A side benefit of coming out as polyamorous to the majority of my social circle is the ability to love publicly without any fear or even reservation. As I’ve mentioned before, I think I’ve always been poly. That is to say that I’ve always been capable of loving multiple people. I didn’t practice it then, however, and I’m not really practicing it now. But I could.

In response to me coming out on Facebook, our friend S commented, “Love you guys”, i.e. including Jill. And while I know she loves Jill, I wonder if she added the word “guys” for the sake of public perception. Just “I love you” might seem too personal to Facebook at large, might imply more than it necessarily should. Even in light of my revelation, “I love you” coming from a woman other than my wife could be improper, shocking, revolutionary even. People aren’t ready for that.

In an instant-messenger conversation later, S told me “Yay for being able to say I love you…without worrying about outing you.”  I understood her sentiment.  She might be perceived a certain way, especially by my friends who don’t know her, were she to express love to a married man.  But even if I wasn’t poly, what’s wrong with love?  Specifically, what’s wrong with loving someone (or being loved by someone) who isn’t my spouse?  I know that’s a potentially controversial thing to say, and that lots of people would take issue with it.  But I’m also intelligent enough to know that for most people love equals sex, or at the very least romance, i.e. deep emotional attachment.  When you’re married, that’s dangerous.

We have no problem loving our family members. We tell our parents, our grandparents, our children, and our siblings that we love them. There’s no stigma, no risk inherent in doing this, even when we are in a committed relationship. That’s because the expression of these emotions – and the emotions themselves – are no threat to our relationship with our significant other. We may love our parents, but we aren’t in love with them. We may love our siblings, but for virtually all of us there is no chance the relationship will turn sexual.

The same thing goes for platonic love between two friends of the same sex. I could, for example, tell my best male friend I love him without my wife freaking out and worrying that I’m going to leave her. I probably won’t tell him, though, because social conditioning has ensured that it would be an awkward exchange. Actually, that’s not true. As close male friends go, we’re pretty unconventional and I doubt there would be any weirdness as a result. But I still won’t tell him because he’s single and I don’t want to lead him on.

Okay, here’s a better example: Women can tell their best female friends that they love them without it being an issue or a threat. I think that’s because, at least in the case of heterosexual women, the person they’re speaking to is not a member of the gender to which they’re primarily attracted. Thus it’s no threat to their marriage or their relationship. Plus their boyfriends and husbands are all probably hoping that a warm hug and an “I love you” between girlfriends turns into a hot makeout session with some fingering at the very least.

But a woman telling a man she loves him? There’s got to be more to it than just simple words born of mutual friendship, right? Especially if it’s a married woman telling a married man, such as S and myself. That would be scandalous, hence the addition of the word “guys”.

And it struck me as I read her comment: There’s no threat there. Jill doesn’t feel threatened; she probably loves S as much as I do. So if she’s not upset over it, why should anyone have a problem with it? Actually, scratch that. I know better than to ask why anyone would take issue with something that doesn’t affect their lives in any way; that’s what people do. Busybodies stick their noses where it doesn’t belong. It’s the national pastime.

Why are we as a society so afraid of love? I understand that loving more than one person can potentially damage the status quo. I know it goes against the norm, and that’s presumably the problem. But why is it a problem? What does it say about our society that hate is more acceptable than love? We’d sooner lash out at someone simply for being different than we are than we would consider sharing positive emotions. I’m not even talking about physical affection. I’m talking about just not being an asshole to our fellow human beings and daring to call that practice “love”.

Maybe most of us are just not wired that way. Maybe most of us are so scared of being hurt, of being rejected, that we allow ourselves to feel love begrudgingly, if we allow ourselves to feel it at all. And when we find one person who can actually live with our baseball cap collection, or for that matter our beer bottle cap collection, we figure this is as lucky as we will ever get and we’d better not risk fucking it up by daring to look for more happiness elsewhere. In fact, let’s hate everything that is not that one person. Maybe it’ll make our love for him or her shine brighter by comparison.

If it’s acceptable for a man to drunkenly tell his male gym buddy he loves him while whacked out of his skull on peyote and tequila during a backyard barbecue, even if that man spends the next week shamefully pretending it didn’t happen, and if that guy’s wife doesn’t fear for his heterosexuality or his marriage vows, if she doesn’t immediately file for divorce in light of this hideous betrayal, there should be no issue with similar sentiment when it’s shared between a man and a woman who have no commitment beyond, say, years of friendship.

Whether or not I have the capacity within myself to love S in a romantic light (and I do), and whether or not I want to fuck her for days on any and every surface in a motel room until we’re both lying in a sweaty heap on the floor (and I do), my telling her I love her or being told the same by her (or any woman for whom I feel a profound respect) is no threat. On the contrary, I have every reason to believe that it, or any such expression of love has the ability to improve my marriage, my interactions with my child and others, my general productivity, and my own happiness.

In the current sociopolitical climate, with much of America if not the entire world so reflexively distrustful of one another, so insistent that anyone who believes or lives or loves differently shouldn’t enjoy the same respect that they themselves have been taking for granted their entire lives, I can’t possibly see an abundance of love as a bad thing. Perhaps it is the unbridled hatred and xenophobia, the disrespect, and the willingness to be an unabashed, unrepentant asshole aided and abetted by the anonymity of the internet – the same anonymity, I’ll grant you, which allows me to write and publish these words without repercussion – that has solidified my commitment to be myself at any cost. That unpleasantness – nay, that toxicity – motivates me to live and love as is right for me, and if I dare to truly dream, perhaps my doing so gives someone else the support and courage to do the same.