Against Polyamory: A Defense of Lucid Love and Radical Presence

Friday, March 21, 2025

In an era where connection is confused with consumption, polyamory is often sold as a progressive antidote to the possessiveness and patriarchal structures of monogamy. But when examined closely, polyamory too often becomes just another extension of the same capitalist logic it claims to resist—a system of diluted attention, fragmented desire, and emotional outsourcing masked as liberation.

The Myth of Infinite Love in a Finite Body

We are told that love is not a finite resource. That it can be scattered, shared, and distributed across many without losing its essence. But love, when lived authentically, demands full presence. It demands that we stop scrolling. That we look, fully, lucidly, into another’s eyes and say: I choose you, now, with all of me. That depth requires energy—emotional, intellectual, and somatic. Dividing it is not expansion. It is erosion.

When someone tells me they want to keep their options open, what I hear is: I am afraid of depth. What I hear is: I do not want to sit in the silence of singularity long enough to become fully human.

Polyamory and the Illusion of Subjecthood

Polyamory claims to honor each person as a full being, yet it often objectifies them through the backdoor. It turns people into an infinite scroll of stimulation—a Tinderified model of connection where others become “experiences” rather than singular presences. The polyamorous subject is often not a subject at all, but a manager of emotional logistics, mistaking accumulation for intimacy.

There is nothing radical in refusing to choose. There is nothing courageous in keeping a rotation.

I Do Not Compete, I Exist

To be in polyamory is to accept the possibility of being one among many. It is to accept a model of romantic Darwinism—may the most convenient survive. But I do not compete. I do not “perform” for attention. I do not offer a piece of myself on a buffet table of women. I am whole. I am a world unto myself.

Exclusivity is not about possession. It is about recognition. It is about choosing to stop and see. The refusal to see someone entirely is not an ethical virtue—it is an evasion.

Love Without Finality

I do not ask for forever. But I demand lucidity. I demand someone who knows, in the moment, that they are choosing me, and only me—not out of fear, but out of radical alignment. Not because there is no one else, but because in that moment, no one else exists. And when the connection has run its course, we move forward—not fragmented, not betrayed—but transformed. Polyamory, in its current form, often delays this transformation by spreading attention so thin that no real integration is ever possible.

The Ethics of Lucid Intimacy

I am not moralizing from the outside. I speak as someone who has lived, loved, and lost with intensity. Who has been reduced, objectified, and projected upon. And who has refused—over and over—to disappear. In a world of polyamorous roles and endless configurations, I choose to be a subject in full presence. My body, my mind, and my energy are not available for consumption. I am not a node in a network. I am a force.

Find my other article on radical love here