Polygamy usually sparks debates about marriage, morality, or tradition. But let me flip the frame: I’m polygamous anyway—not because of multiple partners, but because my first and enduring relationship is with myself.
This isn’t wordplay. It’s a declaration of consciousness. Before I can give to others, before I can build a home or nurture a bond, I must tend to my own ground. My needs don’t vanish when I care for others; they coexist. To deny them is to fracture. To acknowledge them is to grow.
The Primacy of the Self-Relationship
“If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all.”
— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
The dialogue I hold with myself—how I forgive my mistakes, how I push toward growth, how I treat my body and mind—is the first and most enduring relationship I have. Ignore that bond, and I risk becoming dependent on others to complete me. Nurture it, and every other relationship gains depth.
Psychologist Carl Rogers called this congruence: the alignment between who we are inside and how we live outwardly. Without it, authenticity is impossible.
Conscious Polygamy of Needs
Every life is a balancing act between layers of need. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy reminds us that survival, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation all jostle for attention.
To imagine that partnership dissolves my personal needs is to deny human complexity.
I am already polygamous.
I’m faithful to multiple bonds: to myself, to my partner, to my children, to my community.
These commitments overlap, sometimes conflict, sometimes harmonise. The key is consciousness—an awareness that my self-relationship isn’t an optional extra, but the bedrock of all the others.
Meeting My Own Needs
Tending to my own needs alongside the needs of others looks like:
Resting when the world wants performance: honouring my body’s call for sleep instead of chasing one more “win.” Pausing before reacting: recognising when anger is mine to process, not theirs to carry. Practising inward forgiveness: so I don’t lash out at others for mistakes that mirror my own. Cultivating solitary joy: walks, books, music, meditation—so my happiness isn’t hostage to anyone else.
These aren’t indulgences. They’re responsibilities.
“One cannot claim to love if one is unable to extend to the self the basic elements of love—care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.”
— bell hooks, All About Love
Consciousness as Commitment
Declaring that I’m “polygamous anyway” is not rebellion—it’s responsibility. It names the truth that every external bond exists alongside my foundational relationship with myself.
This awareness shields me from dissolving into sacrifice or being swallowed by roles others assign me. It doesn’t make me less capable of loving; it makes me more trustworthy in love.
As Simone de Beauvoir observed in The Second Sex:
“Authentic love must be founded on the mutual recognition of two liberties… it does not annihilate the two lovers; it confirms them in their freedom.”
That freedom begins with self-awareness and self-commitment.
The Takeaway
We speak often of fidelity to others. Rarely of fidelity to ourselves. Yet that’s the soil in which all fidelity grows.
So yes, I’m polygamous. My first, constant, unbreakable relationship is with myself. And it’s only because of that union that I can meet the needs of others—not as a martyr, not as a ghost of myself, but as a conscious, whole being who knows the value of both giving and receiving.