Daybreak

People on dating apps: So what are you looking for?

Me: The exit.

An OpEn rElAtIoNsHip is simple - one person fights for their right to have the “freedom” to have a few “friendships”, while one person constantly searches for the “higher love” partnership to transition out of this open ended question. 

Standup comic: They say don’t quit your job until you’re hired at your next one. So i got divorced when my backup girlfriend said yes to my engagement proposal. *audience guffaw*.

My previous partner revealed that their style of doing poly was, actually & ironically, a lifestyle designed around avoiding intimacy with people, and an intentional escape/rejection of pursuing/engaging in Loving Oneself. They had an aversion, a painfully sensible detestation, for the concept of monogamy, a fixed opinion which in my opinion stemmed out of one or a few broken heart endings from 40 years ago and the vow against ever returning to an effort for that kind of setup again.

It’s multidimensional, and i was, not so ironically, willing and able to justify in every season of us why this was not ideal but we can make it work. Better than nothing! Anybody relate to that? When we give-and-take all the aspects of a relationship to level out our minds to feel comfortable enough in it. The open factor made sense because the age gap in 35 years between us needed to have space for considering my life except and beyond our togetherness. Thus, the distance factor- splitting time and living on a cell phone- gave us that space, and rationalized our individual journeys with respect to our lives’ trajectory (stages 27 - 32 & 62 -67) [favorable numerology bought me a lot of time in this saga]. 

Standup comic: Who’s single in here? *audience cheers* Not me! I’m in an open relationship. So for those of you cheering, I’m available after the show. *audience laughs*. Don’t worry about my other boyfriend, he lives in a different state. My friend had a fair point when she said to me, “You can sleep with someone else… and you live far apart… so, you know a guy?” *audience laughs*.

Another fascinating facet i’d like to add to the mix, is that poly as an identity choice became a thing in american culture during 1960s/1970s. My boyfriend was an OG polyamorist. Now, where we can easily play age is just a number in true love, the literal society and group-think has drastically evolved since back then into today. This fact became the war between a cute older businessman and an intelligent younger hippie, the modern relics of eternal now.

He was a political activist She was an earnest spiritualist - can i make it any more obvious that while our complimentary opposition correlated enough to get us by, ultimately, personality polar opposites will have someone dying on a hill and being buried under it, and someone living until death brings them back to the Bardo. Everytime i tried to build intimacy through being vulnerable, i got shut down, and avoided either in a mental or physical way. I learned to quit trying. I don’t need something i never had. 

Im going with the politics vs religion example here bc we had a surface-level romance stunted by our lack of deeper commonalities. For me, entertaining ideas and living in themes of paganism and taoism and new-agism nurtures who i am. If that “woo-woo” ain’t getting sufficed through my decided mate, it’s unhealthy for me. If our coexistence is me in my meditations & you streaming the news about donald tr*mp, we might not be in the same Revolution. & that’s it, chief. 

When an open relationship is one person relying on hope that someone more preferable will swoop them away (killin’ time with a cool frienda mine), while one person relies on the relationship for the opportunities provided by it (time off the boring farm, trips to meet clients, literally thousands in balloon art cash, having a housecat / playboi bunny at home while remotely 'working', etc.)... it’s not open, it’s capped. Looking for replacements, and casting more people for their personal resources or the help they can offer, obviously threatens the longevity of this duo.

I understood his choices, but never really resonated in them. The structure (my saturn return era) our partnership was founded in was an organization - we met in an intentional community, a very rural farm where 80 people lived and worked. That means i dated many in one and one in many. So it never was a basic partnership principle - to connect with an individual human, privately and authentically. Authenticity was too complex to realistically embody for me; my audacious artistry, bold brain, being eccentric, etc., it’s hard enough to get just 1 person organically on board with all that, let alone up against the whole community, a place necessary for me to survive as healthily as i could at that time.

He and I never went deep emotionally “behind the scenes” with one another, always wearing a shell as supporters of our pleasant and fun but intenseless connection. We always had his many people to consider within our own considerations, thus, we never merged into a real dual entity. We were two people living alongside each other, cycling in what i coined as our one-double life: half of his energy to the Commune & half to My Jade ; half of my energy to mySelf, half to My Man.

It’s honestly not even about the components of open, distance, intergenerational, or how poly identities paired with multiple personalities is just my cup of tea. It’s about how folks get the experience and gain the knowledge best suited for one another to keep on carrying on, satisfied with the spectrum of results which will undoubtedly lead to a clear advancement in your voyage on earth.

We didn’t share much of a love language, but i do luv the language of Many-Loves. 

Solo poly is when one person dates numerous people simultaneously, and those people are not connected to each other; they may (or even may not!) know each other exists, but the one dating them keeps them separate. It’s too much drama to function as a unit, but solo poly ppl casually date around, and aren’t seeking something serious. 

Kitchen table poly is the kind of relationship that twitter likes calling psychotic (jokingly). Because the type it takes to do it are bohemian, and differ from monogamous governing. The tendency is to shun that which differs from us, particularly concerning moral codes. People thought homosexuality was a disorder. People thought jesus said man and woman and kids and anything other than that is blasphemy. People establishing marriage as a system is fine in theory, but, all the downsides ringing the rules and/or the repercussions of breaking said rules, are an unfortunate reality for too many. Perhaps the generation proceeding a 50/50 divorce rate could reverse their trauma into something positive? My partner and I called our war a tie, with that sentiment.

 I enjoy the term monogamish because it accurately depicts the reality that most people, over the course of a lifetime, naturally subscribe to the benefits of monogamy, but have multiplex feelings surrounding themselves and their partner, naturally too. Maybe capitalism and disney princesses sold us a a falsity about what the good life is, but, there is solace in perceiving love and partnerships as abundant, rather than scarce or limited to only one kinda thang.

Kitchen table is when everyone involved shares their presence in a settled state of the highest legitimate love attainable for each of them respectively and wholly. 

I could always think about the qualities i loved in my former companion, and i did feel in my green chakra his genuine aura. Tho, it was a continual struggle for me sensing my “soul” mate was elsewhere. An internal haunting living in the open gap that was our status. It was ongoing that my future and their past, equal in vast, set us alone-together in the present. Nonetheless, he thought about me in a light like how my poetry made his eyes teary, & my drawings activated his great smile, & and our silly balloon busking thing was pretty neat. He too did feel the heat in our bodies, the affection we consistently showed overtly, and the joy of being loved by a beautiful woman. Tho, his assertion of atheism dwindled me down until the dawning of the moonset signaled us phase out.

In closing, 00 regrets. One of the number one phobias/fears abolished in this story is that my finale was not tragic. The past is prologue and preparation for actual “freedom” - defined by the operating IN true and real Love, letting it be your guide reasoning doing everything under the sun you wanna do. My finale is the luckiest, cleanest getaway into the higher love i’d been seeking all along. And all them damn songs about breakups and heart-ache, sorry to hear that but could not be me! Mwah-hAhA. I mean i’d be the wrong kind of psychotic to not feel slightly salty about some things, so i do admit to proper, mild discomfort, but nothin’ hurts that bad after all the strength training from that relationship. 

He’s living his dream - commune leader, until death due me part. 

She’s living her dream - author of Polyamorous Anonymous, the best free art.