There is no simple road map for getting from heartbreak to happy. However, there is a lot you can do to move through this painful loss and gradually recover your equilibrium and joy. The following chapters focus on a four-pronged plan to take care of yourself, learn what you can from the past relationship, successfully maintain your other relationships, and handle other people’s reactions.
Many books have been written about how to get over the pain of a lost love, and most of those books have at least some useful advice that can benefit anyone weathering the end of a relationship, whether monogamous or poly. This book does not attempt to present a complete primer on surviving a breakup. However, the end of a poly relationship creates some unique challenges that require some creative solutions tailored to the polyamorous nature of the relationship.
“Self-care” covers a lot of territory and will look different for each person based on individual needs and desires, but it includes all the activities and behaviors you engage in to heal yourself after a painful ending to a valued relationship. This can mean reaching out to friends and family for support, joining a support group, or going to counseling. It could involve making art or music, playing sports, knitting or crafting, or any other hobbies or leisure activities that you enjoy. It could be spending time in nature or taking a vacation. For some people, taking a class or learning a new skill is very healing and restores self-esteem. Others may find great comfort through nurturing themselves with a massage, a nice dinner out, a new haircut, a weekend ski trip, or new carpentry tool. Don’t judge yourself during this very painful period of recovery. Instead, just keep asking yourself, “What would make me feel better right now, until I get through this?” As long as you are not neglecting important responsibilities like work or your children, go easy on yourself during this period of healing.
Sherina says, “I ate a lot of chocolate bars and nachos and watched a lot of escapist movies while I was getting over my divorce with Shelley. Most of our friends seemed to side with her in the divorce because they were not poly, and they mistakenly blamed my having another relationship for the demise of the marriage. The reality of the situation was that Shelley and I just became more and more incompatible as our relationship went on. We were able to gloss over those differences for the first couple of years, but after seven years together, we were constantly fighting about housework, money, sex, and stupid shit like what to cook for dinner. Opening up the relationship was Shelley’s idea, but her new lover dumped her after six months, and the fact that I had another lover was pretty irrelevant to our breakup. But she ended up with all our friends to hang out with, and I spent a lot of my time with my lover, Glenna. Luckily Glenna had been through a poly divorce herself, and she told me she spent three months doing nothing but going to work every day and then reading trashy novels every night, just to avoid thinking about the breakup. She was willing to sit in front of the TV with me and eat junk food and not expect too much from me. She understood that I just needed to zone out and distract myself from the pain. She told me as long as I could still go to work and bring home a paycheck so she wouldn’t have to support both of us, I could veg out for a couple of months and I would get through it. She was right of course, and pretty soon I started going to the gym again, and re-planting my vegetable garden, which had died completely while I was too much of a mess to even water it. I felt like I was returning to the land of the living, and even some of the friends started calling and wanting to resume our friendship. They apologized for ignoring me but said they were worried about Shelley because she was all alone, and since I had Glenna they thought I would be okay. I realized that a poly divorce is also tough on the friends. Once the worst was over, they reached out to me again.”
For Karen, losing her lover, Yassar, sent her into a spiral of depression. She was having trouble getting through the day at work without crying, and she couldn’t sleep at night. She was always thinking about Yassar and feeling that he left her because she somehow wasn’t good enough. She knew this was irrational, since their relationship had collapsed under the weight of the cultural differences between them, including religion, class, race, and a language barrier. Yassar had thought he could withstand the disapproval of his family, but he was racked with guilt about disappointing them by not marrying someone of his own religion and culture. In time, he started to withdraw from Karen, and eventually, he felt forced to end the relationship.
Karen’s other lover, Jeffrey, happened to be out of town on a month-long trip when Yassar left her, so he wasn’t available to provide comfort and distraction. Karen knew she needed a self-care program, so she went back to her previous therapist and learned some cognitive behavioral techniques to manage her depression more effectively. She started going swimming three times a week at the YMCA, since exercise had previously helped reduce her depression and insomnia. Her doctor prescribed a low dose of sleeping pills for a month, so she was able to get back on track with her sleep. She was gradually able to accept that there had been many obstacles to the success of her relationship with Yassar, and that most of these were out of her control. She stopped blaming herself for everything that went wrong in their relationship, and let go of some of the persistent self-criticism that had plagued her. By then, Jeffrey was back in town and suggested spending the weekend in bed together and ordering food. That turned out to be “just what the doctor ordered,” as Karen puts it.
Bettye felt rejected and crushed by her husband leaving her for his much younger girlfriend. “I had suspected from the start that his insistence on opening up our marriage was just the first stage of abandoning me, and I don’t think he really was poly,” she say. “I was angry at being jerked around for a year while he fell in love with her, and then dumped me. I always felt like I was the reliable, responsible wife at home who he counted on to take care of the house, the yard, the dog, and to do our taxes. After all those years of playing that role, I had been thrown overboard for this ‘shiny new toy.’ I decided I needed to do something totally out of character to remind myself that I am a vibrant and beautiful woman. I had always loved biking and other sports, and before I got married I had done a few triathlons. So I took a six-month leave of absence from my job, and spent the first four months training for a serious bike trip across Australia. It gave me a goal and something to focus my time and energy on, instead of just feeling bad about myself and moping about my ex and his cute, young girlfriend. My confidence and my self-esteem really increased, and by the time I got to Australia for the bike trip, I really didn’t even care about him anymore. I was having more fun than I had had in decades, and was becoming a person that I liked a whole lot more than the person I had been in the marriage. And it sure didn’t hurt that I met a hunky, Aussie biker and had a passionate love affair at the end of my trip.”
Brent had a similar approach to self-care. He had been living with his partner, Sampa, for nine years, and also had another girlfriend, Giara, who he had been involved with for four years. He had been in rock bands throughout his teens and 20s, but he gave it up because Sampa complained so much about him spending so many evenings at rehearsals and doing gigs. After 10 years, their relationship went down in flames due to her drinking problem and her running up their joint credit cards, leading to them both to declare bankruptcy. At first Brent literally felt suicidal, and could not imagine life without Sampa. Ending that relationship shook his foundation, and made him wonder if he could ever succeed in a committed, long-term relationship. Once they sold their house and he was living alone again, Brent started writing songs, connected with a few other musicians, and started playing some gigs around the city. He realized how much he had missed being part of a band and being on stage performing. He became convinced that he had given up too much of himself and his dreams in order to keep peace in his relationship, and decided that in any future relationship, he would not abandon his music.
Harold is a 72-year-old gay man and a psychologist who provides guidance to his clients on navigating open relationships. He says, “The straight people are actually quite late to the party with this poly thing. Gay men have been practicing open relationships for a long time, in my case, personally, for over 50 years, and many of us are pretty good at it. Part of the reason for that is that we don’t have the whole relationship-escalator baggage that the heterosexuals have, about how every relationship is supposed to lead to commitment, cohabiting, marriage, a house, kids, and a dog. Instead, we can allow each relationship to be what it naturally should be, and we have created pretty clear labels to help define that. For instance, a trick is someone you pick up at a bar or the baths or a park or cruising area and have (usually) anonymous sex with. A fuck-buddy is a good friend who you also have sex with, but the relationship is based primarily in friendship, not in romance. The friendship usually precedes the sexual relationship, and the friendship will continue long after the sex is over. A lover is someone you have a short, but very hot, fling with, like when you are on vacation or at a conference, or are staying somewhere for the summer or a semester abroad. A boyfriend is someone you are dating, either short-term or long-term, who may or may not become a serious relationship in the future. A husband is the person you live with and share finances with, the person you are planning on growing old with. And occasionally you might share other tricks or fuck-buddies with your husband, too.”
Harold strongly advises clarifying early on what the status of each relationship is, so that no one is under any illusions, and no one will be disappointed later on. “Straight people seem to think it is terribly cruel to gently and gracefully let someone know that they are a fuck-buddy or a boyfriend rather than a candidate for husband status. But leading them on and creating false expectations is much worse than just telling them the truth. If there are limits and constraints on any relationship, the kindest thing you can do is give someone the whole truth so they can make an informed choice about whether to get involved or not. If they know what they are getting into, they can choose to opt out now if they don’t like the situation, or they can sleep with you but not invest themselves in the relationship so they won’t get their heart broken, or constantly be annoyed that you’re not more available.”
While many gay men may quibble over some of Harold’s terms and definitions, there is a lot of consensus in the gay male community about different types of relationships and their specific role and status. As he says, “It doesn’t really matter what labels you use for each relationship, as long as each person in the pool with you agrees on what that term means.”
Harold has good advice about surviving a poly breakup: “Reach out to friends for support, ask them to include you in social activities, lunches, going out to clubs, and parties. Try not to rely too heavily on your other lovers to help you through this. They are probably really tired of hearing about this partner who dumped you, and they probably don’t particularly want to spend their dates with you holding your hand while you cry about this other guy you are so in love with who has done you wrong.”
Some poly people make the mistake of jumping back into dating new people when they are not really in any condition to start a new relationship. For some people, a few casual dates can be a lot of fun and help you feel desirable again when you are feeling rejected. However, you may not be thinking clearly, and it can be challenging to make good choices about who to date and what kind of relationship to have with them. And no one wants to feel like they are being used as a crutch while you are on the rebound, only to be dropped once you have recovered from the breakup and realized that you have nothing in common.
Pia says, “I had been with both of my partners for over 20 years, and then Rich dumped me for his other lover because she accidentally got pregnant and suddenly demanded monogamy. I had not done any dating for so long, I didn’t have a clue about OKCupid or Tinder or any other way to meet people besides going to a party or bar. I got a dating app and suddenly people were asking me for dates. I was like the kid in the proverbial candy store, and got myself in a lot of trouble dating random people who were all wrong for me. I ended up hurting a few people by dating them once or twice and then not knowing how to call it off. I actually had to get help from my 23-year-old daughter to learn the new etiquette and how it’s done nowadays. She taught me terms like ‘ghosting’ and, as she put it, ‘how not be a douche, Mom.’”