Polyamory Week 2022 - Taking control of my own happiness
You can find all posts for Polyamory Week 2022 collected here.
Becoming polyamorous is not something you can do without putting in the work. There are so many cultural and societal expectations around love and relationships that we're not even aware of. Not actively engaging with these expectations means you're going to end up crashing into wall after emotional wall.
But what do we mean by "putting in the work"? Well, there are all sorts of things you can do, from research and reading to finding supportive communities. But, ultimately, it's going to involve you proactively redefining your relationship with yourself.
No matter what relationships I happen to be in, I continue to own my own ego.
I believed that only "the relationship" mattered.
In my younger days, I subscribed to the romantic notion of "The One". I believed that to be in a relationship was to combine your life with another. And while there is nothing wrong with this idea - I had a beautiful fifteen-year relationship with this model - there are aspects of it that can become incredibly toxic.
Namely, the belief that I didn't matter in my relationships.
I believed that my "job" while in a relationship was to make my partner happy. That's what a boy/girlfriend was supposed to do, right? And if that meant I had to give something up, change my behaviour, or put their preferences before my own, then that was just how relationships worked.
When I look back on myself then, I was very lucky because I dated good people who didn't purposefully take advantage of this. Because if I had dated someone toxic, they could have so easily manipulated me. The argument of "this is what happens in a relationship" could have led to me accepting all sorts of toxic behaviours.
But even though the people I dated were not toxic, this doesn't mean there weren't toxic elements in those relationships. For example, I can remember turning down multiple opportunities that would have benefited me because it would have slightly inconvenienced my partner of the time. Whenever I had to make a decision, I was never completely honest without myself about what I wanted because that wasn't as important as what I should have wanted. I would be completely passive, believing that doing what I wanted rather than asking what they wanted would be too pushy.
My partner never demanded I do these things. And I'm sure they dealt with the same things. We just assumed that this was how things would be.
Essentially, I believed that only "the relationship" mattered.
Your happiness is something separate. It doesn't come from a successful relationship but grows and develops alongside it.
So what has this got to do with polyamory?
Well, I might have never realised these toxic habits weren't okay if I hadn't put in the work on my relationship with relationships polyamory required. By actively addressing my preconceptions and prejudices about what I thought a relationship was, I was able to recognise these unhealthy patterns and see how to go about fixing them.
And there have been a lot of lessons learned during this process. But the one I want to discuss here is that I learned that I am responsible for my own wellbeing, and if that wellbeing needs to come before that of my relationship, then that's okay.
I'm not saying there are no points where some elements of your relationships must come before yourself. That's just a fact of life. But that doesn't mean your relationship always comes first. But your happiness is something separate. It doesn't come from a successful relationship but grows and develops alongside it.
I'm also not saying that we can't go too far. At the root of every toxic relationship will be someone who always puts their own needs above their relationship.
Putting my own needs first doesn't automatically harm my relationships.
This is the root of why people consider polyamory to be selfish.
The history of western civilisation has a strong thread of knowing our place. Feudalism taught that each was born to their station, and that was where you would. Religion taught us that god has dictated how we can behave, and going against that is blasphemy. Capitalism taught us that those at the top deserve their places above us because of their success.
Throughout the centuries, we have been conditioned to believe that fitting in with everyone else is more important than personal fulfilment.
And so when something like polyamory comes along, which teaches us that personal happiness is more important than adhering to the strict conventions of the status quo, it's easy to see it as "selfish".
But the truth is life is not a Zero-Sum Game. Putting my own needs first doesn't automatically harm my relationships.
I never expected polyamory to lead me to realise my relationships don’t require me to give up my own autonomy or happiness to survive.
I want to be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible to be selfish in polyamory. Or any relationship. Someone always putting themselves above their relationship is just as toxic as someone who always puts their relationship above themselves.
It's also possible that your needs will always match those of your relationship. I don't think this is likely, and that if someone believes this is the case, they are ignoring or missing something deeper, but it's possible.
And I'm also not saying this realisation is something that could only have come through learning more about polyamory. But for me, I only came to any clear understanding of this when polyamory forced me to actively address what until then had only been vague ideas.
