Poly ain't easy

Some people think polyamory is easy. It's not. It doesn't mean you just get to do whatever you want with whomever you want whenever you want. It doesn't mean you are free from the worry of ever being alone. It doesn't mean that you'll never get your heart broken. I know all this, and yet, I still have a lot to learn.

In terms of relationships, have a very strict code of ethics I follow, and all of the rules I have made for myself are based on my own past mistakes. I get very judgemental when I see other people breaking my rules. For instance, one of my cardinal rules is: "Everyone knows everything, at all times." This means there are no secret trysts, no clandestine rendezvous, no unexpressed feelings for another. My husband and I tell each other if we even have the barest hint of a crush on someone. There are sometimes pre-negotiated exceptions for special circumstances (like conventions, etc.), but for the most part, no one is in the dark, ever.

Another rule I have is the rule of equality. I cannot tell my husband he isn't allowed to see other people while I continue to date freely outside the marriage. I cannot tell him he can't go past 3rd base if I'm actively having intercourse with my other partner. If I ever started to feel that I wasn't comfortable with the idea of Matt seeing others, we would have to sit down and re-negotiate an equitable solution that would most likely result in closing the relationship for a while and only being with each other.

To me, these things are no-brainers. They are absolutes. They make sense, and they keep me safe. In my eyes, you just don't fuck with these rules, and if you do, you're in an unhealthy relationship and you need to re-evaluate what you're doing. So when my close friends, who are also poly, broke these rules, I became extremely irritated.

Not only were the rules broken, but it ended up affecting me. During Marcon, the male in the couple (I'll call him "Bob") and I made out. I've known him for many years, and we have always been an on-and-off item. He's someone Matt knows that I might be physically involved with at any given time. As far as I knew, Bob's girlfriend (I'll call her "Pam"), was completely fine with this arrangement. She was down with the poly lifestyle and understood that Bob and I had a history. I lived with them for a year at one point. We shared. There wasn't any animosity.

Bob and I hadn't had any time together in ages, and when we re-connected at the con, some old feelings were rekindled. He said he was interested in perhaps seeing me on a regular basis again, and I really liked the sound of that. But suddenly, upon hearing about this, Pam became upset and jealous. And I wouldn't mind, except that she, herself, has a regular boyfriend and at least one other lover on the side.

I can't stand hypocrisy. I'm also very protective of Bob, because he came out of a horrible marriage in which his then-wife never touched him. At all. For any reason. For four years. And he wasn't allowed to see anyone else. Meanwhile, she was cheating on him. I saw what it did to him, and it hurt me so much. At the time, I felt like it was my fault. After all, I'd had the choice to stay and be with him, but instead, I'd buggered off to England to marry some guy I barely knew. Maybe that's part of why this whole thing hurt so bad, I dunno.

Anyway, Pam (who is absolutely nothing like Bob's ex-wife), took exception to me calling her a hypocrite, and we had a falling-out. Understand that I love Pam and Bob both like family. They are extremely important to me, and just cutting them out of my life isn't an option for me. They're not random Facebook friends I can just block and be done with it. These are heart-friends, people I feel I need in my life to be whole. But I'm scared that if this kind of inequality continues, it might tear them apart.

"It's nothing personal," Pam said. Except, it was, wasn't it? I could not help but feel as if she had trusted me one moment, and not trusted me the next. I mean, of all the people Bob could see, I'm probably the least threatening. My priority is my husband, absolutely, always, and I would be devastated if anything happened to break up Pam and Bob. "We worked it out ourselves," she said. They were both okay with it, so I should be, too.

And Pam was right. It is between them. My ethics do not apply to other people. And by imposing my ethics on them, I am the one who is being hypocritical. Whether it makes sense to me or not does not matter; they have no responsibility to justify themselves to me. There are things I don't see, things I don't understand. I get that, and I am sorry that I let my knee-jerk reaction get the best of me and cause a rift. I am sorry that I took it so personally as to resort to a personal attack.

However.

I lashed out because I was hurt. Very, very hurt. To have feelings rekindled like that, then extinguished, was traumatic for me. And it had just always been that I could be affectionate with Bob when we were together, even when all three of us were together. Suddenly, I didn't know how to act. I had gone from feeling closer to Bob again, anticipating a renewal of our relationship as lovers, to ... what, not being able to even kiss him, or hold his hand? I just could not wrap my head around it. So when Pam and Bob acted as if nothing at all had happened, that nothing was different, I lost it.

"It's fine that you guys worked it out, but I need time to process it, okay?" And I walked away from them at the movie theatre.

I guess this was selfish of me. I don't know. Since then, Pam has been responding to posts on my Facebook page as if absolutely nothing happened. I haven't heard from Bob, but that isn't unusual because he's rarely online compared to me. It's because for them, it is like nothing happened. Like Pam said, they worked it out. So this is all in my head.

I decided I needed some space from them for a while. It wasn't as if I saw them every day anyway, or even every week or every month, but of course now that there's this tension, I cant stop thinking about them. I know that I need to be a better person and just let go, let them deal with their own lives as they see fit, regardless of whether I think it makes sense. Pam has issues that I'm not going to go into here that have changed her perspective on life dramatically in the last year, and that is her battle to fight. Considering what happened, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that things will never be the same again.

Regardless... I need time. I don't want to lose either of them, but I need time to process the changes. I also need to acknowledge that this is not my drama unless I make it so. I am in a stable place, in a stable relationship, with many friends and family to support me and my husband. It's okay for me to relax. There is no need to import strife just because I'm used to it.