I like the idea of having a ride-or-die partner. I also like the idea of both of us being independent humans, having independent interests and independent connections with other humans. I like the idea of building a life with a partner, owning a house, building a home, sharing finances, traveling the world together, being part of a team, supporting each other, and knowing that someone has my back.
The Progress and Landscape
I have been doing well in polyamory with the notion and reality of my partner having other partners. Where I feel I struggle is when I would like more time with my person than I’m able to get, for whatever reason. I also feel weird when I’m walking into a situation where my partner will be there with another date and I am not their evening’s priority. Time management really is the hardest struggle in poly, and with good reason, followed by societal conditioning.
I’m mostly not struggling with jealousy but I do find I struggle with both uncertainty and with a fear of missing out, especially as I’m used to a partner being someone I’d share most of my social opportunities with. I’d like to know that I will see my partner more than one night a week, preferably more than two. If we were living together we would get regular-life time in between date nights, and that would make an absolutely huge difference in that frequency. In my current relationship, that reality appears to be at least six months out from now.
The Why and the What
So then I ask myself…. Why, in my programming, do I want or seek this level of companionship? It’s been around me my whole life so there is definitely a societal factor. It’s what I know, it’s what I’m used to. Is it what I need it to be though? Can I be happy having one or two or three very important people in my life and seeing them less frequently than what I previously would have experienced in a singular monogamous partner?
Sometimes I do feel like I want a simpler life. It makes financial sense to share resources, housing, food, car, and more. When you want to spend time with someone it definitely makes spending time together easier as well, when you share a roof. Less driving, no driving home at weird hours. Simple here wouldn’t step back to monogamy, but maybe a simplified form of poly or openness of some sort?
I like the joy that comes from broadcasting that this is my person, and I am theirs. I realize that both this action and feeling are completely made up by humans, built on an evolutionary social and survival platform, as being important. But why do those things matter even a bit? Humans are not possessions, yet part of me does crave that label, that visible statement to the rest of the world.
Other times I think to myself that the simpler life feels mundane, non-progressive, or lacking. I crave variety, growth, spice, and personal challenge. From experience, I know that it is possible to have a living space embracing two independent people, provided the space allows for it. I want to be with my person, I want casual in-between time with my person, and I want date nights with my person. I’m totally fine supporting their desire for space and also in both of us engaging other people.
How can we decide whether we can make a co-living dynamic or life like that work before we actually commit to trying it? I’m pretty sure that with my own self-work that this would meet my desires and needs, not just to have a decent life but also to thrive, but how do we decide if this is going to feel too restrictive for her? I don’t want to smother her, I want her to be a part of a team with me, but only if she wants the same. It might not be something she’s ever experienced before in a healthy or consistent way. It’s a leap of faith that may or may not be right for her.
Examining everything, can I change how I feel, and what I want? I probably can but then I have to ask why I would, or should, make a change of this magnitude. There are so many people in this world and this includes amazing people who already start with compatibility for my main dynamic desires. Why? My partner is amazing and I love her dearly, to the point where if we find a workable shared vision I find myself drawn toward desiring some kind of long-term commitment and reality. She is worth it, and as I challenge every notion of what I know, exploring the longevity in the health of our relationship is absolutely worth it.
Next Steps
I’m a scientist, I’m a philosopher. My tattoos say “experiment” and “understand” and “always forward”, “Think less, live more”, “veritas/truth”. I don’t have to move forward in the same way that got me to the now. I have to move forward with curiosity, care, intent, education, compassion, love, and a goal to have a life worth living. So what does this look like?
Step one: Continue to learn what my partner feels she needs. Is it the same amount of space, dates, and independence she’s taking right now? More? Less?
Step two: Decide how being this solo/independent applies to my own life while having a primary partner. I’m going to have to find some level of acceptance or peace that is greater than what I feel, if this current level is to be my future, especially if we don’t live together.
Step 3: Talk with my partner, my love, and see if we have the workings of something that serves us both and lets us thrive.
Step 4: Keep examining everything in my life, what I believe, why I believe it, and what can change when I think it needs to, then to change when I think I need to.
A Related/Unrelated Emotional Perspective on Decisions
I’m enhanced right now. My thoughts are racing, but also not TOO very much, and nothing before this paragraph was in this state. As I think about the humans in my life and the 48 years I have lived on this planet, I know that I believe in her. I know that I have chosen her and every day I choose her. She is the person whose signal I want to amplify.
Part of me is nervous because this is still such a different world to me, yet all of me knows that she is the human that I want to align myself with the most. Part of me felt some doubt this week, feeling distance, feeling separated. The deep and sincere peace in her heart when she talked to me tonight, the kisses she gave me, those were all the reassurance I needed. Her willingness to include me in her world, and the instance she described as “bending”, touched me. At some point in our lives, we have to either choose “nobody else” or we have to choose “somebody”. Lover, I’m whole-heartedly choosing you.
It’s clear that I’m not the only one who sees her; everyone sees her and they also love what they see. The other night when our friend said she was the most beautiful, intelligent, and attractive woman at the party she absolutely right. I’m honored to be her partner and extra so to be her primary partner. Sometimes it just feels like there are so many people vying for her time, her heart, her attention, her body, her mind. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. Tonight, socially, I felt that, and yet when she described her later restaurant outing I thought that would have been a great environment, with people who care about her, and one I actively wanted to join her at.
But I have to understand and accept that this outside interest will never stop, this is part of reality, and this will sometimes or often be coupled with her own return interest. She is such an amazing treasure, but she is not MY treasure. She is her own treasure and one that everybody is drawn to or seeks out. I understand, I’m already the luckiest guy in the room. It also feels like I’m the guy in the room with the most other people trying to share some capacity of time with their partner and lover. There’s no sugarcoating it, sometimes that’s hard and sometimes I feel it in my body. I might try some more plant medicine tomorrow, some indica, to see if that might reduce some of the edge I occasionally feel. It’s very strange living in a ping-pong between feeling extreme confidence and dancing with various levels of anxiety. This area, too, has seen amazing growth and progress. Everything about me is moving forward, sometimes at different rates, but always forward.
I do a lot of personal reflection. A lot of self-examination. A lot of introspection. She challenges me in all of the best ways. When I tell her that she is the person that I am choosing, that is why. I don’t say it lightly. I’m getting on in years and I have to apply what I have learned and know. This is based on life, this is based on experience, this is based on choice. And yes I’m currently enhanced. And yes, some of my best emotional and brain work comes while I am enhanced on something like psilocybin. Anyone who says their best brain work comes on something else (food, water, coffee, alcohol, air, etc), or nothing, is still actually on something. What is this, other than simply existence? I don’t mind having enlightened thoughts on chemicals because absolutely everything is a chemical. Sometimes my brain feels trapped in its habits. Sometimes it takes another chemical to help break my brain out of the rut of habits.
Sometimes it takes a human like the one who is currently walking with me in life.