Lydia Bennett is a pansexual polyamorous person and spoke about how the relationships in their life fulfill them in different ways.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Lydia Bennett: So, my partnerships, kind of, have varied greatly through my life. I currently have what we consider like a “nesting partner.” So, that's my nonbinary partner I've been with the longest time.
A nesting partner is just the concept that when people aren't polyamorous, they may or may not live with someone else, and so, if you're living with someone else, that's your nesting partner.
It's usually the most stable or the longest-term relationship, but it can depend on the kind of relationship structure that you have with people.
And that's been a very interesting relationship because we got together when I was 18, and a freshman in college, and was functionally, you know, cis, het, monogamous, and, of course, our relationship has had to change a lot over time to become what we are today.

We met in a dining hall. It was a pretty standard story. We were functionally monogamous for a very long time.
But from the very start, I was always discussing kind of like, what I could see a relationship being in the future and the things about non-monogamy that I didn't even have terms for yet at the time.
And so, that's been able to grow and take off and become so many different relationships over time, as we both grew into different types of people.
It's a great like, supporting foundation for me personally. I moved around a lot when I was young, and that created a habit of moving around still.
So, I plan to kind of move every few years, and they're just going to kind of move with me and follow me around, which is a nice to have that support no matter where I go.
My other main relationship right now is, you know, Anna, who's my girlfriend of about one year now, and we met through the dating apps – because that's the easiest way to meet anyone these days.
But it took off better than either of us probably expected. We've got a lot of chemistry. We really like hanging out and spending time together.
And we both work in the medical field, so sometimes we talk about, you know, the same thing that normal couples talk about, like TV shows and movies, and other times we're talking about psychological research, and, you know, how personality disorders affect people's interactions with each other and relationships with each other and, and what can be done to kind of help them through that.
And so, it's just kind of very different relationship for my primary one because they are a musician, so they don't understand quite as much of the science though they still are happy to listen to me when I talk about work.
I do have another partner who's kind of – or they're a platonic partner, Alexis, and we also met through the apps.
We've got a more casual relationship because we're just at different places in our life. They're a little bit younger than me, they're also nonbinary, but it's always a fun time hanging out. We like to go hiking.
So, each of these different relationships kind of fall into a different niche in my life and help hit another requirement or something else that kind of fulfills my life.