Most polyamorous people who have created successful and healthy relationships will humbly acknowledge that they have had a few disastrous and painful breakups along the way. Luckily, many have learned from their mistakes and developed a skill set that has helped them select appropriate partners, and to be good partners themselves. This steep learning curve has helped them figure out what model of open relationships they want, improved their communication with partners, and given them enough practice to develop the strong interpersonal skills required for sustaining poly relationships.
This is especially true for older people who pioneered open relationships during an era when few resources existed. Buddy says, “My wife, Estelle, and I were stumbling in the dark trying to have what we called an open marriage in the 1980s and 90s, before the internet existed and there were literally no books about it, and the word “polyamory” had not been invented yet. Even though we lived in New York City, we could not find any therapist who knew anything, and, in fact, they were all very hostile to anything outside of traditional monogamy and said we must be sex addicts or mentally ill to even be trying this.”
Estelle says, “I have a lot of regrets because I fell in love with a married man, and his wife eventually divorced him because she decided she wanted monogamy. I have apologized to her for the pain this caused her, and tried to make amends, but the reality is that we had no idea what we were doing, and no one to give us any guidance. My lover is still with me, and he is living with us now. Of course he was devastated when his wife left him, but he says he knows now that they could never be happy together because he is polyamorous by nature.
“My husband also has a really wonderful 20-year relationship with his other partner, and our marriage continues to be strong.”
Buddy says, “It’s amazing to me that now there are poly Meetup groups, therapists, websites, blogs, and potlucks. So poly people now have some help to avoid a lot of the mistakes we made. I had a girlfriend for several years during the 1990s, and one day she suddenly got this look of horror on her face and said, ‘You and Estelle are just making this up as you go along, aren’t you?’ It had apparently just dawned on her that we had no road map, and were doing the best we could to make this work.”
Estelle adds, “Everyone in our large poly community here in New York seems to see us as role models since we have a successful long-term marriage and happy concurrent relationships. We try to remind them that we inadvertently hurt some people along the way, because of our lack of skills and knowledge about ourselves and polyamory. We really encourage people to take the poly workshops and classes, read the books, get therapy, to utilize all the poly resources out there, so they won’t hurt other people by being incompetent like we were.”
Shane says, “I grew up in Wyoming on a cattle ranch in the early 1960’s, in a very traditional rural community. Even during high school, I knew that regardless of which girl I was dating, I constantly wanted the other girls, too! I felt very guilty, and thought there must be something wrong with me, because I could never be totally satisfied with one woman.
“I moved to Chicago to go to college, and got involved in the kink/leather scene there. I met a few gay men who had multiple partners in a BDSM context of having a boyfriend, as well as having another man who was a submissive. These guys had it totally together, living in BDSM families as triads and quads, and I was so impressed with them. This made me realize I was not the only guy in the world who wanted more than one partner, and maybe I wasn’t such a total freak to need that. I fell in love with two fantastic women. One was a switch, and the other was submissive, and I tried having a relationship with both of them. I royally screwed up both relationships because I didn’t know how to talk about my needs and desires, or how to be completely honest and transparent about everything. I lost both of them, since I had no idea how to manage the needs and demands of two relationships, and I was constantly letting them down.”
After a period of despair and introspection, Shane realized he needed help. “I couldn’t find a therapist with any knowledge or expertise in open relationships, and the few therapists I talked to thought I was a drooling psychopath for being into BDSM,” he says. “I started having sessions with a professional dominatrix to learn from her, and she agreed to take me on as a student and to mentor me. She taught me the skills to being a good dominant, and how to take care of a submissive, as well as how to meet the emotional needs of more than one woman. She jokingly called what she was teaching ‘Kindergarten women skills for clueless straight guys.’
“As a result, I have been able to have the successful poly life I previously only dreamed of, with two committed primary relationships with two wonderful women. Each partner also has other partners, we have great communication, and everyone is pretty happy. I wish I had had some way of learning those skills before, because it would have saved me, and my previous partners, a lot of pain. But at that time, it was almost impossible to find information or tools for having open relationships.”
Lise says, “It’s hard to admit that you’ve made a mess of your relationships, but it’s the first step to learning how to do it better the next time. How could any of us possibly know how to ‘do’ successful poly relationships? Even though I went to high school during the 1980s, it’s not like they taught us any relationship skills in our Health or Sex Ed classes. And when I was in college you certainly didn’t see a class about open relationships, or even about monogamous relationships.
“And yeah, the monogamous people mess up relationships, too, nobody gives them a clue either on how to be a good partner or how to pick the right partners. My mother sat me down around age 13 and told me to use birth control if I have sex, and told me that condoms would protect me from getting AIDS, and that was about it for any training on sex and relationships. And, being a lesbian, the advice about birth control and condoms was not very useful to me. Love relationships are very complex, and it takes years to build a poly skill set. Unfortunately we had to do it through trial and error.”
Lise expresses regrets about “dragging my girlfriend through years of confusion and aggravation, because I would try so hard to be monogamous because I thought that was the only option. Then of course I would meet another irresistible woman and I would cheat, and feel guilty, and promise never to do it again.” Her partner, Carinne, says, “I wish someone had sat Lise down and just told her, ‘hey, it’s fine to want more than one partner, it’s okay, just figure out how to do it in a mature, responsible way, without driving everyone bonkers.’ She went to therapists who told her she had a love addiction and needed a 12-step recovery program, but she really just needed to wake up and realize she was just not a monogamous chick! Duh!! She gradually learned how to be in a relationship with me, living with me and keeping her commitments to me, and also manage her time and energy well enough to have another girlfriend and keep her happy, too.”
Lise adds, “If we decide to have kids, we will definitely explain to them that being monogamous or being poly are equally valid lifestyles. Nowadays, more and more parents are telling their children that being gay or straight are both okay as a sexual orientation, but I wish they would also present non-monogamy as being just as acceptable as monogamy. That could save the next generation of poly people a lot of angst.”
Ray lives in a small town in the UK, about two hours from London, and he says, “I made a bloody mess of my first poly relationship because we were trying to magically create something out of whole cloth, something we had never seen and had no idea how to do.” He and his partner, Chelsea, are both bisexual and they thought it would be great for two bisexual couples to live together, and create a family together. This was the early 1990s, and they didn’t have the internet yet in the rural area where they lived, so they placed discreet personals ads in alternative newspapers and in newsletters of swingers clubs to meet other couples.
Through the ads, they met a married couple who lived in London. Leonard was bisexual but his wife, Hallie, was straight. They became friends and eventually lovers, and started traveling by train to spend weekends together. Ray noticed that Hallie always had several drinks before having sex with him, and because she seemed very lukewarm about it, Ray was ambivalent about pursuing a sexual relationship with her. Ray and Leonard tended to have a lot of sex because they were quite enthusiastic about each other. Chelsea started to feel ignored and left out. She knew Hallie was straight and that they would not be having a sexual relationship, but she had expected a friendship, and was very disappointed that Hallie stayed inebriated during their weekends together and was not much of a companion. And when Chelsea and Leonard tried to have sex, Hallie had anxiety attacks and they had to stop. It became clear pretty quickly that Leonard and Ray had a fantastic relationship, but no one else in this foursome did. They gave up trying to have a “couple-to-couple relationship,” and Leonard and Ray continued to meet for sex and friendship a few times a month as their schedules allowed. Chelsea was eventually able to connect with other bisexual women through an LGBT center in London that had a monthly bi women’s potluck. She fell in love with a woman she met through the group, and they developed an ongoing relationship.
Chelsea says, “Things didn’t turn out the way we planned, but we had no role models so we just had to stumble around trying things that didn’t work, until we found the right partners and allowed things to develop more organically.” Ray adds, “We had this fantasy about meeting the perfect couple and falling in love and living happily ever after, but real life is much more complicated! I mean, what is the likelihood that all four people are going to really have chemistry, and really like each other and be compatible to live together? I’m sure some people get lucky, but most probably don’t! We just had to take a step back and acknowledge that Leonard and I had fallen in love and had great chemistry as well, and now that relationship has survived for 25 years. He is still married to Hallie, and she is fine with him having a relationship with a man, but doesn’t want him to have any other female partners. She is much happier not participating in anything sexual with him, as it triggers too much jealousy and insecurity for her.”
Many people going through the heartbreak of a poly breakup find themselves doubting whether polyamory could ever work for them, and are fearful of trying again. However, most poly people discover that once they recover from the grief of losing a beloved, they feel more hopeful. And usually they have learned a lot from the experience and have a better skill set for making their next relationship work. It’s healthy and normal to mourn the end of a precious relationship, and it can shake your confidence in yourself and in your decision to pursue a polyamory life. But don’t despair! Open relationships are complex and require skill and practice, and you are much more likely to be successful the next time.