Tag: #lettinggo

Letting Go of “Primary”

“Collaboration has no hierarchy. The sun collaborates with the soil to bring flowers on the earth.” – Amit Ray

If you have been following my journey, you will know what a struggle this one has been for me. When I made the move from solo-polyamory to partnered polyamory I made a lot of assumptions about what that move meant. We both did. And we have been learning over the last several years that some of those assumptions weren’t the same, and that some don’t fit how one or both of us want to operate now. 

The most basic definition of hierarchy is “a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority”. Hierarchy exists everywhere. From political or religious structures, to families, to nature, everything has a ranking system. Even our own bodies are hierarchical, from cells all the way up to organ systems. We are surrounded by it, born to and raised in it, and it is such a consistent part of our lives that most of us don’t even question the need for it. 

But does that mean hierarchy should also exist in our relationships? 

170 years ago the world I live in would have looked very different. My parents would have found a man for me to marry (probably in exchange for some kind of livestock or other trade goods) and I would have moved from their home to his. Instead of answering to them I would answer to him. We would have had children, and possibly farmworkers, who would answer to him, and then only in his absence, to me. I would have lived my life as part of a hierarchy based on sexism, racism, and socioeconomic status and never would have questioned if there was another way. 

The world has changed a lot since then. It still has a long way to go, but it is trying. And one of the areas that is changing the most is relationships. 

I was lucky enough to be raised by parents who taught me that women are equal to men, and that the value you bring to a relationship isn’t your money or status, it is who you are as a person. My parents ran our home together, and if anything my mom was the authority, not my dad. Yes, my dad had a higher income and my mom spent my younger years at home raising kids, but it could not have been more obvious that my mom never felt or acted like she answered to my dad in any way. The concept of rank never entered their relationship, and because that is how I grew up, the idea of hierarchy within a two person relationship has never existed for me. My relationships are partnerships, and always have been.

So why is it so difficult for me to apply that same principle to polyamory? 

The best answer I can give is fear. Fear of being superseded. Fear of not having a say in decisions that are being made. Fear that my wants and desires will not be as important as someone else’s. Fear that I will not be as important as someone else. Fear of being replaced, discarded, or ignored.

The exact same fears a secondary partner feels in a hierarchical relationship. 

Are my fears more valid because I started dating my partner first? Should they hold more weight because we live together? Or spend more time together? Or sleep together most nights? Am I entitled to demand more from my partner than they give to any other partner simply because we have been together longer? Do I get to put rules and limits on their relationship so that I can feel safer in my own? Should my vote count for more, just because I’ve had one longer? 

The answer to all of these questions is no. 

We have already made huge strides towards egalitarian polyamory. I have no decision making power over my partners other relationships, and he has none over mine. We express our thoughts, opinions, and feelings, sometimes very emphatically and dramatically, but ultimately the decisions we make are our own, and are the ones we as individuals feel are best for each relationship. Sometimes one of us is hurt or left out in the decision, and sometimes the metamour is. There are no vetoes or hard limits, and we continue to push the boundaries of what each of us is comfortable with. It isn’t always easy, and some boundaries have moved faster than others, but it is a constant work in progress, and blanket “no”s never enter the picture. Do we choose each other more often than we choose others? Yes, for now at least. But it’s not because of a title we’ve given our relationship, or a set of rules we’ve imposed on it. It’s because as individuals that’s where we are choosing to focus our time and attention. 

I haven’t been practicing hierarchical polyamory for a while now. So why is the title that comes with it still so important to me? I have already let go of the control and privileges that come with it, so why do I still need the word, even knowing that it holds no meaning? Is the appearance of status and authority still important to me, even though the actual status and authority doesn’t come with it? 

Apparently. And now it’s time to let go of that too. 

Dating Depression

“You know, you can only actually help someone who wants to be helped.” – Jojo Moyes 

My first experience with dating and depression was when I found myself dating an old high school friend while I was battling depression. I was not aware that this was what I was going through at the time, but looking back at it now I was smack dab in the middle of what turned out to be a 10 year fight I didn’t know I was fighting. 

Large portions of that time and that relationship are gone from my memory, and the ones that remain are jumbled and confusing. I know we connected again through facebook, that he was living out of town at the time, and that he was the one who made all the effort to try and make things work. I don’t think it lasted very long, or that we saw each other very often, and I can’t remember what words or feelings we exchanged. I know I hurt him badly because he won’t speak to me now, but I can’t remember how or why. 

Depression, in all of its forms, is a mood disorder that affects the ability to function in day-to-day life. For many this includes feeling empty, hopeless, or numb; feeling restless, irritable, or anxious; thoughts of death or suicide; having low self esteem or feelings of guilt and worthlessness. For others it can mean difficulty concentrating or making decisions, low energy, changes in appetite or weight, headaches, sexual dysfunction, aches and pains, digestive problems, and unusual sleep patterns. It can result in agitation, irritability, an increased use of drugs or alcohol, self destructive behaviour, isolation, loss of control, and uncontrolled rage. 

My depression lasted a long time because I wouldn’t acknowledge it, and if you won’t acknowledge something you can’t deal with it and get better. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I started to see how much life I was missing out on living under this blanket of confusion and pain and fear. I’m sure there were people along the way who tried to help me, to talk about what I was going through, but I was so tightly wrapped up in it that ultimately I was the only one who could find my way out. So I reopened the old trauma wounds, explored all their dark and painful pockets, and did the work to clean them out enough that they could finally heal. The scars will always be there, and occasionally show in unexpected reactions or behaviour, but now shiny new skin has grown over them, and I can live and love as a whole person again. 

Not everyone has a type of depression that can be “healed”. My depression came as a result of unresolved trauma and is commonly known as situational depression. Some people suffer from clinical depression, which can still be caused by trauma, but can also come from physical factors, genetics, or from disturbances in the levels of certain chemicals in the brain. Clinical depression can last for a long time, and can even be a lifelong diagnosis.

Several years ago I entered into a long term relationship with a man who masked his depression very well. So well that for a long time he was even able to mask how bad it was from himself. He was a writer, a performer, and he presented himself as a high energy, social, excited about life person. And at the beginning he was, because that was who he wanted to be. He knew he had lots of issues and trauma to deal with, and sometimes they would come out as bad days or short periods of isolation, but those were on the ‘one day’ list of things to work on, not something he wanted to or was ready to deal with now.

The longer they stayed on that list, the more they affected him. We were very much in love, but in the end that didn’t really matter, because love isn’t the answer to depression. Our relationship became about me giving, and him taking. Not because he wanted to take, but because he was so knotted up inside that it became impossible for him to free up anything to give, and taking was all that was left to keep us connected. Our life became about what he needed, what he wanted to do, and what he was capable of. Our relationship stopped moving forward, and I ran out of things to give. I started pushing for the things I wanted and needed, and eventually he ended things. There was simply no energy left for me when it was all being used to hold his demons at bay. 

I took some time after that relationship to do some work on myself, so that I wouldn’t let another person put me through what I had just gone through, and so I could support the next person a little better. That was when I started to learn what was in my power to control, and what wasn’t. I went back to dating and kept picking the same guy I always had – the performer/musician/actor, or the funniest/loudest/most popular guy in the room. I have always been a sucker for charisma. But this time I recognized something common in all of them; they all had depression they weren’t dealing with. The charm and noise and show were all just very loud versions of masking, to hide from themselves and from the world all the shit they weren’t dealing with. This doesn’t stop me from wanting to be with them, or even from falling in love, but now I know enough to know what I can help with, what I can’t, what is because of me, and what has absolutely nothing to do with me, who I am, or how they feel about me. 

4 years ago I began a relationship with a man who continues to amaze me by showing me what living with long term depression can actually look like. He received his clinical depression diagnosis over a decade before we met and will most likely live with it for the rest of his life. He doesn’t try to pretend it isn’t there, doesn’t blame the world because he has it, and doesn’t demand that others make accommodations for it. Instead he continues to test the limits of what he can do and handle within it, pushes those boundaries as far as he can and as often as he can, and acknowledges and asks for help when there is something he can’t handle. He quietly and persistently fights a battle every day that most people don’t even know is happening, and he does it with a graceful strength that I hope one day to achieve. He has taught me that it isn’t wanting to help that is important; it’s being there when a person is ready and able to ask for and accept help that is what’s needed. That lesson is a gift I will never be able to thank him enough for giving me. 

I wish I could apologise to that friend from high school, that I could explain to him, with all of the knowledge I have now, what I was going through, why I couldn’t deal with it at the time, and why I wasn’t ready for the help he wanted to give. But that is not how life works. All I can do is forgive myself, forgive the people who have and will hurt me while on their own healing journeys, and hope that one day he might forgive me too. 

Letting Go

I am the first to admit, I have a hard time letting go. To be clear, I don’t mean I have a hard time ending something that isn’t working; I have no problem analyzing a situation and deciding it isn’t going to work, and I don’t have an issue communicating that. What I’m talking about is emotionally letting go once something is over. Whether it’s a romantic partner that didn’t work out or a friendship that became distant, I have a lot of difficulty allowing people to move out of my life on an emotional level. I continue to worry about them, wonder what they are up to, think of things I would like to say to them, and generally just keep them in my mind longer than I feel is healthy. And when I’m the one to make that decision, to make the call that something is over, it’s even harder, because then there is the guilt that comes from hurting them along with the rest. Losing someone, even if its someone I haven’t really known that long, is an almost physical pain for me. I feel the space they used to fill like an empty seat beside me for some time afterwards.

My last long term romantic relationship could have ended long before it did. We were both holding on for the wrong reasons, and things went on longer than they should have. As a result the ending hurt more than it needed to, and I held onto the pain from that for a very long time. I couldn’t let go of thinking about how he was doing, what could have been, and all the little things that had happened that had hurt me. It was my way of continuing to hold onto the relationship. If I was still being hurt by it, and still thinking about him all the time, then it wasn’t really over. At least not in my mind. 

I don’t only have this problem with romantic relationships. I’ve had friendships I have lost that have been just as important to me. I love my friends as much as I love my partners. They are the family that I choose. When friendships end it is harder on me in a lot of ways, because I can never understand why they need to end. Friendships don’t have the expectations on them that romantic relationships can have; friendships don’t need to meet perceived goals or timelines, they don’t require you to merge lives or to commit fully to each other in order to continue. Most of the pressures that end romantic relationships aren’t there in a friendship, and yet somehow they end anyway, either abruptly or by fading away. It is a type of rejection that I have a lot of trouble letting go of, because I have a hard time seeing as anything but a personal one. I continuously wonder what I did to push them away, or what I was lacking in keeping them interested. 

So how do I deal with it? I’ve learned over the years that it is important to mourn the end of a relationship without obsessing over it, whatever type of relationship it was. Let the feelings of sadness, loss, and even guilt run their course; don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t feel that way. You are allowed to feel the way you do, wonder what they are doing, and replay any moments that you want to. Accept the feelings, acknowledge them, really feel them, and then let them go. Take as much time as you need. The important thing is that you don’t act on them, and that you don’t let them consume you. Don’t become angry or bitter, don’t obsessively stalk anyone in person or online, don’t blame yourself for everything that goes wrong in their lives, and don’t wallow in your memories. Don’t try to keep someone in your life that isn’t there anymore. Take the time to clean out that empty seat, so that someone else can sit there.