Hey friends.

It’s been a hot minute.

It’s been 77 days since NP told me he was leaving. Completely unexpected. Out of the blue.

The profound wisdom I have learned since May 1 2023:

• A) Divorce sucks
• B) Divorce as a publicly Poly person sucks
• C) People suck

Ultimately, I’ve been pretty private about the whole thing. The past 77 days have been filled with feelings of shame, failure, heartbreak, depression, liberation, and empowerment, over and over in a constant cycle. I’ve lost track of the days I get home from work and just climb into bed at 5pm and end up dozing off for the night by 6pm. My Spotify playlists keep rotating from “Sad Songs” to “Empowered Woman I Don’t Need A Man Vibes”.

The word of my summer has been “struggle”.

I’m struggling with feeling valid as a polyamorous blogger…do I have any credibility anymore if my nesting relationship has ended?

I’m struggling with the uncertainty of whether or not I’ll be able to keep my house.

I’m struggling with losing the people who have been my family the past 11 years, simply because they’re NP’s blood relatives.

I’m struggling with the pain of losing the person I committed to spending the rest of my life with, and the person who I’ve made the most memories with over the past decade.

I’m struggling with not having the emotional bandwidth, energy, or finances to expend on spending time with friends who are trying to help by getting me out of the house.

I’m struggling with constant social media reminders of photos I posted “a year ago today”, “two years ago today” etc.

I’m struggling with the fact that wearing a wedding ring the past 7 years has left this seemingly permanent indentation in my finger. I’m struggling with the fact that I unknowingly picked up this habit of moving my thumb over the spot my ring was to make sure my ring hadn’t fallen off as some sort of anxiety trigger, and now I still find myself doing it without my ring on and it’s this annoyingly painful reminder.

I’m struggling with how to answer friends who text asking “how I’m doing” when I’m not doing ok.

I’m struggling with keeping my patience for the acquaintances who assert that the divorce must be “because of the polyamory thing”.

Do we go around asking divorced monogamous folks if their divorce was “because of the monogamy thing”?? No….we certainly don’t.

No, it wasn’t the polyamory thing. At least, not in the sense that people are assuming. When I confided in one coworker that I was going through a divorce, the following conversation ensued:

her “he couldn’t handle you having other partners?”

me “no, that wasn’t it”

her “oh, you couldn’t handle him having other partners?”

If you’re reading this and your gut reaction was something along the lines of “Ahh, yep. It was only a matter of time because they were non-monogamous” or “I called it!” or anything similar – I implore you to think about that for a second. That stigma is why I created ThePolyamorousMillennial in the first place. Because when I first started sharing publicly that I was polyam, those were the reactions I got. I’ll never forget my gynecologist who said “you know, marriages who open up are just a ticking time bomb”. (She’s since come around and has become an advocate for non-stigmatized ENM medical care.) So, if you do have those gut reactions, resonate in them, acknowledge that those thoughts are contributing to an incorrect stigma, and move on.

I’m still polyamorous. NP is still polyamorous.

When people blame polyamory for relationships not working out, they are almost always implying that jealousy was the reason. Polyamory caused jealousy, jealousy couldn’t be overcome, so therefore polyamory is what killed the relationship.

I mentioned that this was out of the blue for me. My relationship with NP had been status quo for years. Things were normal. In April, all of a sudden he had decided that our marriage had to end. It was four weeks of an emotional roller coaster where Friday-Sunday he’d be at meta’s, Sunday he’d come home and say we needed to break up, we’d talk, he’d cycle back and apologize and Monday we were back in an ok-ish place. Tuesday through Friday would be like walking on eggshells, he’d go to meta’s, come home Sunday, cite a different reason why divorce was necessary, and the whole thing would start again. This went on for 4 weeks until I was so exhausted that I stopped fighting to stay together. I got home from work on a Monday, his stuff was gone, and I texted asking if I should file for divorce. He said “yes”. It was a whirlwind of a month.

I’ll never forget the 4 reasons NP gave for why our relationship needed to end over the 4 weeks we were on the emotional roller coaster from hell. 1) He wanted to move to cross country with meta and assumed I wouldn’t want to go with. 2) He blamed me because he isn’t Tiger Woods. 3) He thought that I had been body-swapped by the fae on our vacation to Ireland last year. 4) When he asked the universe for a sign, he found a feather in our backyard…our heavily wooded backyard….during molting season.

So, according to NP, it wasn’t polyamory that killed our relationship (yes, I know how wild some of these sound, thank you for understanding that I’m not ready to elaborate on this presently.)

It wasn’t polyamory that killed our relationship, but after reflection, I do believe that it indirectly played a role.

Polyamory and having multiple partners has directly contributed to my personal growth. Ethical non monogamy is hard work. You’re constantly having to work on yourself, on navigating jealousy, on better communication, on scheduling time not just with multiple partners but time for yourself. Above all, since becoming polyamorous, I have really grown by learning to set healthy boundaries. Not only have I set boundaries in new relationships with new partners, but I also began setting boundaries in my relationship with NP. Ultimately, I believe that this is what started to push NP away. When you’ve been able to get away with things in a relationship for a decade, and suddenly your partner starts putting up boundaries, perhaps it’s easier to walk away citing other excuses than deal with the fact that you’d grown accustomed to some unhealthy relationship behaviors.

Without experiencing ENM and polyamory, maybe I never would have experienced the self growth that enabled me to start setting healthy boundaries for myself. I think of my life today vs my life before I was polyamorous and I am nowhere near the same person I was. I am so proud of the person and partner that I am today.

So.

Going back to the fear and shame I experienced on whether or not I felt qualified to continue writing as a polyamorous blogger:

• Yes – I’m still polyamorous. I’m currently navigating what it looks like to be solo-poly, while also taking a break from adding new partners as I grieve the loss of my relationship with NP.
• Yes – I do still believe that I’m qualified to write this blog and give advice and insight on what it’s like living as a polyamorous millennial.
• Yes – while I intend to pick back up writing on a more regular basis, I don’t know what the future holds for my emotional state. I’m still healing. It’s only been 77 days and the process is far from over.

If you know me IRL, then all I ask for is patience. The answer to the question of how I’m doing is “not great”, and at this time, I really don’t know how you can help.

I do, however, appreciate you taking the time to read this, and I appreciate you making an effort to squash your assumptions about polyamory and divorce.