There Is Nothing Wrong With You
On villainizing yourself for who you are and finally, slowly, letting that go
For a long time, I thought I was broken.
Not in a dramatic, obvious way. More like a quiet, persistent hum underneath everything. A voice that showed up whenever I felt attracted to someone new, whenever I caught myself wanting more than what I had, whenever I looked at my boyfriend and thought with guilt, this isn’t enough for me.
The voice said things like:
Why are you like this?
Why can’t you just be normal?
Why can’t you be like him, happy with one person, not always wanting more?
What is wrong with you?
I asked myself that last one so many times. What is wrong with you? As if wanting to love freely was a defect. As if the way I was wired was something to be fixed, suppressed, or at the very least hidden.
For years, I hid it very well (or tried at least).
The Relationship That Broke Everything Open
My last monogamous relationship was the one that finally made denial impossible.
We loved each other a lot. But we were also both trying to be something we weren’t. We both cheated. The trust was shattered. And what followed was not pretty. He became watchful and suspicious of my behavior. He even looked at my texts one time to see what I was messaging a male friend of mine. Once, at a concert, a guy was dancing near me, and he shoved him and said, “Get the fuck away from my girlfriend!”
I understood where it came from. He was scared. But I also knew, standing there in that moment, that this was what happened when two people tried to force themselves into a shape that didn’t fit. The shape breaks, and people get hurt.
I wasn’t a bad partner, but I was a dishonest one. Dishonest with him, yes, but more than anything, dishonest with myself.
The beginning of the end came on a trip I took while we were still together. I met someone and felt a connection so intense it stopped me in my tracks. And for the first time, instead of acting on it and hating myself after, I just sat with it. Looked at it clearly. Let it tell me the truth.
The truth was: I needed to stop pretending.
I ended the relationship. Not for him, not for the person I’d met on the trip, for myself. For the first time, I chose honesty over comfort. It was one of the hardest and most important things I’ve ever done.
The Voice Didn’t Stop Immediately
I want to be honest about this part, because I think it’s important.
Leaving that relationship didn’t silence the inner critic overnight. The voice had been with me for so long that it had started to feel like my own personality. I carried it into the early days of exploring non-monogamy.
Old shame doesn’t dissolve just because your circumstances change. It has to be slowly, deliberately dismantled.
What helped most was my current partner.
He came into my life and did something nobody had done before: he loved all of me. Not the edited, apologetic, carefully managed version. All of it, including the part that wants to connect with other people, to love freely, to not be contained. He didn’t just tolerate that part of me. He wanted it for me. He wanted me to be free.
I had never experienced that before. Being with someone who saw the fullest version of me and said: yes, her exactly as she is.
It changed something fundamental. Not overnight. But slowly, in the way that real healing works, until one day you realize the voice has gotten much, much quieter.
What I Know Now
Non-monogamy didn’t just change my relationship structure. It changed my relationship with myself.
It gave me a framework in which my desires weren’t shameful; they were just human. It gave me a community of people who felt the same things I’d spent years thinking only I felt. It gave me language for experiences I’d had but never been able to name.
And most importantly, it gave me the chance to be a genuinely good partner for the first time. Not because I was suddenly perfect, but because I stopped lying. To myself and to the people I loved.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me twenty years ago:
Wanting to love more than one person doesn’t make you bad. It doesn’t make you broken, greedy, incapable of commitment, or fundamentally flawed. It makes you someone whose heart works in a different way than the current norm, and there is nothing wrong with that heart.
Cheating isn’t the inevitable consequence of being wired this way. Cheating is what happens when you’re so ashamed of who you are that you can’t be honest about it. The problem was never my desires. The problem was the silence I kept around them.
You are not too much. You are not wrong. You have not failed at love.
You just haven’t found the shape of it that fits you yet.
To My Younger Self
If I could go back, I would find her, the girl asking what is wrong with me in the dark, and I would sit down next to her and say:
Nothing. There is nothing wrong with you.
You are a good partner. You are a loving person. You are not broken.
You just need a different kind of love story. And one day, you’re going to find it, and it’s going to be more beautiful than anything you can currently imagine.
I would tell her to stop shrinking. To stop apologizing for her own heart. To hold on, because the version of love she’s looking for is real and exists, and she deserves to have it without shame.
She did. And so do you.
If any part of this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your story in the comments. You are not alone in this.
xx, Luna Rose