Polyamory Week 2021
You can find all posts for Polyamory Week 2021 here.
Welcome to Polyamory Week 2021!
Last year, the Instagram account @polyamoro.us shared a post inviting those within the polyamorous community to join them in seven days of posts to share awareness and celebrate our lifestyle.
It was great timing for me. At the time, my partner and I had only recently come out publicly as Polyamorous. I was confident there must have been many people in my life who must have been curious, or at least had questions, but felt far too “English” to actually ask. Or perhaps they were afraid of how explicit the answers might be.
So I posted each day of Polyamory Week 2020, outlining exactly what polyamory was and detailing exactly how it worked. For me, it was a celebration. I was coming out to the people in my life about a choice that went against societal expectations and why I was proud to do so.
For those interested, all my posts for Polyamory Week 2020 can be found here.
And I received a lot of good feedback from family and friends. Some told me how proud they were I was being so open about it all. Others were simply enjoyed learning about something new.
But I also received a message from a friend who made a very interesting point:
I also wondered if it might help people a lot if you talked more about how you felt when you were struggling to find your connections […] it felt like there was an aspect missing to give a more rounded picture.
And they were right. My posts had been intended to be a celebration and purposefully did not touch on the harder side of things. But that is a side that should still be acknowledged.
Ethical-non-monogamy is no different from any other lifestyle. As much as it has brought me no end of happiness, there is no glorious utopia. It’s not an exclusive club, where all the members happily swap partners in a whirlwind of romance, sex, and personal fulfillment.
Polyamory is hard. It can be lonely. There is a world of hurt waiting for the unprepared.
And thanks to the way society has conditioned us about relationships, I don’t believe anyone goes into ethical non-monogamy fully prepared.
And while I had already decided on this theme, it has been given extra poignancy by the fact my marriage ended last year. And I wonder how many people wonder how much our polyamory played a part in that. If any.
So this year I’m going to delve a little into the darker side of polyamory and all the missteps, misconceptions, and misadventures that await you.
What can go wrong? How many different ways can you get hurt? How do you learn when there are no templates or traditions to follow? What parts do you think you’ll be okay with but will actually crush your soul?
Yep. This is going to be a fun week.
I’ll try to keep it informative rather than depressing. In no way will any of this be an indication I’ve soured on polyamory. It’s still my life, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I don’t get something tattooed on my arm without being absolutely certain it’s not a fad.
But it’s important to remember that nothing wonderful comes without payment. And part of education involves looking at things from every angle.
So, once again, welcome to Polyamory Week 2021! Check back here each day for a new post, and let me know what you think about the topics I discuss.
