My Latine Culture Taught Me to Be Selfless. Polyamory Ensures I’m Self-Full

It’s Saturday night, and DJ Laylo, one of my favorite DJs, is playing at Rumors in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I’ve been waiting for this party for weeks, so of course I planned my outfit ahead of time: a white, silky, strappy mini dress, black chunky knee-high boots, and my hair in a messy pony. I’m going for grungy but sexy vibes — think Bride of Chucky's Tiffany Valentine. I roll on my favorite vanilla essential oil and I’m ready to go.

I get in the car with my boyfriend, and before we take off, he says: “You look gorgeous.” I smile, we kiss, and we’re off. 

I hear the music from outside the event. I enter, whining my hips through the door. My friends greet me with a roar — more proof that my outfit is, in fact, on point. We all make our way to the bar to catch up. I'm one drink in when I see my girlfriend outside with her group of friends. I walk out to give her a kiss hello. She loves the outfit, too; I can see it in her eyes. She enters the party and greets my boyfriend. In that moment, my heart explodes and expands at the very same time. 

I dance the night away. I’m sweaty, my feet hurt, but my heart is full. The music, my friends, my girlfriend, and my boyfriend all in one spot — everything is perfect. At this moment, I think of something my Colombian mother says to me often. “Gozalo todo. Vive todo lo que yo no pudia,” which means: “Enjoy it all. Live it up the way I couldn’t.”

Her advice is bittersweet. On one hand, I’m fortunate to have a mother who encourages her daughter to live her best life. But on the other hand, it’s also a reminder that my mother feels she’s missed out in life. When my mom shares that sentiment with me, I doubt she had polyamory in mind, but it's one of the many ways I’ve applied it to my life. Through polyamory, I’m liberating myself from traditional relationship norms that are often taught to and expected of Latinas.

Non-monogamy is an umbrella term that can include swinging, open relationships, or polyamory. And polyamory is the relationship style I practice. It’s where you seek to build more than one emotional and/or romantic relationship. So for me, it currently looks like having two partners; one happens to be a woman and the other happens to be a man, and everyone knows about one another. 

That’s the key to any ethically non-monogamous relationship — that it's consensual, no deception. But for me polyamory is much more than the configuration of my relationship dynamics. To me, being poly is an act of self-liberation, self-preservation, and radical self-love. It’s a conscious act of rejecting the constraints that monogamy imposes on women and, in particular, Latinas in hetero relationships. 

One of the biggest reasons I’m committed to polyamory is to unlearn being selfless and learn how to be selfish or, rather, self-full. 

My mother is one of the most selfless people you’ll meet. That’s usually a compliment. But it's one that comes with a lot of baggage — baggage that’s typically given to women to hold. Being “selfless” is a prime quality in being a good Latina. And being selfless is one of the main characteristics of marianismo. I don’t think we speak about marianismo as much as we do about machismo, another example of patriarchy, I suppose.

While machismo is the cultural template for how Latine men should behave (entitled to dominate over others and be aggressive), marianismo provides a model for how Latinas should act (be sexually pure, suffer silently, and sacrifice themselves). Our value as women has been measured by how well we take care of our spouse and our family, and by default how much of ourselves we’re able to sacrifice for them and others.

My parents were my first model of what a relationship looks like, and the example I grew up with was heteronormative, with each gender assigned a role. When it came to gender roles, my household was very traditional in many ways: My Peruvian father would wait for my mom to cook, even if he got home hours before her. My mother took on all of the domestic duties, like laundry and washing dishes. And, of course, my mom also took on the emotional labor of tending to me and my sister. 

I witnessed firsthand how the mountain of my mother's parental, wifely, and daughterly responsibilities came at the price of tending to her own needs. Most of the time, it seemed as if she didn’t even know what her needs were outside of looking after her family. 

And my mother’s not the only one. I come from a long line of selfless women. Whether it was my abuelitas attending to their husbands’ hands and feet or my tía stopping her life entirely to support her mother, the silence is excruciating when I’ve asked them what they wanted out of life.

I refuse to fall victim to the cultural trap that is selflessness. I want to be self-full. It's not a term I invented, but in essence, being self-full means knowing your wants and needs well enough to get them met before attending to others. It’s not to be confused with being selfish, only focusing on your needs and your needs only.

As a Latina, asking myself the question “what do I want?” is absolutely radical, because I and many other Latinas are brought up to neglect our needs. The irony is that, even though I have two partners, polyamory has deepened the relationship I have with myself the most. Navigating two intimate partnerships forces me to question my wants, needs, boundaries, and triggers — not only as a partner in each relationship, but also as an individual. This learned behavior of putting my partners’ needs before mine is still something I’m unlearning, but my partners keep me accountable. 

In the process of organizing the first meetup between my partners, I had a conversation with each of them individually about what their wants and needs were for the meet-up. Both of them asked me the same thing: “but what do you want?” And I had the same reaction to both. Pure shock. Because I hadn’t considered it. I was so concerned about their feelings that I forgot about my own. That’s the beauty of polyamory; it'll put a spotlight on the areas where you need to grow.

Being selfless isn’t the only thing I’m unlearning through polyamory. I used to think I was a good communicator, but nothing tests your communication skills like having multiple partners. The communication between my parents was dysfunctional. It was either absent, passive aggressive, or just yelling. Communication is needed in any healthy relationship regardless of the dynamic, but polyamory just accelerates the practice. I’ve had to unlearn speaking from a place of urgency and suppressing my thoughts. And, instead, I’ve had to learn to speak from a place of mindfulness and compassion for all parties involved.

My family is also guilty of having a universal way of communicating to others; they’re mostly extroverted over-communicators. So instead of respecting people's different communication styles and personalities, they think that with enough vocal escalation or persuasive language, they can force it out of you. Polyamory means acknowledging and appreciating the uniqueness of each of my partnerships. Effective communication means catering to the communication style that speaks to my partners as the individuals that they are. What works in one partnership may not work in the other. And that’s OK. 

Lastly, even though my parents didn’t display any sense of ownership and control over one another, I saw that example everywhere else — from my abuelita’s novelas to my college homegirl’s boyfriend dictating what she wore outside. 

Out of everything polyamory provides me, prioritizing my autonomy is No. 1. This I also thank my mother for. I grew up seeing my mom dance at backyard parties by herself or, at times, with other people besides my father. I remember when a friend of the family asked me, “Your dad doesn’t get upset?” It had never dawned on me that my mother enjoying and expressing herself in a way that was comfortable to her would be something to make my father upset. But that’s when I realized how unique that actually is. 

Heteronormativity is intertwined with machismo; they go hand in hand. And because a characteristic of machismo is to dominate over others, this usually means that in a hetero relationship, a man's masculinity is measured by how much control he has over “his woman.”
On top of this, society has labeled men of color — Black and Brown — as being hyper-masculine, which sometimes means that the men in our communities feel the need to show their dominance even more. 

But don't get it twisted, women, regardless if they’re straight or queer, are guilty of this, too. We’ve all seen the memes or TV characters of the “crazy-jealous Latina,” and some of us even wear it as a badge of honor. The dangerous and distorted idea behind it is: The more jealous and controlling we are, the more caring we are. 

Regardless of the gender of my partners, I always knew that a priority for me is freedom — of expression and exploration. No man, woman, or relationship dynamic can take that from me. I can’t foster a relationship with anyone who wants to tame, control, or own me. I belong to myself. 

And this doesn't mean I’m immune from feeling jealousy. Trust me, I do. But it’s a feeling worth working through because I believe my partners deserve the same joyous freedom that I do. I want them to feel loved without unspoken societal restrictions on relationships. 

My parents may have given me my first relationship blueprint. Some aspects I’m throwing away, some I’m keeping. But, ultimately, I’ve decided to design my own, one where the foundation is based on love as an infinite source instead of a finite one. Yes, polyamory is scary, and it’s a lot of work. But so is any relationship you want to keep and grow. Thankfully, I’ve found two partners who I feel safe enough to embark on this polyamorous journey with.

I'm deeply in love with each of my partners. And I'm also madly in love with myself, for having the courage to redefine love on my own terms, for choosing myself.