BT007
I feel like poly relationships work best for people that don't become easily competitive.
Which very very distinctly bars me from any of those relationships.
It's nice that it works well for other people, and I also think that it's a product of the reality of modern getting-by, and also just, society's change in response to how we communicate thanks to phones and social media and the internet. Not necessarily bad, except for when you consider the material implications of it. Then again, I say the same thing about people marrying for benefits. I can understand why people do it, doesn't mean it's great.
I think one problem that I've noticed is that some people are kind of just pre-disposed to either personality traits at that given time, or have been through situations in their lives that makes a poly relationship either extremely inaccessible, or the sort of situation where a person really has to do a lot of painful interior work on themselves to make function correctly. And everyone seems to be in a poly relationship, lately.
So I have to wonder, how many of these relationships are hosts to partners that understand this same concept, and probably aren't that well-equipped to be involved in one? If it seems to be such a common thing, then I feel like there may be a higher chance that any random individual by themselves could be involving themselves in something either toxic, or potentially emotionally damaging, later on down the line.
Is this something permanent, as a modification to the way that our society works? Is it worth thinking about, in terms of good or bad? I think that some people will. It’s also hard for me to sometimes hold back the pain that I have personally felt, involved in polyamorous relationships of my own.
For me, polyamory was something that resulted from an SSRI-fueled sudden modification to my personality, my nature. When I first was prescribed Prozac, it didn’t take long for it to very very deeply effect me. A massive cloud was lifted - I moved to a fancy studio apartment that you could see the skyline from. I started excercising, quite a lot. Started getting my first piercings and tattoos, grew my hair out, and began dating non-monogamously.
That was a really distinct change from who I was, before. I was a shut-in nerd. I’d been in trouble for computer hacking. Spent all my time on IRC. I used to “DJ” for IRC radio stations, back when shoutcast and icecast were still big.
Prozac turned me into a Bohemian. And my life improved for it. For a while. This was years and years ago, I looked like a bad-news metalcore band twink. The only way I could’ve looked like more of a red-flag, is if my only visible tattoo was on my hand.
I was in a lot of different relationships. All with poly people, but even at what I would describe as my “peak” prozac-ness, it all felt so lonely.
I felt like I was constantly the background character to everyone else’s lives. And despite the fact that I can get by, seemingly totally fine, as I did - something about being involved in poly relationships made me feel like I was a recurring sitcom character in the lives of everyone else. It felt so weird. And after long periods of it, I began to feel extremely detached in a way that didn’t feel good.
Sometime around then, Prozac just stopped working, entirely. Like, I woke up, and it was like someone had turned the lights off, on me. Like I had gone back to how I was before the medication. I tried other meds, nothing worked. Nothing at all. Prozac lifted me up to a new height, and then dropped me at the peak, like I was on the Tower of Terror. I couldn’t do shit. I fell out of alignment with each and every single one of my relationships.
I’ve never woken up to feeling like a completely different human being, except for that day. And I remember it so clearly, because of how drastically different that I felt. A totally normal day, like every other day - no outstanding issues going on - except it was as if I had just been replaced with my pre-prozac normal self again, in this situation I found myself in.
Falling out of love, and alignment with so many people, all at once, was traumatic for me. I’d managed to stay sober while I was on Prozac, and I relapsed at that point. People came to my home to see if I was okay, but it was only briefly before my silence caused me to vanish off of everyone’s radar.
Like I was falling through the cracks, again, similar to many recurring themes in my life, this set me on a relapse that would go on to dominate my life for 6 more years, and almost kill me after what happened on 11/25. My next physical relationship would be after 11/25, between my late fiancée and I, 5 years later, that resulted in his passing, due to his lung cancer.
So, I guess it’s been rough.
What worries me most, is not whether being poly is “good” or “bad” - what worries me to some degree, is internal - for all people that are me, for all of those that understand my energy, I truly wonder how well we will fare as partners of people in relationships both mono and poly.
Maybe us double-leo’s are cursed to a future of curmudgeonous loneliness?
I’m already a widow, so. Would make sense. All I need is a big house that I live alone in.
Maybe, some of us are going to have to force ourselves to learn to be comfortable with things that very much so do not compliment our solidified personality traits. Because they never do change, they only evolve, really.
“You know that poly people existing doesn’t mean that mono relationships won’t go away, right?”
I do.
Get it?
But y’know, over a decade later, I think I could make it work.