I always thought that being Polyamorous was one of the hardest and easiest things I knew. Easy because love is an infinite force and if you're lucky to find the right mix of people, having more than one loving person supporting and lifting each other is a remarkable way to live. Hard because with being Poly comes facing the choices of talking about it, letting your family know. "Coming Out" as Poly can be just as difficult as admitting your gay, transgendered or wanting to live a full 24/7 BDSM lifestyle. There are a lot of prejudices and stereotypes that have to be faced when being Polyamorous, one of the biggest ones of course, is people thinking it's all about the sex.
My wife and I were together for 7 years. During that time we had 2 girlfriends (one of whom was married) and a boyfriend. The girlfriends crashed and burned horribly. Jealousies, inconsistencies and manipulation marked the women's relationship towards us. They were broken off and life became a lot smoother once they were out of the way. The boyfriend was different. He and my wife got along incredibly well. He is 32 and I'm 29, my wife was 30. Our ages matched up nicely. They both loved punk rock music and gaming and just sparked well. It was a passionate love filled with tenderness and compassion, intimacy and support. Then she died. My wife has been dead for 11 days now. We just had her memorial last night. Today is the day after her 31st birthday. She and her boyfriend were only together for a few months, yet we trusted him and cared enough about him to rent one of our upper rooms to him. Now he is alone again. He and I are friends and he's doing everything he can to support me in my time of grief....and I feel like I should be supporting him more. I've got 7 years of solid memories with my wife to keep my company, to keep me warm. He has only 6 months or so of love and a year of friendship. It's not fair to him that we lost her so soon. It's not fair that they didn't get years together, to watch my children grow, to have their own adventures and vacations. I mourn for the relationship that they didn't have time to have. I rage against the Universe for taking her before they could really be, and for taking her from me.
I consider his grief to be as legitimate as mine, yet he doesn't feel the same freedom to show it and that hurts me. I'm her husband, I am allowed to be destroyed. But because we weren't "out" as Poly, her family and mine don't KNOW that he was her boyfriend. That probably would have changed in this year, but it didn't have time. Neither of us want to do anything to damage my wife's memory in the minds and eyes of our families. So we're just not talking about all the aspects of our lives that they didn't know about. While I approve this because I don't want to cause anymore grief to the families than the loss of their daughter has, I hate the position it puts this wonderful man in. I want him to have all the same rights that I do to grief and mourn her loss. His bosses wouldn't even let him take his pre-approved time off from work to come to her memorial service yesterday. Because a unit malfunctioned they made him stay to try to recoup as much of the losses as possible. The outrage I feel is almost boundless. I know she wouldn't blame him for doing what he had to at work. She would have sat and listened to him express his rage and anger at his workplace, raged along side him and then held him to make sure he knew it was alright, that he was blameless. I can only partially do that as his friend. I know my wife loved him deeply and I know that she'd be hurting for his grief and want to sooth it. But I'm not her and I don't have the intimacy of their connection to help his pain.
Because of preconceived notions and stereotypes my friend is in a horrible position. There is only so much I can do to alleviate it. I feel like I'm not doing enough. At least our friends know how important their relationship was and are allowing him to grief with them. I am so thankful for that.
One of the other massively confusing aspects of my life right now is my feelings towards others. It was important to my wife that I find a girlfriend for myself. She knew I was also poly-minded and she hated that the girl I thought I would be close to turned into something poisonous. She very much wanted me to find something healthy... and there were a few people we talked about that I was interested in. People who were out of reach because of situation, timing or previous relationship commitments. Now my wife is gone and I feel like a major anchor is my life has been torn loose. There is a big part of me that wants to reach out to these friends and try to hold on to them for support. Which is how I know that it's not a healthy mindset for myself. Until I can contemplate reaching out to them without the desperation of a desert traveler for water, I can't be sure if my feelings are being tainted by my grief and loss. It puts me in a strange mental state. I am aware of my feelings for them, aware that my feelings existed BEFORE my wife passed on. I'm aware that my wife and I discussed my feelings at length, trying to make plans to make sure that they didn't become detrimental to our friendships. We were doing really well on organizing our thoughts and feelings to make sure that things stayed healthy. Then she died and everything got slapped 90 degrees to the left and 720 degrees to reality. I know I need to be very careful with how I rely on my friends right now, how much I let them support me. It would be easy to fall in love with the beautiful friends I have trying to help me, especially the ones I was half in-love with already. A part of me just desperate wants to push them away so I don't have to balance on the razors edge. A part of me wants to try and draw them close so I have something intimate to cry upon and to draw strength from. Both responses are wrong. The hardest, HEALTHIEST response I can make is to balance things. To acknowledge my feelings, to acknowledge how my grief might be affecting them, and then to NOT act upon anything until that desperate loneliness abides a bit. Because to do anything else would be to give in to the grief. It would be tarnishing any future relationships I might have with those women, and tarnishing the plans I had tried to make with my wife.
But gods above it's hard. It's so hard to choose to be lonely. So hard to acknowledge that you're not FIT to be with someone and to choose to hold your own feelings at bay.
My wife and I were together for 7 years. During that time we had 2 girlfriends (one of whom was married) and a boyfriend. The girlfriends crashed and burned horribly. Jealousies, inconsistencies and manipulation marked the women's relationship towards us. They were broken off and life became a lot smoother once they were out of the way. The boyfriend was different. He and my wife got along incredibly well. He is 32 and I'm 29, my wife was 30. Our ages matched up nicely. They both loved punk rock music and gaming and just sparked well. It was a passionate love filled with tenderness and compassion, intimacy and support. Then she died. My wife has been dead for 11 days now. We just had her memorial last night. Today is the day after her 31st birthday. She and her boyfriend were only together for a few months, yet we trusted him and cared enough about him to rent one of our upper rooms to him. Now he is alone again. He and I are friends and he's doing everything he can to support me in my time of grief....and I feel like I should be supporting him more. I've got 7 years of solid memories with my wife to keep my company, to keep me warm. He has only 6 months or so of love and a year of friendship. It's not fair to him that we lost her so soon. It's not fair that they didn't get years together, to watch my children grow, to have their own adventures and vacations. I mourn for the relationship that they didn't have time to have. I rage against the Universe for taking her before they could really be, and for taking her from me.
I consider his grief to be as legitimate as mine, yet he doesn't feel the same freedom to show it and that hurts me. I'm her husband, I am allowed to be destroyed. But because we weren't "out" as Poly, her family and mine don't KNOW that he was her boyfriend. That probably would have changed in this year, but it didn't have time. Neither of us want to do anything to damage my wife's memory in the minds and eyes of our families. So we're just not talking about all the aspects of our lives that they didn't know about. While I approve this because I don't want to cause anymore grief to the families than the loss of their daughter has, I hate the position it puts this wonderful man in. I want him to have all the same rights that I do to grief and mourn her loss. His bosses wouldn't even let him take his pre-approved time off from work to come to her memorial service yesterday. Because a unit malfunctioned they made him stay to try to recoup as much of the losses as possible. The outrage I feel is almost boundless. I know she wouldn't blame him for doing what he had to at work. She would have sat and listened to him express his rage and anger at his workplace, raged along side him and then held him to make sure he knew it was alright, that he was blameless. I can only partially do that as his friend. I know my wife loved him deeply and I know that she'd be hurting for his grief and want to sooth it. But I'm not her and I don't have the intimacy of their connection to help his pain.
Because of preconceived notions and stereotypes my friend is in a horrible position. There is only so much I can do to alleviate it. I feel like I'm not doing enough. At least our friends know how important their relationship was and are allowing him to grief with them. I am so thankful for that.
One of the other massively confusing aspects of my life right now is my feelings towards others. It was important to my wife that I find a girlfriend for myself. She knew I was also poly-minded and she hated that the girl I thought I would be close to turned into something poisonous. She very much wanted me to find something healthy... and there were a few people we talked about that I was interested in. People who were out of reach because of situation, timing or previous relationship commitments. Now my wife is gone and I feel like a major anchor is my life has been torn loose. There is a big part of me that wants to reach out to these friends and try to hold on to them for support. Which is how I know that it's not a healthy mindset for myself. Until I can contemplate reaching out to them without the desperation of a desert traveler for water, I can't be sure if my feelings are being tainted by my grief and loss. It puts me in a strange mental state. I am aware of my feelings for them, aware that my feelings existed BEFORE my wife passed on. I'm aware that my wife and I discussed my feelings at length, trying to make plans to make sure that they didn't become detrimental to our friendships. We were doing really well on organizing our thoughts and feelings to make sure that things stayed healthy. Then she died and everything got slapped 90 degrees to the left and 720 degrees to reality. I know I need to be very careful with how I rely on my friends right now, how much I let them support me. It would be easy to fall in love with the beautiful friends I have trying to help me, especially the ones I was half in-love with already. A part of me just desperate wants to push them away so I don't have to balance on the razors edge. A part of me wants to try and draw them close so I have something intimate to cry upon and to draw strength from. Both responses are wrong. The hardest, HEALTHIEST response I can make is to balance things. To acknowledge my feelings, to acknowledge how my grief might be affecting them, and then to NOT act upon anything until that desperate loneliness abides a bit. Because to do anything else would be to give in to the grief. It would be tarnishing any future relationships I might have with those women, and tarnishing the plans I had tried to make with my wife.
But gods above it's hard. It's so hard to choose to be lonely. So hard to acknowledge that you're not FIT to be with someone and to choose to hold your own feelings at bay.
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Day upon day will lead you down the path you need. Trust teh universe. Trust your voices. Heal.