I Don’t Fit the Box So I Love Outside It

I Don’t Fit the Box So I Love Outside It

By El Amethyst

I don’t do boxes

I never have

Not for gender

Not for identity

And definitely not for love 🥹

For years I tried to contort myself into those neat pre-labeled compartments

girlfriend wife monogamous straight-passing

I tried to keep people comfortable by shrinking my heart into something they could define

something polite and binary and normal

But my love was never built for containment

It’s multiversal

It’s rebel-hearted

It’s queer poly deep and beautifully undefinable 🤩

I don’t do relationships the way the world expects

because the world’s expectations are far too small for the way I love 🥰

Unlearning the Scripts Relearning My Truth

I used to think love was something to earn

that I had to be good enough agreeable enough small enough

to deserve someone staying

that desire was a transaction

that intimacy had conditions

that commitment meant narrowing sacrificing or blending myself into someone else’s outline 🙈

But I’ve burned those scripts

gently

with ceremony

Now I don’t shrink for love

I expand for it

I don’t barter truth for security

I choose it even if it comes with risk

I’ve unlearned the lie that longing makes me needy

I’ve unlearned the shame around being the one who feels first feels deeply feels still

I’ve unlearned the idea that clarity means answers

sometimes it just means honest presence in the unknown 🤔

And here’s what I’ve learned instead

That tenderness can be deliberate

that some silences are sacred not empty

that emotional courage is more erotic than any performance

that undefined does not mean disposable

that I can want someone and still not own them 🫂

The Desires I Carry

I want to build love like a song

improvised harmonic messy raw true

I want to wake up in relationships that feel chosen not inherited

I want to be the kind of safe that doesn’t require hiding

I want slow mornings and shared metaphors

eyes that meet mine across the room like they already know

I want to hold someone’s story like a treasure map

not a puzzle to solve but an invitation to wander 🥰

I want the kind of kisses that feel like portals

hand-holding that says I see you

I don’t need to name this to honour it

I want endings that don’t rupture

just release

with love still intact 😢

Loving Beyond the Frame

There’s no master plan to how I love

I listen I witness I respond

Sometimes I want to stay in the liminal

that wild bright space where connection blooms without expectation

Sometimes I want to build rituals

be seen daily

share skin and soup and stupid memes 🤷‍♂️

Sometimes I want to be held in my solitude but still known

I love with nuance

with curiosity

with reverence

Not every connection needs to escalate

Not every bond needs to be explained

I’m not here to follow a path

I’m here to trace my own

barefoot heart-forward soul-lit 🥹

Soul Friends Queerplatonic Loves and the Sacred In-Between

Some of the most profound sacred connections in my life aren’t sexual

They’re soul-deep

Queerplatonic

Fierce and intimate and glittering with emotional resonance

We don’t fit a script

We don’t need to

I’ve learned to stop chasing legitimacy through labels

and start recognising the radical holiness of presence tenderness and truth

Whether we kiss or don’t

Whether we co-parent or co-dream

Whether we text daily or speak in cosmic bursts

My loves are real

They don’t need hierarchy or convention to matter 🥰😘

Polyamory Isn’t Chaos It’s Clarity

People act like polyamory is a mess

like I’m juggling chainsaws while blindfolded and riding a unicycle

But for me it’s just truth

I don’t divide myself between people

I don’t dilute love to avoid intensity

I expand

I love fully differently deeply

without demanding that anyone be everything 🥵

It’s not about more partners

It’s about more honesty

more presence

more permission to meet people where they are and grow with them not against them

Polyamory lets me breathe

It lets me honour my own complexity

without asking anyone to be my whole sky 🫂

Polyamory Isn’t the Complicated Part… Hiding Was

People often act like polyamory must be a 24/7 game of logistics and heartbreak

like I’m stitching together a relationship spreadsheet just to survive

But honestly

it’s no more complicated than having multiple people you love deeply

the way most of us already do with family friends community 🤷‍♂️

I used to think I had to choose

between being honest and being accepted

between love and belonging

But the truth is

hiding who I am was the most exhausting part

Since unlearning the scripts and loving how I naturally love

everything flows better

I’m more present

I communicate more clearly

I check in more often

Not just with partners

with everyone

My love doesn’t fragment me

It roots me 🥹

It’s not about adding more people to my life

It’s about subtracting the shame

Wholesome Not Hedonistic

There’s this idea that polyamory is inherently selfish or sexually excessive or emotionally detached

But for me it’s the opposite

It’s sacred

It’s wholesome

It lets me love without pretending I only feel one thing at a time

or that I need to rank every connection like a competition

I don’t do primary or secondary

I do presence

I don’t measure commitment by exclusivity

I measure it by mutual care depth and deliberate choice

Some of my most intimate moments haven’t been sexual at all

They’ve been silent

A breath shared

A look held

A goodbye honoured with soft grief and no resentment 🥹

Polyamory gave me the language to honour those moments without apology

Love That Evolves

I’ve had lovers who became soul friends

Exes who became family

Soulmates who weren’t sexual

Some flames burned bright and short

Others are slow-burning hearths I return to again and again

I don’t need every love to last forever

just for it to be true while it exists

We evolve

We shift

We shapeshift

That’s not a failure

That’s alchemy 😍

I’ve had to unlearn what love is supposed to look like

Unlearn the idea that desire must follow a script

That sex has to mean the same thing every time

That intimacy needs a label to be valid

What I’ve learned instead is to listen

Not just with my ears

but with my whole presence

To let connection speak in pauses

in silences

in the way someone looks at me and asks

Is it okay if I don’t know what I want

And to answer with my body my being

Yes

It’s okay

You are enough 😤🫂

I had to unlearn the belief that sex is only real when it looks a certain way

I had to relearn how much joy I feel giving pleasure

not for approval

not for reciprocation

but because watching someone’s body speak truth is its own kind of ignition

I’ve also learned that not all fireworks come from touch

Some come from knowing you’re trusted in someone’s uncertainty

From knowing that this connection

whatever-the-fuk-it-is

matters even when it’s shifting

I’ve learned not to ask what are we

Not because I don’t care

but because I do

Because I want to leave space for what becomes 🥹

I Don’t Identity I Just Be

I used to think I had to figure it all out

had to find the perfect term

the right flag

the clear answer to what are we or what am I

But I’ve unlearned that hunger for definition

Now I know

Some things aren’t meant to be named

Some things are meant to be lived

I’ve loved in ways that don’t fit any shape

I’ve stayed in connections that shifted form over years

and they were still true

I’ve kissed someone and felt like the universe paused

and still never called it anything

I’ve built beds with people I’ve never had sex with

and those beds held more intimacy than some lovers ever did 🥹

I don’t always know what to call us

I don’t always know what to call me

But I know how I feel

rooted

present

safe

and shimmering

And that’s enough

I don’t identity

I exist

I become

I show up where the love lives

That’s all I need

Sometimes I use identity words

Not because I need a label

but because I want a shared language

something that helps the world catch a glimpse of who I am

but never the whole galaxy 🥹

They’re not boxes

They’re metaphors

descriptive not confining

ways to gesture toward the shape of my soul without trying to fence it in 🙈

I say polyamory

but what I mean is

I love wildly and specifically

I love without ownership

I love in constellations not categories

I say relationship anarchy

but what I mean is

I resist ranking love

I believe in care without control

I trust in connection that grows like roots not rules

I say demisexual panromantic lesbian

but what I mean is

I want depth before heat

soul before body

queerness that flows not conforms

longing that lives in my bones

and love that doesn’t need to explain its wiring to be real 🥵

I use words like mo bhana-bhuidseach

my witch

la mia anima-fiamma italiana

my Italian soul-flame

my comrade fellow life warrior

my Ditto

my Selkie

my Horcrux

my Witch

my Babes 🫂

These aren’t categories

They’re poems

They’re spells

They’re shorthand for stories the world doesn’t yet have language for

I use language like a lantern

to light the way toward myself

never to trap me inside

Because I am always more than any word

I am becoming

I am presence

I am love in motion

And that

is enough 🤩

Holding Grief Honouring Change

Not every connection ends neatly

Some unravel quietly

Some break in the middle of becoming

Some are frozen in time

a kiss that never lost its echo

a friend you never stopped hoping to unfreeze

I’ve learned to love without rewriting what was

Even if we don’t speak now

the truth of what we were still matters

Even if a goodbye came too early or too sharp

I can honour what began before I got lost in what ended 🥹

Sometimes the grief that follows love isn’t just about the loss of a person

it’s about the version of me that was just beginning to bloom in their presence

I carry those versions with me

I write them into poems

I wear them as tattoos

I don’t pretend it didn’t happen just because it didn’t last

This way of loving

It’s not easy

It’s not tidy

But it’s true

and I’d rather be true than comfortable

Raised by Rebels and Chosen Kin

I didn’t learn how to love from the people who told me who I should be

I learned it from stories

the ones I chose

From Rey and Finn’s bond that taught me safety can be found in someone who sees your soul before your scars

From Bonnie Bennett’s loyalty and quiet fire

From Guinan’s timeless wisdom

From Kristen Stewart’s fierce gender-fluid defiance

From Kai Bartley’s vulnerability

From Ahsoka’s refusal to stay where she wasn’t believed

From K-2SO’s sarcastic devotion

From the mystical realm of Rebels Force trio

From Rey Skywalker claiming both the light and the dark and her own name 🖖🥹

These weren’t just characters

they were proof

Proof that you could be tender and untamed

That you didn’t have to pick a side to have power

That chosen connection can rewrite a life

That integration isn’t weakness

it’s holy

They gave me archetypes that made sense when the real world didn’t

They showed me that I didn’t need to explain my truth to deserve presence

That I could be shaped by longing by nuance by undefined intimacy

and still be whole

The love I carry is cinematic mythic sea-wild and soul-led

I don’t always know what to call it

But I know it’s real

And I honour it the way these stories taught me to

By choosing it again and again without needing it to fit a box

I’ve been called a screw-around

Accused of not being able to commit

Told I’m confusing or unrealistic

But here’s what they don’t see

I commit with my whole soul

just not in the way they’re used to

I stay present

I show up

I tell the truth even when it’s messy

I don’t break hearts

I build sanctuaries for them

And when something breaks

I don’t pretend it didn’t

I gather the pieces with reverence

That’s not weakness

That’s radical love 🫂🥵

The Judgement Still Stings... Even When I Know Better

I still struggle with the way the world looks at me when I say I have a husband and girlfriends. Or more than one love. Or a soul-deep connection that doesn’t fit their tick-box logic.

They tilt their heads like I’m a puzzle that’s missing pieces... when really, I’ve just stopped pretending I was ever a picture in their box to begin with.

But the judgment still stings.

Even though I know my life is rooted in consent and care.

Even though I know I’m honest, not cheating.

Even though I know that love... real, fierce, tender love... isn’t diminished by being shared.

I still feel it. In the silence after I explain. In the awkward smile. In the “Oh… that’s… interesting.”

In the way people act like I’m a phase, or a threat, or a novelty.

Sometimes I want to wear a badge that says:

No, my husband doesn’t mind.

Yes, she knows about him.

Yes, they’ve met.

No, I’m not confused.

I’m just not imprisoned.

But I shouldn’t have to defend something that brings this much truth into my life.

I’m still learning how to let the world’s discomfort slide like sea glass around my ankles. I still feel pangs of judgment—questions, sideways glances, people fearing I’m unstable. But I keep building my sanctuaries: with honesty, with clarity, with care. Because loving outside the box isn’t an act of rebellion—it’s an act of reclamation. Loving all the ways I am alive.

I chose honesty over convenience, and the world responded with disbelief. People misinterpret my love as confusion, my marriage as shame, my girlfriend as a flirtation. So I had to learn how to stay rooted in my own voice while being gentle with my own heartbreak.

This is My Relationship Anarchy My Sacred Web

Call it queer

Call it anarchist

Call it soul-led

Call it too much

I call it mine

I believe in chosen family

I believe in sacred consent

I believe in love without possession

intimacy without coercion

and freedom without abandonment

I believe in evolving together

or parting with care

I love like the sea loves the shore

endlessly

but never trying to own it

I love like galaxies collide

messy

bright

transformative

I love like home isn’t one person

but a constellation

And I don’t need a box to prove it’s real 😘🖖🥹

If who you love doesn’t fit the box...

know you are not alone.

May this be your invitation to uncage your own heart.

To love outside the frame.

To build constellations not categories ✨