What had changed for you once you fell in love with someone?
What led up to it was that I was in a very vulnerable spot in my life for a lot of reasons. That partner brought a bit of magic to a life that I kind of hated right then and we had more in common and spent more time together than any of my previous sex-only or sex-and-friendship partners. SO falling in love - or at least limerence? - was nearly inevitable.
*Being* in love with someone else other than Knight started prying open a lot of our codependence. We spent our late teens and all of our twenties completely entangled with each other to the degree that in a zillion ways I had no idea who I was outside that relationship. And while I still loved Knight and wanted our relationship to last, I also wanted, at that point, to figure out who *I* was vs. who *we* were. HipsterBoy was in a lot of ways the beginning of that process. (And that led to some less than ideal choices on my part, which I'm not proud of - mostly pressuring Knight to stay in a relationship that was bad for him in order to maintain my relationship with my partner... quads are *hard*.)
After, though... after was hell but it was also what I consider to be a Kintsugi season in my life. When that partner and I split I felt like I broke inside... but after a lot of work I'm all sparkly and gold in those spots. ;-)
Seriously, though, at this point I can't imagine being wrapped up in a single person enough that I'd be happy monogamous, emotionally OR physically. The biggest thing is in a lot of ways I feel like my partners bring out different sides of me and I *love* that I can explore all those parts of my identity without *losing* anything or anyone.