questioning polyamory after breakup
Hi,
I'm new to the forum and I opened this thread because the title sounded like I was looking for, though I can't claim my experience is in any way similar to yours, WanderingPolymath. I'm really sorry to hear what you went through. I do feel compassion and I hope it gets better.
I guess I'm also kind of asking for help here.
I have had openly non-exclusive romantic relationships for a few years now. I identify as a pansexual cisgender polyamory woman.
I have been with my partner A. for six years, with all the ups and downs that you can imagine.
Last autumn, both he and my other partner P., with whom I had been for two years, felt very upset when I started two new relationships, with M. and with N. Please don't bother telling me it was a mistake to start two new relationships at the same time, I know perfectly well it was a mistake, even though I wasn't breaking any rules in my existing relationships.
The new relationship with N. very quickly developed into something extremely happy and intense.
I did my best to take care of my already existing relationships, give each partner the time and attention they wanted, while I was investing a lot of time and energy into that new relationship. I'm not sure if I always succeeded.
The new relationship with M. has been developing a lot more slowly, which is exactly what both M. and I want.
However, due to not only this but also a number of other issues, P. and I broke up a couple of months ago as she acknowledged that her needs could not be met in our relationship. She never had a problem with A. as he was my partner before she ever met me, but she struggled to cope with me having new partners. That breakup left me sad but also relieved as my relationship with P. hadn't been working for a while and was feeling like a burden to me.
N. had been monogamous all his life and was open to polyamory. I was open and honest with him from the start. He said he wanted a relationship with me and that we would 'work things out' even though it was difficult. But every time I was seeing A., N. was feeling stressed, upset, jealous, insecure, unhappy. I didn't think polyamory in itself was the problem, because N., who is male and straight, seemed rather comfortable with me having a female partner but very uncomfortable with me having male partners. So I thought it was about building up his self-confidence. I knew there was little I could do in this regard, but I did the best I could to show him I loved him and I was willing to make commitments with him and honour them.
However, after six months, he broke up with me, acknowledging that polyamory isn't for him and he wants an exclusive relationship.
I respect that.
The trouble is, by the time he acknowledged that, I had fallen crazy in love with him. We both had invested a lot into this relationship and we were thinking that maybe we could have a future together; I was starting to think about how I could move geographically closer to him (we live about 1000 km away from each other).
I know I should have expected that he would break up with me, but the fact is that I wasn't expecting it, it caught me by surprise.
This has all left me sad, exhausted, devastated. I'm now questioning whether polyamory really is the right thing for me. It doesn't seem to work; but then neither did monogamy work for me before, so maybe the problem lies elsewhere. My psychotherapist is helping, my friends are helping, but it's really tough. I just feel like there's no right option for me now. I feel unhappy every day knowing that I cannot be with N. That unhappiness is making everything else in my life more difficult, including my now otherwise great relationship with A.
I cannot help but hope that N. and I can get back together at some point, and I believe that hope is toxic because rationally I know that is not going to happen.
If I stay with A. and M., I feel unhappy because I cannot be with N. with whom I am still in love. If I leave them so that I can try to get back with N., I'll be heartbroken because I will have left someone I am in love with. Either way, it seems unfair to everyone involved.
In any case at least I should have learnt my lesson by now: I never want to try a poly/mono relationship ever again. Considering that I know very few polyamory people and that we seem to be a minority in the population at large, it is possible that I'll never try having a new relationship again. In any case, my chances of meeting someone who a) is polyamory and b) with whom the attraction is mutual, are really thin. So ironically, my ability to give love to several people drastically reduces the number of people I can actually give love to.
Right now I feel just cannot cope with everything at once (I have also been experiencing difficulties in my professional life). I remember reading in More Than Two about the fact that managing one relationship already takes a lot of effort, so managing more than one logically requires even more effort, time and energy. I feel like my energy is all spent right now. I'm pondering whether I'd be better off on my own. To be honest I'm not even sure if I still want to live, given that most of the (personal and professional) projects I have embarked upon over the last two years have failed.
Yet I'm not seeing only the negative, I'm also seeing the good things about my life. I am physically healthy, I juggle with jobs which are to a large extent rewarding, I don't have any financial problems, I've got a roof over my head, there's no war where I live, I am supported by wonderful friends and some wonderful people in my family, I am loved by wonderful people - and I am grateful for all of that.
However I am feeling sad and exhausted. I feel like neither polyamory nor monogamy is right for me. I feel I'll still be unhappy for a long time whether I stay in my existing relationships or end them.
I remember when my very first partner broke up with me. We had been in an exclusive relationship for almost five years, and I was 19. I felt absolutely heart-broken; all my life plans were being blown up as they had all included him. However I also felt like I wanted to bounce back, I had a very strong desire to live and to pick myself up, and I felt like this end was also a new beggining, I felt like this breakup was opening up new possibilities.
This is nothing like the breakup I just went through with N. It is not opening any new possibilities, only ending them. It does not feel like a new beginning in any way.
I wish at least N. were feeling better now that he made that decision: I only wish for him to be happy. However, I understand from what he tells me that he is not feeling happy at all, he seems to miss me just as much as I miss him. That is no consolation to me. If he were happy now, at least this breakup would have a point. But he's not, so we're just both pointlessly unhappy which feels incredibly sad and frustrating. I knew theoretically that just because two people are in love with each other it doesn't mean they can be together, but this might be the first time I've experienced it so intensely. I just feel desperate.
I acknowledge I might be overreacting because I'm hurt and heart-broken right now, and I just don't know whom to turn to.
Thank you for reading. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to have made such mistakes and felt that way, so any ideas would be welcome as right now I can't see any way forward.