Dear Society,
We knew you’d reject us, yet we did it anyway. We decided to trek on this journey that too many are afraid of traveling on. Authentic living has been one of the hardest things we’ve done. It’s no wonder you scare so many away from living their truth. You intimidate, shame, and box us in to constructs. You tend to make us feel like we’re a new species emerging from the ground, but we’re actually pretty “normal”. One in five Americans reports being involved with some form of non-monogamy. A lot of you just don’t know if your partner is that one in five.
We’re business owners, creatives and leaders. Katie is a creative director, Luis is in IT, and I’m a teacher. We wake up and go to work every day, and we don’t always get the chance to eat dinner together because life and schedules conflict, but having at least one family dinner a week is super important for us. Dinner with a four-year-old also means having to do lots of compromising so he can eat his veggies, so we use the age old trick of bribery- dessert it is!
The three of us were there for the birth of our son, and he instantly became the apple of our eyes the moment we held him. Together we gave him his first solid foods, and took turns with those yucky, poopy diapers. The nose game was our way of determining which victim had to go to the trenches for him. It consisted of us yelling out “DIRTY DIAPER, NOT IT”, and the last person to put their finger on their nose had to change it. Luis lost… a lot. We take Lukas on playdates and chat with the parents as the kiddies play. Convos usually consist of funny parenting fails and what our kids do to make our hearts smile.
We take turns helping Lukas with homework, and to be honest, sometimes we forget about his homework and do it all the night before it’s due- we’re sure we aren’t the only ones. We switch off with school drop offs/pick-ups, and frequently keep in contact with his teacher because we care about his progress. Lukas has an IEP (individualized education plan), so meetings look a little like this: teacher, IEP chair, Louie, Katie and me at a table talking about Lukas’ goals and what we can do to get him there. We’re all welcomed to the table as his mamas and dad- bam!
Katie, Louie and I love each other, but sometimes we get really, really, realllyyyyy annoyed with each other. Like “go away” type of annoyed, but then we miss the other and decide to bury the hatchet with a: “wait, I love you and I’m sorry. Come back?”. There are also plenty of times where we have those hard conversations that lead to tears, awareness of blind spots and healing. We have crazy hilarious moments where Katie and I are too hyper and intense for Louie, and we tickle him like crazy till he’s on the ground. We aren’t always experts at the communication piece, and we forget to let the other know something important, which can be frustrating, but it happens, and we’re always kind and gracious to one another if one of us does mess up.
We share a family calendar, block out family weekends and triad date nights because it’s important for us to spend quality time together. Triad date nights mean the search for a babysitter is on, and it also means we aren’t always successful. Sometimes planned date nights turn into a sweet family hangout sesh, and that is absolutely never a problem.
We love binge watching tv shows together, like How I Met Your Mother, Friends, Shameless, or A Million Little Things. We stay up late as we catch up on life, and a lot of times I (Raq) fall asleep on one of them by 10pm #teacherlife. We aren’t that much different than most of you in the way we carry our day-to-day. Okay, we’ll admit we’re out of the norm in a few ways. The three of us go to bed together in our king size bed, and someone usually gets squished in the middle. We have three toothbrushes, and we switch off on who sits in the back seat of the car. We have more anniversary dates to remember than most monogamous couples do, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We are constantly being targeted and attacked on social media for our decision to simply be honest and transparent. There are even people who damn us to hell!
Thankfully, we believe in an active force of love and light that is always for us and never against us. We refuse to let you bully us into denying our God. We choose to believe in Jesus, in his love for us, and in his redemption and grace that was freely given to us as he laid on that cross. We believe there is NOTHING that will ever separate us from the love of God, and it’s our hope that one day you’ll see there was never a need to distance yourself from us as brothers and sisters in Christ. Holiness isn’t attained by disassociating with the “sinful”, “unclean” or “abominable”. If you’re trying to be like Christ, like you say you are, then your actions should be a reflection of him and his embodiment of love, yet you show us no more of it. Society, our own families won’t even speak to us anymore because of the shame you make them feel for having children like us. We hope one day you see how much we still love you, and we’re hopeful we can one day stand side-by-side in agreement and sing “what a mighty God we serve.”
Our love isn’t a threat to monogamy, but a reflection of how big our hearts are. We’re not trying to be the new norm- we’re just trying to be a norm. We don’t hate this monogamous society we live in, and we celebrate with you when you do find the love you’ve been looking for. We’ve had to break apart what you’ve conditioned us into being, and learn how to work through hard emotions that tend to dwell at the core of who we are. It means we’re willing to work through our shadows and the ugly parts of ourselves for our constant personal evolution. There was never enough space for learning about sex in our Christian community. We learned to repress it, and repressed sexuality is deeply harmful to self and others, which is why it’s important for us to help you understand that we’re more than just sex. We’re three misfits who found each other, love God, love each other like crazy and want to do life together in your heteronormative world.
Sincerely,
The Simbalas, a polyam fam
Photography: Margarita Photography
