How am I Practicing Polyamory Now? | Reflections between two visible solar eclipses
This recent April 2024 solar eclipse reminded me of the last solar eclipse we could see in my part of the US. That first one was in August 2017. I had to physically hold the door shut to my then 6-year-old’s bedroom because I was alone with him and he wouldn’t wear the glasses, and also wouldn't stop staring at the sun, and I was legitimately concerned he would go blind. I’ve spent the subsequent days since the second eclipse reflecting on these two events as markers in time, and using them to see where I was then vs. where I am now. And how many of these changes I could observe were because I decided to pursue polyamory.
In 2017, my little monogamous family -me, my husband, and that aforementioned feisty small child- had just moved to CT after the sale of my company so I could be closer to my extended family as my son started kindergarten. I was coming out of the shock of being constantly needed which happens to parents when children are very young. As the primary caregiver, I was very much aware that while I didn’t know what I should have expected from that period of life, it wasn’t what had actually happened, and I never wanted to feel that way again. I felt full of rage against everyone, and I didn’t have the foresight to understand parenthood changes as the children get older and need less day-to-day attention to stay alive. All I saw was more years of endless days and I was exhausted.
Later, a sexual poly partner would share his observance of these same patterns in women as soon as their youngest reached the Kindergarten age of 5 or 6. He noticed that this is when these (mostly) moms would enter a phase looking for change. He saw it as dating while a married man under “polyamory”, but I agreed with his trend from my own observations of friends.
However, my own personal circle of friends didn’t go to the extremes that it felt like I did - finding polyamory and kink, and becoming inspired by the art and passion I found in shibari to pick up my camera after 10 years away from it, to make that at least a break-even hobby.
My friends did have divorces. One told me point blank, after cheating on her husband three times, that she could never do what I was trying to do - date while married. Divorce was “easier”. But it looked like hell from the outside, both on her and on her children. And as a child of divorce, I hated the contention between my parents. I didn’t want that for my son. And cheating, it was just something I could never do, though I came close in my monogamous days. I wanted to live my life in a way where honesty, even when hard, was rule number one.
Some (most) of my longer-term friends got late-in-life neurodiverse diagnoses. Some went on medicine for anxiety for the first time, or the first time in a long time off. That resonated, both with my late-in-life autism diagnosis, and that I ended up switching the mental health medicine I was on for the first time in 20 years, as it clearly wasn’t working anymore, and got some relief from both of those things.
During this time I also had some serious health scares after ignoring my body for most of my life. And finally got some real answers about underlying health issues, including that anxiety wasn’t only in my head, but also had real causes in my body that were mislabeling anxiety because I had been masking for a very long time. Even armed with the “right” medications, it would take time to feel “normal” in my body again. To be where I am now.
I had uncovered how much I had been masking after I was unable to mask on/over the only thing I couldn’t stop doing - parenthood - and that plus a pandemic, I was ready for major changes on a personal and systemic level to make sure that didn’t happen again.
Polyamory always seemed to be the intellectual solution to me. It also felt like it was the right label for what I very distinctly saw as a “perfect” way of living. I so clearly saw pods of humans connected - as tribes, as lovers, as friends, as co-parents. I had fallen in love with multiple people, in multiple ways, multiple times in my life already to that point.
But the reality of the “dating” world I walked into in 2021 was very different from this poly utopian vision I had in my head, and VERY different from the last time I “officially” dated, almost 20 years earlier.
So. Because it is the only way I know how to do things - I jumped in and submerged myself entirely. I wasn’t prepared for how deep I would go, or how long it would take to get my head above water again. And now I’m here, treading water, but with full awareness of my own hard-earned lifejacket (my newly learned self-awareness of emotions and how to feel them) and fully committed to the relationship with myself above all others. Something, as a severe people-pleaser, I didn’t know how badly I was neglecting. Choosing literally anyone else over myself.
I did it because I thought that’s how I was supposed to act. As a woman, an employee, a daughter, a wife, a mother. I did it to avoid conflict, to keep people in my life because of my deep abandonment wound, and because self-abandonment was also my particular brand of self-sabotage. Meaning, it was the oldest subconscious way I knew how to avoid feeling the feelings that were coming up when I had needs to be met. Instead of recognizing those feelings as needs, and therefore something I needed to hear, I would try to suppress them for other’s stated “needs” until my needs would explode outward.
I had to learn that anxious people are actually avoiding feeling their feelings by projecting it on someone - anyone - else. I had to learn that avoidant people are deeply anxious about feeling their feelings, so they avoid them in any way they can. And all of this was exacerbated by how people born as men were socialized to NOT feel, in a way that goes much deeper, and starts much younger, than I truly was able to understand until I experienced it with multiple people. Including seeing my own father and brother very differently with this compassionate lens.
I had to learn that people socialized as women were still covertly communicating like their mothers and grandmothers before them, who had considerably less rights as women, but could now act like men - which meant learning to repress emotions and speak directly - at least in the workplace. Yet, these outdated binary gender roles would seemingly collide at home - internally and between partners - especially once children were born.
I had to understand all of this so I could understand how much UNLEARNING needed to be done, on all levels, to be able to even attempt to live this new vision of family I had in my head.
I also had to account for the very dry well of being sexually repressed, only doing what I thought I was supposed to do, and the frenzy that came with trying to fill that well with NO roadmap. And with partners who I may not have otherwise been compatible with. I reinforced some old trauma stories (thankfully had a wonderful therapist), and ran from some people I was actually compatible with, because I was scared of the potential success of these relationships.
I didn’t know how to love non-monogamously. I only knew how to feel what I thought was love, but was probably co-dependency, and mostly in a monogomous way. Would loving these new partners mean I would have to leave my little family, even though I stated I didn’t want to, so that I wouldn’t lose them, these new people?
I didn’t know how to live the life I wanted, so when it would seem to arrive, fleetingly, it was terrifying.
I had to learn how much I was trying to be hypervigilant and try to be aware of “what was coming” in order to feel some semblance of control in my life. And, because I was on an uncharted path, I only had old models to work from as divination markers, so I was seeing heartbreak ahead and preemptively striking to “avoid” that.
That was, and continues to be, the hardest lesson. That only by letting go of any expectation of the future, only by leaning into my greatest fear - the unknown, was the place where I found the true freedom I envisioned. A paradox.
I also had to learn about boundaries, and consent, on both sides. The need to speak directly and clearly and to hear others and take them exactly at their word, even if I felt differently.
I had to learn to literally slow down in all communications. I learned that *I* had been burning myself out when pushing communication to go “faster”. My reason for doing this, I would learn, was so that I could reach the “safe” place of relationships with titles! Except, you can’t shortcut the work of getting to know other humans over time. You just can’t. And in the defacto polyamory I was practicing by default, titles didn’t mean “safety” anyway. Which I intellectually understood AND emotionally stumbled on.
So I learned to slow down, intentionally. I learned visualization exercises where I picture myself running in slow motion when I need to stretch out a minute, an hour, a day before I replied. I still find comfort in that when I feel the anxiety of the need to rush creeping in. I learned how to reframe the feeling of “bored”.
All of these lessons culminated in new life best practices that I am currently in the middle of playing out. Life is “quieter” because of it, but I feel I’m finally building the foundation for myself to be with ANY partners because I can finally be with myself.
And I am grateful for that.
So when the errant thoughts of “boredom” or disappointment about missed “expectations” or rage around a co-parenting issue come up, I have a long chat here on paper with my inner child.
We, little me and adult me, brainstorm about what activity - usually art or movement-based - we can do to relieve the boredom in constructive ways, knowing that the dopamine-fueled moments of social media (kink or otherwise) that I reach for first leads me (us) down a dark path that is very akin (ok the same) as addictions of other kinds. And if/when my mind still won’t settle, looking for outside validation to avoid those emotions, I just sit. And be. And feel. And journal some more.
I turn my phone and computer off and close myself in a room. I shut off my access to others until I can name my feelings on that tangible paper. Then I decide if I need to take any direct, calm action to communicate any needs or boundaries, again on paper, before I talk to another person. It feels like it sounds more sterile than it is. It’s hard for me to do this, so I am learning how. It took time, and still, some days go better than others.
I am in a period where I am focused on spending time cultivating relationships other than sexual/romantic ones. Which feels counterintuitive to every part of my take-control mind. But. It’s part of me trusting that by building my foundation of friends and friends-who-are-family with the same dreams, integrity, and life goals, the romantic/sexual partner will arrive. (Sidenote: Come seemed a little on the nose. 😂)
That felt like another paradox, that I am only looking for one compatible person to allow me to explore the sexual and romantic things I want to explore by opening myself up to the freedom and possibility of getting to know the many. And that feels like monogamy, but while being platonically married and partnered with other people. So, monogamish.
It is the reason I have vowed that I will meet this person NOT on the dating apps, because I found the constant “on-on-on” on both sides to be unsustainable for me. For my nervous system.
I have found as a highly sensitive person, perhaps even more sensitive than I knew before these experiences, that I value real relationships, and they stay with me for far longer than the lifespan I was finding of a relationship fueled by constant stimuli from the lure of the swipe of the dating app.
I also find that NOT being on the apps means I have to counter, almost daily, the internal thoughts of lack. That if I’m not “looking”, then I will get left behind. Left alone. Perhaps fueled by anxious attachment, but also perhaps fueled by a lifetime of being misunderstood, and growing up in a culture where I was taught to hustle. A skill that has done well for me in business, but not so much in finding mutually respectful and passionate relationships.
Internal thoughts like this require feeling more emotions without taking action to “fix” them. A skill I had to learn. It took a few rounds of back and forth, but I can finally be at peace about being off the discords, Fetlife, Feeld, etc, and just trust my curiosity to bring me to the events I want to go to when I am invited by the people I have cultivated beautiful, platonic relationships with.
All of this has let me be sure where I am is where I am supposed to be, with the people I am supposed to be with at that moment.
I channel that drive, that hustle, into joyfully planning kink + art events (when asked directly to help), into furthering the skills for my erotic and fantasy art, into coffee with platonic friends, into trying to find things in common with a now 12-year-old son, and into remembering to build time, a lot of time, into being with myself, along, preferably near (or in) water.
And I will say I have found others who are living what I imagine in my head. A peaceful form of polyamory, filled with mutual love and respect. Children, who are able to see & love & learn from multiple adults, living an authentic life full of emotions and unlearning. I see it in my local community, and, recently, I saw it online (during my self-regimented time allotted on Instagram) in a video of an online influencer (for lack of a better word) in the polyamorous space, where she and her platonic husband (like mine) were cleaning kitchen appliances (an awful home chore) while their different live-in sexual partners play with the two children of the married couple. It was so unglamorous. And perfect.
And of course, it happened on social media, so no one really knows all the emotions, agreements, conversations, and time it took this one group to get there. But it was an tangible example of a place I would like to be sometime in the future.
My path ahead didn’t feel quite so isolated with the knowledge that someone - someones - out there is/are trying to do it the way I envision it too. So I commented on that post, and then something strange happened. I kept getting notifications that others had liked my comment, seemingly agreeing with me. Almost 300 of them (and counting).
For all of the struggles I had (and have) with social media, for all the self-regulating rules I had to put around my own usage of it, this seemed like a positive use case. A connection point with people I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to interact with in real life.
Like my earlier paradox of finding the most freedom in my biggest dear, social media feels like, at its best (in among the worst - the noise, the silos, the nasty comments from people who don’t want to take account for their actions, remembering to view it all with a grain (or a bucket) of salt), it does allow us to connect outside of our family of birth units. Allow us to see other people living a life close to the way we want to live it, whatever that may look like, but different than what is, and give us glimpses of possibility. Of hope.
So I end this with a thank you for the others braving the way ahead, and strive to keep my head up in my quiet way, heart open, trusting that the people who want to build these alternative worlds will find me. Because I am focusing on building my social media spaces with intention, integrity, and authenticity, and a lot, a lot of introspection before making anything public. But hoping it can be a bright spot, a light on a path for someone else just starting out.
Using community, events, and social media as communication tools to build public moments that feel authentic to me. But understanding, that for me, the most powerful communication happens privately, in my inner dialogue, and in any direct conversations with other loved beings. And polyamory has given me the freedom to have those direct conversations with the ones who come on my path at any time, in any relationship combination.
Phones down, hearts (and ears) open, present in the moment. And knowing those moments - public and private - make up a whole life.
(And as for sex? Well, for those of us who may be in a season of friendships, to keep that proverbial well topped off, jute around the wrist tied to a ponytail and a vibrator in the other hand go a long way. IYKYK. haha.)
Cover image by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash
