Exploring Your Sexuality In a Monogamous Relationship
Confusion, concern or anxiety may come up around the idea of exploring your sexuality when you are in a monogamous relationship.
It can be scary to think that you or your partner’s desires are different to what you thought they were! It can activate insecurities or bring up fear around the unknown. And this fear of upsetting or hurting your partner may make it hard to feel okay pursuing this exploration. But it can actually be a wonderful thing for folks in relationships to explore their sexuality.
More simply put, exploring your sexuality is another to learn more about yourself, and with that knowledge and exploration, you can then show up in your relationship differently and perhaps more fully–which can actually strengthen the trust and intimacy within the relationship.
We know this can be a scary thing to work through. And we know that, even if you’re not in a monogamous relationship, exploring your sexuality can be overwhelming! Below, we’ve put together a few tips on how you can work on exploring your sexuality while still honoring your monogamous relationship.
1) Remember that exploring your sexuality is not just about who you desire, but how you desire.
There is so much more to sexuality than who you’re attracted to. Having space to explore your sexuality could also mean a new community to navigate and different perspectives to see your body, desire, gender, and your relationships through. Having the space to explore your sexuality with this dynamic understanding of exploration isn’t about leaving your partner, it’s about connecting with yourself intimately, which may create more space to better connect with them.
Sexuality, desire and fantasies are an ever evolving and expansive part of our lives, which can be exciting and contribute to maintaining long term desire. Taking the steps to explore your sexuality can be an opportunity to introduce something new into your sex life, and open up the conversation about desires, fantasies, and new ways of relating sexually to your partner.
2) Remember exploring your sexuality can be a purely solo activity.
When exploring your sexuality in the context of queerness, you don’t have to “prove” your queerness! You don’t have to have experiences with anyone of any gender in order to confidently declare your queerness. Exploring your queerness is possible when in a non-queer monogamous relationship, because exploring sexuality doesn’t just mean going out and hooking up with new people.
Instead it can mean exploring the history of the queer communities, and the communities you identify with, whether that be bisexuality, pansexuality, asexuality, etc. It can mean exploring how your desires and fantasies show up for you, your body, your gender, and the roles you play in various parts of your lives to see if those are the roles you truly belong in, or if they were prescribed by someone else.
Learning more about the history of the queer community can also help give language and understanding to your experiences that you maybe couldn’t quite articulate or make sense of before.
3) Remember that self exploration is not a threat to your relationship, but an asset.
Just as you would want your partner(s) to be comfortable + confident showing up in your relationship as themselves, you should want the same for yourself! Ignoring parts of ourselves doesn’t make them go away, it just makes it harder for us to understand the role those parts play in ourselves. When you give yourself permission to learn more about yourself and your sexuality, you’re also giving yourself the opportunity to show up as your true self, more than you ever have before.
Ways you can get started with this exploration can include:
Looking for local queer organizations to join
Using dating apps to make more queer friends
Exploring queer community spaces in person and online
Reading books by queer writers
Watching movies made by queer people, telling queer stories
Taking time to fantasize
Watching, reading, listening to queer porn
Another great, reflection focused way of exploring your queer sexuality is simply to take time to think about what being queer/bi/pan/etc. means for you.
A few journal prompts to help with this could include:
What does it feel like when I say my identity out loud?
What is the first thing that comes to mind when I say the word queer/bisexual/pansexual?
How does being queer make me feel?
Where in my body do I feel my queerness the most?
How can I express my queerness in my sex life with my current partner?
How can I celebrate my queerness with my friends? With my partner?
What still feels distant and unknowable about my sexuality?
If relevant, why am I having trouble connecting with my sexuality? What are my roadblocks and trailheads here?
How did/does “straightness” show up in my life before beginning to explore my sexuality?
How did/does compulsory heterosexuality influence the way my partner(s) and I behave around and toward one another?
How did compulsory heterosexuality influence my relationship with my body?
In what ways does exploring my sexuality feel healing to me?