I guess a lot of people probably try to be thoughtful about consensual non-monogamy. But at least when I publish stories mentioning it, a small minority of people react very strongly against it, as if they're threatened or something. Maybe they're projecting based on feeling feeling fearful or hurt in their own relationships?

But for the thoughtful majority, I guess trying to see the idea through a different lens can be challenging, especially given how most of us are conditioned to look at things in particular ways.

It's funny, even in gay relationships, and even as much as many of us push back against the idea that members of gay couples fulfill traditional gendered roles, I still see us struggling against the "script" sometimes.

It's complicated, though. When we were raising a child, my partner would often say things like Jim's the dad and I'm the mom. He was defaulting to a script about nurturing and providing and caregiving. Not necessarily anything wrong with that, and we were playing to our strengths. I was better at setting limits and providing structure, and he was better at emotional caretaking.

But how quickly we tried to make those strengths fit into traditional gender roles, even though we were gay. Lol

And even though it didn't work for other things. He is quite a bit more traditionally masculine than I am, much larger than I am, and not particularly motherly looking. 😂

All I'm really saying here, is that if it was tough for us to push back against the script even though we clearly didn't fit it very well, just imagine ...