how his life changed with three partners and one child

Juan Pablo D’orto He has three partners (Cecilia, Florencia and Sebastián) and one son. “I am happily polyamorous, convinced bisexual and eventual crossdresser,” she explained, summarizing only part of his current life.

But before living and growing up in polyamory there was another story, one that had little to do with the openness that governs his days today: for six years he was a cloistered monk in a monastery in San Pablo, Brazil.

He currently does not identify with any religion. However, he assured Clarion that something that brought him to the world of faith is still valid today: “I felt very attracted to learning about the world and improving it. I left the monastery and the Church, but not the personal search that took me there. I simply continued it outside the limits that the institution sets for you.”

D’orto did not feel comfortable with the classic activities of adolescence. He was not attracted to bowling or the dilemmas of that stage. In that context he began a personal search that, for more than five years, found his place in religion.

“At 15 years old I really wanted to change the world and learn. As I was quite young, I joined a Catholic group called Tradición Familia Propiedad. A year later, when I finished high school, I began to participate more often in their meetings and a group of people offered me to dedicate myself to research in a monastery under the Benedictine rule. So at the age of 16 I began to dedicate myself entirely to religious life.”

This is how Juan Pablo summarized his years as a cloistered monk (most of them in Brazil and the rest in Austria). In those times his interests included studying history, politics, philosophy and theology. A monastery in the middle of the Brazilian jungle was the perfect setting to satisfy that need.

But it was not only the instruction of those sciences that attracted him. “What happened to me was that I was bored with what in the Church we called ‘the world.’ ‘The world’ is, for the worldview of religion, everything that implies living in a hurry to seek fame, money or power. In my adolescence ‘the world’ was being passionate about football or the night, living waiting for someone else to like me and all that bothered me terribly.”, he recalled.

All of this led to what, at that moment, he believed was his vocation. “When I realized that in a monastery I could meet people who dedicate almost all their time to reading, debate and growth, I felt like I had found my place,” she said.

Much later, life in the monastery stopped covering his concerns and John Paul began to doubt his faith. “For six years I dedicated myself to participating not only as a monk, but as Church activist in almost all its spaces (secular, political and ecclesiastical). I was able to thoroughly understand its influence mechanisms and controls. It’s not that I left the monastery because I was away from society, that was precisely the reason I entered. The decision to leave was part of the same search that led me to enter. There was a moment when I realized that I had to continue it on the outside.”

In this second search D’orto mentioned two works that were fundamental to him: Three essays on religionof John Stuart Milland The name of the roseof Umberto Eco. The latter, he claimed, was defining. “I finished reading it terrified, even though he was already 26 years old. For several nights I couldn’t sleep well and a feeling of loneliness invaded my body. Those were the first days that I felt that he was alone in the world, that there was no god listening to me”he recalled.

Then many of his convictions changed and so He rebuilt his life outside the Church. “Ironically, although I was leaving religion, those weeks were quite religious moments, because I was saying goodbye and mourning the people who had died and who I thought I would see again at some point. I was burying all my teachers, rooting for Christ and my superiors in the monastery. “I realized that I would never see them again, nor see the face of Christ, nor the saints, nor anyone good or bad that I have ever crossed paths with in this life.”

As the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, back in Argentina, who had been her best friend in high school moved into a new role. “When I left the monastery I met again Cecilia walking down the street and, between conversations, I realized that not only did I admire her and love her as always, but that I also liked her, that I was in love with her, her affection, her intelligence and her audacity. So we started to go out “barely left the Church.”

This love meant a discovery: “I began to look at her not as a wife in the religious sense, but as a partner. I knew that one day she was going to die and so was I, and that all this beautiful thing I have with her was going to end. Not today or tomorrow, but at some point, all of this was going to end. And there my life began to be redefined, but in a very different way. I no longer feel like we are in a trial for another, better life in paradise. This is life, the last, the only one. Everything has to happen here. Who I am, I must be here.”

Already as a couple with Cecilia, the premise of the bond was to live “without any type of prohibition”. “It never occurred to us that our partner was there to hinder or sabotage our growth, but we had not even talked about the possibility of ‘opening the relationship’, a phrase that is quite accepted today but that at that time was not so well known. ”.

They talked about everything: the past, the present and their fantasies. “We had to give names to things, but first we had to overcome all the prejudices that exist about things.” open relationships”, he admitted.

Questions arose from all sides: “Did I like Cecilia less if I was attracted to another woman? Was I experiencing this because I wanted to separate? Was I wanting to be unfaithful or betray her? All of these are logical questions that arise when one opens the relationship, but they have nothing to do with what is happening,” Juan Pablo explained.

At that moment, for them there were more questions than answers. “People who seek to open their relationship enjoy a space of autonomy and support their partner to have it too. It is exactly the opposite of seeking to separate or be unfaithful. But we didn’t have any support and we had to find our way by walking,” said the former monk.

When they managed to accommodate their ideas and emotions, they knew that what they wanted was to be a polyamorous family. As the years went by, the wish became a reality: today Juan Pablo lives with his three couples and his son in their house in the city of Ranelagh. In addition, together with Cecilia he directs a space for listening and accompaniment for those who have gone or are going through the process of opening a relationship (on Instagram they are @relacionesa).

“We are a family like any other, we have to share the household chores and we rely on the dreams and desires we have; Obviously, we also have our coexistence conflicts,” he assured. And he highlighted a fundamental characteristic within their relationship: “We do not ‘tolerate’ that members of our family have other ties, we ‘support’ them, which is much more than tolerating.”

When describing What is it like to parent in polyamory? He was emphatic: “It’s lovely! I have no experience parenting in monogamy, but I imagine it must be the same. We learned to be well coordinated, which is perhaps the most difficult thing among the four of us, although we never had many different opinions regarding parenting.” Furthermore, he highlighted the positive of “having a mattress to fall on” when the famous tribe necessary to raise is within the house: “It is not the same to raise alone while having two jobs, as raise as part of a team that supports each other”.