In the past couple months, I’ve been doing a lot of introspection. I turned 33 in October and my mantra for this year is “growth”. One of the things I’ve discovered about myself pertains to the way in which I internally label my relationships with the people in my life.

A couple years ago, I met a guy on a dating site. At the time, I wasn’t actively seeking any new relationships, but I received a message from someone who looked interesting and we started conversing. As we communicated more, I grew excited for the possibilities of a substantial relationship forming. We went on a date and hit it off extremely well. On our second date, we communicated about what our hopes and expectations were for the relationship. For me, there was no limit. I could see the relationship developing into a “boyfriend” situation.

Side note: labels

In polyamory, some people like labels, some people hate labels. Boyfriend, girlfriend, partner…what’s the difference? Does it matter? For me, I find that labels help me differentiate the capacity in which someone is entangled in my life when talking about various partners to others. Someone I refer to as a boyfriend/girlfriend is someone with high entanglement. We talk every day, we see each other as often as we can, we may spend holidays together – essentially they become part of the family. Partners without that label are partners whose lives are less entangled with mine. While we still enjoy each other’s company, we don’t see each other on a regular basis.

For him, even though he was polyamorous, he hadn’t ever loved anyone aside from his wife. He practiced hierarchical parallel polyamory and was more so looking for someone to meet up with every once in a while to go on a fun date and enjoy each other’s company. Anything outside of that was outside of his comfort zone. I acknowledged this and we agreed that we were both open to dating on that level.

What I didn’t realize was at that moment, I placed that relationship in a box. Subconsciously, I told myself that “this person doesn’t want entanglement or love” and I created a line that I would never let the relationship cross over.

Fast forward one year, and we’re out for drinks at our favorite wine bar. He grabs my hand and tells me that he’s had such a great year with all our dates, and he felt he was wanting to take our relationship “to the next level”. Fun fact about polyamory, the traditional “relationship escalator” that is standard in monogamous relationships is totally out the window. As Jessica Fern describes in PolySecure, showing commitment in polyamorous relationships often isn’t the same as how those in monogamous relationships show commitment. Commitment in monogamous relationships may include marriage, buying a house together, and having kids. Commitment in a polyamorous relationship may include sharing intimate details, taking a trip together, helping each other with a move or with a project, and making the person a priority¹. With all this in mind, and knowing that commitment can look totally different to each person, I asked him what “the next level” meant for him. He said he wanted more entanglement; he wanted to move more towards my idea of a “boyfriend”. Knowing that was what I had wanted a year prior, I happily agreed.

As the months went on, try as I might to move things to “the next level”, I just couldn’t seem to let things develop out of that “invisible box” I’d confined the relationship to. It was as if I just couldn’t break past that invisible threshold. Eventually, six months later, the relationship fizzled and came to a close. I think we both kind of knew that it had run its course.

There’s another relationship I’m in currently. We’ve been in each other’s lives for three and a half years now. Although we met on a dating site in 2019, he explained that he was poly-saturated and not looking to add any additional partners to his very-full plate. We continued forward with him in a mentorship capacity since I was just starting out in my polyam journey. We talked every day and a couple months later, went on our first date. Knowing that he had very limited availability, we agreed to get together when we were able, which ended up being just a couple times a year the first two years we were together. I was okay with the lack of frequency because it was communicated and understood from the beginning. In 2021, we made things slightly more “serious” and listed each other as partners on one of the sites we’re on. While the label changed, the relationship did not. A year later in 2022, he told me he loved me and that he wanted to be more present in my life, as more of a boyfriend role. While I should have been happy because it was what I initially wanted all those years ago, I realized that I had subconsciously done the same thing as above…I had put the relationship in this un-alterable box. I’m finding myself happy with the capacity the relationship had, and unable to let it develop any further. I’m struggling because I don’t know what’s preventing me from allowing the relationship to grow. He’s a great person and I care about him so much. I should want more. I should be overjoyed that he wants more with me. Yet I find myself retreating and wanting our relationship to stay the same limited relationship it’s always been.

The crazy thing is, one of my favorite things about polyamory is the removal of expectations surrounding the nature of relationships, excellently worded in the following quote by @hilliamwilliam

Theoretically, this makes all the sense in the polyam world and sounds ideal to me. Realistically, I feel like my constant need to put my relationships into these “invisible boxes” limits this from occurring.

It’s not that I’m incapable of having deep emotional relationships with partners I label boyfriends. I’ve had several long-lasting boyfriends in the years I’ve been poly that involved an extremely high amount of life-entanglement. The difference is that with each of those relationships, when we chatted at the beginning about hopes and expectations, those partners had no limits and were open to letting things develop naturally. It’s when partners specifically tell me that they have a limit as to when this “invisible box” gets created.

What’s wrong with me? I’m a Libra with anxiety, depression, and ADHD – all things that are strictly resistant to change. Could that be the cause? Or perhaps the “invisible box” is my coping mechanism to attempt to safe-guard my feelings from getting too-attached to someone who isn’t emotionally available at that time to feel the same way? I have this joke that I wish all relationships could go on forever. That I wish I could fall in love with every person I date. Whenever someone new on a dating site asks what I’m looking for, I want someone with high entanglement, a boyfriend, all the things. Maybe this “invisible box” is my way of settling into relationships that don’t meet my emotional needs at the time? I’m not in love with that last theory because “settling” is always a negative term in relationships. In the relationships I’ve mentioned above, I’ve had such wonderful, fulfilling moments with both partners, that I wouldn’t have experienced had we not dated, simply because they weren’t open to high-entanglement at the time we started our relationships.

I’m still trying to work through this “invisible box” feeling because I don’t want future relationships to be at risk, but I think introspection and awareness was the first step.

Do any of you out there in polyamorous relationships do this? Is it just me?

References

1. Fern, J. (2020). Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy (pp. 163). Thorntree Press. ↩