The more I step away from those cultural narratives about what is "normal" and "appropriate" the more I see how restrictive they can be. There's always this unspoken feeling that you might need to defend the way that you choose to go about intimate relationships because mono heteronormativity is so clearly accepted as the "default" and there's this subconscious belief out there that it's what we should all aspire to, even if it's really, really not in line with who we are.

I wonder how much this will shift/improve in my lifetime, but I'm not all that optimistic.