Poly Chicago

Recently, I was able to take a weekend trip away from the city into the wilds of Missouri for a weekend of frivolity, feasting, and fending for oneself. It was a long car ride there and another long drive back, but the time spent in the heartland of America was just as advertised; full of love.

Now, in the interest of saving time, lets just say that this was not your average camp site. People come from all over the country once a year to imbibe copious amounts of alcohol and get in touch with nature in more ways that simple munching of high fiber granola while hiking through thick brush and sleeping under a bug net. It was myself and my steady in one tent, and a whole camp of new friends in the others. Where the situation gets relevant is when I mention that two of these new friends were tied to my steady for several years in the past. And what could have turned into a Ben Stiller ‘Meet the Parents’ weekend was instead a great opportunity to share our mutual affections for one person, in effect, to grow closer to one another. We bunked at this couples house, had take out together, developed long meaningful conversations about the end of the world and whether Stacker Pentecost is possibly the best fictional character name in the history of cinema, and then drank until the sun came up.

It is a rather salient point that my relationship with this person has been spattered with instances were present and past relationships entered and exited our daily lives. I could say that none of these occurrences made a huge impact on how we felt towards each other, but that would mean overlooking how these episodes helped grow our connection to one another. Instead of simply saying, “yes, I am poly and that means that outside relationships are okay,” we will regularly talk about our histories and feelings for these other people. Undoubtedly, it is a tricky thing to do because you have to respect the privacy of the people whom you are speaking about, but when you really get to the meat of the conversation, the value is that you understand your partner so much more than when you started.

For example, I am still close friends with a person whom I dated for almost 6 years of my adult life. We play games together, talk about important real life issues, and share in each others successes and failures. I knew that this relationship was alright in the context of my current g/f, but it was only after I explaining why I was still hanging out with this person that I felt more comfortable with the whole arrangement. My partner understands the reasons for seeing the person, and I am confident that they trust me enough to be open and honest when real relationship struggles arise.

As humans, we touch many people in a given day/week/month/year. Some we will brush by without a second thought and some will stay with us for a whole lifetime. How unfortunate it is, then, that the norms of society prevent us from holding onto those people that we have been truly intimate with, if we should, say, express those feelings in more ways than a hug and a cheek peck. It is a great luxury of our time that I can be connected to so many wonderful people and one other person who is comfortable in the idea that { (luv1),(luv2),(luv3) } ≠ (luv) / 2.

So in summary, I met two very wonderful people last weekend who still have strong feelings for my current steady, and I want to see more of them, not less.