love and relationships

I don’t think it really changed anything yet, but I do think that will happen after a while. I have to say, I do feel more comfortable in this situation than I would be if I was just dating him, because I feel like he would hide things from me (I have a lot of trust issues sadly). But now, because we both know what he wants and I’m okay with it, I know he’s honest about when he’s seeing other people. I’m not gonna say I love him dating others while dating me, but I know that’s what he wants and needs so I try to be as flexible as possible… until it doesn’t work for me anymore or it gives me more bad and negative thoughts and emotions than good ones.

It’s definitely changed my perspective on that because now I can separate those things, and I can think a little more rationally about them. Like, if someone just wants to be friends with benefits with me I don’t have to be offended about it. I can be more open to the fact that maybe a relationship and love isn’t in the picture for that person right now. I’m having to deal with that right now, obviously [laughs]. But yeah, I don’t know, I guess it’s shown me that you can separate those things and still be okay, and understand them wholly. It’s kind of like it changes your expectations of people because it makes you really think like, what do I expect out of a relationship? That isn’t just like sex with one other person or being connected to only one other person. Like, what do I want out of a relationship if it’s going to be shared? You want other things other than just possession, you know? You want honesty, and you want connection, quality time, and you think more about the love languages and how it is that you wanna be treated.

Regarding my first quite painful experience, I feel that it has had both positive and negative effects. I initially made to feel that my demands and personal boundaries were unreasonable and I was acting ‘like a psycho’, when in fact all that occurred was that they were not placed on an even playing field as my partner’s. Over the past year or so, I have had sexual relationships with multiple people who are much more ‘on the same page’ about listening to each other, and I have overall become much more sex-positive as a result.

It’s expanded my concept of love and really helped me work through my insecurities to be a better partner. I am greysexual so I don’t always include sex in my relationships. My relationships have gotten stronger and healthy overall.

I find that my poly relationship has had an extremely healthy effect on me. It helps me work on my communication skills and learn healthy problem solving with my partner, something I had never achieved in a monogamous relationship thus far. The experiences from my relationship definitely influence me to feel more free to be myself, and not feel shame for being outside of the norm, as well as making me feel more secure in my relationship at the same time. I spent a long time trying to be monogamous when it felt like a poor fit for me - I’d like to say I experimented with monogamy in my youth and it wasn’t for me. I had very little knowledge of non-monogamy before discovering it, and had to build my understanding of it from the ground up. It’s hard to pick apart what about my life was an influence of polyamory and what was just growing up. When I discovered polyamory, it was senior year of high school and in the next few months I graduated, got my first real job, moved out of my parents house and went off to university. It was a huge transition period but I am glad I was free to grow as a person sexually and romantically during my time in university. I think if I had been monogamous it would have made the experience kind of miserable and deprived me of so many wonderful connections and experiences.

Yes they have changed my ideas. Because I have had mixed experiences a lot of them being negative. But this has not stopped me to try it and see how it could work. With the right amount of trust, respect, communication and how it could form a very beautiful special relationship between two or more people.

My experience with non-monogamy has been interesting. My thoughts were very different towards it before it was implemented into my life - I thought it would be this huge exciting and controversial thing that I wasn’t sure I could fully live with. Now I’m here living with it, it seems to be something else completely. We find it works because of our trust for each other, I’m not sure it's something you can rush into if you want a long term non-monogamous partner. We took the time and really invested into each other, building trust and communication enough to be secure in ourselves and one another. Now we see other people and have a couple of stable partners each, I find it nice when I spend time with someone else. When I’m with different partners, it’s a unique experience and cannot be compared to the time spent with anyone else. They're all different people, and I have a different relationship and dynamics with each person. This in a way gives me experiences and feelings towards people that is invaluable, and when I come home and see my partner I feel so blessed and loved. She sees how happy it makes me and revels in it. The same can be said for her. I see how she is exploring her sexuality and having a great time doing so.
The experiences I have had while being with different people is a great chance to explore my own sexuality and different dynamics - it helps me understand what I like and what I don’t like. I have a great opportunity to explore kinks with people that maybe my partner is not into, the same can be said for her. We don’t 100% match up sexually and that’s okay. I’m not sure you can be 100% sexually matched with anyone. It’s such a good and comforting feeling to know I will never need or lust for something I cannot experience.
As she is bisexual she sees both men and women, I find I like to meet her girlfriends but I’m not sure I would like to meet one of her boyfriends, this is one of the only negative feeling that comes with the relationship. Jealousy. It really makes you hold a mirror to yourself and you can see every insecurity you have. I do think it is healthy to recognise and understand insecurity, and I think it’s so interesting that I only feel these feelings towards men that date my partner and not women. Things like this cannot be felt in any other circumstance and I think it provides a great opportunity to take a deep long look at myself, my thoughts and feelings towards myself and how sure and comfortable I am being me.

I basically grew up with the idea that you could only be in love with one person and that person being a man (for I am a girl) but when I got older I realized that I most definitely do not agree with that. I think you can love who ever you fall in love with, no matter of their gender, no matter how many people! You should do whatever feels right to you honestly, if you want to be with one person that's alright, if you want to be with multiple people at once, that is alright too! I think people shouldn't care that much about what other people think about it, you do these things because you feel like it's right for you, because YOU want it .

I feel like my personal growth from the experience came from what I did wrong, and realising that I need to have strong feelings for someone before embarking on any kind of relationship. But in a wider sense, I guess I know to never judge or presume I know about how someone wants to experience intimacy. It’s such a changeable and personal thing. You can never manage someone else’s feelings, even if they don’t make sense to you. It’s about respect and knowing your limits as a human; we’re all trapped within our own bodies, having our own experiences. Why not be good to someone else as well?

Honestly, it has been world-opening to the kinds of relationships I have with people. I have a lot of love to give, and I believe that every connection I make with another person is its own unique facet of my life. Everyone we meet potentially has a role to play for each other, and I can’t find out that role without allowing myself to let go of expectations and experience people/relationships for who and what they are, no strings. Whether it is romantic or otherwise, it almost feels like taking the pressure off of the interactions I have with people and allowing relationships to bloom organically. Just because I meet someone and have amazing chemistry with them doesn’t mean I don’t love my girlfriend, you know? The world is so much bigger than my base relationship, and who am I to pre-emptively shut down an interaction just because I am in a relationship? I don’t believe in closing doors like that and I never have.

Love & sex can be separate things and you can be romantically involved with multiple people.

Well, I like to give love and I like to get love. I don’t think I’d be really happy to just be with one person, I have lots of love to share. I don’t think I can love only one at a time, or I would struggle, it doesn’t really suit me. The sex part hasn’t really changed. For the rest, it didn’t really change that much I think. Maybe I communicate more, but I always said what I think. I think it’s healthy to be with multiple people, but just what suits you. I don’t really care about what other people do.

It’s weird to think about how it’s impacted my ideas because I think I act the same in both a mono and a poly relationship, with slightly more communication. I try to treat all my friends with the same time and respect as I do my partners, because I think both are just as important. If anything, being poly has improved my ability to deal with the ‘fear of missing out’ and learn that just because I feel bad alone – it’s my own fear of abandonment and doesn’t equate to their actual emotion towards me or their opinion of me.

I grew up believing that monogamy was the only way, and it led to me feeling trapped a lot of my life. I’ve also been in very abusive relationships, both physically and psychologically, and a lot of that mental abuse stemmed from entrapment. I know that being able to go out and do what I want is normal, but monogamous relationships never gave me that leeway. I always feel like I’m in control with polyamory. My opinions are heard and valued, and things change if I’m unhappy. The whole machine doesn’t work if one part of it is rusted and broken, you know? It’s never been just me upholding the whole relationship. So, maybe I’m biased - definitely. But my experience with polyamory has been so much more positive and has allowed me to trust and build confidence again.

I think it was just a nice thought to realize that it's not wrong in any way to have this mentality and that the truest form of love doesn't have to come in monogamy. I was for a long time frustrated by not being capable of imagining myself in that type of relationship and when the time came for me to understand that some people just don't strive for such things and that's completely normal I felt a huge burden being lifted off my shoulders. I also think it made me have a healthy interaction with any person resembling a partner I've had, since I wasn't pushing myself to mentally pursue something I don't want anymore, and I was being way more honest about my feelings.

At the end of the day, all my relationships taught me, what is worthy and what is not, what real love is about; once it's over. It's weird because nobody has any clue of what real love is, and when someone breaks your heart in a thousand pieces, you realize what true and unconditional real love feels like. Surrounded by your best friend's arms, holding you. That is when at least I knew that what would matter for me among everything, would always be friendship. Because it is a relationship as well. Between individuals that in theory don't have sex, because that is what romantic love and religion has taught us. To keep your virginity until marriage for the one and only and your HALF ORANGE and that ugly way of conceiving yourself as incomplete. But how many times did you hear "marry your best friend"? It sounds cheesy but my point is, that monogamy focuses so much on the relationship itself and in matching, on sexual attraction, on cheating, on things that humans are not naturally meant to do or be in. For me there is a difference between sex and love. And in all my non-monogamous relationships I made clear, the different levels of relationships between other people for both ways, as the affective responsibility with everybody...