Why Polyamory was Right for me - Part. 1

I always thought I was monogamous when I was younger like most people think they are. I believe this is mostly thanks to the media and how our society is, you see monogamy everywhere and other relationship types seem rare and rarely spoken of. Thankfully that has begun to change now in the recent years as polyamory no longer is seen as a weird swingers thing but as an actual way to have an adult and working relationship. It would take until I was 18 years of age to even consider an open relationship and until I was around 22 I would still have felt that polyamory was a bit of a stretch for me to be comfortable with.

A bit of backstory: When I was 18 I started talking to a lovely 25-year-old guy, I know age difference and all that but I have never really seen age more than just a number. We both had relationships before where either our partner had cheated on us or we ourselves had done the cheating and we felt sort of... Fed up with the whole idea of cheating. It sounds a bit silly to try to find a way to eliminate the factor of cheating when there is a super easy solution to it; just don't sleep with other people! That was not enough of a solution for us, however. We talked about it a lot and in the end, most of the cheating we had experienced did not happen because there was a lack of love or intimacy, the cheating happened since someone was well, attracted to someone else. In the end, we decided that attraction is natural and perhaps it is better to just roll with nature rather than trying to fight it, and so we did.

It was surprisingly easy, we set up our ground rules and that was it. Some of the rules were that we were not allowed to tell the other partner if we slept with someone else, always have to use protection and stop seeing the person if feelings started to develop. It took more than six months into the relationship for me to sleep with someone else and I felt awful about it. It could have been because monogamy was still in there deep inside because it felt 'normal' and this was now 'cheating' by my old standards, and most of societies standards. My partner and I had great communication in our relationship and I was used to telling him when I was not feeling good. This time I couldn't and it made me realize that while I am allowed to have sex with others, it might be better to be pickier and get ready to take responsibility for your actions. This resulted in that I had a much healthier sex life outside of my relationship as well since I raised my standards a lot and was able to cut off a lot more toxicity from my life. Before this, I had a hard time saying goodbye to people, even when they were bad for me I felt that I could help them and make them better even if it made me feel worse. Since I already had a partner that I loved I could safely prioritize him and our relationship instead of fuck boys who were not really worth my time and effort.

An open relationship was surprisingly drama free. A common misconception about poly is that those relationships do not last long because you can't love someone and fuck others. This is true, in some cases of course since poly does not work for everyone and some only agree to it because their partner is interested in it even if they prefer monogamy themselves. Mine, for example, lasted for 6.5 years mostly because we were in an open relationship then polyamorous. It made me feel free, like it was always my own choice to be with my partner and not just dump him to be with someone else. It made us communicate better and made me appreciate him so much more. I also did not get sexually frustrated, as I can get easily in closed relationships. I simply have a thing where I like to meet new people and get to know them in an intimate way and if I can't do that it makes me frustrated. This is more of a -me- problem that I can work on rather than demanding that it is a proper need of mine but being in an open relationship definitely helped with this issue. When it came to trust, I actually trusted my partner more than I have ever trusted a mono partner and I had to worry a lot less about cheating. Even though we were allowed to sleep with others cheating was still a possibility if any of us broke the rules we had set up.

So how did it go from an open relationship to poly then? Well, I had an ex, the classic teenage romance stuff but a lot more toxic. It had ended badly but a part of me still cared deeply for him. It is really hard to write about this, to be honest, as this whole thing makes me feel guilty, stupid and selfish but you deserve to know that about me and not just my good sides.

Buuut! That will have to wait until Part. 2, the final where I will talk more about poly and also answer some common questions about it.

I hope you all enjoyed my first serious post on here, don't worry, I will continue writing fun guides and other content but I felt like I had to challenge myself a bit and not get stuck in a single genre, even if humor is super fun to do. Until next time, my dears!