Deep in Polyamory

Leaving campus at the end of last Spring semester felt like a fever dream. I packed up my room in less than 24 hours; piling clothes and sheets into garbage bags, donating almost every last toiletry, and stuffing the shortest semester of my life into the trunk of my parents’ car feels like a memory that I just wasn’t fully there for. On top of the stress and unknowingness that was set ahead for the remainder of my spring or summer, I hadn’t come to terms with the fact that I was leaving my friends— and my partner at the time— for a span an unknown amount of days, weeks, or months. To top it off, I had been avoiding giving my parents, family, or friends from home any type of explanation on my relationship because it was not something that I thought would be taken lightly. 

Art by Natasha Arnowitz

To be blunt about it, I went from being in a hetero monogamous relationship to being polyamorous with another queer woman— meaning that although we were ‘dating,’ meaning we would call each other ‘my girlfriend,’ (yes, labels do sometimes make a difference!) and were very much in love with one another, we were not exclusively sleeping with or ‘talking to’ each other. This worked for the most part because both of us felt the same about where we were in our lives; two young bisexual 20-something-year-old women who were looking to not only foster a genuine, love-filled relationship but didn’t want to limit any opportunities that came our way to meet (and kiss) other people. And even though it sounded like the perfect plan for a while, it was admittedly hard— but sometimes for reasons out of our control. 

A common misperception about polyamory is that the only people who are willing to do it are people who want to ‘cheat on their partner,’ people who are ‘overly horny,’ or people who are inexplicably afraid of commitment. The issues all lie within the way poly-oriented people are portrayed in life, media, and household conversation, but mainly with the hyper-sexualization of those who simply want to (and are able to) sustain a deep relationship with one person while being physically, and sometimes emotionally intimate with others at the same time. Unfortunately, I knew that a lot of people in my life pre-attending Emerson were just not used to this dating style, and I’d therefore have a ton of roadblocks ahead in navigating how to tell the people I loved about my relationship. And although I understand why these are all common thoughts and misconceptions, I think it’s most important to highlight and understand that polyamory does not just mean one thing— and therefore cannot be pinned as being such. 

So, when I got home earlier this year, I was admittedly very anxious to tell my (mostly straight, cis, heterosexual) loved ones about the person I was actively seeing and falling in love with because I was afraid they just wouldn’t understand or support me. Polyamory was something that I had grown up only seeing very oddly skewed reality tv shows about (queue TLC’s Sister Wives and Big Love and tell me they don’t make you feel… off for some reason?) and in my younger years, I was basically conditioned to see any romantic relationship that involved more than two, often heterosexual, people as ‘weird.’ I didn’t know of any adults who were in a happy polyamorous relationship, and I was only seeing shows that sensationalized anything other than hetero-monogamy— making polyamory more of a spectacle than a possibility of being implemented into my daily life. And everyone around me followed suit. 

The biggest issue that lay in front of my way that I wanted so badly to talk about the new love I was experiencing, but I was avoiding rejection. Although my partner and I were able to sustain an open relationship that was founded on the basis of trust, communication, honesty, and vulnerability— and was to date the most fulfilling relationship I’ve ever been in— I felt so shameful in not feeling comfortable with telling everyone I loved about it right away. Any open relationships that my friends and I had been aware of in high school were automatically regarded as being “over before it started,” because it was never an avenue that was taken seriously (or handled maturely) in our teenage years. Even more confusing was attempting to navigate telling my older family members— some of who, to date, probably didn’t even know that my partner and I were polyamorous. Introducing them to a woman was daunting enough, so I figured I’d save the theatrics (and honestly, very personal details about our sex lives) for another conversation-starting announcement. 

I will admit flat out that being in a polyamorous relationship was insanely hard at times, awkward, upsetting, and very much filled with gray areas that were near impossible to navigate.  My partner and I had to have what felt like cyclical conversations about our open relationship, all scattered throughout the time we spent together, and all arguably very hard discussions to have with the person you love. We wouldn’t see eye to eye on what was ‘allowed’ or ‘off-limits,’ we’d have mixed feelings about where the ‘line’ would lie in terms of seeing other people, and we even questioned canning the whole idea and being monogamous for a brief moment. But it’s not the ups and downs of polyamory that moved me to write this piece; it’s the lack of understanding and genuinity that attaches itself to polyamory as a construct, and therefore what made it so hard for me to shout about my love from the rooftops for everyone to know about. 

At the end of the day, I want people to understand that you can be in an open relationship with someone— meaning you can be sleeping with, or going out on dates with, or even dating another person at the same time as your significant other— and you can still develop a deep, caring, intimate and legitimate relationship with them. So until we can detach ourselves from the stigma of polyamory that shows like Sister Wives continually perpetuate, I guess I’ll just have to work through the doubt and confusing conversations until my dating style becomes a little bit more ‘normal.’