Relationships are hard enough at the best of times. Having been poly for almost 10 years, and with one of my relationships into its 25th year (yes, we were children ...), I have seen all sorts of relationship challenges.
My newest partner is new to polyamory, which has been useful in highlighting to me all the things that I now manage without too much thought, but that people who aren't in multiple relationships just never have to deal with.
The current issue my new partner is dealing with is maintaining one relationship while grieving another.
The first time someone broke up with him, it nearly killed our relationship, too. Grief is an incredibly powerful process, and it really takes a big person to be able to stay connected with a romantic love while grieving the loss of another romantic love.
I remember once when I was in that situation, wailing to my two still-with-me partners "when will I find someone who will love me properly ...?"
They made suitable soothing noises and didn't take it personally, thank God.
When it happened to my new partner, he just didn't know how to process all the emotions. He didn't know that free-floating anger is part of the grieving process, so he turned the anger toward me. Add in some parting shots from the departing girlfriend questioning the basis of his relationship with me, and there was a cocktail of collateral emotional chaos.
Fortunately, my man has the heart of a lion and the ability to find and follow his inner compass, and we got through that difficult time, with some very timely and powerful man-to-man support from my long-term partner.
Yesterday, my dear beloved no-so-newbie-any-more partner was let go by another lover, beautifully and gracefully, but dumped nonetheless, and this time is a very different experience.
He is just as torn apart emotionally, but he is open to me, sharing the pain with me, remaining connected and allowing me to support him through the experience.
As with any relationship, poly relationships are all about opening up, being connected, then opening up some more, and being even more deeply connected.
Grief can open us more deeply than almost any other experience, which means that times of grief can be deeply bonding times, if we allow them to be.
If we tense against the strong emotions and contract with our grief, we cut ourselves off from the loving support of all the people who are still with us.
Polyamory calls to us to respond to pain by opening, by sharing ourselves, by being vulnerable in our times of need, by becoming bigger people.
I honour and acknowledge my new lover for having the courage and strength to do just that, and I honour and appreciate my lifelong lover for the love and support he provides to both of us. You are both extraordinary people, who consistently choose growth over contraction, and I am astounded that I have the privilege of sharing your lives.
Dear Jenny
Thankyou for your post about this subject. I am new to this website, and just joined up. I have been married ten years this year, and love my husband. He gave me permission to have a lover on the side, but preferred that I kept it secret and when he found out, he suffered feelings of betrayal. He's been a wonderful friend. He acts forgiving. For some time I worried alot about whether I would lose him because of my infidelity, even though actually I hadn't been deceitful, only that he wanted me to keep it a secret, and he preferred that he never found out.
But really, that is not what I am here to feel my way through, although all my issues, I came online looking for a therapist, but really what I need is people to talk to, that are not judging me, and telling me that I made a mistake. I need to find happiness within myself, and I need to work through alot of feelings that I haven't had anyone to talk to about, because of the judgement that is the social norm, about my behaviour and what I have done.
But mainly, I wanted to talk about, (keeping to the topic), how the anniversary of my lover when we first made love, comes up very soon. He left me for a younger girl, and it was very painful. I sufferred so much and he was cruel in many ways.
It is almost a year since we broke up, and I haven't had anyone really to grieve with. (And saying this makes me start to cry).
I feel very silly, because he was an abusive obsessive lover, and I chose to end it, but I have sufferred more in the year after he has left, than during the sexual harrassment and abuse during the relationship.
I still feel so sad. I am learning to feel the consolation that "I love and loved him well", even though he treated me badly. This is my way to combat the shame I felt about allowing myself to be treated so badly.
During the relationship, I wanted so many times to talk about, and confide in my married partner, and tell him what I was going through, and to have his support. Unfortunately, he hasn't been there for me in that way, and I have grieved alone. He has witnessed me crying over and over, but we don't mention his name, and I just say I'm depressed. Perhaps he knows something about what I am feeling. Perhaps he doesn't think about it.
In the same way, I haven't been able to reach him. His complex feelings, the pain that he felt that I was loving someone else, and having sex with another man, he hasn't talked about very much. We have been numb. Well we were numb before I found a lover, that is why I needed to find someone, because my husband and I were not connecting.
Since I realized the relationship was wrong in April 2007, I have constantly been reading all the books about marriage, and love, and sex etc. from the local library. None of the books condone polyamoury, and three of them cautioned the reader against it, well more than three of them. Infidelity is considered worse than breaking up. According to all the books, I should have left my husband three years ago.
I don't agree with this.
I am finding solace here in writing about this, and I hope that I can make friends here. I hope you don't mind that I have so much to get off my chest, but I guess that's why the group is here, and I thank you for it. Your post about the grief of breaking up in the situation of polyamourous relationships, puts my situation into a "normal" and "positive" perspective, and helps me to stop the fretting that my sad story, is just so bad, and I'm in such a mess.
I'm not in a mess. I'll be pulling myself together very soon, and what I have gone through is a normal process of grieving a relationship that didn't work out.
Logically, I can see that my life is full of opportunity and joy, it is only inside myself that is out of sorts, not the world.
Thankyou for sharing, and I hope you find my story interesting and acceptable. I have felt very isolated, and now I feel less alone.
Lovingly, Deer Hart amandahart_8@yahoo.com.au
PS I just thought to ask everyone here, what is the normal grieving time? Barbara & Alan Pease specified one month madness for every year that the relationship lasted. What I mean by madness, is the altered brain function, which is likened to obsessive compulsive brain activity. It is a normal result of failed love. The book said I should have this for one month, but for me it lasted seven or eight months.
My thought about this is that people who really love, and I think many of you will be like this, open their heart and the suffering is greater. What do other people think about this? Am I very far outside "normal" boundaries?