A little about me.

I have always had a crush on Jay Gatsby. And I have always latently blamed the late, Great Gatsby for my initial campaign against traditional marriage. You see, when I was a fifteen-year-old high school English student, I couldn’t help but advocate for Gatsby’s cause and create my first critique on the institution of marital bliss.

Gatsby and Daisy were the titular characters of my paper defining the basis of my critique on marriage—that vows allow for a general stagnancy due to the lack of necessary relational reassessment. Instead of marriage, I posed that committed relationships should be contractual, spelling out expectations, and the general unspoken entitlements of monogamy would not be presumed. The contract would be subject to re-evaluation on an annual basis, and could be dissolved according to the agreed upon “relational separation” clause. Granted this rationale has grown over the years, but the main point remains intact.

Maybe my initial motivation for the paper was because I harbored the desire to be Daisy, a woman who held Gatsby’s attention. Maybe, just maybe, I didn’t like the double standard that Tom could imbibe in pleasures of the flesh with Myrtle, and Daisy had to be limited by her husband’s rage against her potential impropriety. Regardless, I thought Gatsby was justified in his relationship with Daisy; however, I couldn’t help but think that if the whole fiasco were out in the open, it would benefit the entire Great Gatsby cast. Why couldn’t the lot just happily accept that people are capable of maintaining multiple relationships at the same time?

Ultimately, my crush on Jay Gatsby drove me to establish a foundation for a belief that has evolved over the years: monogamy simply does not work for me. In addition, it has driven me to live according to my theory, and explore the possibilities of having-my-cake-and-eating-it-too, or as non-monogamists like to call it, dabbling in ethical sluttery.

The following writings chronicle my self-experimentation into non-monogamy. I hope you find some entertainment upon reading, but above all, I hope you learn something…

Sincerely,
Cecilia Rationale