polyfucked part I

on knowing what you want

I once had a boyfriend, except I didn’t call him that for a really long time because that was the kind of girl I was then. One day, he sat opposite me on a bench infront of an unnoteworthy burger restaurant and I told him that when he turned 50, I’d call him my boyfriend and I was looking forward to it. I enjoyed the thrill of making a low-key commitment/plee to the fickle future and we both laughed.

We’d been seeing each other for 2 years and we had 2 years to go.

This week the turning 50 thing happened but I wasn’t there to knight him with his new title. And he won’t be reading this now, because he told me recently he thought it was for the best that he unfollow me on the internet. I wish he hadn’t, because I liked revealing things to him here that I’d hid behind witty comments whilst sitting on benches outside restaurants.

The truth is, in the summer before last we skipped ahead and named the thing before the big birthday afterall, due to the impactful turn of events being that he had just said yes to someone else when she asked if she could be his girlfriend, saying to me ‘you’re my girlfriend too’ whilst blindly anticipating a smooth and easy adjustment to this new normal. Of course, I was devastated and in the end it all panned out so differently than we’d imagined.

On the phone today my sister reminded me that there are some people out there who’s idea of hell is having multiple partners. That some people are not trying to fall in love every waking second of their life and do not need to spread themselves romantically. She told me that some of those people even live expansive, satisfying lives full of intimate friendships and a sense of well taken care of freedom, despite having settled on just the one. And I felt myself exhale as I imagined what that might be like.

I remember unfollowing someone on instagram once because she had posted that all polyamorous relationship styles were rooted in unresolved wounds and trauma. But it apparently didn’t matter that I cut her out of my social media life because it made a lasting impression on me anyway. I know that there was more truth in what she’d written than not, in fact I think it’s obvious now that I’m out of the echo-chamber. And look, I wouldn’t say that all polyamory is trauma based, just like I wouldn’t say that all couples are trauma based despite the evident lack of perfect pain-free childhoods in so many of us.

But I do want to tell my story because it is one of awakening and emboldening true desire, and doing the work not only of imagining it, but of believing I can have it and no longer feeling victimised or crippled by fear around the things I actually want.

Before I go any further, I want to clarify a few things:

1. I don’t regret the process it took for me to get here, not one little bit.

2. I am not prescribing or rejecting any specific way of relating for myself or for anyone else, I am advocating for the brave and imperative work of knowing yourself intimately and not abandoning it.

3. I am radical in my way of trying things and the pride I take in that has been to my detriment at times, but it has meant that I really gave it my all whilst sometimes missing obvious signs.

4. I have hurt myself and others deeply as I figured this stuff out, and I have been hurt by others too.

5. Acknowledging that some actions and choices are rooted in wounds, doesn’t always mean you change what you’re doing. Sometimes knowledge is power enough to take care of it and keep trying for something, and sometimes it isn’t. Ultimately the choices we make should come down to a combination of knowing what your capacities are (as in can your nervous system hold it or are you constantly overwhelmed?) and from there being clear about your consent and its limits.

6. I think I always knew, but I had to go through this anyway.

So, how did I get here?

My first love was a girl 3 years above me at school called LT who I was completely obsessed with. I loved kissing her in secret on our lunchbreaks at school. After me, she played with the attention of my sister, my best friend and subsequently another girl from our friendship group who she is now married to. She used to put her hand between my legs underneath a jacket in the back seats of the car, both of us believing nobody could see, and after it ended between us I knew that she was doing that with the others too. I don’t remember how I got over it, but I did because I was 13.

After her, a rapid coming of age saga took ahold and my sexuality felt like the first time ever knowing power in my life. I loved the attention I got when I swayed my hips through the shopping centre and the way my older brothers friends would pretend not to notice until they simply couldn’t resist anymore. Being sexually adventurous and liberated (which at that time meant untamed promiscuity and saying yes to everything) became my weapon and my protection.

At 16 I met JJ. A tall, handsome, extremely arrogant boy from a neighbouring school that I used to notice in town from time to time. A mutual friend introduced us and we’d have loud sex in the tiny apartment he shared with his mum. I had my first orgasm with him and I was hooked, on him and on orgasms. When speaking about girls, he and his friend P used to say ‘b-b-c’ which was short for ‘bitches be crazy’ and I was determined to be so cool that they would never dream of saying that about me. Which meant a lot of swallowing down feelings and laughing things off. I was devasted when he called to tell me he’d slept with someone else. There was a lot of drama and ultiamtely we broke up and that time it felt like it took me ages to get over it. I remember lying on my Mum’s bed crying about him and her sage advice was that I needed to go out and get fucked, and I’m pretty sure she meant sex, not booze.

At 19 I met L. We were put together at random in a student flat share with 5 others. He was a rugby lad from devon with a nice ass and we became good friends. It was much safer to be friends with the rugby team than not, due to their use of extreme sexism and mysogyny as entertainment, but L was kind to me and we took care of each other. It came as a surprise when we hooked up, and we kept it a secret even at the bar we both worked in, but in the end we let it out and we were together for 5 years. I called his armpit ‘the nook’ and he called me ’grumpy grace’ when I was in a mood and thinking about that now still makes me feel warm. We were one of those couples that made sense to everyone and a stable part of a large friendship group. I loved him very much, but deep down I was restless and often questioning if we should be toegether. We split up sadly but amicably and although at the time he was convinced we’d get back together, we went our separate ways.

That was the last monogamous relationship to date, and it included threesomes and foursomes and several secret snogs with strangers, plus I’d put money down that he slept with at least one other person during our relationship and never told me, but I’ll never know and I don’t need to know.

Following the break up with L, I did the whole quit my job, leave my flat and move to India thing. That was 11 years ago, and the start of a very explorative, adventurous, spiritual home coming that included a lot of the kind of sex that would make for a really excellent trashy novel that, much to the disappointment of my friends who witnessed it, I will never ever write.

The gist of that never to be written novel is several hard and fast crushes and even harder faster burnouts. Including one married man, one student on the course I was teaching, a lifeguard, one guitarist who wrote me a song and posted it on facebook (turns out grace is a great name for a muse), a mystical poet from New York twice my age, a wild women from Magdeburg, a psychedlic couple from Berlin who became family and a face I will never ever forget that smiled at me on the tram to Sysiphos.

In every affair I was well intended but, with zero capacity for real intimacy, I left many hearts broken. It was my comfort zone, to be utterly desireable and utterly uncontainable. And yet, I was beginning to uncover a deeper yearning for something that felt more real and less performative.

After leaving India in 2017, I found myself in Berlin and quickly immersed in a new love I’d met on my way there. Determined as I was to break the pattern of burnt out crushes, I announced to him that I knew how this was going to go and I couldn’t do it to myself again. To which D said, some 2 weeks into knowing each other, ‘OK well why don’t we just see how it goes, and if it gets to the point where you want to leave, just promise me you’ll say something before you disappear'. And that caught me off guard and I liked the idea of letting things unfold and so he became my partner and from the beginning we agreed we were open and we let the boundaries be loose and flexible and took the approach of ‘take it as it comes’.

I used to close my eyes and imagine his face in great detail when we were apart, which since I was abroad alot for work, was often.

Maybe it’s obvious to you, dear reader, but I don’t know why I was so afraid of commitment. I don’t know why I couldn’t take a risk and be brave and instead I took refuge in my own delluded idea that the most desireable thing I could be was fluid, boundaryless and needless. But I do know that it lead to a fierce inner-conflict where, despite living together and spending nearly all our time together, I could not reply with ‘same’ when D told me he imagined us old together, and I certainly could not picture moving to England with him if I ever chose to return.

To this point, Polyamory had meant a few kinky nights together, one almost falling inlove at first sight with someone who already had two partners, plus one or two flings and flirts. But it did not yet mean radical honesty, it definitely didn’t mean more independence and it did not mean having everything I ever dreamed of. In fact, looking back it was a place to continue avoiding intimacy whilst performing liberalism and although we talked and talked and talked, I often did not actually express my needs or take proper responsibility for them. There are many reasons why the relationship with D ended, but I can’t help but wonder if it would have gone differently, had either of us been brave enough to lay down some hard lines.

It was towards the end of that relationship that I met the now ex boyfriend who’s big birthday just passed. And it was this whole glorious, beautiful meeting, and all the careless ways that we destroyed it, that finally gave me the courage to admit to what I really want…