Dear Ali,
I wish to thank very much William for sharing your post. So I could read your position and experience and maybe try to answer it. You raises a lot of questions. And they have some echoes with my own experience and reflexions.
First you started by defining monogamous and polyamourous relationships and asked if there is a third way ? This third way you also try to describe is for me the way of polyamory.
But are words and labels really needed to dicuss about it ? Stille, maybe it can help a bit, because this way you can find other people asking themselves and others the same questions. So my first answer would be : keep searching what polyamory can means and you will probably find a lot of different ways of living relationships. Some are "open" (with no engagement), some are only sexual, some are romantic, some are only intellectual, some are only with three people, some are with children, etc.
I discover polyamory about two years ago. Actually, I always have asked myself a lot of question about love and relationship, but two years ago I discover that there is quite a lot of people asking themselves the same kind of questions. And one of the most important step of the discovery was going to "Café-poly", a place of debate about relationships. There, one of the most frequent answer is : "it depends and it is complexe". And often it can be resume to : "there is as many polyamoury model as there is polyamoury people". Nobody does live theirs relationships the same way. Each time it is something that will be negociate between the people involved : the nature, the frequency, the possible engagements etc.
It was kind of relief for me. To understand, it was not again a model I had to fit in. It was something, I had to build with my own full consciousness and in negociations with the people I love. So today, and because I listen to many testimony of polyamourous relationships, I believe we can live immense love and commitment without exclusivity.
In the meantime, I read the comments on your post. And I'm impressed by the amount of beautiful answers and support you received. It's comforting.
I agree with some of them, about your quick judgment of polyamory, but therefore I wish to encourage you in reading and searching more about it. Maybe it can be as reassuring for you as it was, and it is for me.
I live in Paris. What is my life like? That's a big question. But I was planning to tell some that relates with yours questions.
I liked a lot your expression about being a "most whole and authentic version of ourselves". Since I opened the box of questions about relationships, it is one of the value I treasure the most: honesty. Honesty to myself and honesty to everyone. And since that, I grew up so much to understand myself and to act to be what I wish to be. I realize I will change every day and the fabulous question about "who I am" will always stands but I take part with full consciousness in building myself. And I enjoy it.
So today, I'm a consultant in urban planning. I like what I do and I'm very curious about the different ways of making cities and contributing to a better life for everybody in an eco-friendly way of living.
I bring these centres of interest in my everyday life, and that means with all my relationships. I like to question our way of living, of being happy, of enjoying moments together, of taking responsibilities etc. Some of my friends finds me overactive because I enjoy doing so many things, but especially I like to share special moments with all of them. And I was always confronted to the question of "choosing". And I'm poor at choosing. I'm always afraid of regretting, because so many things and people are extraordinary. Each in his own way, unique and special. So how I’m dealing with these wishes and this fear?
I think it is why I first was so receptive to the philosophy of polyamory. Because it was kind of an answer to my own wishes and fear. I was struggling between the impression that I could not choose because there was no rational argument for choosing and the common convention that let me believe it was wrong to want so many things, to give in to my impulses.
But hearing to the questions of others and others way of doing, I learned I could negotiate and judge alone or with my partners what is good or wrong according to my and theirs values. Of course, I need a ground of values to help me choose, but I feel more confident today because I understand the “why” of the values that are guiding myself in my choices. And these values are a construction made of my education, my experience, and of course still common expectations of the society.
So how I deal today, is that I trust my judgment to make choices and keep learning from my experience to do tomorrow always a better choice and enjoy life as much as possible. And I believe that I can enjoy life especially by letting or helping people I love to enjoy there life as much. And there is so many ways to do that: sharing moments together, debating, making love, but also respecting intimacy, independency and encouraging my friends or lovers to realise themselves even if that does not include me in their projects, etc.
Sure, it is sometimes difficult, because I do am an egoist person. And I wish that the people I love need me, so I can be useful. And I like to feel that I can count on them, when I need them; so sometimes I please myself creating an artificial relation of dependency. Because, as you said it so well, it is so easy to let others love us instead of loving ourselves first.
So, this is kind of where my reflexions stand today. But it is evolving every day. And still it is so fulfilling to being aware, having a full self-consciousness or I don’t know how to say it. I feel so confident.
It doesn’t mean my every day is perfect. Far from it. I’m struggling every day about how to make choices, how to respect my engagement to the people I love. I’m sometimes sad when a relationship, for some reason, isn’t going well. But I’m motivated to try and be happy with as many people as I can.
So today, I’m engaged in relation with someone for 7 years. We live together in a flat in Paris and we share most of our time together. Two years ago, the experience of some friends (starting a three-couples / trouple) allowed the debate to raise between us about love and exclusivity. I revealed him that I already had fallen in love with other persons while I was with him, but I had not taken actions because of the unsaid engagement between us, result of the common convention, that I had to be loyal and only his. So, I expressed myself about what I value in our relationship and most of it is honesty and respect. And that I did not consider it like a disrespect that we could love someone else at the same time.
This conversation and his open-mind allowed us to experiment new way of considering and acting about our relationships. It did shake also the boundaries between friendship and love relationships, so we went during a phase where we tried things. It was like being a teenager again, trying things, testing our own boundaries, what we really were searching for, what we enjoy, what was just small pleasures, what could be real projects or values. So, this phase looks quite like your description of polyamorous relationships or “open” couple. We experimented one-night relationships, some kisses. We learned about how it could shake our primary relationship together and it helped us realize about what we care, about the real engagement or commitment we are ready to make together.
During the meaning time, I started going the “Café-Poly”, this place of debate about polyamory and relationships in general. And I started growing up about my self-consciousness. I discover that I still was someone unique and not only define by my first partner, with whom I was since more than 5 years. And I enjoyed this discovery. Because it was also the occasion of making choice new again, like the choice of keeping and treasuring this relation because it is really something I want, and that makes me happy.
Last year, I also met someone. And I fell in love with him almost immediately. It was new. Because I was still unmatured about polyamory and myself, I did not know how to deal with it. It was something different from the experiments we were doing (mostly during parties). Because I choose to see him again. This time, the real questions came up about commitment, about jealousy, about managing time and sharing it. I thought I could find a path, because I was confident in my love, in my expectations and in my capacity of managing my time. But I was confronted with someone else expectations. We tried almost a year to find a compromise to be both happy. And today, we realized we are not finding a path together.
I believe this experience was really important in building my vision of love. I experimented and lived love for several persons at the same time and I was confronted to the practical questions along with the emotional complexity of it. And I realized it was beautiful to live it, to be true to myself about my emotions and to be true to my partners about how I could manage it, what I could really give or not.
Today, I’m not searching for new relationships. I’m simply okay with the fact that time can bring me to meet new people, that today’s relations can evolve, and it is not a bad thing. And I’m ready to let this take the place it will need, to let new relationship grow while treasuring the one already here. To listen to myself about my needs, my values and building my projects and my engagements being true to them. And I know it will not be always easy. Most relationships are based on compromises and I believe this is what is beautiful in the love partnership: our capacity to listen to each other personalities and needs.
I’m also very lucky today, because I’m living a relationship that respects this vision of love. My partner is very committed to our relationship and want it to last, so we try to communicate about how we feel. For example, he is living another relationship with a girl. It is still new. And we are still experimenting how to find our place around it. I don’t want to have a hierarchy between our relations, because I like to consider every one of them like unique and special. But of course, there is differences. And an important one is that I’m living in the same flat as my actual partner. So, it means we need to find arrangements when we want to have intimacy with someone else.
This answer is probably already too long. I have to admit, trying to put my reflexion in words is a really interesting exercise for me. It helps me figuring and understanding myself better. And I would be very happy to hear your reaction, if you wish to react.
For me, it is important to accept and be aware of the variety of emotions, their complexity. And I wish to dedicate my life at the constant exercise of respecting and encouraging each other to blossom.
