Love Free From Fear
Image copyright: John Hoelle. Love and relationships were a consistent theme in the cartoons I drew for my high school and college newspapers…
It seems consenual non-monogamy practices (such as polyamory) have only been becoming more mainstream, as people in our society are increasingly exploring alternatives to the longstanding monogamous traditions we’ve inherited from our forebears.
This exploration is understandably frightening to most of us, myself included. But as someone who has explored consenual non-monogamy for almost 20 years, and who remains in a deeply committed partnership started in 2006, I’m writing to share that there is something of value to be discovered here, even without jumping into the deep end of the pool.
Relaxing your fear and control is a value unto itself, and can actually support your partnership.
Members of the Tamera Peace Research Community in Portugal, which has garnered attention around the world and is the subject of a feature documentary released in 2024, call their project a “free love” community in the sense of love being “free from fear.” So when love is free from fear, what does that mean? It means relaxing the need to control whether your partner has attractions, or even acts on them, because of your fears. Dropping your fear and letting your partner be “free” doesn’t have to mean promiscuity or polyamory any more than the freedom of the Second Amendment means you have to own a gun. Freedom has a potency, regardless of what actions you actually take in its name.
In our current culture, we grow up believing that a love partner’s “faithfulness” (romantically or sexually) is going to make us safe and secure. Meaning, we think this will help avoid the possibility of losing someone that we love. I grew up this way, too.
But wouldn’t we feel more secure once we learn that an intimate partner is with us not because they are “claimed” by us, but because they love us and want to be with us? I have learned this to be the case. My own experience tracks with what they believe at Tamera–my marriage has been made more and more secure, the more that freedom is integrated within it. I have never laid claim on my wife, before or after our wedding date. I have held her with an open hand since day one. Not always without fear, but with openness as a guiding principle. After 18 years, I am more secure in the knowledge that I am her life partner, because while she is free to connect with and love other people, she continues to primarily be with and to love me.
No question, it is a courageous practice to lay down your fear and instead build up faith in its place. (Putting faith in the structure of monogamy is a bit like worship of a false god: the structure itself won’t keep you safe.) Part of the faith I am talking about here is the faith that freedom doesn’t contradict, but complements true partnership. The foundation of extraordinary pairs may well rest in a concept of “freedom” that people generally reserve for non-monogamy. But relaxing your fear and welcoming freedom promotes one’s own health as well as the health of any relationship.
And freedom happens to have the side effect of being a powerful antidote to the “stuckness” people feel in a monogamous pairing.
Relaxing your tight grip on monogamy as a concept that will keep you safe does not mean letting go of the idea of true partnership. It means opening up to true partnership being revealed.
John Hoelle is a Co-Founder of Conscious Family™ Law & Mediation
