Polyamory
This is my first time writing here. I've been reading a bit of other people's stories, and eventually decided on sharing my own. I have actually wrote it a couple of weeks ago as a form of self-therapy, trying to process my own grief, and it did help for a while. Now I feel ready to share this with other people. It is a long story, and I'll have to upload it in several part, I apologize in advance if it's too long. I will also say upfront that my story is about a relationship between three gay men, whom I refer to as myself, my husband and C, to protect the privacy of everyone involved. I guess that's it for opening word's, so here it is:
Part 1
Part 1
There are many things to be said about love. It can evoke the most powerful, uplifting and joyful emotions a human can experience, bringing absolute joy to the people involved. It can also lead to other extremes, when by chance or by choice, the circumstances diverge from the ideal. Like many, I’ve been fortunate to experience both sides of this range, along with the joys and hardships entailed. Remarkably, I've been blessed with not just the opportunity to embrace my desires and fully immerse in these emotions, but also to be embraced by an abundance of patience, acceptance, forgiveness, and support beyond what I had any right to expect. I truly believe, that the individuals in this story are exceptionally kind, warm, and courageous, forming a family I'm incredibly proud to call my own.
This story is told from my own perspective, but I don’t pretend to be the hero by any means. In fact, I’m not at all innocent of careless and distasteful conduct, being self-absorbed, arrogant, childish and needy to the very least. I’m not admitting this in an effort to redeem or excuse myself, but rather to stress that despite these mishaps, I was lucky enough to fulfill my heart’s desires, something not to be taken for granted. I have learned the truth of the notion that love sometimes means letting go of the person you love, and that despite the tolls it took, I would never regret the time we all shared.
I will also not pretend to be indifferent to sympathy. The need for sympathy is a main driving force behind writing these words. The nature of this story is such that there are few who could be confided in real-time, and support had to come from within, which is not taken lightly. Choosing writing as an outlet in which to process my experiences, is ultimately a way to navigate and reach conclusion and closure, and the need for sympathy is very natural and should not be overlooked. With that said, I realize and respect the fact that my behavior might be considered unacceptable at times, and I do not expect anyone to change their own opinions or believes to accommodate me. I simply wish to share my story as I lived it, hoping to recount it as fairly and accurately as possible.
My story has many parts, and choosing the right place to start is difficult. To make things easier, I decided to begin at a certain point, and work my way from there. This point is set in the year 2019, which is five years ago from now, when I met a guy who I will name C for the purpose of the store. He was a handsome, caring and lovely man, who brought excitement and joy to a challenging and stressful time in my life. Most importantly, he liked me. A lot. The thing is, I was and still am, happily married.
This year, me and my husband will celebrate ten years of marriage, which will add up to five more years of dating. That’s a total of fifteen years of solid, stable and happy relationship. At first we were a very boring, so called normal, monogamous, gay couple, trying to build a life together, and things worked very well for a time. However, a couple of years into the relationship, we started seeing other people, mostly for sex. Sometimes, these encounters produces new friendships, some of them lasting to this day, and a couple of times, they produced romantic involvements which ended badly, as one might expect. But the marriage remained solid, and neither of us ever doubted the other's commitment.
Opening our relationship was a big, but necessary change, initiated by myself. Due to emotional baggage I carried through my childhood and an adolescence, I had a lot of open issues to content with, many of them had to do with insecurities, low self esteem, and the general feeling of missing out on life. The constant social pressure from the very demanding gay community where we lived at the time, didn’t alleviate these tensions. At the time I used to work at an office job with many other gay men, and to them, open relationships were not only acceptable, they were expected and considered as the natural and common outcome of any relationship, while boring monogamy was mocked and frowned upon. There were probably other gay social circles that might have held different views, but I wasn’t a part of them at the time. For me, these pressures worked themselves into my state of mind, and along with my own old emotional baggage, eventually paved the way for me to prompt the idea of seeing other people. These causalities seem obvious and even sensible in retrospect, however, at the time, I could understand very little of it.
Meeting other guys did eventually helped. For the first time in my life, I finally managed to deal with my insecurities and low self esteem, and felt positive changes take place in many aspects of my life. I was working out and taking care of my body, I got promotions at work and we moved to a nice new apartment in a good area. I made friends and for the first time had an actual social circle of my own. I felt powerful, respected and loved, not only by my husband, but also by my friends and coworkers. There were nuances of course, nothing is ever perfect, but mostly this is what I remember of that time. The price, however, when it was due, came in the form of new emotional blows.
Sex was easy for me. Controlling my emotions, was not. Over and over, I found myself knowingly overstepping boundaries agreed upon with my husband. It felt bad disappointing him, yet I was not ready to stop exploring life, sex and eventually more love. Most of my life I’ve been automatically saying no to things, now I wanted to become a yes-man. This came with pushing boundaries, ans sometimes I developed romantic feelings that were inappropriate for a married man. I loved my husband, I still do and have no doubt that he is the one person for me, whom I would love my entire life. Still, other feelings were there, and as much as I tried to repress them, the stronger they became. The price of acting upon these feelings could have potentially hurt my husband, the other party, and eventually myself. The price of not acting upon them, hurt me nonetheless, and sent me into a deep darkening depression. This is another consideration I can easily make in retrospect, but at the time, I was completely at a loss. I had never heard of polyamory at the time, and couldn’t conceive a way for such a construct to work.
My husband was supportive of me, as much as I allowed him to be. I could never have asked for a better person to walk this unusual road with. When I finally disclosed my feelings and what I was going through, he adjusted and accepted me completely. He hadn’t always liked the situations he was forced into, but he never ever let me down. He realized and believed completely, that I chose him first and foremost, despite any feelings I could develop for anyone else. And on my side, I felt, and still feel, immensely lucky to have him alongside myself.
I realize how long of an exposition this was, I do hope that it will be useful in explaining why and how things turned out the way they had. Fast forward to many occasional guys later, I finally got to relive my lost years, probably to an excess. I had some regular guys and two separate pseudo-relationships that ended badly after realizing things aren’t working out. On one hand, I had no intentions of leaving my husband for someone else, and on the other, I was jealous and expected exclusivity, and was unable to cope otherwise. To be clear, exclusivity meant all parties, me, my husband and the third guy. Even now I can’t say for certain why I needed these harsh terms in place, except as a defense against outer threats to the new relationship, which seem to always be in a disadvantage. These “terms” were never put into words, but developed naturally on their own. Exclusivity became an obvious accepted fact without the need for it to be said. However, when these relationships reached their inevitable breaking point, exclusivity was the first thing to go. Intellectually, I knew and understood why the men involved wouldn’t want to stay in such a demanding relationship, giving themselves to me and receiving only parts in return. Emotionally, it made no difference, I was devastated each time. I knew my expectations were unrealistic and unfair, but I never excelled at controlling my emotions, and often acted on them. Supportive as much as my husband had been, marriage felt suffocating during these times and I kept thing from him, which in turn produced negative emotions towards him for no fault of his own. Luckily, we eventually discussed these issues and worked them out, and I never blamed him for my misgivings and faults again.
This story is told from my own perspective, but I don’t pretend to be the hero by any means. In fact, I’m not at all innocent of careless and distasteful conduct, being self-absorbed, arrogant, childish and needy to the very least. I’m not admitting this in an effort to redeem or excuse myself, but rather to stress that despite these mishaps, I was lucky enough to fulfill my heart’s desires, something not to be taken for granted. I have learned the truth of the notion that love sometimes means letting go of the person you love, and that despite the tolls it took, I would never regret the time we all shared.
I will also not pretend to be indifferent to sympathy. The need for sympathy is a main driving force behind writing these words. The nature of this story is such that there are few who could be confided in real-time, and support had to come from within, which is not taken lightly. Choosing writing as an outlet in which to process my experiences, is ultimately a way to navigate and reach conclusion and closure, and the need for sympathy is very natural and should not be overlooked. With that said, I realize and respect the fact that my behavior might be considered unacceptable at times, and I do not expect anyone to change their own opinions or believes to accommodate me. I simply wish to share my story as I lived it, hoping to recount it as fairly and accurately as possible.
My story has many parts, and choosing the right place to start is difficult. To make things easier, I decided to begin at a certain point, and work my way from there. This point is set in the year 2019, which is five years ago from now, when I met a guy who I will name C for the purpose of the store. He was a handsome, caring and lovely man, who brought excitement and joy to a challenging and stressful time in my life. Most importantly, he liked me. A lot. The thing is, I was and still am, happily married.
This year, me and my husband will celebrate ten years of marriage, which will add up to five more years of dating. That’s a total of fifteen years of solid, stable and happy relationship. At first we were a very boring, so called normal, monogamous, gay couple, trying to build a life together, and things worked very well for a time. However, a couple of years into the relationship, we started seeing other people, mostly for sex. Sometimes, these encounters produces new friendships, some of them lasting to this day, and a couple of times, they produced romantic involvements which ended badly, as one might expect. But the marriage remained solid, and neither of us ever doubted the other's commitment.
Opening our relationship was a big, but necessary change, initiated by myself. Due to emotional baggage I carried through my childhood and an adolescence, I had a lot of open issues to content with, many of them had to do with insecurities, low self esteem, and the general feeling of missing out on life. The constant social pressure from the very demanding gay community where we lived at the time, didn’t alleviate these tensions. At the time I used to work at an office job with many other gay men, and to them, open relationships were not only acceptable, they were expected and considered as the natural and common outcome of any relationship, while boring monogamy was mocked and frowned upon. There were probably other gay social circles that might have held different views, but I wasn’t a part of them at the time. For me, these pressures worked themselves into my state of mind, and along with my own old emotional baggage, eventually paved the way for me to prompt the idea of seeing other people. These causalities seem obvious and even sensible in retrospect, however, at the time, I could understand very little of it.
Meeting other guys did eventually helped. For the first time in my life, I finally managed to deal with my insecurities and low self esteem, and felt positive changes take place in many aspects of my life. I was working out and taking care of my body, I got promotions at work and we moved to a nice new apartment in a good area. I made friends and for the first time had an actual social circle of my own. I felt powerful, respected and loved, not only by my husband, but also by my friends and coworkers. There were nuances of course, nothing is ever perfect, but mostly this is what I remember of that time. The price, however, when it was due, came in the form of new emotional blows.
Sex was easy for me. Controlling my emotions, was not. Over and over, I found myself knowingly overstepping boundaries agreed upon with my husband. It felt bad disappointing him, yet I was not ready to stop exploring life, sex and eventually more love. Most of my life I’ve been automatically saying no to things, now I wanted to become a yes-man. This came with pushing boundaries, ans sometimes I developed romantic feelings that were inappropriate for a married man. I loved my husband, I still do and have no doubt that he is the one person for me, whom I would love my entire life. Still, other feelings were there, and as much as I tried to repress them, the stronger they became. The price of acting upon these feelings could have potentially hurt my husband, the other party, and eventually myself. The price of not acting upon them, hurt me nonetheless, and sent me into a deep darkening depression. This is another consideration I can easily make in retrospect, but at the time, I was completely at a loss. I had never heard of polyamory at the time, and couldn’t conceive a way for such a construct to work.
My husband was supportive of me, as much as I allowed him to be. I could never have asked for a better person to walk this unusual road with. When I finally disclosed my feelings and what I was going through, he adjusted and accepted me completely. He hadn’t always liked the situations he was forced into, but he never ever let me down. He realized and believed completely, that I chose him first and foremost, despite any feelings I could develop for anyone else. And on my side, I felt, and still feel, immensely lucky to have him alongside myself.
I realize how long of an exposition this was, I do hope that it will be useful in explaining why and how things turned out the way they had. Fast forward to many occasional guys later, I finally got to relive my lost years, probably to an excess. I had some regular guys and two separate pseudo-relationships that ended badly after realizing things aren’t working out. On one hand, I had no intentions of leaving my husband for someone else, and on the other, I was jealous and expected exclusivity, and was unable to cope otherwise. To be clear, exclusivity meant all parties, me, my husband and the third guy. Even now I can’t say for certain why I needed these harsh terms in place, except as a defense against outer threats to the new relationship, which seem to always be in a disadvantage. These “terms” were never put into words, but developed naturally on their own. Exclusivity became an obvious accepted fact without the need for it to be said. However, when these relationships reached their inevitable breaking point, exclusivity was the first thing to go. Intellectually, I knew and understood why the men involved wouldn’t want to stay in such a demanding relationship, giving themselves to me and receiving only parts in return. Emotionally, it made no difference, I was devastated each time. I knew my expectations were unrealistic and unfair, but I never excelled at controlling my emotions, and often acted on them. Supportive as much as my husband had been, marriage felt suffocating during these times and I kept thing from him, which in turn produced negative emotions towards him for no fault of his own. Luckily, we eventually discussed these issues and worked them out, and I never blamed him for my misgivings and faults again.