Hello polyamory.com
I will go by soulfly here. To clear up any confusion that may arise over the name, I am male, and no I am not a member of the band by the same name. It just has sentimental value to me.
I'm not sure if my story is typical, as I discovered the exact nature of my sexuality only after years of suppressing it. I don't know how common that is, because this is the first time I've ever attempted to enter into a community of this nature. My real life experience has been limited to a very tight circle of friends. Which I imagine isn't exactly uncommon. But since I don't get much of a chance to interact with polyamorous people on a larger scale, I'm hoping this site will serve as a major learning experience for me.
I'll try to keep my story brief, but I do feel the need to let this out, for my own well being. So if my introduction runs long, I apologize.
I spent a lot of my youth in and out of empty, yet faithfully, monogamous relationships. In each one, there was always this sense that I was much more emotionally involved than my partner. At the time, I didn't understand that the reasons I felt that way were; First, I am, and always have been, a being of love. And second, that I wasn't truly receiving what I needed emotionally from a single partner. Looking back, that means I was probably more unfair to the people in those relationships, than I felt they had been to me at the time.
It wasn't until my mid twenties that I did some heavy soul searching to find that I've always felt honest, emotional connections, for many people. And that the only reason I wasn't fully embracing this fact about myself, was that I was somehow taught that it was morally wrong to ever feel love for more than one person at a time, while simultaneously hating myself for ever thinking along those lines. Before that time though, I couldn't have told you the definition of love as I've come to understand it now.
My online experience since coming forward about my polyamory, has been anything but welcoming. I've come to expect hostile and completely unwarranted attacks from people who don't even understand that polyamory isn't recognized as a word by most spell checkers, let alone what it means. For this reason, I tend to stay uncharacteristically quiet online. I will read many posts, but I'm not sure how many I will respond to. Don't think that it's not because I don't want to, I just don't always feel the freedom to express myself the way I once did. So I edit myself for the sake of avoiding any additional undue hostility. I'm hoping that some time here will help change that, so I can get back to feeling as free as when I first discovered that this is in my very nature. Just posting this has already made me feel a little better.
Thanks for reading.
Much love and warmth ~ soulfly
I will go by soulfly here. To clear up any confusion that may arise over the name, I am male, and no I am not a member of the band by the same name. It just has sentimental value to me.
I'm not sure if my story is typical, as I discovered the exact nature of my sexuality only after years of suppressing it. I don't know how common that is, because this is the first time I've ever attempted to enter into a community of this nature. My real life experience has been limited to a very tight circle of friends. Which I imagine isn't exactly uncommon. But since I don't get much of a chance to interact with polyamorous people on a larger scale, I'm hoping this site will serve as a major learning experience for me.
I'll try to keep my story brief, but I do feel the need to let this out, for my own well being. So if my introduction runs long, I apologize.
I spent a lot of my youth in and out of empty, yet faithfully, monogamous relationships. In each one, there was always this sense that I was much more emotionally involved than my partner. At the time, I didn't understand that the reasons I felt that way were; First, I am, and always have been, a being of love. And second, that I wasn't truly receiving what I needed emotionally from a single partner. Looking back, that means I was probably more unfair to the people in those relationships, than I felt they had been to me at the time.
It wasn't until my mid twenties that I did some heavy soul searching to find that I've always felt honest, emotional connections, for many people. And that the only reason I wasn't fully embracing this fact about myself, was that I was somehow taught that it was morally wrong to ever feel love for more than one person at a time, while simultaneously hating myself for ever thinking along those lines. Before that time though, I couldn't have told you the definition of love as I've come to understand it now.
My online experience since coming forward about my polyamory, has been anything but welcoming. I've come to expect hostile and completely unwarranted attacks from people who don't even understand that polyamory isn't recognized as a word by most spell checkers, let alone what it means. For this reason, I tend to stay uncharacteristically quiet online. I will read many posts, but I'm not sure how many I will respond to. Don't think that it's not because I don't want to, I just don't always feel the freedom to express myself the way I once did. So I edit myself for the sake of avoiding any additional undue hostility. I'm hoping that some time here will help change that, so I can get back to feeling as free as when I first discovered that this is in my very nature. Just posting this has already made me feel a little better.
Thanks for reading.
Much love and warmth ~ soulfly