solocycle polyamory

Before you read this one please know that this is a dense piece of writing. The terms and concepts that follow may make this post challenging for the beginner in solo-polyamory or kink. I have done my best to define as I go, but if you have any questions, as always, please feel free to reach out.

The opinions reflected here are mine alone, and are in no way representative of the fetish or poly communities at large.

I met a person on the internet once. In a land of empty profiles and people who claim to lack understanding for what they are searching for, he was hunting for people like himself, sick fucks only. I admit that when I read this criterion I was intimidated. I had my doubts as to whether I would fit the bill, but his specifications called out into the dark and pulled at the hungry parts of me, so I swiped right. When I had updated my Tinder profile only days before, I had something specific in mind. Earlier in the year, I had had my first taste of submission from the right side of the slash (Dominant/submissive, D/s). Something new and heavy had poured out of me and it was everything I could to boil it all down to one word: devotion. At that time, I had been getting to know someone who identified as a Dominant, but once this new feeling had a name a fetish dynamic started to develop at warp speed. I felt as if I had little control over how quickly things were falling into place for me; unfortunately, the opposite was true for my Dom. We stepped away from one another as Dom and sub and agreed to come back together in a way that fit for us both. The dynamic came to an end only six weeks after it had begun. I felt like I had hardly scratched the surface of what devotion and submission were when there was suddenly no longer a container for its exploration. I have to admit that rearranging my feelings for this now close friend was one of the more complicated relationship transitions I have gone through. Not only did I need to grieve the loss of the romantic potential, but also needed to untangle my submissive self, half formed and heartbroken. Since then, we have successfully come back together on equal footing, but I have been left with a sense of devotional homelessness. I wanted that container back, and so this is what I had set out to find.

While I had been both proud and excited to discover my own ways to practice kink, this exploration had come with the realization that I was indeed, and once again, an outlier. First, I had discovered I top from little space. While this alone was enough to make most kinkster’s heads spin, it was not where my framework ended. A large piece of my puzzle lay in the fact that while I was indeed a Top and a Dominant, I was also a submissive. I was not a switch as I did not go back and forth between the two sides of slash. Rather, I existed on both sides at the same time. I had multiple bottoms and one collared submissive, but I was also seeking a Dominant to submit to; a pyramid of sorts where I could conduct myself as a Top/Dom in service to someone who could get down with what I had to offer as the L/little P/prince (my honorific for both my D and s identities). Trying to find someone who not only understood but also fit into this type of dynamic was more difficult than I had hoped. The pandemic had put a stop to all in-person opportunities to meet people, so I decided to try my hand at dating aps and almost immediately stumbled upon a dark heart with potential; a sick fuck, as it were.

Forming bonds with people through a screen comes with a unique set of challenges. I was attempting to fill in the blanks of how this person might feel to be with in real life without taking liberties around who they actually were, and with the added challenge of them living over four hours away in a completely different country. It helped that he was also practicing solo-polyamory and appeared to resonate with many of the same hard limits and fundamental core beliefs as I did, but it did bid the question: how does one remain solo while connecting in a kink forward manner that is dynamic adjacent and long distance? The more time I spent getting to know this person, the more I wanted to share private space with them and see what might develop. I hypothesized that all negotiations would probably have to come through three different filters: boundaries, emotional capacity, and physical separation. Then there would need to be redistribution of responsibilities, protocols, and effort between the Dom and the sub to restore a sense of balance. I recognized the potential, but it would have to look very different than what I originally had in mind when I started looking for a Dom. So, I did the thing I always do when things are so complicated they make my head spin; I made a diagram. Once it was finished, I sat back to take it in visually and as I did two things become clear. Not only was this uncharted for me, and complex, but it was also possible.

I remember learning about relationship dynamics at a poly 101 meeting. The topic was “Triangulation”, and the meeting was being co-hosted by Mel Mariposa of Radical Relating. Mel explained that to understand where complications are occurring in any dynamic, we must first understand how many dynamics exist between the people involved. Only then can we locate the relationship where the conflict is originating and attempt to find solutions. If we are capable to forming multiple dynamics between two people when relating in vanilla space, then we must be capable of doing the same in kink space. A person who identifies as submissive will often search out a Dominant to co-create experiences with. D/s dynamics are commonly seen in the kink world and are an excellent example of how we can create separate spaces for different types of interaction; however, successful ones can be hard to find. One reason for this is because they come with a large amount of commitment and responsibility to ensure the safety of both people involved. With this kind of emotional load, I have frequently wondered how a person remains polyamorous if they are putting the work into a building a healthy D/s dynamic, and what that might look like. Hierarchy? In the before times, when I had been kneeling into devoted submission with my previous Dom, I had felt the magnitude of what was needed from me for our kink connection to be healthy. I had been bleeding poetry and creative writing just to help me process all the new and overwhelming things I was experiencing and was still struggling to keep up with myself. I finally ended up asking my other romantic connections if we could widen our orbit to allow me a little more space. I needed it to hold myself together. Although that was not necessary for long, I wonder what my polycule would have ended up looking like structurally if that dynamic hadn’t ended so abruptly.

My trans-oceanic Dom had been very clear that he was actively practicing casual relationships only. For this to work my submission needed to be structured in a way that allowed that boundary to remain intact. Normally casual relating is a no brainer for me when it comes to dating or play connections, but my homeless devotion was longing for something with complexity and depth. I wondered if it was possible to separate my feelings of devotion by rearranging its placement in the chain of command. Could I allow myself to become devoted to my experience of submission rather than to my Dominant himself? If I was not offering my devotion directly to my Dominant, then could a casual D/s dynamic still be an outlet for its expression while maintaining boundaries around autonomy? Brave questions. Given that this person was interested in my nuanced way of practicing kink, and all the other ways in which we aligned philosophically and fundamentally around polyamory, I decided to accept the challenge.

The kink container is a magical place. There are no rules that dictate how things need to be structured. Generally, in a formal setting, the Dominant helps to hold the weight of the submissive’s devotion while the submissive puts that devotion into practice by caring for their Dominant. In this way the emotional load is shared. In a casual dynamic, the emotional load would arguably be higher for both participants. Along with the complexities that exist naturally when engaging in power exchange, intentionally remaining casual would add an extra layer of need for heavy communication and resilience. The hope would be to ensure boundaries are being upheld while still allowing for intense levels of vulnerability to be experienced. As a casual sub, I would be the one holding my devotion and delineating where the appropriate expressions of that emotion belong. I would need to take my devotion and offer it to the relationship that exists between it and the scene space that my Dominant and I were co-creating. In theory, this could offer a home to my devotion without placing its weight directly in the hands of the person facilitating my submissive experience. My Dominant would still partake in the delicious meal of my submission, as would I, but the devotion would be mine alone and expressed solely through what I decided to bring to our fetish interactions. My casual Dominant would then need to hold their boundaries around autonomy while still allowing for the flexibility necessary to receive the submission being offered. I am certain that for some people this would feel natural but I struggled with the idea of a casual D/s dynamic, which is interesting when you consider my vanilla framework for relating to people and my overall distaste for hierarchy. I was officially a walking contradiction.

I suppose in its own way, fetish has been the ultimate solo-poly playground for my insatiable relationship appetite. The forever shifting landscape of customizable rules and intentional decisions has found me starving; I cannot seem get enough. Just when I think I have something figured out there is a new intersection to explore, dissect, make diagrams of, and follow to the next opportunity for growth. No matter how this intercontinental exchange was to play out I was excited to see what came next.

The Malahat looks beautiful in the fall. The leaves all change to golden hues lit up by the odd crimson red, and the sun does its best to illuminate the entire display. I had driven this route many times over the weeks that preceded the seasonal shift, but I hadn't noticed. There was a sense urgency that had been pushing me forward at a pace that did not allow for time to watch the show; I was falling in love. I was driving forty-five minutes each direction to spend as little as two hours with this new human, fueled by coffee and hormones, running on empty - beautiful. I have memories of this beginning that are so vivid that, when I recall them, I can smell the coffee in the air and feel my feet warmed by the sun on the clay tiles in the kitchen. The intensity of the love drug in my body made seeing this person easy to prioritize. It also facilitated the sacrificing of my own needs and self-care. Reckless abandon.

I have spent a lot of time in the past year examining the end of my relationships. Taking ownership of the ways I contributed to the dissolve of connections that were once tender and loving has been empowering and has ultimately aided my progress in shifting to a solo-poly structure. I have let it all come down to rubble and am searching for what I know to be myself amongst the quiet chaos of what is left. I have slowly been picking up pieces that I recognize and finding new pieces I didn't know were there, trying them on to see how they fit, a completely new wardrobe. I have left intense, lose-myself-in-you love in the discard pile in the hopes of finding a new way to fall that centers intention, consent, and refusal to compromise.

In my quest for this hot take on intimacy, I have settled into a cozy niche where I am beginning to find people who are also seeking to tear down and rebuild. I have been exploring fetish in an official capacity for two years, and where I am now looks extremely different from where I was when this started; a woman having kinky sex with a man "she" loved. For those of you who know me, or have read anything else I have written, you probably already know some of the reasons this is almost humorous. I came out as transgender a year into my relationship with that man. I also started out as a bottom to that man. As we explored further, it became clear that I was not a bottom at all. In fact, this is how I came to be a rope top.

I have spoken about my love for rope many times in my writings, all the things it means to me and the important role it played in my life before I ever labelled it as a fetish. When I began to learn the art of tying actual knots, I quickly graduated to using it as a medium for artistic expression. That male partner and I started venturing out into the city and playing in public to incorporate our love for photography with our desire to practice rope. This exploration was where I truly started to find myself engaging with fetish free from sexual interaction, and found a new sense of intoxication with which to flirt - power exchange.

I have had the opportunity to play with many people over the last two years. I have learned that fetish creates a space where I can design emotionally and physically intimate experiences without the obligation or assumption of sexual intimacy. This allows me to co-create unique connections with each person I play with. My identity within the fetish community has been evolving, and I am so thankful to everyone who has placed their trust in me to bind and contort them into deliciously awkward art. I have learned that I top from a place of curiosity where I am keen to explore pain, tears, suffering, struggle, catharsis, and terrible beauty, and in some connections I have felt safe enough to top from the place where this curiosity originates. These connections are the ones that run the deepest for me within kink space, and as such honorifics are used to distinguish them from those which are strictly co-created for artistic expression. All this to say that most of my current intimate connections have become kink forward and non-sexual in a traditional sense.

There is love here, but with each person the signature is different. This is not the type of love that comes together with intoxication and overwhelm, nor is it the type that breeds personal sacrifice. This love is born out of intention, acceptance of limitations, and respect for the line that separates us as individuals. Trusting someone with things like your deepest childhood trauma looks very different when it is being communicated through fetish. In my experience, building romantic relationships often comes with a sense of entitlement to your partner's internal workings and memories; an obligation, and motivation, to truly know your partner by knowing absolutely everything about them. Within the container of fetish, I learn these things about the people I interact with more so through somatic means than verbal. I still peel back the layers and taste the tears, but the explanation behind the emotions felt may never be offered to me in kink forward connections. If my bottom or submissive does offer context, my only job is to accept the offering in the way it is presented and show love and support for their experience. In this way a unique form of intimacy is created where I know this person in a way that most others may never have the privilege to. I know only what is shared and they know only what I share in return. What is known in this space may not carry over into the interactions I have with this person outside of the container, therefore the connection is only intimate when we both intend it to be.

Much like polyamory, kink is different for everyone. What works for one person may seem absurd to the next, and that's okay. For me, kink is the perfect medium for challenging and rejecting my deeply engrained assumptions of what love is, and what loving someone should look and feel like. When I think back to how falling in love and building relationships used to feel, there is a stark difference between that and how I feel about loving people now. When I look back at the connections that burned the brightest for me I can see all the small sacrifices my partners made to be with me. One of the things I am learning about myself is that I can be very stubborn when it comes to being fallible. This is rooted in childhood things and I own them, but I can see how my ego influenced the creation of those relationships, and perhaps also that the people I was building with were not able to stand firmly in their own boundaries and meet me equally. I could talk for hours about how we are taught that to be with another person romantically you have to make compromises, and about how compromising who you are to be with someone ultimately leads to the demise of the tender parts of that love. If those bright burn, intoxicating, lose-myself-in-you connections were based on the other person compromising themselves to be with me, then I wasn't actually falling in love with those people at all. If those tender hearts were forming themselves around my spikey survival techniques then I was, in fact, falling in love with someone they were not. I suspect that the pieces of them that were being compromised were the parts that did not fit into the script I had written for myself through years of abandonment. What I am trying to say is that the people I ruminate on most, that I felt the most intensely about, were molded into the form that my ego insisted was the safest. I have literally been recreating and falling in love with my trauma.

Kink was a choice. When my last hierarchical relationship was ending, the offer was made to remain in the light. I could have chosen to veto my secondary connection and continue towards building a family and a lifetime with this person. I loved them deeply, and I could have chosen that future for myself. I remember sitting at the bottom of the stairs surrounded by photos of our family unit, knowing that the decision I was about to make would mean the end of the togetherness we had worked so hard to build. I often think back on that relationship as the sun, warm, loving, and playful, and as I sat at the bottom of the stairs I knew that it wasn't what I wanted. I had spent my entire life searching for a connection like this one, and now that I had it I could see that it would always fall short.

I chose the dark. I didn't want to exist solely in the light, above water, never really knowing what was underneath it all. I chose polyamory, being wide open and connecting solely in authentic ways. I chose this knowing that it would be harder for myself and my child existing as a single parent household. I chose to be alone.

I have no idea where this path leads. I have been running in mud for so long I have forgotten what progress feels like. Breaking down that last hierarchical relationship felt like running for ages and getting no where; however, stepping into solo-polyamory and kink forward connections has allowed me to stop running altogether. I am no longer laboring in an uphill battle, but simply standing still.

I am certain that it was a common experience for many through the pandemic to have struggled with isolation, and that isolation looked a little different for every person. Navigating the health regulations as a solo person was tricky and I found myself terrified to ask others for physical contact. Not only did I not want to contribute to the spread of the virus, but I was also aware of the intense level of judgement radiating throughout our community.

As regulations continued to tighten, I leaned into self-discovery and healing practices, of which fetish was a heavy hitter. I had been lucky enough to be in a bubble with a person whose kinky interests were closely matched to my own, but as the year rolled on our emotional load progressively intensified. Eventually, the sheer weight of it all made the vulnerability needed for cathartic engagement feel like too much, and our practice was placed on an indefinite hold. Even though physical touch was never truly off the table, the loss of that framework left me feeling chaotically adrift. This shift gave way to the awareness of my own gluttonous wants for sensation beyond the everyday pleasures of snuggles and sex, along with the fear that I may be shit out of luck for the foreseeable future.

One of the practices I had fallen in love with was rope play. I have always had a sexual fascination with rope and as such it has been present in my bedroom adventures throughout my adult life. Fetish had taken this avocation one step further and given it structure and direction. It presented me with a new type of exploration that was ripe with the delicate flavors of power exchange, and then taken it away just as suddenly as it had appeared. What it had left me with was the understanding that there was more to physical relating than just pleasure; there was pain here, too.

And pain could feel just as good.

I began to search out new experiences. I was well aware that actually touching people would need to wait until the province allowed such activities but now was the time for groundwork. I remember imagining what the world would feel like after the fear of COVID had passed, and I didn't want to miss a beat. When the world opened up, I would be ready.

In my search for loveliness and future indulgence I came across an individual who seemed to know a thing or two, and I must admit my mind immediately paired them with my want for taction. We decided to make the necessary arrangements to share time in private spaces and get to know one another. The more I got to know him the more challenged I felt. There was potential here, certainly, but also lessons to be learned.

This was someone with clear, healthy boundaries which enforced their fundamental core values and needs. Not only had he deliberately been single for a stretch of time before meeting me, but he was also particular about who touched him and when. I was in awe. I found myself in deep states of listening as he would talk about his life. He told me about all the events which had led him to these understandings about himself and the things he needed to thrive in relationship to others. He requested that, for the time being, I ask permission before touching him, and I happily obliged.

I am a firm believer that boundaries are to be respected and am a frequent flyer when it comes to setting them for myself. There was never a moment with this rad new being where I felt that his boundaries inconvenienced me, nor did I ever think to cross them. However. This was definitely a new approach to forming connection for me, and I did struggle with my own comprehension of what made a romantic relationship successful. I was challenged in my interpretation that touch was something I needed rather than something I wanted and had to actively remove my attachment to the idea that the request for physical space would dissolve in the future at some point. Instead, I was choosing to accept that love could grow within the authentic parameters which allowed him to feel safe with me, especially when that meant we did not touch at all.

Over time I began to see how touching the people I love has always been an assumption woven right into the ways I connect. Being asked to refrain from touching without permission became a point of intense focus for me. As it became more routine, I noticed how often people out in the world would touch me without asking. This was the first time I was experiencing societal entitlement to my body with this level of clarity. For weeks this realization was present for me, like I was waking up and realizing I didn't know I had been asleep.

I can honestly say that the lessons I am still learning through loving this new person have come at a time of upheaval in my gender transition. I recently wrote about my realization that I was experiencing bottom dysphoria and my decision to remove sexual interactions from my life for the time being (I explored this process in the posts titled Standing Still and What Is It, Really?) Had I not been learning about how to love free from physical expectations, making the decision to stop having sex would have likely caused me to spiral into uncertainty, self-doubt, and depression.

Life has a funny way of giving me what I need rather than what I want, and it doesn't seem to care if I hold my breath and stomp my feet about it. When it's time to learn, it's time to learn.

When I met you, I thought I knew some things.

Now that I am learning you, I can see how little I know.

TW: Bottom dysphoria, sexual content, finding humor in both.

$250 seemed a bit steep for a closet organizer, but there really was no comparison for the sense of urgency I was feeling after a year of tripping over shoes and piles of laundry. I had just written my last final exam of the semester and my inability to turn off the “go, go, go!” mentality that carries me through my school year was in full force. I thanked my student loans, held my breath, and tapped my life away.

I managed to maneuver the heavy, oblong box out of the car and up the two flights of stairs. As I dragged it diagonally through the abnormally small doorway of my apartment, I tripped over a pair of shoes and went ass over tea kettle scaring my cat and undoubtedly my downstairs neighbor. The townhouse we had moved from had been 1900 square feet with closets in all three bedrooms, as well as coat and linen closets on both floors. This closet is one of only two in the 650 square foot, one bedroom apartment that my 11 year old child and I now share. Small home living requires functionality, often demanding that stuff be two things: the bathtub is also where the cat litter box lives, the kitchen table is also a desk for homework, my bed is also a couch, and this closet needed to contain my clothing, everyone’s shoes, and also all of the household coats and snow gear. I grumbled something along the lines of "I'll show you" to the rogue runners now flayed across the hallway floor, stood up with conviction, and grabbed a handful of hangers.

I made quick work of removing all the items from the standard apartment coat pole and shelf. As I looked over the instructions for the organizer, I realized that not only was it a foot too wide for the space I was working with, but also that the hardware that currently resided here was permanently fixed to the walls. I grabbed my hammer. Demolition ensued. I was swearing and sweating as I pulled the fixtures out knowing full well that returning the closet to its original state would be a future Joey problem, and he would not be happy about it.

The next step was to translate the instructions, make the necessary space adjustments, assemble, and install the organizer itself. This process was tricky. There were many steps taken out of order, requiring many partial disassemblies to include a crucial piece of nameless hardware needed for structural integrity. Sometimes I wouldn't even realize a piece was missing until I tried to insert the new structure into the empty space where it would collapse in on itself and I would need to pick up the pieces and try again.

Somewhere among the rubble of failed attempts I realized that this closet organizer was more than just a home improvement for me. I have often explained that I visualize my gender transition as a house of cards. In the beginning, I had a fully built structure where the cards at the bottom represented a foundational understanding of myself as a woman in society; each one being a different facet of what made me who I knew myself to be. When I began to look closer I realized that one of those cards didn't quite fit, but when I pulled it out the entire pyramid collapsed in on itself and left me with a new sense of alienation and spiritual homelessness, not to mention a stubborn sense of motivation to put the puzzle back together. This has been a repetitive process for me. Each time I examine the foundational cards I find one that needs to be replaced and start the process of rebuilding my identity all over again.

The last time I had sex I cried for three days afterward. The sexual interaction was so lovely that the juxtaposition of how it affected me was shocking. I had been fully clothed. There was excitement, consent, kindness, orgasm, and a very loving goodbye at the end of the evening. When I unpacked the 'big sads' that followed with the help of my counsellor, I connected this feeling to feelings of shame I had experienced as a very young child when I was starting to explore my body. I remember anticipating that I would feel dirty and shameful afterward but also feeling unable to refrain from chasing the excitement of release. I was too young to know that I was not the only person in the world who felt good when I touched myself, and I certainly had no language to help me understand why I felt shameful afterward.

I recently engaged in a deconstructive adventure of my gender dysphoria with the man who was the catalyst for my sexual, and ultimately my gender, revolution. I honestly cannot count the amount of conversations we have had that have entirely changed my understanding of myself and the world around me. On this day, he had asked if we could explore my dysphoria to help him understand what the experience was like for me, and I happily obliged. After an hour of co-creative conversation and weaving of language, my love made a proclomation of understanding that shifted one of my foundation cards.

"So your dysphoria is based in sensation rather than visual representation, which means that your physical sensations remind you of the state of your body."

Down came the cards.

The last time I had sex I had an orgasm. There had been physical contact made with my lower pleasure center leading to the release of that sensation throughout the rest of my body. The 'big sads' had come the next day and lingered with a message I had not been ready to receive. Bottom dysphoria.

I quickly connected the dots to the dirty, shameful feelings I had when I was too young to understand that the body I resided in felt foreign and wrong. In that moment my understanding became the ultimate witness for my 'big sads.'

I stood triumphantly regarding the fully operational closet organizer and became excited to put all my pieces into their new homes. I hung the coats, long items such as overalls, and dress shirts. I placed the shoes on the tower and slid my drawers into place. To my surprise I had not made any space for new items. In fact, I had lost space. Not everything was going to fit back in which left me pulling apart my outward gender expression piece by piece. Consideration was given to each item: does this shirt feel like home when I put it on? Some items stayed, most ended up on the boulevard.

Thank you closet organizer. Installing you has shown me that no matter how messy things need to get, no matter how disassembled I need to be, in order to figure out where the pieces go, there will inevitably be times when I feel validated for my hard work. I find comfort in the knowledge that I am capable of taking myself completely apart to come back together in a more intentional way.

"Would you like me to drop you off down the street?"

This offer was my genuine attempt at minimizing the potential for heated conflict upon my company's arrival back home. We had spent the evening simply enjoying one another perched on a rock face over the ocean, eating a picnic dinner and discussing scary movies. When we got back into the car, the heaviness of what might come next joined us and rudely buckled in for the ride. I have to admit, this was the first time I had ever had to navigate the wrath of a metamour, but not my first experience with this type of situation. In the past, I have been that metamour.

I have always felt a sense of entitlement to my feel my feelings. Knowing that they are not a reflection of who I am has helped me to minimize my fear of what they might mean, and allowed me to explore them with a willingness to learn from them. I am grateful to have experienced safe spaces created by loving partners where we have dug in together to find the roots and pull them out. Every time I got to do this I felt loved, supported, and seen, and in the times where there was no immediate resolution there was always space to return to safety and remember why we loved one another. When I let those memories in, I feel the return to that secure space in every nook of my vessel. Within this structure I am experienced; existing in safety with a person I love, knowing that what we share with one another goes into our vault and is not held in judgement, but seen rather as an opportunity to learn and grow together.

I know how those conversations would have looked to someone existing outside of our private space. Without the years of pre-existing context to lend understanding to my experiences, I can imagine how unsafe I would have felt to a person coming into a secondary-type position in our polycule. It can be so challenging to know what is safe to share and what is not when you are exploring the excitement of a new connection. You want the new person to know you, to see all the wonderful things you bring to the table. You want them to know what makes you who you are, how you practice poly, the struggles you have had and how you overcame them. Show me your resilience, and I'll show you mine.

Four years ago my marriage ended; I felt lost. I was adrift in the nothingness that used to be my life plan, surrounded by confusion and rage, the rug pulled right out from under me. While I was deconstructing the life I had built with my spouse, I was also falling in white, hot love with another person. It was conflicting to hold something so sad and tragic in one hand while also holding something so beautiful and loving in the other. My world was a yin yang, and I was frantic in the emotional upheaval of it all.

I look back at that experience and I know that I failed to maintain separation between the two sides of that situation. I would often have intense conflict with my spouse and lean on my new partner for support and validation. It felt good to have someone see what was happening from the inside and confirm that my fury was righteous. However, what I did not anticipate was the return of my spouse into my life later down the road.

When I leaned on my new partner to support me in my break up, I did not set them up to feel comfort when my spouse and I did not entirely part ways. I paved the way for my new partner's attachment to the removal of my spouse from my life, and when that didn't happen it left a tear in their ability to feel safe in our connection. It also ended in my new partner giving me an ultimatum which knee-capped my freedom to form a new connection with my spouse moving forward.

If I had moved through my separation with my spouse free from that new connection there would have been more space for me to burn through my feelings, learn from them, and proceed in a much more respectful fashion. I was with my spouse for six years. He and I were together through losing a friend to a mystery illness, our child growing and starting school, moving to a different city together, starting new jobs and losing them, living apart in separate cities. . . the list goes on. That relationship deserved just as much of my time and attention in its deconstruction as it did in its creation and duration. Falling in love while coming apart enabled me to disengage from my separation, and pacified me with reassurances that in the end did me a disservice to my personal growth. It also sent the message that our marriage didn't deserve my respect because "it didn't work out."

Relationships end. Badly. Either someone dies, or we break up (Multiamory, 2019). These are things I know. Being the "new partner" gave me front row seats to the turmoil my presence was causing in the pre-existing partnership. Despite my best efforts to remain neutral, I could feel myself becoming attached to the outcome and fearing the possibility that a conclusion may not ever entify. I remember feeling unsafe and punished for existing. It was clear that there was no allowance being made for my presence in the life of the person I was building with, despite their best efforts otherwise. My metamour was actively attempting to remove me. Although there was never an actual ultimatum it felt an awful lot like an attempt at veto.

Being the secondary person was an important experience for me to have. It gave a depth and dimension to my understanding of polyamory that I did not know I was lacking. It is easy to speculate about how someone else might be feeling when you are situationally oppositional; however, it is often much different to actually live that experience yourself. I can say that this one felt especially gruesome leaving me feeling both grateful and wounded.

I am still growing from those lessons. I want to know about other partners; tell me who they are and why you love them. Tell me about what they love to do and what makes them unique. But there is a difference between telling me about a person and telling me the details of a fight your had with them. Perhaps we should keep the inner details of our other relationships out of our conversations. Those things have no place in our connection. They can lead to misrepresentation, misunderstanding, fear, resentment, and can create a feeling of opposition and danger for a new person attempting to take up space. When it comes right down to it, who said what when emotions were running high is none of my business anyway. Instead, let's focus on what I can learn about you.

Tell me about the hardships you have survived and the arguments that you revisit and have regrets about. Tell me about the most difficult choices you have ever had to make and the lessons you have learned from the stories others have shared with you. But leave names out of it.

In the novice stages of learning any new skill the mind is hungry for the wisdom of those that came before. It is common to cling to advice that is offered to help you progress in your practice with very little room left for deviation; this has certainly been my experience with polyamory. Throughout my personal evolution I have made a habit of reaching out to people who were practicing poly with seemingly more success than I was having. Every bit of advice I received came with the caveat that although their strategies were working for them they may not work for everyone. I was instructed to take what worked and leave what didn't, and I have been grateful for every tidbit.

I have done my best to tend to my garden so that my poly plant may grow as it will, but what happens when the practice outgrows itself? My solo heart longs for love without borders, but the current boundaries of my practice are chafing against the sneaky, exclusionary opinions of the community at large. I am left questioning much of the content being created and passed onto those who are just starting out or seeking advice, worrying that the backhanded messaging is doing us a disservice.

The concept I would like to explore today is how monogamy and polyamory are portrayed as a contradictory set of ideologies rather than individualized methods of relating. There are a ton of people who will tell you horror stories about a monogamous person falling in love with a polyamorous person, and then trying to convince them to become monogamous. This archetype is coined “the cowboy.” Many poly people have suffered the disillusionment of the person they are with wishing to returning to monogamy. This happens. I am not going to pretend it doesn’t, but I wonder how often someone actually enters into a poly relationship with this intent versus how often someone genuinely tries polyamory and it just doesn’t fit.

I am privileged at this point in my life to have had experiences where I have loved someone deeply and known that, despite our best efforts, what we were doing wasn’t working. In many of those situations I have tried to change myself or find compromises to save the connection. Just because my compromises were not found within the relationship structure itself doesn’t mean that I wasn’t willing to shift other important aspects if it meant that we could stay together. This strategy never worked for me, but that isn’t the point here. The point is that there should be no shame in lacking the tools, and possibly also the innate understanding, to make polyamory work. And if polyamory doesn't work for you, you should be able to change your mind without being shamefully labelled as having ill intent. Nor should there be shame attached to falling in love with someone who does things differently than you do. Unfortunately, most of the messaging out there reinforces the idea that if someone changes their mind about polyamory the relationship needs to end.

Let's dissect polyamory and monogamy. What are they? They are constructs, ways in which people build loving connections with others. It is common knowledge that within the polyamorous community there are a litany of ways that people practice - so much so, it can be difficult to find other people who practice the same way that you do. Often you will see solo folx relating with hierarchies, anarchists with entire polycules, primary partners practicing secondary relationships in different ways. . . the possibilities truly are endless. The reason this works is because we seem to have an unspoken understanding that just because one person is one way doesn’t mean that their partners need to be. So why do we then carry this belief that monogamy is any different? Why is the fear of “the cowboy” cemented solely to monogamous folx? Human beings are made up of complex layers, and I know from experience that even polyamorous people can change their minds about maintaining these types of relationships. It seems to be contradictory to say that if you identify as poly you are safe to love, but if you identify as monogamous you come with a greater risk of ultimatums and manipulation.

People are just people. They do their best with what they have. If someone practices monogamy it literally has nothing to do with me. That is their relationship structure, not mine. Does that mean that we can still have something beautiful and worth investing time and energy into? Absolutely. I would have a hard time walking away from authentic love with a person based solely on how they build their own romantic foundation. Would it require work? Definitely. Would it require some educating and trial and error to find healthy patterns? Most likely. Does this also sound like every other connection I have ever had? Eerily.

Now what if we turn this line of thinking on its end. If one person has been monogamously relating to you and changes their mind about that relationship structure, where does that leave the original connection? If we are working off of the firm belief that people have the right to change their minds, then there must be room given for the decision to be made in the opposite direction. I read an article once that changed my perspective on opening up a relationship. It attested to the fact that if you are indeed changing the foundation of how you are going to be relating to one another and the people around you, you must be willing to let the original connection come to an end. It is impossible to take the same structure and expect it to work when the rules have changed. The ways in which you have learned to exist together no longer can provide the sense of security it once did, and a new way must be found to come together while making space for other connections to be prioritized and nurtured. Holding someone hostage in an expired way of relating fosters resentment. It stalls the opportunity to come back together and allow for personal growth and autonomy. Refusing to change expectations and being rigid towards new people in your partner's life creates friction for everyone. In fact, it could said that this behavior is similar to that of someone who would be labelled a "cowboy" if the situation was reversed. I won't say that because I believe that labels like this set us all back, but this is definitely something to consider when making judgements about how to accommodate the people we care about in ways that support their growth rather than grate against it.

When it comes down to it, if someone is telling you you're not allowed to changed your mind, that's not love. That’s control.

Conflict is uncomfortable; No matter how you slice it, emotional responses are mostly inevitable and it takes practice to come out the other side with transformation rather than hurt feelings. I have been staring at this blank screen for 5 days now and my fingers have finally found their way to the keys. Being an individual who struggles with perfectionism, simply the thought of discussing my shortcomings in conflict resolution was enough to stop me in my tracks. Admitting to one's self upon reflection that you could have done better is very different from putting such admittance into practice in real time, especially when the heat of battle has your head and your mouth in a state disconnect. Lucky for me, there is no shortage of opportunity to practice the art of making space for authenticity and acceptance of other conflict styles when relating to people outside of common relationship structures.

When I originally sat down write this I wanted to talk about Karpman's drama triangle (in case your are unfamiliar, you can find it here: https://agile-od.com/mental-model-dojo/karpmans-drama-triangle). Understanding this concept has been integral to my personal growth trajectory, so much so that I have the triangle tattooed over the spot one might refer to as the throat chakra. Interestingly enough, as I proceeded through the mental gymnastics of taking an end concept and working it upside down and backwards towards my internal experiences, I had a realization that left me stunned and steeping a few days longer than expected. My intent for this article was to explore the concepts around my tendency to operate from the position of 'the victim.' This has often been the end point of my own spiral, and something I have come up against recently in the processes of the people around me. As I pulled up the drama triangle and started to read, I clicked a link that brought me to another article called "Radical Candor." Then something happened. As I read, a connection was made to a behavior that I have recently become aware of through working with my counsellor. I had no idea that this behavior had a name: fundamental attribution error.

(I am going to paraphrase what I learned from this article and do my best to link it to my own experiences, but you can read the full article here: https://agile-od.com/reflective-leadership/radical-candor)

When I look back at many of my relationships, I can pin point where this concept has been the first step in a cascade of reactionary hardening in my emotional demeanor, and has very quickly lead to recoil and refusal to be physically touched. In those moments I have always placed the blame for my recoil on my partner's behavior; I truly believed that if they had not acted in a certain way I would not have felt the need to recoil. After reading that article, I can clearly see that while my partner's behavior was indeed a catalyst, it was not the reason for this emotional response at all. I can also see that the intent I had for this entry, to examine myself through the lens of 'the victim,' is no longer appropriate.

If I consider this chain of events through the scope of the drama triangle, it becomes obvious that this recurrent dissonance is not a byproduct of my habitual self-victimization. Rather, this is a consequence of my incomprehension around my own defensive routines where I gravitate to the position of 'the persecutor.' There is a monumental difference between these two positions, and I was mistaken in my certainty that my conflict style was to move quickly through persecution and rescuer and land firmly in victimization. In reality it appears that I have been making assumptions about my partners' internal experiences, and in my hard-headed responses I have been oppressing them rather than working with them to heal.

This is where this dance begins.

The more my partner experiences what I perceive to be self-pity the thicker my shell becomes, especially if that partner reaches to me for comfort. As my emotional plasticity evaporates, the harder it is for me to access compassion and gentleness. This quickly slides into blame in order to justify that the behavior I am observing is a character flaw rather than a circumstantial reaction. Where I should be extending compassion and space for the other side sort through their own healing processes, my defensive instinct is to assassinate their character and blame them for my emotional upheaval. This autopilot setting is not solely attached to conflict either. This can also be triggered situationally; I have had this pattern arise when partners have been struggling with self-doubt or depression, and I am aware that it even showed its ugly face while a past partner was recovering from surgery and struggling to reach the dishes in the top cupboards. How awful! This is something I can never unsee, and realizing this has come loaded with shame and embarrassment. What a terrible way to treat people.

I could take some time and dive into the childhood reasons why I behave this way, but justification seems trivial when I know that I have done damage to the relationships that have lived this with me. If you are reading this, you know who you are. I am so sorry if I have added to your trauma. I lacked the ability to see my own patterns and certainly the tools to acknowledge and navigate them.

Healing is a lonely process full of looking at the undesirable ways that you have treated people, and yourself. I am astounded that I still have people in my life who care to be around me, and I fully understand the reasons why some people have chosen not to stick around. I am also actively working to extend my past self compassion around my complete absence of self-awareness. It is alarming to realize that I have been actively responsible for many of the fissures in my romantic connections. I own that I have caused harm, and I am working hard to implement accountability for that harm. I am making amends where I can and slowing things down to avoid repetition.

I hate that my past partners have had to make sacrifices for my rigidness. I hope to do better.

How does one maintain solo intentions while navigating . . . Here I want to say NRE, but the use of the word ‘relationship’ in this acronym seems to contradict the question, while also precisely reflecting the question itself. A paradox.

I have done years of work and gone through many heartbreaks to get to where I am today. I have dissected my upbringing: the ways society portrays and dictates how I should look and how I should act, and the assumptions I had that I would grow up, get married, have kids, and die happy (and old) in my bed beside my long-term monogamous partner. I have scaled that rocky tundra and fallen down many times doing it. I have the scars to prove it. 

I have taken a few workshops in the last couple years and they have been life changing (stay tuned for links to my favorite facilitator at the end of this post). I have learned about loving partners through trauma response, triangulation, and how to step out of victimizing myself. I have also calculated my “north star” which has always read something like, “because this is better than the alternative.” Reading it now, I can see how dismal that sounds. 

I was married monogamously for 4 years and when that relationship ended I promised myself I would not allow that to happen again. When my spouse left I was an empty shell. I felt so far from myself I forgot I was in here somewhere. I met someone soon after and could feel myself coming back to life. It felt like I had been asleep and didn’t know, and this new person was waking me up. I fell in love very quickly and was determined that this time I was going to do it right. This new person and I slowly and intentionally built ourselves a primary partnership structured around transparency and trust, but we were so caught up in falling in love that we were not actively seeking other connections. It’s all well and good to intend to be poly, but all the talking in the world cannot provide the same experience as actively practicing. After eighteen months of talking about it I began to feel empty again. I could feel myself pulling away from my partner’s loving physical touch and was falling into a prolonged state of frustration. I am thankful we were scheduling regular check-ins as it gave me the dedicated space to work to the bottom of my behavior in real time. As we worked together to unpack my resistance, I realized monogamy was the culprit. Although we were not labelling ourselves that way, the situation so closely mimicked those patterns that I had fallen into a near comatose state; resentment was building and the robot was driving the vessel. 

This would have been an excellent time to access a counsellor.

I have heard many people say recently that polyamory is becoming more common these days, and I would be inclined to agree. Poly is quickly becoming the chicken dinner option at the steak house, but I can’t help wondering if hierarchies have become the new monogamy for me. I know that I have done well in challenging the monogamous messaging we are all steeped in, but what about hierarchies? There really is no ‘how to’ on allowing love to grow in intimate and authentic ways without falling into prioritization of those connections. How does one solo and fall in love?

Last night I had a check-in with a person I have been growing along side of, during which I shared my excitement around two new connections I have made. He asked me if the new feelings I was exploring left room for me to truly stand alone and operate as a solo individual. I had a hell of a time answering that question. Conceptually, this way of existing and relating makes sense to me, but as soon as I look directly at it I lose it, and begin to feel uncertain. 

Solo poly is like seeing the andromeda galaxy in your peripheral vision. The way the rods and cones are arranged at the back of your eye make it physically impossible to view this wonder of the universe while looking directly at it, so you must look directly ahead and use your peripheral awareness to see its splendor. I feel this is an excellent way to approach viewing solo poly and the connections we explore through this framework. Take your hands up in front of your face and turn your palms toward one another. Interlace your fingers. This is what hierarchy looks like to me. Our lives are entangled, enmeshed, have become one. Now unlace your fingers. Flatten your palms, and turn them towards one another, but do not allow them to touch. This is what solo poly looks like to me. There is freedom for both hands to wave at one another individually, in opposite time, or in sync. There is also allowance for more or less space between them without the need to disassemble. Now, come back to andromeda with me. Let’s say my left hand is me, and the right hand is a romantic connection. In order to truly understand how solo poly works we apply the andromeda principle to the right hand. My left hand is my life. My child, my pets, my career. My self-love, my self-compassion, my healing. When I look at my life directly and place my attention there, I can see the love that surrounds me in my peripheral vision. I focus on my left hand because if I look directly at the right hand instead, the connection to that person disappears. In fact, when I focus solely on other people my connection to myself disappears as well. It is only when I focus on my left hand that I can actually see how I want my life to look. By focusing on myself I am creating space for those I love to show up authentically in whatever way they have the capacity to. My connections remain in my peripheral awareness and have the freedom to dance and play, while my life remains intact. This. Is how I solo poly. 

I know that as I allow love to grow I will come across new challenges that will blow my mind wide open. I look forward to seeing where my life takes me in the coming years, and welcome the opportunity to allow loving connections to run along beside me until they find curiosity pulling them in another direction. I am already thankful for these people, some of whom I do not yet know. 

I think it is time for a new north star. If I recalculate my trajectory, and ask myself, “why am I practicing solo poly?” the answer reads something like this:

“By prioritizing myself, I am loving myself, and when I allow loving connections to grow in this way I am enriching my life without sacrifice.”

By allowing romantic relating to remain in the periphery, I am gaining a new understanding of how to love authentically while learning to confidently stand on my own.

For now, I want to say thank you to the people I love. To every single person who’s life is happening next to mine, in whatever way we are relating. 

Thank you for loving me back.

Resources:

I cannot say enough about Radical Relating. Mel Mariposa’s workshops provide gentle guidance and education around compassionate, fearless relating, and I would not have gotten to where I am with out them. They offer many services, including relationship coaching that comes from a combination of professional training and real life poly experience. They are gender and trauma informed, and this comes through in the safer spaces they create for people to learn and grow.  

To access some of my favorite workshops, visit:

http://radicalrelationshipcoaching.ca/

And, as always, I would like to direct link you to the Multiamory website for access to hundreds of podcasts on polyamory and ethical non-monogamy. This podcast has always been there for me while I have been struggling. They have also taken the time to transcribe their podcasts. They have included a search tool so that you can type in key words and any podcast they have done that mentions that word will come up in the search results. Check them out here: 

TW: Sexually explicit language, kink content

Recently Multiamory did an episode on the difference between NRE and limerence. I was so impressed with their explanation and all of the discussion and examples they gave. This entry is a continuation of my thoughts on that episode. If you are reading this and run into moments where you do not quite understand what I am talking about, hop over to whatever ap you use to listen to your podcast content and listen to: “Multiamory: 320 - Limerence and NRE: The Dark and Light Sides of the Force.”

Or, listen here:

https://www.multiamory.com/podcast/320-limerence-and-nre-the-dark-and-light-sides-of-the-force

 I recently met a human whom I had already met. I remember meeting them because I had been aware of their existence long before our first formal introduction. I am not the type of person to straight crush on a stranger. Normally if I feel compelled to introduce myself to someone I will. But this was different. It has always felt awkward and obvious; my skin burns bright red and hot, and incoherent sentences fall out of my mouth. My friends think it’s hilarious.

The first time I actually met this beautiful human was on a dance floor. I nervously introduced myself. As we chatted we both looked down at the same time and knocked heads. Great first impression. Over the last couple of years we have also shared space in a professional capacity. These events have landed us in close quarters and interacting a fair amount, and to be honest have left me feeling a little high. Apparently, limerence will do that. 

Recently we were present at the same wedding. I had spent the entire day in close quarters with this beautiful human, and for the first time that hormonal response seemed to melt away. We even shared conversation with another mutual friend later in the evening. I shared photos of myself from my fetlife account, tied and exposed, and felt completely comfortable doing so. Eventually, they prepared to leave for the night and on their way past me they crouched down and a hushed conversation was had. They explained that they were also polyamorous, cohabiting with a primary partner, and asked me if I wanted to get to know one another. I couldn’t help but laugh at myself as we exchanged numbers. Later that night, alone in my hotel room, I tied myself up and sent them a photo.

Since that evening I have been caught in what appears to be a game of cat and mouse. After a week of conversing and heavy flirtation they told me they had decided not to open up their relationship. We agreed to take sex and romance off the table and remain friends. Despite this agreement the flirtations have continued, leaving me feeling hooked on the maybes and what-ifs. According to the folx at Multiamory, this situation is flirting with the “darker side of the force,” and I am inclined to agree. I have been letting it steep at the back of my brain stove with intentions to think more about it . . . later. 

Last week I was out for lunch with a romantic connection where I witnessed an interaction between them and a person I did not know. The interaction very closely paralleled my limerent interactions with the beautiful human. In fact, what I witnessed was so similar that it left me feeling exposed and deeply uncomfortable. This stranger was openly flirting and pulling at my dates attention, and it was explained to me that my date had been crushing on this stranger for quite some time but this person had been explicit that they were only open to monogamy. As we proceeded to eat our lunch, the stranger started sending text messages to my date from across the restaurant. The first text was inquiring if the two of us were romantic or just friends. Once it was confirmed that we were romantically relating the next message that came read, “well stop messaging your crush then.” My discomfort immediately manifested as concern for the person sitting across from me. I gently inquired about the relationship that was spawning these interactions I was seeing, but was careful not to express my opinions about the motivations of the stranger involved. How easy it is to see things from the outside looking in.

The last thought I have on this topic comes from a tender place. The limerence podcast has left me pondering whether limerence may be partially responsible for the rumination that follows a break up. When my last primary partnership ended, we were left with messy ties to one another through my child. We had spent over two years building a family unit and when we broke up it was because of a fundamental incompatibility, not because we didn’t love one another. The uncertainty of how exactly to end our primary connection while maintaining the family connection left me in a state. I was constantly holding onto the hope that they would change their mind again and come home to us. The mismatch between the words being spoken and the ease at which we fit back together every time we were in each other’s company was confusing to say the least. When I examine this constant state of back and forth, the confusion I felt has obvious similarities to the how limerence leaves one standing on uncertainty about what is really happening on the other side of the fence.

The main difference for me when it comes to these two manic states of relating is this: New relationship energy comes with confirmation and is usually reciprocated, while limerence is a constant state of maybe. Limerence may even give a person power and opportunity for manipulation. They may appear interested, but in reality they may not be feeling the same type of attraction, may have no interest in rekindling the relationship, or in some more extreme cases, may be attention seeking or looking to cause harm. If I was able to stand outside of my limerent situations, would I feel the same way I feel about the interaction in the restaurant? It’s scary to think that the answer might be yes. So here I stand, with mixed feelings about how to proceed. Will I walk away from my limerent situations? Most likely not. Will you walk away from yours? Who knows.

TW: Sexually Explicit Content, Gender Transition and Depression

Everything feels scary when your body doesn’t feel like home. I think I spend more time now getting dressed than I ever have in my life. My mind sways me towards one presentation while my body often shuts me into a different box altogether. This time consuming struggle has occupied the forefront of my mind for the past year, but recently I had a startling realization. Transitioning isn’t just how I present myself through my appearance. No, there is another layer to this; one that has left me rattled like a good jump scare in a horror movie I didn’t see coming. 

I feel the need to press rewind and take a skip back to a time when my tinder account was set to show me women only, and I found myself flipping through the photos of a profile that belonged to a man. 

This man was unexpected, and truly changed my life. 

The first time I met him in person I knew I was safe with him and we spent many hours allowing our minds to connect in intimate ways. I shared with him that I recently discovered that I could leave my shirt on during sexual interactions. Sadly, this had never occurred to me as an option, and had caused introspection about the types of sex I had engaged in over the years. Had I always been performing rather than actually enjoying? 

He held this information with a pensive look on his face and then posed a question: 

“What is sex?”

I froze. Every answer I tried to pick up fell apart in my mouth. My date didn’t miss a beat, and before I knew it we were elbow deep in dissecting a life time of socialization and assumptive experiences. Is sex always penetrative? No. Is there always release? No. Is there always nudity? As mentioned, I recently had discovered that the answer to that one was definitely no. So if nudity doesn’t make sex, then can you have sex with your clothes on? Yes. Which quickly led to the question: can you have sex without touching someone? I was dumbfounded. 

When the night had come to an end, he walked me to my car and kissed me goodnight. As he walked away he turned back and asked, 

“Did we just have sex?”  

This was almost two years ago now and my life looks very different, but that conversation always comes back to me when I need it most. And recently it hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. What is sex? Although my sexual horizons had become infinitely more free on that misty October night, what sex was to me two years ago was still through the lens of a woman. What I know now is that I am, in fact, not a woman at all. This internal dialogue violently shook me at a fundamental level. Being socialized as female is not only engrained into how I look, it is also a big part of how I carry my body. It bleeds into the way I walk, the body language I use, and yes, the way I have sex, clothed or not. 

There have been a few separate instances during my transition where I have had fully clothed sexual experiences. Each time I was with a relatively fresh connection and each time has felt respectful, safe, and exciting; each time was also been followed by “the big sads.” This is how I label deep, sorrowful despair, and this emotion is very hard to drag myself out of. They tend to come with one single demand: witness. So, when the sads come I do my best hold my own space and witness them.

I’m lucky to have found my counsellor.

I have connected some of the dots and I see that “the big sads” following these sexual expressions are rooted in the automatically feminine dance my body does during these types of interactions. I am practicing self-compassion for my complete lack of knowledge around what types of interactions will feel more authentic for me, and I am also aware of the childhood shame and imposter syndrome that often shows up for me with gender work. Each time I have attempted to step into new sexual exploration since my transition started I have ended up in these dark places. So what is the answer then? If being sexual leaves me feeling despair, then is it best to put sex aside until I feel capable of holding myself through this level of vulnerability?

At this moment in time the answer is yes.

And now we are right back to where this post started; everything feels scary when your body does not feel like home. I own that I am carrying shame from my past. I own that I am carrying fear of the unknown. I know that I am transitional and that I deserve peace, so I am actively deciding to allow myself just that. Exhale sexual intention. Exhale sexualized touch. Exhale performing for other’s arousal and sexual approval. 

Exhale fear, inhale intentional conversation with romantic connections. Exhale uncertainty, inhale clarity and boundaries. Exhale expectations, inhale safety. 

My body, my rules, my timeline. My growth, my discovery, my comfort. 

Healing has been a lonely process. The more I dig into my own trauma the more I seem to find conflict with those around me. The reason for this is counter-intuitive. This is happening because I have built connections on a foundation of personal boundary violation. Until recently I had no idea what personal boundaries were. I feel compassion for younger me, building relationships on compromised values and resentment. They never really had a chance.

The pandemic placed all of my connections in a pressure cooker. At the end of last summer I also came out as transgender. This forced me to look at my past through new eyes. The more I looked, the more I saw, the more work I did, the more I changed. Many of us were forced into isolation with a single romantic connection, and these connections bore the brunt of the uncertain and constantly changing societal landscape. All things considered, I suppose we never really had a chance either. 

I chose a fairly new romance to isolate with. From the beginning I had been lost in the conversational ride this new person brought to the table. I admired his fervor for verbal exploration as well as his well read mind. He could talk for hours, and I would mostly listen. If I knew then what I know now about my own needs I could have done better in setting us up for success. I was lost in this person. Actually, I was lost under this person, and that was problematic. I would often come away from our interactions feeling drained but would chalk it up to the NRE and keep moving. When the pandemic locked the world down the thought of not touching one another was strangely romantic. The contact rules and fear of societal judgement did a number on me in this way, casting me into forced monogamous patterns. Through no fault of his own, my voice was often lost under this love’s knack for one way conversation. I elevated his thoughts and his voice and allowed mine to fall to the way-side.

I was lucky to find my counsellor. 

As I began to shine a light on the ways my voice was devalued when I was younger, I began to feel intense rage. I was aware that this was a step towards setting healthy boundaries and communicating in ways that asserted my own value, but I also knew that the rage was going to start showing up when I felt old patterns taking over. I did my best to communicate this but was shocked at how often I found myself lashing out at this person who loved me. The rage eventually burned away, but it left us with a crumbling structure. It felt like we no longer knew how to have a conversation. No matter what the topic was, I would eventually feel as if my opinion was not being considered, or my voice was not being heard, and dissociate or become combative. This became the pattern; conflict that was recurrent and heated. 

I know that my love did his best to try to meet me where I was at. I can imagine how difficult it must have been to see and feel me shifting so rapidly, looking and holding myself differently every time we met. That must have felt lonely. . . and scary. In a time when we were required to hold one another, his anchor was adrift. I can see how he would have had to start over each time we came together, to find new footing and new ways to relate. I empathize with how disrupting that must have felt. I know you did your best.

I hope to eventually find a new way to love one another, but for now we exhale the romance and try to find a way to inhale repair.

The pandemic was a catalyst for me. It placed a magnifying glass over my life and I had no where to run. It tried its hardest to set me back, to put me into the box where society seems to think I “belong,” and now I am fighting and clawing my way back to myself. I know many of you also struggled in the same ways I did over the past year. Please know that I see you, and I hope that you have the support you need to heal the things that pull you into those dark places. If you are in need of resources please reach out. You are not alone. 

The work is worth it.

I begged my spouse to stay. Our marriage had been a sad and lonely place for a long time, and I still begged him to stay. He did the right thing by leaving. I wouldn’t have been strong enough to do it and when I look back now I am glad he did. My life crumbled around me that day. I felt completely adrift and terrified that I would not be able to survive on my own. He took a few bags of his stuff, but months later I pulled every room apart and separated his things from mine. You know those last minute boxes when you’re moving? Random things forgotten behind all mish-mashed into hurried chaos that then sit in the storage space at the new place because you’re not really certain what’s in them? Old pens, some photos from years ago, key chains, a bag of sand from a trip during happier times . . . We had moved many times and those boxes were the most painful to revisit. It was wounded work which I had been shackled to.

This has been a trend in the way my relationships have ended. I would walk away when I became so empty my shell echoed like a canyon, but they always felt the same; devastating. I have always wanted deep, get-lost-in-you connections. I would entwine my life with someone else’s causing us both to compromise our needs. We would make long-term plans and use words like “family” and “partner.” Then when the relationship came to its conclusion I would  become a robot, programmed to do a dance of survival, and turn myself off to the world. I am a repeat offender.

I know this dance well; find anger and fear to power the resentment and let the survival instincts drive the vessel. Left foot, right foot. Just keep moving. Bills to pay, a child to care for, animals that need attention, cleaning, moving, get their stuff out of my house, reclaim my space. Left foot, right foot. But you know, every time I did this dance I did not allow myself the space to feel the loss of the connection itself. I would drop into survival mode and allow the pressure of the situation to power me through. It was a brilliant disguise, too; I would appear driven and strongly independent. I would also drop weight because I was so stressed and busy that my body couldn’t hold onto excess if it tried (which I was always praised for, but that is another rant for another time). I would do this dance until it broke me, and in most instances I would meet someone new to help put me back together.  

The last time I did this survival dance was the last time. The relationship ended because I fell in love with a secondary partner and my inexperienced behavior triggered a trauma response for my primary partner. If I had understood trauma the way I do now, I could have done better. I was incapable of helping them return to safety and the consequences robbed them of their health. This would have been enough for anyone to throw in the towel. This break up was special though because I had put some big life changes in motion for my child and I based around joining households with this partner in a different city. School transfers had been finalized and paid for, notice had been given to my landlord, packing had commenced, and then it ended. And just like that I was dancing again. Left foot, right foot. I found a new place to live, worked out the financial changes in the plan, asked for a ton of help from all of the people around me, and moved to a new city during the COVID-19 pandemic. Left foot, right foot. I unpacked boxes, got rid of anything I didn’t need, and became hyper vigilant about introducing my child to their new surroundings. Left foot . . .

 After the dust had settled the sadness began and I was unable remember the steps. Everywhere I looked was a reminder of what had been lost, and still is. 

One thing that solo-poly has given me is the gift of feeling the end of my loving connections. There is no need for the survival dance. If I do not need to go through my home with a fine tooth comb and literally pull our lives apart from the inside out, then I actually have time to sit and grieve the loss of that person in my life. I am able to see the wonderful things that person taught me and feel the sweet pain of appreciation for having met them at all. Would it be easier to dance my way to the next romance? Maybe, but the wholesome truth is: sad is a good place to be. Sad is the basement. There is nothing else hiding underneath the sad blanket, or the sad stairs. Sad is it, there is no where else to go. 

I encountered a being once who promptly told me that if they were to count up all of their years of relationship experience it equaled their age. The concept turned on a burner located at the back of my brain stove that had been dormant far longer than I care to admit. I followed suit. I counted the years of my life I had spent in relationships and the number shocked me. If I were to present my data to you, I might seem like a person who knows a thing or two about successful relating. Yet here I am, still stumbling around in the dark, tripping over the ottoman.

I have tried many different flavors of polyamory throughout my life; some monogamy, too. However this is the first time that I am creating an intentional life where the title of this chapter does not have someone else’s name on it. If I look back over that data, that number of years spent relating to others in romantic ways, I can often recall where I was and what I was doing either by what I was wearing, or who I was dating. I can officially say that I am addicted. 

From an early age, I felt committing myself and my sexual expression to one person to be a waste of my time. In high school I was dry humping anyone who would let me; girls, boys. . . the couch. I did not care that I was labelled in unflattering ways because I was having so much fun exploring myself (the people I was humping were having fun, too, for the record). I was purely and innocently selfish in my pursuit for self-discovery but I was also flirting with constant dopamine release. The pleasure centers in my brain were overactive and I lacked the tools and ability to understand that this euphoria was not being given to me by the people I was exploring with. No one told me that the pleasure that I was experiencing was a form of self-love, so I grew up seeking pleasure from my partners. This quickly spiraled into subconscious reinforcement that I was only worthy of pleasure when my partners felt like giving it to me. As you can guess, this also took all of the fun and satisfaction out of masterbation. I hope someday to return to loving myself sexually, the way I did back then.

The last three long-term, loving commitments I have been a part of have been echoes of my search of what I thought my life should be. I had a primary connection with a man and had a child with him in hopes of getting married and starting a family. It fell apart. Days after, I met a lovely human who I ended up marrying monogamously. We were together for six years. Although we loved one another fiercely, we couldn’t hear one another which left us both suffering. When things started to come to an end we tried to open up. It fell apart. Very soon after I met another tender being. I rebuilt my family with them and they brought play, music, and joy back to my home. I saw myself growing old with this person so we laid a sturdy foundation based on our connection being primary. We spoke the same language and we took care of one another. We did everything right. But when I fell in love with a secondary partner they changed their mind about wanting to be poly and It fell apart, too. Looking back on the last 12 years of my life I can see how I allowed each of these connections to determine my own self-worth. I can also see that when each of them left I let them take essential pieces of me with them. 

I think about that a lot; changing your mind about polyamory. The more I think about it the more I know that it has never been an option for me. Monogamy has never led me to thrive and so I have always clung to this core belief that I am fundamentally poly. While I know this to be true, the scary thing is that I can now see how I have been relying on other people to breath the life back into me when everything goes dark. Just one more hit of dopamine, please, I’m in pain. I had been keeping myself so busy and intoxicated that I couldn’t see how I was violating my own needs and boundaries. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, I was simply looking to feel. Had I been chasing societal validation that entire time? Who says I need to be partnered to be happy? Successful? Worthy? 

Boundaries: with others, but mostly with myself. I have torn myself down to the very tired base of my being. Here I have realized that when I truly listen to what I need, when everything goes dark, I know that I need to show up for myself. The pieces that I have always labelled as taken from me never went anywhere at all. They have been here the entire time, I have just been too loud and busy to notice. And that in itself is a sad realization. 

I have grown to understand that I exist solely because I deserve to, and if I deserve to exist then I deserve to experience pleasure free from expectation. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to have orgasms whenever I want to and in no way does the experience of self-exploration hinge on my worth or depend on another to deliver. I deserve to say when, how, and if I engage in romantic experiences with others. 

And I deserve to say no. 

I say no to marriage. I say no to sharing a home. I say no to sharing finances. I say no to entanglement. I say no to the title of “partner”. I say no to time expectations and to shared schedules. 

I also get to say yes. I say yes to choosing to spend time together. I say yes to holding space for another’s feelings and having the capacity to listen. I say yes to knowing where other people end and where I begin. I say yes to sweet romances, kisses, and snuggles. I say yes to running along beside people and feeling the joy that comes with being witness to their growth. And most of all, I say yes to me.

I encountered a being once who told me “time is art.”