I used to think open relationships were not for me because I would have to give up my romantic side. That just wasn’t true
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?
Tomasz Lesniara is a journalist based in Glasgow
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