Polyamory: A Personal Update Based on Our Experience

It's been already nine months since I wrote my first piece on polyamory, the most popular article on my blog so far. As we are still living this relationship, one of my longest for sure, I thought it'd be interesting to share more practical experience and thoughts on the matter.

My partner and I have known each other for over three years now, with a nuance: we do not live close to each other and rarely meet up. We have a common social group and I happened to see him fairly regularly in all those years, but it's far from being a traditional relationship-fostering setting.

Back in May, I was living with him as an attempt to imagine our lives together, an experiment. I stayed there for three months, sharing his house and blending in his life. We had ups and downs in all aspects of our lives, and we concluded that the whole experience was very positive that we still had a lot to learn and that we should pursue this relationship.

Then I left for Canada. That was last July. We have not seen each other in real life since.

What was polyamory for us before I left? I think it was a set of experiments we designed in order to make relationship accessible. I recall a discussion as we were walking on the beach shortly after we hooked up. "I don't know if I want to be in A relationship, how could I know if I want to be in a relationship with you?" I reacted strongly to that statement. What, we were friends for such a long time already, and there was no relationship between us? What, we had sex and were getting in phase, enjoyed kissing each other and cared for each other and we had no relationship whatsoever?

"You're playing with the words," he said, "you know exactly what I mean. We have a relationship, we're not just IN a relationship."

Bummer.

I realized that I was allowed to question that reasoning, and that nobody had the right to tell us what a relationship was. Long distance relationships, multiple partners relationship, open relationships, friendship relationships, same-sex relationships...

There is such a diversity of possibilities! We just had to dare to reinvent what it meant to us. We had to find what trapped us in conventional relationships, what scared us. His scarce experience of dating and his longing to explore the realms of feelings, emotions and sexual enjoyments. My long line of affective wreckages and my cyclothymia. My restlessness and my reluctance for being controlled. His avoidance of commitment. All that made us "us" rather than just "him and me". From there we were able to negotiate and come up with a formula that felt right.

***

What's happened since? We both had other relationships. He travelled for three months, and I now live in the Arctic, which makes real-time communications overall difficult. I had bouts of joyful love for him, felt he was THE ONE, missed him, cried and more recently had doubts for the first time this was ever going to work.

It's hard to explain the dynamics of this. Without our last year's peaceful experience, I think I would run away from the relationship right now as I start seeing difficult times ahead. After all, he's seeing someone who will still be there when I move back to his house. He's in love with her. I'm financially unstable. I want kids and he doesn't. We have way more reasons to be friends now than to be lovers. I might be falling in love myself with someone else.

You know what? The same reasons that make this situation complicated make it healthily livable. He's in love - I'm actually very happy for him and hope this will diversify his sexual register. Our level of commitment is flexible - if I want more space I can just take it. We are still making plans for the future. We never lie to each other. We are learning not to lie to ourselves either. We are transparent with our partners. We can still dream together. I don't feel very in love right now, but I really care for him and his life is over there, right now with that girl that makes him happy. My feeling of love for him fluctuates, but not the core values that hold us together.

Sometimes, we want to believe that we control events, feelings, situations. But even in a conventional monogamous relationship, control is very unhealthy. And control can take several forms, from manipulation to hiding the truth.

This entry could have been completely different had I written it a month ago. I was recently hurt by a secondary relationship. I also met someone else, when and where I least expected. I fell in love, I got inspiration. This got me thinking a lot.

And thinking, in this case, is very healthy.