Is it possible to love two people at the same time?

The emotional life of the vast majority of people is usually well nourished by doubts about what it means to have a partner and about how a "normal" relationship should develop.

These are small questions that assail us with a lesser or greater intensity. and that make us wonder if the loving bond that unites us with the other person is authentic, or if our needs and feelings fit what a romantic relationship is supposed to be traditional. And, one of the most frequently asked questions about that is the following: is it normal to love two people at the same time?

In this article we will try to answer this question, which, be warned, is complicated.

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A moral dilemma about love

The first thing we have to understand when addressing this issue is that the question of whether it is normal to love more than one person at the same time is a moral question. What does this mean? Well it means that an answer to this question, to satisfy us, must be of a moral kind

, that is, he has to talk to us about whether it is good or bad to love two or more people at the same time and if that is compatible with a relationship.

It is necessary to emphasize this fact, because the initial question masks the nature of the doubt by talking about what "is normal" and what it is not: technically, normality is determined by measuring the number of times in which this phenomenon occurs in the people. Let's say that 80% of human beings have loved more than one person at the same time (invented percentage). Will we be satisfied with this answer? Well, in the vast majority of cases, no, because what we really wanted to know is whether it is legitimate to feel that or relate in a certain way to these people feeling that. Looking at the frequency with which this occurs in other people will not tell us anything about whether that is good or bad.

But this is not the only idea that we have to consider before answering the question; there is another.

The couple as a social construct

Let's think for a moment about the reason why we ask ourselves the initial question. If we reflect on that, it's because we take it for granted that there is one way of relating to the people we love that is more likely to be normal than the other options. If we have doubts about whether loving several people at the same time is normal but we don't have doubts about whether it is normal to love (romantically) only one person, it is because In our culture there is a lot of social pressure that leads us to establish loving relationships with only one person at a time..

Now, regardless of this social influence, is there something in the design of our body that establishes that we should only love romantically to a person, in the same way that our body has something that prevents us from hearing unless we cover our ears. ears? The most obvious answer is no: the proof is that many people realize that they love more than one person. Our biological constitution does not prevent us, what prevents us to some degree is social influence.

This idea that there are perverse "affective deviations" coming from the culture that make a supposed Naturally programmed monogamy in our body cannot express itself correctly is wrong, in addition to essentialist. For example, cases of infidelity are frequent in many animal species that, in theory, are monogamous (or at least try to appear so). In fact, in some studies It has been seen that the success of some animal forms depends largely on combining monogamy with discreet infidelities.

So, to understand if it is good to love two or more people, we will have to ask ourselves if the legitimate or not to disobey those social rules, and whether it is useful to let these rules dictate how we should manage our emotions.

Differentiating between feeling and acting

To answer the question of a moral character, we should ask ourselves the question about whether the fact that we love more than one person romantically harms the others or not. The default answer is no. Because? Well, because, on the one hand, our feelings only concern us, and on the other, these feelings do not force us to behave in a way that may harm others.

That is to say, that we can love several individuals without this translating into a series of actions that we cannot control and that, therefore, can harm others. The fact that an intense feeling is born in us does not mean that this is going to transform us into a uncontrollable and harmful, because we have the ability to manage the way in which we express the emotions.

The importance of the communication

And what happens when you are in a monogamous relationship and you start to feel love for another person? Is this bad? The answer, although it may shock at first, is once again no. Of course, it is a fact that it can cause pain, but it is not a bad thing in a moral sense. For it to be, we should have had the choice between loving another person and not loving someone else, but this never happens.

That doesn't mean that this simultaneous infatuation can't lead us down a morally ill-considered path. For example, if we know that our relationship as a couple is based on a commitment and on the idea of exclusive crush, that means that if we start to feel something for someone else we must inform our partner. Otherwise, we will be deceiving her, and the psychological consequences of this can be very harsh, since not only does the relationship enter into a crisis, but also the other person will feel denigrated and with low self-esteem, thinking that she is not even worthy of knowing the truth and being able to decide what to do with the relationship.

Summing up: is it possible to love several people?

In short, if there is something that we must be clear about when considering whether it is normal to feel something for several people at the same time, it is that not only is it normal, but also that when it happens we cannot avoid it. Whether we behave more or less in accordance with an ethical code will depend on the commitment we have adopted with the people involved and if it is fulfilled or not, for which the communication. In some cases, such as those in which love and affective life is expressed through polyamory, the room for maneuver will be much wider and possibly this will be an issue that will not worry us as much.

As for social norms, these will have an effect on our propensity to adopt one or the other commitment to people in whom our love is reciprocated (monogamy will almost always be chosen, in which majority), but beyond that we don't have to stick to them, for what has been said before: in our feelings, or rather in the way in which we experience them subjectively, we command.