Poly or Not?

I love my man. We’ve had prob­lems, but I’ve nev­er had a rela­tion­ship this deep. Ever. Yes, we’ve had to real­ly work at it, and we’ll have to do so—but yes, the good far out­weighs the bad. Are there things that would absolute­ly run me off? Yep, there are trans­gres­sions for which I have absolute­ly zero tol­er­ance. But I’ve found that my will­ing­ness to for­give, to work past obsta­cles, etc. is deep­er than it ever has been with any­one else. He sure as hell does plen­ty of for­giv­ing and work­ing and tol­er­at­ing, too!

But you know what? He’s actu­al­ly worth fight­ing with. Tru­ly. I love him enough to say the hard stuff, get angry, and deal with it. I don’t just with­draw and pre­pare to jump ship, and I’ve been guilty of doing that in the past. I hate con­flict so much that I’d rather break up than deal with it in most cir­cum­stances. Yes, it is imma­ture. It leads to rel­a­tive­ly shal­low inter­ac­tions. It’s also relat­ed to PTSD, and expect­ing to get the shit knocked out of me if I ever allow myself to be angry or if some­one else is angry—but I’m work­ing past that stuff.

Still, if you know me and I actu­al­ly both­er to argue, dis­agree vehe­ment­ly. or oth­er­wise engage in some kind of con­flict with you, know that you’re pret­ty damned special.

There are times now when I won­der, for the first time in my life—am I real­ly polyamorous? Was I poly before because I had­n’t ever had the depth of what I have now, and I knew that some­thing was missing? 

Oth­er than that moment of doubt, I do believe that I am real­ly poly—I still firm­ly believe that I can love more than one per­son at a time. I know that I have loved more than one per­son at a time. I cer­tain­ly am not inval­i­dat­ing my pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ships sim­ply because this one is dif­fer­ent. I def­i­nite­ly expe­ri­ence com­per­sion and love it.

But my rela­tion­ship with Sam real­ly has raised the bar. I do not in all hon­esty think I could ever set­tle for any­thing less than this in a pri­ma­ry rela­tion­ship again. I know that I’m much pick­i­er about sec­ondary rela­tion­ships now, too—I’m spoiled. Would I be will­ing to start from scratch again, know­ing how much work would go into ever get­ting anoth­er rela­tion­ship up to this point? I don’t know.

That’s a lit­tle scary to me. I’ve always known that I could find some­one else, anoth­er rela­tion­ship, etc, and do so pret­ty eas­i­ly. The only times I have ever been total­ly sin­gle, it has­n’t been for lack of inter­est­ed par­ties. Did that make me less will­ing to work things out than I am now? I don’t hon­est­ly know that either. I’m find­ing myself with a lot of “I don’t knows” today.

And I also know that I am whol­ly capa­ble of being com­plete­ly sin­gle and being hap­py. That has­n’t always been true. It does lead to being pick­i­er because when you know you’re fine alone, you don’t feel that dri­ving need to find some­one, any­one! to be with. It helps to avoid some of the worst kinds of mis­takes, of course, because you aren’t des­per­ate. But it can also lead to sim­ply being unwill­ing to go through the has­sles of a new rela­tion­ship. I’ve seen that in one of my life­long bach­e­lor friends and in others.

I do won­der, too—does the free­dom of polyamory lead us to be less devot­ed to work­ing past the hard places in our rela­tion­ships than peo­ple who focus sole­ly on one rela­tion­ship at a time? Are we hedg­ing our bets? Is there any grain of truth to the things peo­ple say about us just being unable or unwill­ing to com­mit to one per­son? I’ve always denied that as being valid in the past, and now I’m ques­tion­ing it.