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As some of you may know from my last article, Confessions of a Messy Human Heart, the past few months have been particularly groundbreaking for me in terms of consciously acknowledging and accepting my “nonmonogamous proclivity” and then communicating that tendency and my corresponding needs to my partner of almost six years.
In that piece, I talked openly about my feelings for another person, sordid past, and the reasons as to why I did not acknowledge myself as nonmonogamous sooner.
Since that time, I have refined my understanding of my own heart and come to a slightly broader self-realization.
About a month ago, my partner was texting with a person she had met at a local farmer’s market. The person in question had a same-sex partner of two years and was curious about us and our relationship. Being less reserved than myself, my more sociable partner told her that I am a textbook introvert and am also polyamorous.
When she told me that she described me in that way, I felt reduced. It felt to me as though someone had poured the ocean into a glass.
Suddenly, I looked at my partner and said, “That label just doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t feel as though it really represents me and who I am.”
For a moment, my own adverse reaction to the mere label “polyamorous” took me aback. After all, I now had deep feelings for two people simultaneously, so why should the word not feel as though it fit? Had I internalized a lot of cultural shame and felt a sudden wave of guilt or repugnance for not checking the box of yet another societal norm?
I sat silently with these questions for a few moments, trying to decipher what was preventing me from boldly and proudly accepting that label with a greater sense of ease.
Finally, the answer came to me.
After swimming through a stream of answers, I came to the conclusion that the reason why I felt such a strong wave of resistance to the label is because my internal experience of having genuine feelings for two people at once feels far too tangled and complex to be boxed in a cage.
I don’t necessarily seek more than one partner; I don’t want to collect lovers. I do not enter into contracts with the intent to find someone else and keep them on the side. That isn’t how I operate. The internal reality is far messier than that.
Instead I tentatively accept the label “girlfriend” whilst feeling a deep bond with the person interspersed with a peculiar detachment.
In other words, while I am perfectly capable of feeling a sincere and profound love and connection for another person, there is always a part of me that doesn’t feel as though we truly belong together or belong to each other.
No matter how much care, connection, and love I feel, I never quite seem to feel bound to that person. There is always a part of me that feels too vast to be captured and retained. I do not feel I “belong” to someone, and in turn, that they are “mine.” I can spend a lot of time with them, thoroughly reveling in their company and cherish our conversations and shared experiences, but nonetheless, a part of me wants to remain staunch in my own sovereignty outside any relationship, and if I happen to meet someone else who sparks a medley of emotions and sensations in me, that’s just part of what is unfolding in the here and now rather than a hard and fast rule about how I function or operate in a connection with someone else.
The most affirming thing I have recently read that describes how I currently experience connection comes from a passage from The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran, titled, simply, “On Marriage.” In this poem, he wrote the following words:
“…let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of heaven dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
These words are an emblem for how I relate to my current five-and-a-half-year long connection. I deeply enjoy my time with her and we share a deep and honest connection, but I will never feel as though we must possess or belong to each other.
In fact, the most simple and truthful way I can phrase it is that I feel as though she and I are best friends with benefits, although I do not mean to cheapen our connection or sound flippant.
What’s more is that my partner is well-aware of how I experience our connection; we have had many open and brutally honest conversations about how I feel about the idea of “possessing” and “belonging” to a person. In addition, I have also been entirely transparent with her regarding what I feel are our points of incoherence or incompatibility, which isn’t the most flowery or romantic topic of discussion, but ones I deem quite necessary.
Although we both can admit that we enjoy travelling, being in nature, and are genuinely deeply bonded to each other with a real feeling of mutual care and comfort, we both have our limits in terms of what we feel we can experience together and provide one another.
Despite everything we have and all that we share, there are worlds of personal differences between us and how we operate both together and apart. While I tend to be quieter, philosophical, reflective, and introspective by nature, my partner tends to be more vocal, carefree, pragmatic, and externally focused. While I tend to prefer to process experiences inwardly first and be slower and intentional in terms of how I live my everyday life, my partner tends to prefer more continuous action and to process her experiences out loud quickly. While she has less tolerance for silence and would rather spend her time working on something tangible to keep busy or chatting with family and friends, I would rather think in a corner by myself, take a solitary walk, or bury my head in a book. She tends to be more of a comedian, to want to always look on the “bright side” of everything whether or not that is warranted, and to generally laugh things off, even when they’re genuinely difficult. I, on the other hand, am admittedly more serious and have a tendency to want to look at things for what they are, sometimes predisposing me to depression.
At times, these basic myriad differences in style and temperament can cause some minor friction and make me feel lonely within our connection simply because we process experiences in completely different, sometimes opposite, ways.
With these values or personal differences openly discussed between us, we have built our connection on a foundation of respect, friendship, and mutual freedom. We do not own each other’s inner world, and if she happens to meet someone who sparks feelings in her, I have told her that she too can tell me about it and that as long as everyone involved knows that we have each other in our lives, we do not necessarily have to part ways unless we feel an overpowering desire to be exclusive with someone else we feel more strongly for or unless we truly can’t see eye-to-eye or love each other anymore.
Over the past six years since my awakening, I have grown to find the thought of having a co-dependent and possessive relationship repugnant. I do not want someone to become “my entire world.” I do not want to feel “lost” without a person in my life. I do not want to “merge” with someone; I want simply to enjoy their presence without fusing our lives and identities together among other things. I want to be me, and I want her to be who she is, as well. I also don’t want to share the same hobbies, friends, and for us to never have necessary alone time. I want to stand together yet comfortably apart. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
We don’t belong together: we are the byproducts of life appearing as two messy and complex human beings, and to openly acknowledge that together is perhaps one of the most honest and noble things two people can do.
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