Newbie Problems and How to Face Them (Or I How I Did)

My husband and I have been together since 2005, married since 2009, and polyamorous since 2015. With all the thought I had had over the concept of polyamory, actually choosing to shift from monogamy to polyamory was not at all as complex as it probably should have been. It was more or less me asking my husband what he thought when we were asked if we were interested in becoming two-thirds of a triad. He was up for it, and he wanted to be sure that I really was okay with the notion. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

Now. That’s probably not the way to do it. But it’s thankfully worked out for us. Eventually at least. If you’re looking into polyamory, you probably think that there’s no such thing as jealousy in our world. You’d be wrong. You’re not less “evolved” if you feel jealousy. It’s a valid and human emotion. It’s just that being polyamorous means that you have to really delve into why you’re feeling that way. (And, honestly, you should delve into the whys when you’re monogamous as well. But we’re not talking about that.) It’s important to recognize the drive behind that emotion in order to process it and move past it.

Side note: You might notice some therapeutic/psychological verbiage. That’s because I’m a mental health therapist. End side note.

I bring up jealousy because that happened a lot when we first started on this adventure. At least for me. He didn’t have any problems and dove right in, which was surprising, considering that when I’d brought up the concept some years before, he scoffed at the notion. I’m not sure what changed in him, but it doesn’t really matter. At any rate, it seemed odd that he was acclimating better than I was, when it was something that I’d considered for quite some time. Seeing my husband excited about another woman made me feel “less than,” as if I wasn’t enough for him anymore.

And there’s a pitfall that newbies find. You could call it a cognitive distortion, if you will. Or if you won’t. Whatever. The concept of being “enough” is something that you just need to throw out the window. Consider how you [probably] have more than one friend. For me, I have some friends that I can meet for coffee. I have some friends that I can go out with for drunken karaoke. I have friends who love talking for hours on the phone about nothing. Others who want to go on photography expeditions with me. Not all of these people overlap. And that’s okay. You don’t think of your friends as lacking in any kind of area. You just know who you can go to for what. Some are easier to talk to than others. Some are funnier than others. You have that one friend who is a walking encyclopedia even when he doesn’t have his smartphone at his fingertips.

I’m beating a dead horse. Anyway. You can translate that to romantic relationships. Sometimes folks just end up meeting different needs, and other times there’s overlap. In fact, in my experience, there’s a lot of overlap. But I appreciate being able to take one partner out for coffee who actually likes to drink coffee, so I don’t have to make my husband suffer through it when he doesn’t appreciate any kind of hot beverage. It’s not always as simplified as “Who can I have a coffee date with?” but sometimes it is.

At any rate, I felt jealous. There was my husband getting downright giddy about whenever we’d make plans with our at-the-time girlfriend. He’d always been giddy for me because our dynamic wasn’t too far off from newlywed status. We were just always adorkable together. So the idea of him being that way for someone else was foreign. People fear the unknown. Also? He was super excited over the idea of having sex with her. This upset me because he and I had not been having sex all that often at the time. So this made me feel inadequate.

And this is where I introduce the term NRE, which is New Relationship Energy. What’s that? Imagine how you've felt when you started a new relationship. It’s that. For those new to polyamory who are already in established relationships, it can be difficult seeing your partner experience this with someone else. Yes, even when you are also experiencing NRE. As it turns out. (It doesn’t mean that you will have difficulties, but you can. Because I did. So don’t panic if it happens to you. Not that you can stop panicking just because someone told you not to do it. Otherwise, I’d be out of a job.)

Hmm. What else? Much like how we dived headfirst into our first polyamorous relationship, so did we in the literature and the like. We read blogs, listened to podcasts, and hit up our friends living the lifestyle. And what did we learn? Well, if you’ve been looking up information on this, you’ve probably gathered that we learned what you did. And if you haven’t been looking up information, then here’s what you’re gonna find: Everyone has a different viewpoint, but everyone agrees on the need to communicate. You need to communicate what it is you want and expect. The problem with being a newbie is that you probably don’t know what that is. If you do, then good on ya, because I didn’t. But it’s important to communicate your wants and needs and your boundaries. Sometimes you don’t know where your boundaries are until one is crossed. And that’s okay. When it happens, say something. Then renegotiate. Communicate all the things!

Another thing I learned about myself was something that I could not verbalize fully until I read an article about the concept. A lot of polyamory literature will skip this one step in preparing monogamous couples for polyamory, and that’s: detanglement. What this is, is allowing yourself to become your own person while allowing your partner to be his/her own person. And that can be difficult. Especially when you thought you were already there. That’s also part of early jealousy, at least in my experience. Pre-poly life, you and your partner have a particular routine. Polyamory disrupts that routine. People fear change. The solution to this? Come up with a new routine. Make sure that you two continue to make time for each other. And make time for yourself. With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, people often forget to take care of themselves. I am definitely guilty of this.

Growing pains can hurt, but eventually you find yourself strangely more autonomous, despite having more romantic partners. And why is that? Because you’re recognizing what it is you’re looking for to fulfill your life, for one. Also? Even with having multiple partners, you’re gonna spend some time alone. So you gotta get comfortable with that.

I guess to wrap this up, since I feel I’ve exhausted the main points, is to recognize that jealousy is a thing and to contemplate why you’re feeling that way, communicate what you need and what your boundaries are, and work towards becoming your own person. Because you are more than your relationships.

Covering a Lot of Ground Here

Okay, so I got the first post out of the way, and I think I know what I want this to be. Unless I’m wrong, in which case it’ll evolve into its own thing over time. As of right now though, I want to write semi-anonymously (if I send you the link, then you know who I am. If you find it by happenstance, then you probably don’t know me) about polyamory.

Why anonymous? Because I’m not ready to tell everyone. I have told a fair number of people, including my mother, who did not even bat an eye at the idea, which is kind of amazing because she’s selectively old-fashioned about things but witnessed the sexual revolution, so. She sort of has polyamory confused with swinging though, which is just another branch of ethical non-monogamy. Which I suppose I can explain a bit further.

But first I want to finish (or start?) answering the question of why I wish to be anonymous. While I have told my mother, one of my brothers, and a large portion of my Facebook friends via a filter I created, I know that a lot of my family would not understand. For example, my father would not approve, but he would let me live my life. However, he can’t keep a secret for the life of him, and so the secret would spread like wildfire through my family, and I would be overwhelmed by tirades about my soul being at risk and my marriage being in danger due to my inability to close my legs or some such nonsense. I would like to avoid all of that. Some argue that it does not matter what other people think, which--okay, is true, but it does matter to me. Also, my lifestyle is not pertinent to their lives, so to go out of my way to out myself at the next family gathering in between the Lord’s Prayer and passing the mashed potatoes would be for my benefit and mine alone. Our lives rarely intersect, and so this is not information that they would require. If that changes, then perhaps my viewpoint on telling my family will change.

Okay, so ethical non-monogamy. Perhaps I should capitalize that. Ethical Non-Monogamy. It’s what it sounds like. Being ethical about not being monogamous. Which means that this is not at all synonymous with cheating, which many folks believe. Under the umbrella of Ethical Non-Monogamy, there are three branches, which are Polyamory, Swinging, and Open Relationships. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure of the difference between Polyamory and Open Relationships, except that maybe one may have subtle changes? I don’t know. I could google it, but I’m choosing to focus solely on polyamory, as that is what I practice.

Have I always been polyamorous? Not really. That’s a weird answer, granted, but that’s because I have a complicated answer. So I’ll explain my polyamorous thoughts or actions prior to recognizing what it was:

(1) When I was in middle school (1995ish), I remember having a boyfriend I was into, but I was also crushing on another boy, who was crushing on me, but I knew I couldn’t date both, but I felt that things would be so much easier if I could. I didn’t though. This is a simple story that takes no time to read. As you will see,  the stories become a bit more complex.

(2) In high school, I had an on-again/off-again relationship with a boy (well into college, actually), and I also had a brief on-again/off-again relationship with a gal (we broke up three times in the span of two months I think, so it was very brief). For a blip in time (1999), I was dating Gal, who was dating a dude, and I was dating Dude. Everyone knew about everyone and was totally on board. We didn’t know that it was called “polyamory,” but that’s what we were doing.

(3) Dude went off to basic training (this was in 2000), but prior to going, he told me that he felt that we should have an open relationship, since there’d be a lot of distance, and he wanted to make sure that I was okay. I initially said no to it because I felt it was unfair to him, since he was saying this would be for my benefit and not for him. However, communication with him was sporadic after he was stationed in Germany the summer of my high school graduation, and I serendipitously had met a fella who was slowly becoming smitten with me. So I reached out to Dude to see if we should reconsider the open relationship idea. It’s a long story as to why (I’d have to tell you about our dynamics as a couple and a couple of other backstories, and it’s just exhausting, so let’s skip it), but I was under the impression that he had approved of this notion, so Fella took me out on a date to see American Pie 2 the weekend before I started my freshman year of college. About two weeks into the relationship, we realized that we loved each other, and word got to me (through Dude’s mom) that Dude was not aware of my relationship with Fella. Not wanting to be unethical, I had a dilemma. However, in this instance, I actually broke up with Dude rather than Fella, because Dude had been letting me down a lot (the short version: Dude had the means to communicate with me and chose not to do it, and I wanted someone who would try, and I happened to have someone standing right in front of me who would.).

(4) Fella and I broke up after a couple of months. Dude and I got back together. Because I was a glutton for punishment. As you will probably learn in this blog if this goes in the direction that I think it will go. Dude and I were together for most of my college career. Near the end of the Dude Era (2004-2005 timeframe), we were in a purgatorial state of being with our dating dynamic, being more than friends but not a couple. Meanwhile, I had met another guy, who I eventually married. So Husband and I started dating, being more than friends but not really a couple. So I was seeing two people, and I was kinda liking it honestly. Husband wanted a monogamous relationship though, so I had to make a decision. And judging by the moniker I have selected for him, you can see how that went. (But the story behind that is so much more, but it’s an even longer story than the stuff I avoided telling you in #3. But know that it’s a pretty amazing story, and if you sit around with me long enough and have an hour to kill, and if you’re a fan of John Hughes films, then you’ll enjoy hearing it.)

(5) Husband and I were together for four years prior to getting married. I became super close friends with one of my exes a couple of years into my relationship with Husband, and I started to have strong emotions for Ex. I’m talking for years. And while he never officially stated it (nor did I), it was clear that he felt the same. We never acted on it, but I thought things like, “Why can’t I be with both of them?”

(6) While Ex and I dated in college (during one of the breaks with Dude in 2004), he introduced me to his roommate. I didn't know what kind of boring blanket name to give this guy, but he has requested The Yellow Dart. Anyway, shortly after Husband and I got married in 2009, The Yellow Dart and I reconnected through Facebook (who knew that people could use the site for what it was intended for?), and he told me about his polyamorous lifestyle. And we became good friends on an entirely unrelated note, but I began to also have the feels for The Yellow Dart pretty hard. However, I did not act on that either. But there were points in time when it ate away at me that I couldn’t.

So I have a fair number of moments in life that gravitated towards the notion. I remember one time in 2010-2011, I asked Husband what he thought of the idea of polyamory. I’m not sure how I phrased it. Maybe I was talking about some story that The Yellow Dart told me, and how I “couldn’t understand how anyone could have time for that sort of thing,” and then I asked him his opinion. He thought it was ridiculous, and I was like, “Oh, uh, yeah! Me too! Totally. >.>”

So how did that change? Weeeeellll…… While Husband was against the notion of polyamory, he was intrigued by the idea of having casual sexual encounters as a couple. I was terrified of this idea but also kind of interested. So we talked a lot about this sort of thing but, in actuality, did very little about it. And by “very little,” I mean that we hooked up with The Yellow Dart twice, once being with one of his girlfriends at the time. I was completely anxious the entire time, and I talked through a lot of it. Because that’s what I do. There were other times in which we almost had a random encounter with a person, but my fears overwhelmed me, and so we had to decline. This was the case in July 2015. We had recently befriended a married couple we had met through a mutual friend’s home (actually, she is now my girlfriend, but we can get to that later) during a game night. It had come to light that they were up for such shenanigans, and I had somehow managed to convince myself that I was a much more mature individual than I was years prior.

I was wrong.

Almost the instant that plans were cemented, I was terrified. I chatted with the wife throughout the week prior to The Weekend, in hopes of being more comfortable, but when the time came, I just freaked out and apologized over and over again (like I do). The wife swore it was fine, that we could take it slow and try again some other time. The husband said that even if it never happened, it would be okay because he would be fine with all of us simply being friends. I was surprised that they had taken it so well. It had come up a time or two after that weekend, but I was still nervous, so the wife said that, if it would make things easier, we could have a relationship and see how that went. So I talked with Husband to see what his views were about it. And then he and I were in a triad with the wife. The plan, for me, was to eventually feel comfortable with the husband and date him too, but I scrapped those plans for a while. Until about a year later. But that’s a story for another time, because I just wanted to get to the part where I became actively, knowingly polyamorous.

Maybe the next topic will be how we got through being newbies.

Hello, World!

Here's my obligatory first post. I'm bothered that I had to tweak my blog site address because someone got to the idea a good three years before I did (or longer. I didn't scroll far down her page.). So good on her. Anyway, I just wanted to note that in case anyone actually types in the name. In case anyone reads this.

Okay, so that's out of the way. Now to goof on the settings and think of what I want this to actually be.