MONOGAMY AS AN AUTHENTIC PATH

Following post is contributed by our member teahers Aaron & Chantelle

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I have always thought that monogamy was hypocritical…that it was giving up desire for the sake of another desire.  That is, giving up the desire to be lovers with someone because the desire to have a relationship is stronger. I never actually considered the possibility that we can be in a relationship with someone and genuinely not desire to share our sexuality with anyone else.  In my line of work I hear everyone’s sexual secrets and most people I see as clients, and even socially, who are in monogamous relationships, are with someone else on the side or wanting to be…and keeping secrets.  So I have always thought monogamy shmonogamy.  What a sham.  Lying, sneaking, cheating and dissatisfaction.  May as well be open and honest about our desire and be in an open or polyamorous relationship.

Hmmmmm there are the concepts of monogamy and polyamory and then there is the experience.  What I think is that we all have our own path and that rather than listening to anyone else’s views or ideas or basing our decisions on other people’s experiences, we need to choose what works for us.  So what I am about to share may not resonate with you and that is fine. I’m not attached to being right, I’m simply sharing what I have experienced. At the end of the day, I think that the kind of relationship we choose and how we relate to monogamy and polyamory need to based on our own EXPERIENCE.  I have given both monogamy and polyamory a fair bout of experience and I would like to share what I have learned.

Monogamy never felt authentic to me because I could still feel my partners longing for something/someone else whenever I tried it.  My partners would give seductive and enchanting hugs and kisses to get validation from some new minxy person. So they could feel like they’re “all that.” Or get something else that they were clearly not getting from me.  Or they just had desire-based longing without any real regard for the impact that would have on me.  I am no angel. I would often act in the same way.  It was as though we were being monogamous to feel safe and to avoid feeling jealous, avoid conflict, avoid hurting each other, but that was not actually our genuine organic truth.  So, it was more of a decision based on fear rather than love.

Polyamory has also never really worked for me.  I would have to process so much just to move through the intense feelings of betrayal, grief, fear and jealousy that would come up (so much energy!!!!) and in hindsight, I can see where it gave me permission to avoid or retaliate against what was not working in my primary relationship.  At times, I was getting something from other men that I could not get from my partner. This would mean that rather than really working on the things in my relationship that were lacking, I would get my needs met elsewhere. Other times, I was wanting to get my partner back for sexual interludes he had (very unhealthy I know!). Of course I still enjoyed my encounters and was only ever with men that I loved deeply and had a lot of respect for…but still…the energy was not completely clear at the best of times.

Now that I am in a monogamous relationship that has a completely different flavour to the monogamy I have experienced in the past, the question remains… Is monogamy a genuine path toward being in full alignment with who we really are?  In my view and from my current experience, when two people come together who feel a deep love, reverence and gratitude for each other, electric sexual attraction/connection that is ALWAYS a healing experience – revealing and birthing deeper intimacy, and also share a beautiful meeting of minds and consciousness… the answer is YES.

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I know that this is quite a controversial topic to broach, but I can only say what I am experiencing and what I am experiencing is a new world.  Being in a relationship with a man who is confident in himself, who is remarkably free from the fear of being truly close, intimate and vulnerable with someone and then also remarkably free from fear of abandonment, who loves and respects himself and me and who says a full YES to LOVE… Fuck, this is a HUGE GAME CHANGER and it is teaching me more than I could possibly begin to express! I will say this: Feeling and seeing the way that my beloved’s sexual energy is so contained (even though he is such an amazing sexual being), feeling and seeing the way he loves everyone without sexuality needing to come into the equation other than with me… Wow, it has been very healing to say the least and has literally brought tears to my eyes.  It has given me a whole new experience.  The energy between us is so clear and only gets clearer as I receive this incredible transmission from him of a new level of sacredness. There is so much energy between us that it has to be a channelled vision that we pour our energy into… because none of it is being wasted on the drama that comes with polyamory or the drama that comes with a guarded heart that is afraid to be too close to someone and/or too afraid to be alone. It is like this extra energy is Divine Providence pouring through.

I have had so many questions regarding my relationship change from polyamorous or open to monogamous and I guess the shortest answer is this: I have found that my preferred path of relating is monogamy. The longer answer is that through deep contemplation and experimentation, I have found that if I am to commit my sexual energy in this waking dream to the Highest Altar of Loving Truth, I am only sharing it with my Beloved.  This means that even during my sessions now, I am not EXCHANGING sexual energy.  This does not mean sexual energy is not present.  I will still run it through my own body, and hold space for my clients to run it through theirs, I am simply no longer merging my sexual energy with theirs.  This is a huge shift for me and one that feels right to my very core. What I actually find is that when I engage my sexual energy with a client, it is very easy for them to project their divinity onto me.  But when I hold space for them to run sexual energy through their own system, this projection does not happen and clients can feel the healing potential of their OWN sexual energy and the immense pleasure they can experience by being their own lover. This is extremely empowering.  They do not attribute their healing or pleasure to me, but rather to the experience they are having in their own sacred temple.

I do not have any regrets around paths I have chosen in the past, even though I can now clearly see where the downfalls were. In fact, I am so grateful that my life has given me the chance to really explore lots of different paths of love and relating. My relational world has always been out of the box and extremely unconventional ranging from living with my ex-husband to co-parent our children together, diving into polyamory, having relationships with women, tapping into ancient temple rites… You name it, I’ve probably tried it. Sacred Relationships and Sacred Sexuality is what I am really passionate about, but questions around safety and freedom co-existing have always eluded me.  I have been a big freedom lover and really thought that freedom meant that our sexual energy cannot be exclusive but rather needs to be inclusive. I no longer view freedom in this way.  I now see freedom as freedom to share the energy of love without drama. I now see freedom as freeing ourselves from the identity or from what Louis C.K. calls the “forever empty,” the insatiable sadness deep within us that we are all alone.

Growing in deep sacred love together, where we feel safe in love allows so much spare time and energy to do the real work –  to know ourselves more deeply through each other, to let go of the fear of being alone by actually being alone and loving that as much as being together… By combining forces and planting seeds of vision that will create heaven on earth. I am so grateful to finally feel at passionate peace in relationship… To be growing in love with a man who is my friend, my lover and my ally.  All my life I have known what was possible in relationships. But somewhere, at some time, I was told that fairy tales don’t exist. Well maybe not the ones we hear about, but my fairy tale was always the same. Fearless, passionate, rapturous love and devotion. The ironic thing is, when I let go of my dream, it actually showed up. This feeling I have, this love, is the wondrous manifestation that perhaps arises when the addiction to continually fall in love has burned away.  When the real thing appears and suddenly we recognise that what we were clinging to was an illusion.  For only when we experience the real, can we know what is not real.

Mary Magdalene, addressing Christ, in the Bridal Chamber of Wisdom:

“Beloved!

Embrace me as your emptiness and fill me with your love…

I am an empty vessel, a chalice of holy yearning for you…

I am the melody the harp of heaven has never played… play me now…

Bring the melody of all I can be into living music…

Play me all lovingly and my heart will blossom and grow in strength and beauty

for you… for the bright promise of the fullness of your loving

uplifts my heart and stirs an inward music that makes me want to sing

all my love for you as you play me, play me, all-caressingly, so very lovingly…

What Spirit, this, so invisibly stirring in me, that makes me fountain forth

all this love for you… Be thou the Eternal Guest, receiving my kisses,

filling my arms, blessing me with your best, nesting in me so exquisitely….

And take me into infinite ecstasies… annihilate my every sense

of self unto selflessness in this rapturing of endless bliss in *you*!

Oh come! come! come! into me, & fill me like the surging Fountain of Eternity!

At the crest of your fountaining it is *our* fountaining; & how i soar,

overflowing for you — in the more! more! evermoring…

In my nothinging you infill me and I become everything — All that *you* are!”

Wynn Manners