Tear Up the Map: Loving Without Borders
There was a time I thought love had a map.
You know the one:
Find your soul mate. Build a life together. Buy the house. Merge the bank accounts. Fade into happily-ever-after.
But all around me, healthy relationship models felt absent. What I saw instead were connections tangled in anger, slowly eroding until they crumbled into divorce.
I realised that map of love wasn’t mine. I questioned whether it could ever be navigated. A mythical land that could ever be found.
Most of the era of my twenties was one alone. Only engaging in casual sexual encounters. Building a life cultivating my independence, choosing to live alone and live a life driven by autonomy.
But I was still at war with myself.
A part of me craved deeper intimacy but the other feared the entrapment of a loveless relationship consumed by codependency.
Or facing the inevitable abandonment.
I didn’t always know another way was possible.
But something in me never fit inside the original story.
After years of suppressing my queerness, I finally found the courage to come out and started dating women too.
Then couples. And non-monogamous people.
It was a beautiful and chaotic journey of exploration at first.
I felt drawn toward so many different kinds of connection — and it wasn’t just about sex.
It was about how different people lit up different parts of me.
How no one person could — or should — be expected to be everything.
At the time, I didn’t have the language for it.
I just knew I wanted more — more freedom, more fluidity, more honest connection.
I started researching everything I could get my hands on.
I devoured books like The Ethical Slut, Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity and Jessica Fern’s Polysecure.
I immersed myself reading essays on non-monogamy, sexuality, tantra, queer identity.
And for the first time, I felt seen.
Polyamory made sense of what I had always felt but never had the capability to name before:
That love is infinite.
That different connections nourish us in different, incomparable ways.
That love isn’t something you slice up into segments.
It’s an expansive ocean you swim in.
As I explored my pansexuality more deeply, this truth sang even louder:
I needed the freedom to love across genders.
To build connections that honoured the full, wide spectrum of who I am — without squeezing it into a monogamous box that said one relationship had to be “enough.”
Finally, it all clicked:
The problem wasn’t me.
It was the map.
The old models didn’t fit because they weren’t made for wild-hearted, multi-faceted, expansive free spirits like me.
Over the past five years, I have navigated a range of relationship structures — from traditional monogamy, to being part of a throuple, to building a primary polyamorous relationship where I lived and nested with a partner.
Each version taught me something.
Some showed me how easy it is to slip from freedom back into the old stories: the ones that tell us love can fall into ownership, hierarchy, control.
Each one revealed both the beauty and the limitations of the stories we inherit about love.
The truth is: there’s no one-size-fits-all.
No single script that works for everyone.
And the beauty of non-monogamy is that we get to make our own blueprints.
We get to tear up the map — and build something honest, creative, and real. Something authentic to who we are.
Tearing up the map wasn’t a one-time event.
It’s been a practice.
A choice.
A beautifully chaotic, liberating rebellion.
Rethinking Love: An Introduction to Non-Monogamy
When people hear “polyamory” or “non-monogamy,” they often imagine chaos or confusion.
They assume that we’re obsessed with sex and orgies.
That we’re afraid of commitment.
That we just want an excuse to avoid intimacy.
But here’s the thing:
Non-monogamous people aren’t afraid of commitment. We’re redefining it.
We’re committed to honesty over obligation.
To communication over control.
To building relationships that are chosen, not assumed.
And while yes, wild sexuality can be a beautiful part of many non-monogamous lives, polyamory is about so much more than sex.
It’s about freedom, fluidity, creativity, consent, and the radical idea that love doesn’t have to be limited to be real.
Ethical or consensual non-monogamy (ENM or CNM) is simply the practice of building relationships where multiple deep connections are possible —
rooted in honesty, consent, self-awareness, communication and freedom.
Here’s a quick sketch of different ways people in the non-monogamous spheres are making their own blueprints:
Monogamish
A mostly monogamous relationship with some flexibility, like occasional sexual experiences outside the partnership, often with clear agreements.
Open Relationships
Partners agree to have sexual non-romantic relationships outside the primary relationship, but still prioritise their bond above others.
Hierarchical Polyamory
Relationships are ranked with “primary” partners prioritised (often living together, sharing finances, raising children), and “secondary” or “tertiary” partners given different levels of time, energy, or commitment.
Non-Hierarchical Polyamory
All relationships are treated as unique and valuable, no one person automatically “outranks” another. Time, energy, and commitment are negotiated individually, and based on needs, not fixed titles.
Solo Polyamory
You are your own primary partner. Relationships are important, but your life stays centered on yourself — independence is core. Individuals value their autonomy and live independently — they may have deep, loving relationships, but they prioritise their own life structure first, often resisting traditional relationship escalators like cohabitation, marriage, or merging finances.
Relationship Anarchy
A philosophy where all relationships — romantic, platonic, sexual, familial — are approached without pre-set rules or hierarchies. Each connection is crafted individually, without assumptions based on labels.
Now, none of these models are “right” or “wrong.”
What matters is choice. Consent. Real conversation. Making sure everyone involved actually wants the world you’re building together.
My Journey: Navigating from Primary Poly to Solo Poly
When I first stepped into polyamory, I craved the freedom I imagined it would bring.
And for a while, it did.
Until I spent two years deeply entwined in a primary polyamorous relationship, living together, sharing a home, struggling to balance my autonomy with partnership.
I was under the illusion it was working. Blinded by love. And attachment.
Until I realised it wasn’t.
I started feeling the slow erosion of my independence.
The way that being part of a couple, even in a non-monogamous world, started shrinking the shape of my life. It started to overshadow my own identity. Forever being seen as just someone’s partner or one half of a couple.
His jealousy crept in. His anger raging when I connected with lovers. His anxious grip clinging tightly, possessing my body, violating me, while pushing my heart further away. Expectations became a burden I couldn’t bear. Partnership began to feel like a cage I couldn’t see an escape from.
And I realised: I was playing a role in a story I didn’t want. One I didn’t deserve.
Entrapped in this relationship, I no longer felt connected with myself. No longer aligned with my truth. With my deepest values of freedom, fluidity, and abundance.
It was not easy to disentangle and set myself free. But a necessary one. To be true to myself.
To reclaim my freedom. To reclaim my identity. To reclaim my body.
I didn’t want to build another hierarchy.
I didn’t want to climb another relationship escalator.
I wanted something different.
Something that left room for me.
That’s when I returned again to solo polyamory — not as a fallback of solodom, but as a conscious practice of living rooted in myself.
Why Solo Polyamory Feels Like Home
Solo polyamory isn’t about being alone.
It’s about coming home back to myself.
It’s about being my own love story.
It’s about being my own primary partner — rooting my life in myself first.
For me, solo polyamory is about choosing freedom — not just in who I love, but in how I live.
It’s a commitment to autonomy and self-partnership while embracing the beautiful, fluid possibility of multiple relationships.
It’s about loving deeply without needing to cohabit, merge finances, or fold myself into someone else’s life plan, in order to validate that love.
Instead, I craft relationships that are rooted in choice, independence, and agency.
Solo polyamory gives me the fluidity to let relationships grow organically, without running up the relationship escalator.
It allows me to connect without ranking one person above another.
It honours the truth that love isn’t scarce, it’s abundant.
That love, real love, comes in many forms and cannot be compared.
Solo polyamory has taught me to be intentional.
To communicate clearly.
To speak my needs and boundaries with radical honesty, not just with lovers, but with friends, family, and the world around me.
It’s a practice of loving without possession, connecting without control, choosing without fear.
And at its heart, solo polyamory offers me something deeper than independence:
It offers me the space to create love as art —
fluid, dynamic, alive —
without needing to fit into any cage, box, or blueprint.
It’s not about fearing or avoiding intimacy.
It’s about building intimacy on my own terms — fiercely, tenderly, and free.
What Really Matters: Consent, Communication, Creation
Five years of complex yet beautiful, non-monogamous life have taught me this:
At the heart of any non-monogamous dynamic — whether open, poly, solo, or anarchist — are two vital commitments: consent and communication.
Listening and evolving is everything.
The structure itself matters less than the conversations that hold it up.
Boundaries matter.
Needs matter.
Honesty matters.
You can have a perfectly “progressive” relationship structure and still hurt your lovers and partners if you’re not actually checking in, respecting boundaries, honouring needs.
When people consent to the structure of the relationship they’re building and have the freedom to renegotiate it when life shifts — love becomes an act of co-creation, not control.
The truth is: there is no “perfect” relationship structure.
There is only the willingness to show up, to listen, to love courageously — without defaulting to systems that were never designed with our freedom in mind.
Non-monogamy isn’t an escape from responsibility.
It’s an invitation to practice deeper responsibility.
Deeper love.
Deeper choice.
Tear Up the Map — Build Your Own Beautiful Blueprint
There’s no one right way to love.
No perfect relationship model.
No blueprint you have to follow.
The beauty is — you have the freedom to build your own.
You get to tear up the maps they gave you — the ones built on scarcity, jealousy, ownership — and create something honest, fierce, and completely yours.
You get to carve your own path, not because you know where you’re going,
but because you trust that the journey itself will shape you into who you’re meant to become.
To love without borders, without cages, without fear.
That’s what we’re here to practice.
That’s what The Art of Wild Love is all about.
And if you’re ready to break the old rules and build something wildly, beautifully yours,
you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
— Lana
