The Gift Of Polyamory

Recently, I read an article on Bolde, titled “The Problem With Polyamory” by Ossiana Tepfenhart. I read the entirety of the seven sections she provided. To summarize her thoughts, polyamory does not work because…

• At the end of the day, it is human nature for every individual to want to go home to one person to share their life with.
• She had major insecurity issues, stemming from huge jealousy issues she had, from relationships with other people that try to corrupt the relationships with other people, so certain partners can have a partner all to their self.
• Instead of working on issues that arise in one relationship, people tend to shrug off those problems because there is no incentive for them to stay in that relationship, when they can just go to a different one easily.
• In a poly relationship, you can still feel lonely, when your partner is being shared with others. Thus you may not get the time nor commitment you need from your partner.
• There is a lot of drama in her poly relationship.

Well, after reading her article and the subsequent comments that defended her article as the almighty truth to all intimate relationships, I mentally facepalmed myself. Her entire experience with polyamory comes down to one thing: wrong mindset. More than that, is that she had major self esteem problems which allowed herself to fall into a toxic environment.

As I stated in one of my comments in response to the article, I love how the author states in the first paragraph of her article, that poly relationships didn’t work for her, but throughout her article, she tries to pass her personal experiences off as the facts of science, when actually she cited no peer-reviewed studies to back up her claims. Then in some of the comments, people defended her article because it concluded their own personal feelings on how poly relationships are wrong.

In short, they had their feelings hurt and now, are out to prove their perspective is the truest one of them all. To them, monogamy is the fact of life and poly relationships are bad, bad, bad! 😉 My wife and I is in a poly relationship. I’m not trying to force anyone to believe poly relationships work for everyone and monogamous relationships don’t work. In fact, I have been saying that people need to be on the same page for any type of relationship to work, whether that be a working relationship, a sports team, a debate team, a friendship, or a romantic relationship. All of this is about mindset.

As stated in my Our Open Marriage blog post, Amber and I, have clear defined rules for our relationship, which makes up the foundation of what we can and cannot do outside of our marriage. However, the most important thing in our marriage, is that we have a strong well-defined one. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t even consider opening up our marriage in the first place.

Since we have a strong foundation to our marriage, opening up our marriage was a decision we both made. We are not just two individuals romantically involved with each other. We are individuals who have built a life together. So for that article to state that people can just whimsically shrug off problems in one relationship because they can just move onto to another one, is just utterly immature. If you two don’t have a foundation, then you have nothing to hold you two together. Unless my spouse is an abusive toxic asshole, I strongly DO want to work on our issues together. On top of that, my relationships with my other partners open me up to new ways in dealing with problems as they arise. So what I might learn from my relationship with another partner, may well benefit my relationship with my wife. Different relationships allow different perspectives. Different perspectives allow different ideas. Different ideas allow different concepts in how to solve issues.

If you go into a polyamorous lifestyle on the notion you’re sharing your partner, then you’re already on the wrong mindset. Polyamorous relationships are about creating new connections, rather than sharing existing ones. It’s about using what you create in new relationships, to help fortify your existing ones with new concepts and interpretations. If you’re not utilizing what you gain in one relationship to benefit the foundation of another, then you’re doing it all wrong. Polyamory isn’t about sharing. It’s about creating.

I don’t expect to be the only person in the entire universe who can provide everything my wife needs and wants. I encourage her to seek out others, to fulfill the bits that I cannot provide. I encourage her to build new relationships, so she can evolve herself, to continue to grow, and become a better person, as well as a more refined lover. The more experiences she gains, the more she adds to the possibilities of ours. When I see her being happy with her other partner, I am happy, because she is living in a lifestyle where we trust each other, and she has put that trust in others, who also trust us. I am sad when their relationship have issues, because one of my biggest joys in life is to help other succeed in theirs. When I see them unhappy, my heart breaks and I strongly desire to help them through it, if they ask. If not, then I will be there for them.

You might wonder, what if two of my partners are sad at the same time and want me to be with them. Then through the sheer will of our relationship dynamics and individual maturity levels, we create the time and reserve energy to be there for them. Sometimes, we can all come together to share that pain together. To support each other. Amber and I are very mature in how we perceive time with other people. It’s all a dynamic. We both ‘just know’ when to take and when to give. We’re natural to it. It shouldn’t be something that has to be scheduled. I’m not talking about scheduling a day of the week to spend time with someone. I’m talking about spending time with someone who needs me.

Anyway, relationship dynamics is a whole different topic. I just want to end this by saying that poly relationships aren’t for everyone. If monogamy is the way to go for you, great! If poly relationships is the way to go for you, awesome! Regardless, just make sure to work on your own self esteem first, before getting into any type of relationship. Otherwise, you’re just going to set yourself up for a world of pain and drama. It all comes down to how it all works for you, and NOT how it works for others. How it works for others is the responsibility of those individuals. Of course, it comes down to the dynamics. It works for Amber and I, but our natural dynamics allow our relationship to thrive the way it does.