Polyamory is tricky stuff. And it can get messy when the primary relationship is trashed. Not a pretty picture, believe me.

One mistake that I just learned for good not to do is to keep silent. My excuse was that I needed to think about stuff, structure it in my head (which is true), and completely failed the oh so simple just telling the facts and ask for further discussion to come later. It's possible that this oh so simple thing gets grumbled by my wife's usual wish to talk NOW, not later, something I find very intimidating.

Either way, I'm finding that polyamory is something I need in my life. For me, the alternative is to bottle up those emotions, and I honestly can't say if it will only be those, or if other emotions will follow into the bottle. I've done that enough in my life, and I just decided that I need to stop doing that and start reconnecting with that part of me.

So what exactly is polyamory? So far, my experience is that there are as many answers as there are people being asked about it, although they have a certain amount of similarities. I won't go into what other people say, that's up to them. Instead, here's my variant:

Polyamory, for me, is very simple the ability to love (be in love with) more than one person.

Since I'm the type of person that wants to build models around things in life, I've spent a couple of years just thinking about the concept of polyamory and modelling.

My first thought was that my "heart" (I put it in quotes snice it's not really my physical heart we're talking about here) can be divided into a number of chambers, one for each person I'm simultaneously in love with. That felt very awkward, since it would either mean that the heart would have to grow to fit all the loves, or the chambers would be smaller (i.e. the love would be smaller) with each added person, or there would be empty chambers (and how many chambers are there?).

I slowly grew the idea that it's not really one heart, it's a bunch of parallell hearts, and so far, I have no idea what the limit would be. I've found that I have to pace myself so I don't get a scheduling hell, but there's definitely more hearts in me than have been "occupied" so far.

Either way, the "parallell hearts" model fits my feelings quite well. It allows each relationship to be fairly independent (no, I'm not fooling myself, the different relationship will affect each other to a certain degree), and grow in different directions.

In connection to polyamory, sometimes triads (where three people live and share their lives together) are mentioned. I once considered the possibility of inviting another person into our bed, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that. It's not like I'm closed to the idea, just... not now.

http://www.polyamory.org

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