*Originally posted on OneHandedWriters, a blog for romance and erotica readers & authors.*

I always thought that polygamy would be the lifestyle for me.

When I was 16, I was friends with a woman on Livejournal. She was a sweet, if tortured, soul. Some said that they didn’t believe her stories, but I did with all my heart because she struck me as such a delicate, damaged bird. I couldn’t imagine someone convincingly pulling that off, not the way she did.

She was abused by her father from a very young age, but when he died she had inherited his wealth. She lived in a house with a private pool along with her two primary partners, a man and a woman. They had their problems, but both of them saw something valuable in her. Both of them wanted to heal her pain.

And she had so much pain.

At 16, so did I. I thought I needed an army to put me back together again, but that a polygamous relationship would be the ticket. I could get the loving, nurturing care that I so desperately craved.

It wasn’t even about the sex, or about anything kinky. It was just that I so desperately longed to be loved, and I thought that being loved by two people would heal me so much faster.

I was wrong. I met Joshua and he was more than two people could ever be, and slowly my dreams of being in a polygamous relationship disappeared. Part of it, I’m sure some keen people would have already figured out, was that my dream was selfish. My dream was about two people, healing me. Loving me. Being dedicated to me.

They were friends with one another, but in the end, their ties were to me.

I was a very jealous young woman. I struggled for a decade with this jealousy, because every threat to the love and stability I had in my life terrified me. Deep down, I was still a wounded and scared child, needing the love of another more than anything.

To tell me I would have to share my love, my partner? It was more than I could fathom.

But the lifestyle has always remained interesting to me. We experimented with it a bit in When Dreamers Wake. Though Leon, the main character, has many sexual partners, he is in love with Tia. And she, despite her many sexual partners, is in love with him. What they have is complicated and beautiful, but neither of them feel much jealousy.

Though that’s not to say they feel none. They feel jealous that others can be around their loved one when they can’t. That others can share in something with them, when they can’t. It’s not a sexual jealousy, per se, but a more emotional and romantic one.

I believe that’s why I think of it as a romance. Leon has deep, emotional connections with many women. Some only sexual, some more meaningful, but they’re never just a warm body to him. They’re a full and whole human being that he very much wants to experience something amazing with.

It’s far less selfish than my girlish desires of polygamy, at least.