- I'm polyamorous. I'm married, and I also have a partner.
- I wear a wedding ring and a commitment ring.
I wear a wedding band on my left ring finger, as many married people do — it's been there since my husband and I got married in 2010. But I also wear a white gold band on my right ring finger to celebrate my commitment to my longtime life partner. I'm polyamorous and share my life with them both, so it feels right to honor my relationships with each of them in ring form.
Both relationships are special
My relationship with my husband followed a typical trajectory: we met in college, got engaged on Valentine's Day of our senior year, and moved in together after graduation. We got married a year later and exchanged wedding rings. Other than the fact that we're polyamorous, our marriage is fairly average. We own a house together, have a standing Friday date night, love traveling, and bicker about the best way to load the dishwasher.
Unlike in my marriage, mainstream US culture didn't provide a road map for my relationship with my partner. I always tell people that if you know one person in a polyamorous relationship, you know one person in a polyamorous relationship. There are so many different ways to be polyamorous, from your living situation, to how much time you spend with your various partners, to your partners' relationship with each other.
People assume that the biggest challenge of polyamory is jealousy or possibly time management. I think it's actually finding the right person (or people). Not only do you have to have great chemistry, you also have to want the same (or a similar enough) style of relationship when there are infinite possibilities.
I won that lottery with my partner. Over the past several years, we've settled into a comfortable routine: I spend two nights a week at his place, we go on vacations together, and we watch "Is It Cake?" on Netflix. We're both commitment-oriented and in it for the long haul. He's accompanied me to difficult medical appointments to provide emotional support. I'm the executor of his will. He's called me his "de facto spouse," and that pretty much sums it up.
However, our relationship doesn't have any of the legal recognition that my marriage does. Some stuff can be addressed with estate planning documents and healthcare directives, but there are so many irksome ways in which society doesn't account for polyamory. Emergency contact forms only have space for one name, and I can only list one partner in the relationship section of my Facebook profile.
I wear two rings to honor both relationships
My partner and I wanted to do something to show that our relationship carries the same emotional heft and commitment that a marriage does. So, a couple of years ago (specifically, on February 2, 2022, because we couldn't resist the date's romantic appeal), we exchanged rings at a local conservatory, surrounded by purple, pink, and blue flowers. We wrote our own vows, split a bottle of bubbly, and enjoyed some very fancy cake.
Lovely as our commitment ceremony was, it didn't necessarily make our relationship more committed, in the same way that getting married didn't really change how I felt about my husband. My relationships with them both are continually evolving and deepening, regardless of whether they're recognized by a government entity or society.
However, it still means a lot to me to wear both of my rings. We don't think of a wedding ring as something that symbolizes the right to file taxes jointly or get a discount on car insurance. We think of a wedding ring as something that symbolizes love and dedication to a relationship that you want to last for the rest of your life. That's what my commitment ring symbolizes, too — and even though most people don't know what it means, I do, and it makes me smile to see it on my finger.