Welcome to the Poly Pathways Podcast, helping you create paths for practical polyamory. Your hosts are Kat and Doc. We're glad you're here. Hi friends, it's Doc, and I wanna share with you my polyamory origin story. I've met a lot of people in poly who have come to it at different places in their life. They've come to it through various levels of confusion and conflict and celebration. And my story is certainly no different. I came to polyamory later in my life. It was at the end of a long marriage to someone who I care very deeply for, and I'm happy to say that we can coexist and co-parent successfully for the benefit of our family. The end of that marriage came during the pandemic. Those several years really pressurized our relationship. It exacerbated the frustrations and tensions that we had. It compromised our mental wellbeing and forced us into making really difficult choices. As the marriage ended and we parted company, I went into therapy and reflection and started to think about not only that relationship, which is very important to me, but all of the relationships that I've had in my life. As I look back on them, I noticed an overarching theme of confusion. Cat calls these confusing connections, and I think that's a really apt description. That confusion really stems from my misunderstanding of how I could have explored those connections and relationships naturally. I grew up in a monogamous world for a very long time. My friends group, my family, my community was all monogamous. The societal pressures and mononormativity said you can't explore that relationship because you're in one already, or you can't explore that connection because you have to have the full relationship experience and jump on the escalator. It didn't allow me to explore my connections with people the way that I wanted to all of the time. There were times though, where those connections, the needs or the wants or the hurt that I wanted to heal was so powerful that through the mononormative lens, I was beyond my agreements that I made in my relationships. I hurt people and that sucks. And I work every day to make that better. It's also at this time where I met my now long-term partner who introduced me to the idea of polyamory. Partly because this was what she was feeling in the world. And it started to make sense given the lens of our relationship and given the lens of all of these confusing connections that I had. Simultaneously, my social media algorithm was also filling up with messages of polyamory, maintaining ethical and successful multiple loving relationships. It was filling up with messages of being authentic to who you are in your love and your life and your connections with other people. It had struck a chord with me. And it was at this point that my longtime friend, Kat, re-entered the picture. A message on Instagram. Hey, I don't know what you're going through, but it sounds familiar. And I wanted just to share with you my story. All of these synchronicities gave voice to this amorphous feeling that I had in my heart. That I was able to love multiple people because I had loved multiple people at the same time. I never saw love as that of sacrifice. I saw it as that of plentitude. I saw it of being able to give more and more in my life. And how one relationship can benefit all relationships. I finally had a way in the world. I finally had a way to describe how I love these people. How I want the best for them. How I want to have this connection in this style with this person because it's what makes sense and it's what flows for us. And yet with this person, I want something else. It was amazing. It was enlightening. And it was like this weight had been lifted off my shoulders. This cloak of monogamy had been removed so that I could now see the world through the lens of who I was authentically. And that was polyamorous. I am by no means perfect in polyamory. And I don't think anybody is. I learn every single day about maintaining relationships. I'm challenged often by mononormative thinking, by frustrations and envies and jealousies, insecurities and challenges that multiple loving relationships have. But I'm also able to be present and celebrate all the joys that polyamory has brought to my life. The ability to love many, many people in many ways. To build a community of people that can support one another. That can truly love one another. Not just for who they are, but for what they're going through and what their challenges are. This level of awareness fit so tightly with how I've lived my life professionally and personally for so long. It just felt and feels absolutely natural even today. Since discovering polyamory, and with lots and lots of therapy, I've been able to go back through my relationships and better understand the choices that I made given the information and the knowledge that I had at the time. It's helped me to better understand my inner workings and my mindset at the time. It's helped me to make better choices today because I have new language, I have new knowledge, and I have new rules that I can follow to be a better person in relationships, in love, and in life. I'm now able to successfully manage multiple loving relationships in my life. To deal with the joys and wonders of those relationships. To work through the ruptures and the tensions that they may present in time. I'm fortunate that I am loved and love multiple people. The reason I feel my origin story is important to share is because I encounter a lot of people in polyamory who arrived at it in a very same or similar way to me. They came to it later in life. They came to it after living a very monogamous lifestyle with mononormative thinking, both good and bad, for a very long time. They were outside the agreements of the relationships and confused by that. They were confused how they could love multiple people and that it wasn't having an impact. They didn't understand why love also meant sacrifice when in fact it didn't and doesn't. The more people that I talk to, the more my own story resonates with me. I was able to, through forgiveness and therapy and making amends and better understanding and reflection, provide myself the grace that I needed in order to move on with my life. While I carry with me the wounds of monogamy and mononormative thinking, I also have given myself the permission to move on and forward in my life and live more authentically as a polyamorous person. If this story resonates with you or it's something that you can understand, then I'm here for you. And I wanna continue the conversation. I'm always just blown away at the amount of things that polyamory has done in my life and will do in my life. It's part of why we started this podcast, because there are multiple paths through polyamory. No one arrives here from the same place. No one's following the same rules or blueprint. We're all just creating paths to successful polyamory. And I'm glad you're here. And I'm glad you're part of this community and part of this conversation. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing and follow us at PolyPathwaysPodcast on all the social medias that you enjoy.
