Poly Pathways

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.

Hello Poly Pathways listeners.

This is Kat here.

I wanted to jump in and tell my story.

Doc and I are doing this separately because we have our own origin stories on how we came

to poly.

So my disclaimers, because I always want to start with my disclaimers.

And of course, you know who we are and who we identify as definitely sets the stage for

how we communicate and how we navigate relationships.

So I identify as a demisexual, occasionally bisexual, if people don't know what that means.

Bisexual to me means I don't really care what you look like and what your plumbing is.

It's really more about how we make each other feel and how we vibe with each other.

So I am a white woman.

I live in the United States in a historically blue state, if you know what that means.

My upbringing was actually in a pretty lower class neighborhood, not really a safe space.

You know, I experienced some food insecurity as a child and things like that.

So I did not really have financial privilege.

My parents did not pay for college or anything like that.

They didn't even go to college.

I am currently legally married to a Cyhat man and dating another Cyhat man, both of

which are monogamous to me by their choice and identify as polyamorous.

So we do have two young children together and can pass as a nuclear family, which is

great in some cases and in other cases not so great.

And generally I don't talk a lot about my career because I do have success in my career

and my professional life is potentially at risk from outing myself in this way.

But how I came to polyamory is actually more important.

I was one of those people that kind of said, you know, I always really liked having connections

with people.

They were kind of weird.

They were kind of unconventional.

And I had a roommate in college who first introduced me to the term.

And at the time I said to myself, oh, really, that's not for me.

I don't really understand that.

No, I just want to get one boyfriend.

Why would I want, you know, more boyfriends?

You know, I wasn't really open about my sexuality at that time.

So it really was, you know, I just want to get a boyfriend and whatever.

But even when I have those relationships, when I was in a relationship with my boyfriend,

I always felt like I was still looking and not looking for something else, but just open

to those conversations and open to those relationships in other ways.

So when I finally got the language kind of as an adult to say, you know, what that was

like, it wasn't that I wanted more.

It wasn't a, you know, do everything.

It was always the concept of why not both?

As a kid growing up, I was always like, why can't I have two flavors of ice cream?

You know what I mean?

And I think that's my natural curiosity of wanting to experience the world in its fullness

and as in its richness.

I believe there's so many different levels and values that you can have there that the

whole concept of there's only one right way to do something, it doesn't really resonate

with me.

So cupping forward a few years, few relationships, obviously, I got married and did the, you

know, whole picket fence thing.

And, you know, I would say a couple of years ago, I started a relationship with somebody

that I had a really close relationship with, similar to the one that I had with my roommate,

where I would just classify it as confusing.

We are very emotionally enmeshed, you know, we are very, very close.

I will say it was not a sexual relationship.

You know, I actually believe that person is pretty much asexual or on the scale of asexuality,

similar in my way to my dummy sexuality, but slightly different.

And it didn't really matter.

We were just really, really close.

Outside optics would have said, "Oh, this person is your boyfriend, you're dating.

We travel together.

We hung out a lot.

He was kind of really involved with my family."

When that relationship fell apart and ended up not working out for completely other reasons,

I realized, "Oh, I can have fully functioning relationships that feel really close with

multiple people."

And it was kind of the aha moment where I really started to poke at, you know, what

polyamory is.

Luckily, the algorithms were kind enough to serve me all of that stuff.

Once you search for it once, the internet remembers.

So really, I kind of started poking that a little bit and was wondering, like, is that

really who I am, a person that values multiple levels of relationships, you know, and can

find a way to navigate those safely?

So I had that relationship with that human for about three years.

And you know, even when it fell apart, I was like, "All right, let me rediscover who I

am."

And a few months after that, I had actually already been talking to someone who I had

also known for about three years in a more professional setting.

So we were not friends at the time, but we were moving towards friendship because we

had a lot in common, we had a lot of similar interests, and we overlapped a lot in what

we like to talk about when we're interested in.

And these were traits that I did not see, you know, in my husband.

My husband is a wonderful, fabulous person.

Of course, I'll talk about him quite a bit.

But you know, my interests are so wide and so varied.

I have ADHD, so of course I have 8,000 hobbies, right, and a million things of interest.

And one of those things, you know, a lot of those things didn't overlap with my husband.

They overlapped with this other human.

And the more we talked and the more we got to know each other, I realized, "Hey, I

really want to be friends with you."

And then very quickly I realized, "Oh, my friendship, I am actually attracted to you."

Like, my demisexuality was very much activated where I enjoyed this person so much that I

could see myself getting close to them in a manner.

So through a series of conversations, eventually that's where the relationship ended.

And that was three and a half years ago and bloomed into, you know, a fully functioning

relationship.

And did we, you know, did we make mistakes along the way?

Of course, everybody makes mistakes.

And this was my real fully, full-on embracing my polyamorous mindset.

My husband said, "Oh, I should have always known.

Like I always knew there was parts of yourself you were not acknowledging and going with."

But you know, it wasn't a surprise.

It was not a surprise, you know, to the people who know me best.

They were like, "Oh, that makes total sense.

I get it."

So really I looked at it more of like, "Wow, this is a great way to have all these beautiful

connections."

A few years into that relationship, I would say about a year ago, I started seeing someone

else, a woman that I had met through polyamorous groups locally.

We dated for about a year or so, but the distance was a little bit hard.

And we ended up parting just because there was a misalignment, I think, in values and

what we really wanted and what we were actually able to give at that time.

That person was also married, you know, had kids, had other, you know, priorities and

things like that.

But a lot of what I've learned through these past several years of having these types of

relationships is how powerful it can be to tell your story, to claim some of those labels.

I used to find labels restricting.

You know, I always used to say I like who I like and I really don't, you know, care.

And I was hesitant to claim, you know, the label of bisexuality or demisexuality or pansexuality.

I was just like, "Yeah, no, I just am how I am."

And the same thing with polyamory.

It was just, "No, I just love people and, you know, love people in different ways and

navigate a little bit differently."

But now I'm finding more empowerment with claiming those labels.

Even the challenges that come with claiming those labels.

You know, you'll have some people when you say to them, "Oh, you're polyamorous," and

they'll say, "Oh, you're just greedy," or "Oh, you just can't decide," or "Oh, you're

just dating around."

There's a lot of negative connotations around it if people don't fully understand.

And that was why I was so drawn to Doc's story.

Doc and I go way back, all the way to early days of getting into running together.

We actually both ran our first marathons together.

I ran half of his on the relay and he was at the finish line for mine.

So it was so compelling to me when he's like, "Hey, we should do a podcast together because

we talk about this stuff a lot."

He's kind of my sounding board.

When I have questions about polyamory, when I'm questioning my own relationships, when

I'm experiencing some of those challenges, and we realized, I think, together how isolating

it can be to have an actual connection with someone on a friendship level that you can

talk about these things with.

I'm betting if you're listening to this, you're poly or polycurious and you probably have

a lot of friends, but they might be a little not willing to discuss things in this way.

Your single friends might be like, "Wow, I can't even get one date."

And you're over here with your two guys or two guys, three partners, whatever you got.

And then your more monogamous, wired friends that are in a relationship are uncomfortable

because you're challenging their ideas of how relationships are supposed to work.

And they're on one tap and you're on another.

So I think that sounding board, that community is what we're trying to build with PolyPathways.

I am blessed to have that with Doc.

And I think together we can kind of share some of what that means to this community.

So thank you for being here.

Thank you for listening to my story.

And thank you for being here with us on our journey.

We'll talk soon.

Thank you for listening.

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