And the “it” is polyamory and with or without bisexuality being a part of things; once you get that taste of it, it is hard as hell to go back to being monogamous and even more so when you’ve known that you have the ability and capacity to love the one you’re with… and so many others.
However – and as mentioned in my last scribble – once someone changes their mind and decides that things would be better by going back to the way it was, hell, I can’t readily think of a word or phrase that would describe how hearing this can make you feel and especially when one of the conditions set for entering into what I call the ultimate relationship was that either of us could call it off and at any time… and my thought that you just do not expect this to happen.
Once you’re able to let your bisexuality “run free” in a polyamorous environment, it’s damned hard to go back to being monogamous but there’s the pact you made with the partner who has changed their mind as well as whatever impacts that has affected the core family as a whole (and especially if you have children – and children who have figured out what you and Mom/Dad have been up to here lately) and priorities have to be reorganized and it’s not all that unlike being on the wildest rollercoaster ride you’ve ever been on but now, the ride’s over, you have your feet back on ground that’s not moving and you’re trying to get reoriented to determine what’s going on and where are you going from here.
The question had occurred to me of, “What if one partner doesn’t want to give this up?” I’m like two years into this new relationship and it’s been one hell of an insane ride and I’d found myself sitting and thinking about stuff regarding the relationship as a whole but even then, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was going to go south at some point and I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop (even though it took 22 years before it did drop). It’s too good to be true and almost hard to believe and the three of us had settled into this very major change a lot better than I had thoughts but I did consider how things would turn out if any one of us decided that, nah, this isn’t for us – can we go back to the way things were before?
One of the things I thought was… there’s no going back. Oh, for sure, you can go back to being monogamous, but it never feels… right. It might make the person who called it off happy but now, well, they got what they wanted and if they wind up having to deal with a partner who is now unhappy that this got called off, yeah, it kinda makes you think.
One of the other things I was aware of that could be problematic was anyone spending more time thinking about “me” than “us” and more so when “us” has been expanded and now, anything that you do is going to affect the whole. I think it’s not a matter of someone not being aware of this but they are deep into their own thoughts and feelings about being in this situation that maybe they don’t see that throwing in the towel is going to cause… problems. Some are easy to deal with and some aren’t, oh, like now you’re living with someone who was the best person they could be in this new relationship and now… it’s back to the same old stuff and being put back on lockdown.
What do you do? Do you take one for the team and roll it all back to where monogamy ruled the roost? Do you argue to keep it going even though the person who shut it down has valid reasons for doing so? Do you say, “I don’t know what you’re gonna do but I know what I gotta do…” and run the risk of trashing things more than stopping this has already done?
Decisions, decisions. On the real, no one wins if this gets shut down and especially if it gets shut down for something that, if we could have talked about it, things could have been remedied, adjusted, etc., so that the duration endures, and everyone involved remains happy and loved like they’ve never been loved before.
Yes, when you’ve been exposed to loving and being loved like this, going back… I can’t describe it. In my own experience with this, I had made it clear to my wife that if she didn’t like how things were going, then do what we agreed to do: Call it off and we go back to the way things were. Except, she didn’t want to do that while complaining about being unhappy – and unhappy about stuff that she had the power and freedom to do something about… but she didn’t. Now there’s four of us involved in this and three of us sat down and decided that… we had to keep going even if it meant going on without her “coming along for the ride” because once you get a taste of this, you don’t want to give it up.
I look back at the moment everything “died” and wonder what I could have said or done differently to prevent it from happening but, at the same time, I knew she would be the one to kill it all – and I knew it from the very first night. I realize that there was nothing I could have done, all things considered, and it all went down the tubes and, yeah, a stark remind that nothing is forever… not even the most amazing love you’ve ever experienced in the whole of your life.
Once you have the taste of it, going back to the way it used to be just isn’t the same; it’s like you’re used to being outside and just having fun being there and then, you get grounded and confined to your bedroom and all you can do is look out the window and it can be so damned frustrating and it seems so unfair that you’ve been grounded and not allowed outside to play.
How do you deal with this? I would suppose that couples therapy would be one solution, but I also suppose that there aren’t that many therapists that specializes in this kind of relationship and, I dunno, maybe they’d be more in favor of the partner who called it off since, you know, we’re not supposed to be anything but monogamous. I’m kinda sure that the things that should have been talked about can come to the surface but at a time when talking about them now… serves no purpose as far as having that taste of… freedom again. I don’t know how you compromise with someone when you know, deep down inside, that you don’t want to be grounded and you really don’t want to go back to the way things used to be – but you’re also not of a mind to throw away a relationship that’s been going on for a lot of years, either.
I go back to something I’ve always said about this: You have to be seriously grown up to do this; you have to be able to set aside all the negative thoughts and feelings that are going to show up and, to be honest, if you know that you can’t do this at the time you’re being asked if we can do this, um, yeah, you should have said something then and not remain silent until you pulled the plug.
Being poly – and no matter why or how things got to this point – is harder than being married and monogamous is… and don’t we know how not easy being married and monogamous is? Yeah, we do. Like I said, it’s all fun and games until someone changes their mind and takes their balls and goes home. And then the partner who has now been grounded is sitting around wondering what the hell went wrong and even if they happen to know what went wrong, beating their head against many walls trying to figure out what they could have done to prevent things coming to a screeching halt… and maybe realizing that there was nothing they could have said or done because it is a communication failure when you’re talking to each other and… someone isn’t really listening because they’ve already made up their mind that nothing you can say or do is going to get them to change their mind back so that the grounding gets lifted and everyone can go back outside to play.
Once you get that taste, you just cannot imagine not being able to keep right on tasting it….
LivingBi/BiWifeLife 