Polyamorous dilemma

Am I polyamorous right now? Will I be forever?

Is it a reflection of my past? Is it a refraction of my future self?

I am trying to work out if I am on a polyamorous journey right now or forever.

 In fact can I even answer this question or it will be answered for me?

I come from a place where my previous monogamous relationships have not met all my needs, have included episodes in all of them where one or the other partner ended up getting their needs met elsewhere (notice I didn’t say ‘cheating’ as I don’t believe this exists when your needs are not met.)

I accept that many of my affectionate and intimate desires have not been offered to me by the one’s I have loved.

How could you I them then? If they were not right for me… So much of them was right though. And I fell in love anyway. How was I to know they were not right? I certainly didn’t believe in perfect and don’t measure anyone by it either.

All my previous relationships have been long and committed. I’ve even been married. The last of my relationships was for almost ten years and it was the most open, equal and brutally honest commitment I had ever shared with anyone. Our levels of communication were incredible and our acknowledgment of our differences and our needs always clear and tabled. If we could not meet each others needs we sought to consent to them being met elsewhere and put ourselves through individual therapy if we had issues with accepting what each other needed. Permission and consent. It felt mature and equal and fair. But it still didn’t work out.

On reflection I know I am complex, but isn’t everyone? I am powerful, strong, intimidating awe and a force to be reckoned with. I have complicated intricate dreams of the world but I hold myself absolutely accountable for my own life and experiences. I know I am hard to love. Yet I receive love from many and it changes my world. It makes me whole.

I know I seek to connect. I love to be with people and to feel value from them.

I ask constantly to seek to understand my boundaries and my needs. I ask this a lot of myself.

If you look up Polyamorous in a dictionary, or google it online you will find a description like this –

The state of having multiple sexually or romantically committed relationships at the same time, with the consent of all partners involved.

“Polyamorous communities emphasize love and honesty in their multi-partner relationships.”

The key words here being, consent of all involved.

Now it would seem, from my limited time exploring this, that consent is given easily if it’s a one night stand, (commitmentless) or a romantic Asexual relationship you agree to engage upon (with acknowledgement of sexual needs met elsewhere). Consent is given freely and often quickly when the offer is instantaneous and immediately gratifying. Obvious really isn’t it?

And that’s only if you really feel the need to explain these dynamics of yourself. Because if you don’t intend on seeing them ever again, what business is it of theirs what your bigger life balance story is?

Being new to this I find it ruins the heat of the moment when I just want to taste someone’s peachy lips to have to explain my wordy over thought, my new way of being, the experimental ways I am trying to fulfil my own needs. To then spatter from a verbal gun of under practiced phrases of my polyamorous explanation. Its quite a mouthful, and not the right mouthful either. Apparently I haven’t learnt my ‘phrase’ yet!

But what happens if you get into something good and intimate that bowls you over, blows you the fuck away in all the surprises it has in store for you and punches a button that you want to keep being pushed?

What happens when you have thrown yourself in before you knew it, given all of you, because it’s the best you have tasted in a long long time. It’s the safest you have felt, the hardest you have laughed, the fullest you have loved, the longest you have day dreamed about someone. But then, it gets a bit obvious its more, its verging on that elusive yet seductive place of getting serious. You discuss these boundaries further and they, no longer give consent.

Boom.

Your delicious dancing dreams shatter like fragile crystals and your heart breaks into a million pieces of personal confusion. You second guess what you did wrong, what you don’t have enough of and you gasp that terrible last breath of feathered futuristic fantasy before the walls go up, you protect your wounded heart and feel alone again.

What if you have fallen? Head over heels for something really good? When you thought all your cards were on the table, when you thought you had been clear and open and honest. And as your feelings hot up and your emotions attach hold of that delicious new person, who you want in your life, who you find has opened a new part of you, who you can’t imagine letting go. What happens next?

It feels like losing love for a part of yourself that you had not fully experienced or acknowledged yet.

Consent is important. Communication is the key to understanding what consent does or doesn’t unlock.

Surely it should prevent me from getting into something I don’t want for myself.

Accept in this scenario it didnt prevent me at all. I am already there. I am in.

This person is deeply under my skin.

And so the pain begins.

My heart and soul has committed and now I am trying to withdraw.

I feel hurt. I have lost a love I dreamed was beautiful. Easy. Free.

But its not how they feel about me.

So I have to let it be.

And that’s not at all easy.

In my explorations, I discovered territories new which I now feel I have got lost.

But really I have lost myself, and in the process lost love all over again.

I recognise this pain.

Yet another part of me is shouting loud.

You can do this! You can be less attached. You can enjoy the moment and stop living in the future of what may come. After all Lou Rain,  is that not what you are supposed to be exploring?

Does this not feel like a lesson, pain for a gain?

Is not change the precursor for a perception of a loss or gain?

Make it gain!

Rise again!
Gain on yourself Lou Rain!

For the person who will love you the most, the person who will always see you and know you, comfort you and congratulate you...is in fact you Lou.

So I endeavour to make this pain into a gain. To try and understand how to move on quickly and happily, with permission to learn and consent to try again.

I give consent to myself.