A very wonderful friend recently shared with me her story of love with many different people at the same time. I found it fascinating and asked if she would be willing to share with my readers.
Love really is a wonderful thing. Enjoy.....
And, Not Or
I have a different lovestyle than most: I am polyamorous. This means that I love many: “poly“ coming from the Greek, meaning many, and ‘amorous’ coming from the Latin ‘amor’, meaning love. I know, Greek and Latin, right? But it actually makes sense to me: my poly mantra is “And, not or.” I can love this person AND that person; it doesn’t have to be this person OR that person. I don’t have to choose—provided that the people I love are open to being in a relationship with someone who loves more than one.
How did this begin? After my divorce some years ago, I found myself pondering relationships and their formations. I had nearly always dated monogamously (except for that one wonderful time where I realized I was in love with two men—which felt so natural and joyous—but then I felt internally pressured by society to choose one to “get serious” with). A few years later, I married someone, monogamously. After my marriage ended, I tried dating again. I grew dissatisfied with trying to find one person who had all the qualities I was looking for—I have so many different facets to me that it was really hard finding a single person to resonate with all or most of those facets.
Then I had a conversation with my sister about polyamory…about the possibility of having multiple, simultaneous romantic relationships. I had heard of it years ago—one of the LiveJournals (yes, LiveJournal!) I regularly read mentioned that the author had a husband and a boyfriend. But I thought that was just a fluke—I didn’t know of anyone else who had such a relationship, and I forgot about it. Until that conversation with my sister. People do this? This is a thing? Yes, Virginia, it IS a thing! It really appealed to me—being able to date this man, that man, and possibly that man, too! And hey, this woman (I’m also bisexual)! Not to just casually date them, but to potentially be in love with them, with all of them, too. I was regularly hanging out with a lot of jazz musicians in my 1920’s crowd, and I had crushes on a few of them. I imagined having relationships with them all at the same time, and everyone being cool with that. I’m not sure if I am wired this way or if I chose it because it feels right, but I was down with it, no matter how I came to it.
I never did date my jazz musicians, but I did reconnect with an old high school acquaintance via Facebook, at about the same time. He was 3000 miles away, and married. Not a snowball’s chance in hell of us being together. We began chatting, every day, and found companionship in each other. He said how he had always had feelings for others while he was married, though he had never cheated, but that it never changed his feelings for his wife. The emotions all existed simultaneously. I said to him, have you ever heard of polyamory? He hadn’t, so I told him about it. People do this? This is a thing? Yes, it’s a thing. About 6 months later, he was divorced from his wife. And he came to visit me, 3000 miles and 25 years later. And somewhere in hell, there is a snowball, because we did get together. I moved to the state he lived in (which was my home state), to live with him—we joke that doing this was my mid-life crisis, as I was 41 at the time. And we are still together, five years later. He has other partners (he also lives with one of them, as well as with me), and so do I—we both have online dating accounts. And I wouldn’t change this lovestyle for anything.
I love our life! I knew I would never marry again, or never be in a monogamous relationship again (you can be married and be polyamorous). Our life fits me perfectly, and fits him perfectly, too. My other partner is amazing, as well. We don’t live together, but we sometimes spend the night and we are in love. He is very different from my live-in partner, although there are similarities, too (both of them are nerds, both of them are very giving, sweet, highly intelligent, funny and generous). He has another partner as well, and we get along wonderfully, too. And someday, I’d love to be with a woman, as well. Another area where I don’t have to choose one or the other.
We have a small polycule (us, and our respective partners—all of our connections), We have all met, and while we don’t all communicate directly every day, we know about and care about each other. One of his partners (my metamours) I talk to every single day, who is like a dear sister to me. He brought her into my life, for which I am so grateful. Other metamours I talk to every so often, but there is still a sense of caring and camaraderie between us. I love having one big, happy family, so I love how we are warm with each other. We are a strange and wonderful little family. People have come and people have gone (relationships do break up, and other ones form), but we accept the changes as they happen (eventually). And we are there for one another—recently, my other sweetie had to go to the ER. I went with him, stayed with him for the five hours he was there. His other partner was in another state and she was glad I was there with him (he ended up being fine). At the same time, my live-in partner went to be emotional support for one of his other sweeties, who’d had a horrible fight with her husband. We were supposed to be together that night, but instead, we went and supported our other loves, unquestioningly, because they needed us. We also supported each other doing this, unquestioningly. And our metamours checked in to see how everyone was doing, as well. So much love!
We are a family of choice, a tribe of our own making. This is what love looks like, to me.
It's important to note that there are down sides. One of the most common is that a power differential can form between married or committed partners and the one who is the metamour. This privilege gets expressed in many unconscious ways, so it's important to consider the dynamic from all sides, because it can lead to emotional damage to the metamour. The other side of that coin is the metamour who doesn't take their poly relationship seriously because it isn't shaped like a ladder - dating to love to commitment to marriage. They may talk about wanting a "real" relationship after dating for months or even years. They may hold back in the relationship emotionally, because "it isn't going anywhere."
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between someone who is polyamorous and someone who is monogamous but single but engages in a polyamorous relationship as long as they don't have anything else going on. This can also do emotional damage to each of the married ones when someone they have grown to consider as family has no problem disappearing when "the real thing" shows up. And then there are people who do live a polyamorous life until they meet someone who insists on monogamy, and they readily throw over any serious relationships under way to pursue a relationship with the monogamous person. This can be heartbreaking.
It's important to know there is a difference between people who are in earnest about polyamory but don't do it perfectly, and people who deliberately take advantage of a polyamorous person's availability and emotional support as a diversion or a comfort without considering what the reciprocity really is as the married polyamour understand it. This isn't the case all the time, but it happens often enough that people contemplating polyamory should remain aware that not everyone takes the situation as seriously.
It's also true that, as much as LGBTQ people, sometimes more, polyamours face a lot of discrimination outside of their circles, and don't have the privileges accorded to monogamours. It's difficult to be completely out, to everyone, and it's also difficult to have to conceal important aspects of your life if you prefer others not to know. Married polyamours are privileged because they are are able to "pass" as monogamous, so they need to consider carefully the position this may put other partners in by having a love they don't get to publicly declare and the painful sense that they are a shameful secret, which can destroy any relationship.
Polyamory does dispense with many of the pitfalls of monogamy, but it also presents new ones. It's a great way to be and it can be very fulfilling and rewarding, but by no means is it totally free of difficulty. The learning curve can get pretty tricky.