Plinky asked, “If you eventually break up with someone, was it ever true love?”
What sort of silly question is that? If a person dies, was he truly alive?
Yes, relationships based on true love sometimes end. That doesn’t mean that they are failures, any more than lives that end are failures. The “happily ever after” thing is for fairy tales, and the idea of “one true love” should stay there as well.
It’s clear that most people are only paying lip service to monogamy now by practicing serial monogamy, so I don’t see why these outdated ideas hang on to cause misery for so many.
I have been in many relationships. I have loved each of those people. I don’t consider any of those relationships failures, nor do I doubt that I loved those people simply because we are no longer together and don’t feel the same way about each other now. I feel some affection, at the very least, towards most of them, and more for some of them. That doesn’t bother me at all, as a polyamorous person. It doesn’t set up any sort of conflict. I’m not going to act on those feelings, because there were valid reasons for the end of each relationship – but where there was deep love, ther’s always something left.