Not All Polyamory Is About Dating Partners. Some of Us Build It Through Friendship

Raised in a matriarchy, I don’t wait for romantic love to build a life. I do it with friends, we co-parents, legal partners, and chosen family.

This Pride, I watched people talk about polyamory like it only involved romantic partners, a calendar full of dates, a shelf of partners, or a rotation. But some of us don’t practice polyamory through dating at all. Some of us practice it through structure, through who we build with, protect, and grow alongside. Through friendship.

My version of polyamory isn’t new. It didn’t arrive through white feminist theory or ethical non-monogamy manuals. It came through watching my grandmother sit under a neem tree with her closest friend, the one she called suma jabarr, which means “my wife.” I watched them raise each other’s children, make medical decisions together, plan for death, and prepare the next generation to inherit something stable.

That framework through West African matriarchal design.

I was raised in systems where kinship wasn’t confined to coupledom or to shared bloodlines alone. The people you built with didn’t always share your bed, but they shared your burdens. You didn’t wait for romance to validate your direction. You built with whoever stayed.

That’s what I’ve done.

My polyamory is African. Neurodivergent. Matriarchal. It’s anchored in chosen family over pursuit, in co-regulation instead of conquest. It comes from survival systems shaped with people who understand that intimacy isn’t a lifestyle, it’s a responsibility.

The word polyamory often flattens what many cultures practiced long before it had a name. It tends to center desire, expansion, and the number of partners. But in the systems I come from, love was measured by who could hold the household when everything else fell apart.

I have not dated several people at once. I have built with several people at once. That difference matters.

Romantic love is still treated as the apex of intimacy. But for many of us, especially those who are neurodivergent, queer, or culturally outside the Western nuclear script, friendship has always been the real infrastructure.

That’s the relationship model I’m aligned with. I’m not chasing more partners, I’m building more stability. More planning. More truth. More safety.

Some of us didn’t enter polyamory for freedom. We entered it for continuity.

And we found it in each other.

All original writing in this essay is © Lovette Jallow.Quotations, structure, and phrasing may not be reproduced, scraped, or repurposed by AI tools, content farms, or third-party platforms without explicit permission.

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Author’s Note: This piece draws directly from my own research, lived experience, and intellectual frameworks developed over years of public lectures, consulting, and fieldwork on matriarchal kinship, neurodivergent intimacy, and decolonial family structures.

Practicing Neurodivergent Polyamory Without Masking or Performing

There’s a difference between being loved and being interpreted.

Most romantic dynamics I’ve experienced required too much translation. Facial expressions decoded. Tone softened. Sensory needs delayed until someone else was ready. By the time I explained what I meant, the moment had already passed. So had the intimacy.

But with my friends, I don’t perform clarity. I just speak.

We’ve created a no-masking zone. Neurodivergence isn’t something we accommodate. It’s assumed. One person’s alexithymia meets another’s hyperlexic over-explaining. One of us says something blunt, the other becomes the translator. There’s no shame. Just a shared rhythm. Sometimes co-regulation means letting the most chaotic sentence land so we can clean it up together.

The kitchen is usually where it happens. Someone’s chopping onions. Someone else is pacing. The conversation veers from workplace racism to childhood coping mechanisms without warning or apology. That’s how safety feels to us. Unscripted. Unpolished. Uninterrupted.

One night, it sounded like this:

Her: “I hate pretending to have imposter syndrome. I don’t. I’m THAT girl. Imposter syndrome is for white girls and I’m not.”

Me: “That’s fair. So why do you have to perform humility?”

Her: “Because if I embrace it, their insecurities will harm me. And then I’ll crash out and be the angry Black woman.”

Me: “But you already know that’s a trope. Anger doesn’t appear from nowhere. It’s provoked in Black women by people socialised to avoid their reflection.”

Her: “Don’t be logical.”

Me: “I can’t pretend you don’t know what’s happening, you also know why you are disturbed by it so…”

We kept talking. The knives kept chopping. Somewhere in between, we moved from rage to regulation. That’s how we hold each other. Not with polished delivery. With real-time navigation.

These are the kinds of conversations I have curled up in bed with friends. Or in the car at 2 a.m. Or over voice notes we send back and forth when the words don’t land the first time. These are intimacy rituals I rarely find room for in romantic relationships. Especially as someone who processes fast but emotionally arrives late. Romantic pacing demands instant recognition, polished presence, seamless translation. My friendships allow space for the pause, the glitch, the repair.

They don’t ask me to decode myself to be loved. They let me be witnessed as I am. And then we move through the friction together.

That’s the polyamory I know. Not a title. A nervous system contract. Not a network of partners. A collective of people who help me return to myself.

And when that level of presence is consistent, love doesn’t need to be romantic to last.

Suma Jabarr: How Black Women Build Platonic Marriages That Last

In Gambia, we don’t always call our closest friends “friend.” At a certain point, the word stops being useful.

There’s a shift sometimes gradual, sometimes immediate where someone moves from companion to counterpart. And when that happens, we call her suma jabarr. My wife.

It’s not romantic. Nor a euphemism. It’s how we are structured.

My grandmother and her circle of women called each other this often, without pause or irony. These weren’t girls’ trips and matching necklaces. These were women raising each other’s children, protecting each other’s inheritances, holding power together in ways the men around them didn’t always recognize, but never dared interfere with. If one woman passed, the other stepped in as the mother. If one household lacked food, the other didn’t wait for permission to provide. This wasn’t generosity. It was design.

Suma jabarr isn’t just a title they called each only when they greeted each other with laughter, hugs and smiles. It’s a contract. It means I will name you in rooms where you are not present. I will advocate for your children like they came from my own womb. I will carry your grief like my own, not because we share a bed, but because we share a life.

There was no ceremony. Just consistency.

That’s how I learned to love.

Today, when I feel that depth with someone, when I know I’d fight for them, hold paperwork for them, co-sign a loan or show up at the hospital, I don’t always say “best friend.” Sometimes I joke and say, “I’m going to marry you.” But what I mean is: you are now a permanent fixture. We are moving from casual to covenant.

Western systems don’t have language for this. They still divide relationships into two clean categories: romantic, which is serious, and platonic, which is optional. But in matriarchal systems, friendship has always been foundational. It was never the afterthought. It was the structure that kept everything else alive.

So when I say my friends are my partners, I don’t mean we blur intimacy lines or use queer language loosely. I mean that I practice a kind of polyamory that honors the oldest logic I know. Care as commitment. Friendship as architecture. Presence as proof.

This wasn’t friendship as decoration. It was friendship as infrastructure. That logic will forever shape how I love. And I’ve watched it live on in real time.

Legal Co-Parenting Without Romance: How Women Protect Each Other and Their Children

There are women in my life today who are legally married in common law for safety. Both are straight.

Both are high earners estranged from their biological families. They purchased two homes and joined them into one, creating a shared household where their children could thrive and be centered. One of them carried both children through IVF because the other couldn’t conceive. They co-parent with full legal documentation, co-manage finances, and co-steward the household. They date men freely, when and if they want to …but their life isn’t built on romance. It’s built to protect what they’ve already secured and it’s built to outlast crisis.

What they’ve built mirrors what I saw growing up: women securing each other when the state, their families, or romantic partners could not. They didn’t wait for a husband to build. They built with who was present. Who was consistent. Who would stay.

Särbo in Sweden: Why Some Couples Live Apart to Stay Committed

In Sweden, even many heterosexual couples choose to live särbo, in separate homes despite being in a committed relationship. It’s not uncommon.

Sometimes it’s about autonomy. Sometimes it’s about tax logic. Sometimes it’s because shared housing doesn’t equal shared values.

That is the Swedish way

But in the matriarchal structures I come from, this choice wasn’t a workaround. It was a protection strategy. A deliberate decision to center children, legacy, and safety over tradition or optics.

We’ve always known how to build lives that don’t collapse when love shifts form.

We just haven’t always been allowed to call it love.

Polyamory for Depth and Stability, Not Volume or Novelty

I’ve never needed multiple partners to feel polyamorous. I’ve needed space. I’ve needed slowness. I’ve needed the kind of intimacy that holds even when the relationship shifts, fractures, or goes quiet.

My polyamory isn’t about expansion. It’s about consistent. It’s also what allows me to be selective with romantic partners because they have to bring something my friends don’t already provide. And they have to offer a safety that matches what we’ve already built.

People still confuse polyamory with collecting. They assume it’s about chasing newness, stacking lovers, or resisting commitment. But I was raised to understand love as a responsibility not a resource grab. And as someone who is neurodivergent, novelty rarely feels exciting. It feels overwhelming. Disorienting. Loud.

What I crave isn’t more people. It’s more truth. More pacing. More capacity to stay. That’s what depth gives me.

When I love someone, I don’t love a fixed version of them. I love the versions that grief will pull forward. The ones that rage will hide. The ones that trauma will try to flatten. The ones that success will inflate. I love the them they haven’t met yet. And sometimes I have to grieve the version they’ll never return to.

That’s its own kind of multiplicity.

Loving a single person deeply over time through seasons, shifts, breakdowns, and returns feels like loving a constellation. It requires recalibration, memory, emotional labor, and forgiveness. That kind of love is layered. It has timelines. It has losses. It has repetitions. And it’s never casual.

I don’t need to chase new partners to experience change. Change lives inside the people I already love. Especially those of us who are neurodivergent.

Hormonal shifts. Burnout. Masking fatigue. Meltdowns. Resets. We don’t stay the same for long. Our emotional bandwidth moves with our nervous system, not the calendar. And loving someone through all of that while honoring their autonomy and protecting your own is not a light ask.

It’s sacred work. So no, I don’t date for volume. I build for depth.

Because the truth is, many people can enter your life. Very few can stay for all your versions.

Fewer still can help you meet them without fear. That’s who I build with.

How We Used Friendship to Build Legal Systems of Care and Protection

There’s a difference between being close and being accounted for. The people I build with aren’t just in my life emotionally they’re in the paperwork.

That’s the kind of love I practice. It’s logistical. It’s strategic. It’s matriarchal.

What people often call “friendship” doesn’t cover what we do. This isn’t casual connection. It’s estate planning. It’s legal strategy. It’s asset protection. It’s interdependence written in contracts, custody, and co-ownership.

We’ve signed mortgages together, named each other in wills, written down guardianship plans for children who aren’t biologically ours. We’ve done the math on taxes, inheritance, healthcare access, and housing security not because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary.

Romantic love is still treated as the only form of intimacy worthy of infrastructure. But what we’ve built isn’t waiting on romantic permanence.

We live in homes where parenting is distributed, not isolated.

We share child pickups, calendar logistics, grief rituals, and financial responsibilities. We don’t ask each other to perform softness. We ask each other what needs doing, and then we do it.

This isn’t a workaround for singlehood. It’s a decision to center care over convention.

And it’s political.

When systems are designed to privilege couples over communities, choosing to build security through platonic relationships is a form of resistance. Especially for women, especially for queer people, especially for the neurodivergent. We are creating lives that don’t collapse because a romance ends. We are building foundations that last because they were never built on performance in the first place.

What we’re building now isn’t radical. It echoes what held us before colonial systems tried to flatten kinship into coupledom. To understand it, we have to remember what came before the nuclear family.

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Matriarchal Kinship and African Family Systems That Didn’t Wait for Romance

The idea that your future should depend on whether or not you fall in love is a Western invention. And a fragile one.

In the matriarchal systems I come from Fulani, Mandinka, Wolof and others, romantic coupling was never the axis of survival. Children were raised by multiple adults. Wealth and land passed on. Care was layered, not linear. Marriage could be romantic, even polygamous but the role of friends in it was structural. It existed for continuity. It supported as much as it was supported, reciprocally.

There was no fantasy of the perfect nuclear household. There was responsibility. Presence. Design.

The people who raised us, protected us, and held our legacy weren’t always blood relatives or romantic partners. They were who showed up. That was the logic. Show up, and you belong. Stay, and you are trusted.

What the West calls “alternative households,” we called normal. And now, the data catches up to what our ancestors already knew.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has tracked participants for over 80 years, found that the biggest predictor of life satisfaction and physical health wasn’t wealth or career, it was the quality of close relationships. People with stable, secure connections lived longer, recovered faster, and stayed cognitively healthy longer.

The CDC has named loneliness a contributor to chronic illness, depression, and early death. The WHO has called it a public health crisis. Because what we build with others isn’t just emotional, it’s biological.

Romantic dysfunction doesn’t just harm the couple. It reshapes the nervous system of the children watching it.

Children raised in high-conflict romantic homes even with both parents present show elevated cortisol levels, anxiety, and difficulty regulating emotion. Compare that to the outcomes of children raised in multi-adult households or platonic co-parenting homes: more emotional bandwidth, less pressure, and more models for repair.

Matriarchies understood this before any of it was peer-reviewed. More balanced and supported adults. More consistency. Less fragility.

Compare that to today’s nuclear family model, isolated, under-resourced, and crumbling under the weight of loneliness. Two adults expected to be everything: parent, therapist, regulator, income. When that structure breaks and it often does there’s no one else built in to catch the fall.

That’s a liability that we today romanticise as….love.

Matriarchal systems built in redundancy on purpose. Not because people were disposable, but because no one should be indispensable to the point of collapse. If one mother couldn’t cope, another stepped in. If one household struggled, another adjusted. Romantic hierarchy didn’t decide who deserved care.

That’s the part people misunderstand. Centering romance doesn’t just limit who gets love. It limits who gets remembered in crisis, named in legal plans, carried in grief, or considered in legacy. And when that hierarchy falls apart, the fallout isn’t just emotional. It’s structural.

We didn’t wait for love to show up to start building. We built with what we had. And the people who stayed became family.

Why Real Intimacy Is Measured by Protection, Not Romance

Love is easy to declare. Protection is harder to sustain.

What I’ve built with my friends goes beyond sentiment. It lives in how we make decisions, plan futures, and hold each other’s lives with care. Not in metaphor. In action.

The Western script tells us that the most important person in your life should be a romantic partner. That your legacy, your paperwork, your parenting, your primary loyalty should orbit around love. But romantic love is often the least reliable form of protection. It can be intense without being safe. Familiar without being consistent. Public without being private.

And yet, we keep measuring intimacy by whether someone loves us romantically.

Not whether they will stay when things fall apart.

Not whether they’ll pick up the kids or sign the documents.

Not whether they’ll grieve you properly or defend you in the rooms you’ll never enter.

We’re measuring the wrong things.

I have friends who have never said “I love you,” but have shown up for every illness, signed every legal form, and rewritten their lives to make space for mine. I’ve been in romantic partnerships that said all the right things but collapsed the moment I needed more than words.

Protection, not performance, is what makes a bond sacred. Matriarchal systems understood that. They didn’t wait for romantic compatibility to assign responsibility.

They didn’t treat marriage as the ultimate goal, either. If a man became too needy or disruptive, you did what my grandmother did, you encouraged him to take a second wife in another household so you could get back to your community work. That was her priority. It still is mine.

This is the legacy I come from: one where structure wins over sentiment, where care is distributed, and where nobody, especially not a romantic partner is allowed to derail the village.

In fact if someone or something demands more from me than they offer, I suggest they marry two more people to meet their needs. I’ve got work to do.

Our systems didn’t ask who felt the most. They asked who could carry the weight. And then they handed them the rope. Because survival couldn’t hinge on chemistry. It had to rest on structure. That’s the logic I trust.

Maybe that’s why people in the Global North say autistic people lack empathy.Maybe they just lack strategy.

I don’t need my intimacy to be romantic to be real.I don’t need my commitments to be sexual to be sacred.And I don’t need the state or strangers to legitimize what we’ve already secured.

Because what we’ve built is strong.It’s clear. And it’s already working.

Author’s Note: This piece draws directly from my own research, lived experience, and intellectual frameworks developed over years of public lectures, consulting, and fieldwork on matriarchal kinship, neurodivergent intimacy, and decolonial family structures.

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