My first partner Lenny and I were not monogamous. We were together for a decade before he passed, and we each occasionally had sex with other people. We had clearly articulated rules about how that would work. Those rules mostly precluded any kind of an actual intimate romantic relationship with someone else. A sexual dalliance was fine, but no more than that.

So I would not describe us as polyamorous, since we had not opened up our partnership very wide.

We were ethically non-monogamous, but not in the sense that people talk about that today, I suppose, in a subcultural context.

However, I always forget about Brad when I talk about the situation. We both loved Brad, and he loved us, and once in a while, though not very often, one of us would have sex with Brad. We never had a threesome, though. It just never occurred to us.

In any event, a lot of younger gay men I know are continuing a sort of gay subcultural tradition of non-monogamy. This doesn’t get talked about a lot, because it runs up against prevailing heteronormativity that lots of gay people feel pressured to adopt these days. I mean, can you imagine Pete Buttigieg and Chasten announcing they sometimes see other people? Such a announcement is, sadly, unthinkable. Still, I’ve seen data that indicate most gay men are not strictly monogamous.

But I don’t think very many of us have heard of the sort of subcultural ENM and polyamory norms that get written about and talked about a lot these days. It’s kind of like two different worlds exist. Different subcultures.