Oh, whimsy Mimzy!

Sense8:

I don’t talk about being poly very much on here but I’ve been wanting to make a post about my experience with polyamory and breaking up while being multiple relationships. Break ups happen no matter the type of relationships you have and they happen for a lot of different reasons. Here are some of the things that I found made breaking up while dating other people harder:

If your support systems are mainly monogamous people, they might not understand what you’re going through. In my experience, mono friends attempted to comfort me in my break up by reminding me that I still have my other partner. Others also suggested that now that I’m only in one relationship I can try to be monogamous.

Your break up will likely be hard on your remaining partner(s). I feel like no one likes to see someone they love be sad and hurt. Especially considering that they wont be able to make it go away.

How you and your partner handle your grief together is important to your relationship and its growth. I felt compelled to push my remaining partner away, to hide my grief from them, to try and minimize the hurt they saw. Luckily, my partner was still there for me to lean on and wasn’t hurt by my retreat into myself.

You don’t have to rush to “get over it” or to start dating a new people. My ex and I were together for a year, I know I’m not over it yet and I found that some poly people would try to encourage me to get back out there before I was ready.

These are just some of my thoughts. Lastly, I want to leave you with this:

Episode 1: “Roses and rings for all you cuties.”

Myth #4: Polyamory is for people who don’t get jealous.

People in polyamorous relationships do experience jealousy, sometimes quite often – but instead of avoiding feelings of jealousy, poly folks (just like all people in healthy relationships!) are pushed to confront jealousy head on.

It’s important to recognize that it’s okay to feel jealousy! There’s nothing shameful about it. It’s just a feeling.

What is important is what you do with that feeling, and how you come to understand and deal with it.

There are strategies to survive and even work to unlearn jealousy. These can often be applied to other areas in our lives.

Morethantwo.com

Here’s a few things to consider.

What kind of non-monogamy do they want? (Polyfidelitous, casual other relationships, play it by ear, just sex, long term relationships, etc)

What do you like doing in your spare time?  (Video games are my husbands go-to, and he loves that he gets more time with those now, but whatever it is, ensuring you have your own interests is crucial)

What are your love languages?  (This helps ensure that you are shown love in a way meaningful to you)

What kinds of activities/dates are important to you? (Learning this first can help - if they want to go to an opera with a date, and you hate those, you might still experience jealousy about it - it’s important to note when jealousy is about time in general, vs an activity)

What are your wants and needs?  (Separating them is very difficult.  I’ve found it’s best to assume things are wants until you don’t get them, and then define them as a need, rather than the other way around)

The “rules” can be different for every poly/non-monogamous people and their relationships, but some things are universal:

cheating is horrible and has nothing to do w/ polyamory

honesty and communication are KEY 

we often have too much affection to give rather than not enough tbh