic romantic before I even knew I was gay. The idea that someone was out there somewhere, waiting for me to find them and become their everything, got me through my (often unbearable) adolescence.

In conservative Poland, where I’m from, many bigots see being queer as a purely sexual thing. Even the more liberal ones view it as something that should remain “in the privacy of their own homes”. As if being gay was a fetish that doesn’t make any sense outside a sexual context. Deep inside, I knew that wasn’t true. I had my first crushes in primary school, and the purely sexual portrayal of queerness made me want a truly romantic relationship even more. And what’s more romantic than only having eyes for one person only, right?

Despite this desire for a fairytale love story, gay men in my circles never quite shared the excitement. One of my first ever hookups, an established orchestra conductor, told me that the older a gay man gets, the less realistic monogamy seems to be. Before moving to the UK in 2016, when I was 20, I had my heart broken by several young gentlemen who all promised me a happily ever after, only to then hook up with someone in a club or invite a guy over to stay when I was away.

It seemed that younger men were more likely to say things like “I will never love anyone else” just to get what they wanted, while older ones would tell me what they really thought, even if it was something I didn’t want to hear, like: “Statistically, there is a very small chance we will be together for ever.”

But these failures and heartbreaks didn’t put me off monogamy. Whether it was a mentally draining young softboi or a cold and distant older man, each breakup left me wanting more, like a gambler sitting in a casino at four in the morning. “I will hit the jackpot soon: I just need to keep trying,” I used to think.

It was with my current partner that I began to understand that being sexually exclusive doesn’t always equal love, and vice versa.

There was a period when, after a year apart, my partner and I started seeing each other again without putting a label on it. We would do exactly what we used to do before as a couple – spend a few days in a row together, eat, watch TV, sleep together and travel – all without mentioning what exactly had happened in our lives while we were apart. Both of us knew the other one had sex with someone else from time to time but we never addressed it, and became comfortable with it after a while.

Eventually, we established some rules and gave it an “open relationship” label. I found that due to the nature of gay dating apps such as Grindr, sex has lost some of its sanctity. “You up?” “Fun now?” “You far?” “Where u?” “Looking 4 now?” “Send location!” Register on Grindr, and you’ll have these phrases thrown at you almost instantly. The gay community has created an environment in which sex isn’t always celebrated as special. But for centuries, we were treated like hopeless perverts – so it’s no wonder, right?

I realised that I really didn’t mind if the person who gives me a peck on the head every morning before leaving for work, who cooks with me for hours, watches rubbish TV by my side and waits with me for more than an hour in the pouring rain just so I can get a selfie with a popstar, wants to have some spontaneous sex from time to time. I know he loves me a lot. Sometimes I’m jealous when he’s having fun and I’m rotting at home writing – I’m only human. For the most part, though, I thoroughly enjoy our arrangement.

I always return to the words of RuPaul, who said, “I wouldn’t want to put restraints on the person I love the most on this planet.”

When you have rules you agree on openly and honestly, as we do, no party feels hurt as long as they are followed. If there are misunderstandings, we talk them out. I would rather be with someone who is transparent and honest about their feelings, needs and desires, than someone who will leave me feeling like a free newspaper abandoned on the bus seat. I used to think that open relationships were not for me because people in them couldn’t be romantic. That simply isn’t true. I am in, by far, the most romantic relationship I’ve ever been in.

Will I ever go back to monogamy? Maybe. This arrangement may not feel right for another relationship, but it does for this one. And most importantly, I don’t need to be monogamous just to prove my country wrong. I have found my love story, on my own terms.

Tomasz Lesniara is a journalist based in Glasgow.