Why Some Gay Men Are Returning to Monogamy
- Michael Pezzullo
- May 3
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
For a long time, the message has been clear: if you want freedom, you should be open. If you want to be evolved, you shouldn’t limit yourself. If you want to move beyond heteronormativity, monogamy isn’t the answer. For many gay men, that framing made sense. It felt like progress, like expansion, like a rejection of rules that never fully fit in the first place.
But something is shifting.
Quietly, and without much discussion, more gay men are starting to reconsider monogamy—not as a regression, but as something worth re-evaluating. This isn’t happening because men are becoming more insecure or more conservative. It’s happening because what they’ve been told should work doesn’t always align with how they actually experience relationships.
The Narrative Was Never Neutral
The push toward openness in gay relationships didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It developed as part of a broader effort to challenge constraint, to redefine intimacy, and to create alternatives to traditional relationship models. That cultural shift was important. It created space for new possibilities and gave many men permission to explore connection in ways that felt more authentic.
But over time, that nuanced shift hardened into something more rigid. The narrative became simplified into a binary: openness as liberation, monogamy as limitation. And while that framing may have started as a reaction against restriction, it now functions as its own kind of pressure. It subtly suggests that if monogamy appeals to you, something about you must be outdated, afraid, or misinformed.
That assumption doesn’t hold up under closer examination.
When Gay Men and Monogamy Don’t Fit the Script
What’s often missing from these conversations is the reality that not all men experience connection in the same way. Some men thrive in open relationships. For them, openness feels expansive, energizing, and aligned with how they relate to both desire and autonomy. But for other men, the experience is different. They may enter open structures with the intention of embracing that same sense of freedom, only to find that something feels subtly off.
It’s not always dramatic. It doesn’t necessarily show up as overt jealousy or conflict. Instead, it can feel like a low-level instability, a sense that the relationship is harder to fully settle into, or that something meaningful is being diluted in a way that’s difficult to articulate. Because the dominant narrative frames openness as the more evolved choice, many men don’t question the structure itself. They question their own reaction to it.
They assume they need to adapt. To push through. To become more comfortable with something that, at a deeper level, may not actually fit them.
Monogamy as Alignment, Not Limitation
One of the most persistent misconceptions about monogamy is that it inherently represents restriction. But for some men, the experience is the opposite. Monogamy can function less as a limitation and more as a framework that supports a certain type of connection. It allows for focus, for continuity, and for a depth that builds over time without being diffused across multiple channels.
This doesn’t make monogamy superior, nor does it make openness inferior. It simply reflects a difference in how people bond. For some, connection can be compartmentalized without losing its meaning. For others, emotional and physical intimacy are more integrated, making separation feel artificial or destabilizing. When those men try to force themselves into a structure that requires that separation, the result isn’t growth—it’s fragmentation.
Understanding that difference is critical, because it shifts the conversation away from judgment and toward alignment.
The Question Most Gay Men Aren’t Asking
Most discussions about relationships begin with the question of preference. Do you want to be open or monogamous? But that question assumes a level of clarity that many people don’t actually have. It treats the decision as if it exists on the surface, when in reality it’s rooted in deeper psychological patterns.
A more useful question is not what you want, but what actually fits how you connect. Some men experience desire as expansive and easily separable from emotional attachment. Others experience it as more selective and tied to intimacy. Some feel energized by variety, while others feel grounded by consistency. None of these tendencies are inherently better or worse, but they are not interchangeable.
When men make relationship decisions based on what they believe they should want, rather than what actually aligns with their internal experience, they often find themselves repeating the same patterns, just in different forms.
Reclaiming Monogamy Without Pathologizing It
What’s beginning to happen, often quietly, is that more gay men are stepping outside of the default narrative and asking a different set of questions. Instead of trying to conform to an idealized version of what a relationship should look like, they are starting to examine their own experience more closely. In doing so, some are arriving at monogamy—not as a fallback or a compromise, but as a deliberate choice.
This shift isn’t about rejecting openness. It’s about recognizing that no single structure works for everyone. Reclaiming monogamy, in this context, means removing the assumption that it must be rooted in fear or limitation. It allows it to be considered on its own terms, as one of several viable ways to build a relationship.
Start With Clarity
If you’re questioning what actually fits for you, the first step isn’t choosing a structure. It’s understanding your own patterns. That includes how you experience connection, what creates a sense of stability for you, and what tends to destabilize it over time. Without that clarity, it’s easy to move between different relationship models without ever addressing the underlying issue.
If you want a clearer sense of how you operate in relationships, you can start here:
👉 Take the Monogamy Alignment Test
The goal isn’t to tell you what you should choose. It’s to help you understand what actually works for you so that your decisions come from alignment, not assumption.
Working Through This in Real Life
For many men, insight alone isn’t enough. Recognizing a pattern doesn’t automatically change it, especially when those patterns are tied to deeper experiences of attachment, identity, and self-worth. This is the work I do with clients—helping them move beyond surface-level decisions and understand the underlying dynamics shaping their relationships.
If you’re navigating questions around openness, monogamy, or recurring relationship patterns, you can learn more about working with me here. You can also explore my perspective on open relationships or, if you’re already partnered, consider whether gay couples therapy might be a better fit for the work you’re trying to do.
Final Thought
A lot of people aren’t choosing relationship structures from clarity.They’re choosing from fear, adaptation, loneliness, validation, or unconscious patterning.
If you can’t tell the difference, you’ll keep building relationships around a version of yourself you never fully examined.
If this pattern feels familiar, you can explore my work with gay men around attachment, self-worth, dating patterns, and intimacy here.
Related Articles
If this topic resonates with you, these articles explore some of the deeper psychological patterns underneath relationship structure, attachment, validation, and emotional intimacy among gay men.
Watch: Why More Gay Men Are Reconsidering Relationship Structure
A lot of the conversation around monogamy and open relationships focuses on ideology, rules, or what’s considered “evolved.” But in reality, relationship structure often has much more to do with emotional wiring, attachment patterns, validation, and psychological fit than people realize.
In this video, I break down why some gay men genuinely thrive in openness—while others slowly become emotionally destabilized trying to adapt to a structure that doesn’t actually align with who they are. We explore the difference between freedom and emotional diffusion, why some people confuse stimulation with intimacy, and why monogamy may be quietly resurfacing for many gay men right now.
If you’ve ever felt conflicted about what you’re “supposed” to want in relationships versus what actually makes you feel emotionally grounded, this video will likely resonate. You can check out more gay men's dating and relationship content on my YouTube Channel Therapy For Gay Men.
Comments