How do you hold a safe space for exploring sexuality and identity in a monogamous couple?

Angel: In some corners of the queer world right now, for you to be monogamous can be seen as radical. There’s often this idea that as a queer person it’s compulsory to be open to being poly. Something that was big for me in this relationship was talking about the subject early on. For example, what our comfort level would be if we were, hypothetically, to be in a non-monogamous relationship – not necessarily with one another, but generally. Talking it through, we both felt that we wanted a monogamous relationship to start, to see what it would feel like to focus on building a strong foundation between us and keeping the conversation open for later, be it in 3 months or years later.

That felt like a useful conversation to have early on because, in other situations, I have fallen into suddenly dating someone in a monogamous relationship, then a year and a half in and we're stressed about not feeling able to share around that subject. For that reason, we try to keep a continued space for talking about it. We’ll bring up close friends’ relationships that we admire, who have their own arrangements that change over time. Or we’ll talk about how we feel when we're attracted to somebody in a way that feels safe for us because we also have parameters.

We might say “that person's hot because of this reason” or “I feel attracted to this type of person now, and I didn't realize that before.” We talk about types or if we don't have types. We try to be supportive of that with one another: “OMG, I can see that for you. I love that.”

For us, levity is important in monogamy. We try to process it in an enjoyable way. We do role-playing in a non-sexual way about our identities, which is really fun. We have different characters that are typically different genders or body types. So it allows us to see how we feel playing out these roles, exploring little aspects of how we feel about ourselves.

Being in a monogamous relationship with Ash has actually allowed me the space to really think about my sexuality and gender identity. I think the safety of this particular relationship, where we’ve worked hard to build trust and independently slowing down my pace of life has allowed for that exploration and reflection. It’s very new for me, which is awesome and really gratifying. It’s like, when I’m not focused on dating multiple people, I get to spend some time going inwards rather than thinking about how other people perceive me.

Ash: I think as the partner of someone who's exploring their identity, a sense of curiosity is really important. Many of my friendships are with people who have transitioned, are transitioning, are thinking about their transness and queerness, or how their gender and sexual identities are evolving. And so that vocabulary and understanding is always developing. There have been times where Angel shares something with me and I’m like, "Oh, my friend felt a similar thing and this is how they explained that to me." And Angel is like, “that’s actually a really helpful way of framing that." It’s really helpful to be in a community where there is so much language around queerness, because that way you aren’t having to go through anything alone. But overall, I would say the biggest thing in holding space for your partner when they're figuring these things out is just listening and affirming them.