How did your open relationship start?
Who was the "lover" that tipped me into the world of non-monogamy?
When I was living in London, I was on the fringes of a collective called Crossmodalism; a group of artists, scientists and thinkers who would meet for regular themed gatherings. It was at one of these gatherings, on the theme of “Invisibility” that I met Anya. She was co-organising the event, exhibiting her paintings and giving a workshop on privilege and invisibility in society. I asked one of the other organisers to introduce us.
We spoke for barely two minutes, long enough to swap names on Facebook. The next day we started chatting and very quickly felt a really intense but totally online interest in one another. We were both travelling, so it was several weeks before we could meet for a first date. But when it finally happened it was magical; it sparked a relationship and from that point on we’ve been together.
During those initial weeks talking online, however, she told me that she had a “lover”. By coincidence, I then found out (from a mutual friend) that it was the organiser who’d introduced us at the gathering… so I knew him already. But this didn’t stop me from feeling insecure, jealous and nervous about entering a relationship. She told me she was in love with him and wanted to keep seeing him, even as we became girlfriend and boyfriend.
I realised I had a choice:
Stop seeing Anya
Tell her to leave him so we could be exclusive
Find a way of accepting their “lover” relationship, and enter a polyamorous relationship
My instinct told me that I was entering a messy situation and bound to get hurt. I know that my instincts about people are often completely wrong and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was not a nice person, someone who created a lot of drama. The word “polyamorous” seemed a catalyst for drama. And yet… I felt like I couldn’t stop myself; I was being sucked into the relationship whether I liked it or not. To stop seeing her never seemed like an option.
What about my second option? Could I give her an ultimatum, demand that they break off their relationship so we could enter a monogamous relationship, the only kind I had ever known, the one I thought was in keeping with human nature? It was tempting… but something held me back. More than anything, it was a philosophical objection I had. They were already together before I arrived on the scene, so their being together could not, by definition, have anything to do with me. What right did I have to demand its end? To put it simply: he got there first. (Maybe this was just my English politeness; after all, proper queuing is basically our national sport…)
In the end, I felt like I was left only with the third option: to find a way to accept their relationship.
Within this option, I had a further choice. Did I want to feel resentment towards their relationship, or did I want to coexist with it, feeling genuine willingness? Did I want to simply accept it, or embrace it?
This decision, and the values that it sparked, lead into my next article topic: How Does Your Relationship Work?