What if we thought of monogamy as a spectrum?

“The study revealed two important findings. First, millennials like myself are less interested in monogamy than our elders are. Second, millennials don’t view monogamy as all or nothing. We realize that, like sexuality and gender, relationships can exist on a spectrum. And even though we were brought up in a society that aggressively pushed a monogamous agenda — teaching us that our goal in life is to find our One True Love — we’ve begun to reject this notion. For many millennials, monogamy doesn’t hold the appeal it once had.”

By Zachary Zane

During my exploratory college years, I was often confused about my sexuality. I knew I had loved women, but found myself, drunkenly, in the arms of various men. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. Was I in denial of being gay? Was I simply an open-minded straight guy? Or was I just a drunk and horny hot mess?

These questions kept me up at night. Finally, my senior year of college, I entertained the idea that I might be bisexual, but I didn’t embrace the label until a year after graduating. That’s when I learned that I didn’t have to like men and women equally to be bisexual. I learned that sexuality was a spectrum, and my point on the spectrum wasn’t fixed. My attractions to various genders could evolve. In fact, it’s completely normal, and even somewhat expected that my attractions to all genders change over my lifetime.

In my queer theory class in college, I also learned that gender, too, is on a spectrum. Some of us don’t view ourselves as strictly male or female. We can be both, neither, or somewhere in between, a.k.a. bigender, agender or genderqueer.

This led me to ask the question: Since sexuality and gender aren’t understood as binary anymore, does monogamy have to be?

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