New Perspectives: Changes, Mistakes, Healing, and Growth

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted on this site. My life (and the world) has changed a lot since 2020, when I last posted anything. My views on polyamory and relationships have changed along with them. Because of this, I have a goal to start posting new articles again, as well as updates to older articles. I will be keeping the old articles up, with notes and links to the new articles within them, so that it is easier to see where things have changed, and where I’ve learned some lessons. My goal in creating this website has always been to share what I know given my experiences and knowledge. I’m expanding that goal, now.

I want to share my mistakes.

Too many books and blogs on polyamory focus on speaking from authority and declaring the right way to do things. I slipped into that myself in some of my writing in the past, though I tried to be mindful of it. But sharing from a place of authority and correctness causes problems, in many ways. No solution works for everyone, and no one is perfect.

Part of the reason I stopped writing is because I felt like a hypocrite, because of the experiences I was having. Where once I felt that I had a handle on my jealousy and wrote about it, suddenly I was feeling jealousy and insecurity all of the time around a specific metamour. Where I had talked about holding firm boundaries, I was dropping them left and right to overextend myself and try to become what I hoped others wanted. Where I had felt compersion, I was feeling insecurity and suspicion. How could I write about polyamory when I felt that I was “doing it all wrong” now?

I was right that I was making many mistakes. Some that hurt me, some that hurt others, and some that rippled out even farther. I was frequently wrong about which things were mistakes, or why they were mistakes. I made choices that I would have never told a friend to make in my shoes. I was in a lot of pain. I was being abused, and I was watching people I love be abused by others. I was neglecting people that cared about me. I was constantly dealing with watching people go through crisis after crisis, and feeling responsible for helping them through each one. Every day was in survival mode. One time, at the end of a particular crisis, I had been so emotionally exhausted that it expressed itself physically. I ended up bedridden for a day, barely able to move my body.

In some ways, I made it through in spite of some of my decisions, not because of them. There were multiple times that, on reflection, I could have made big decisions and choices that were much healthier for me and the people I was close to. The choice to end some of the most painful situations I was in was frequently made by other people, and only after then did I see what was actually going on.

After many things changed, I still felt like I couldn’t write. I still felt like a hypocrite. And to be honest, I was right not to start writing then. I still had a lot to figure out. I had to undo a lot of gaslighting (both by others as well as things I convinced myself of). I had to recognize some experiences as abuse and betrayal. I had to recognize where I had reverted to old patterns of codependence and trying to save and fix everyone to both my detriment and theirs. I had to not only see my mistakes, but find the lessons that I could take from them.

I have taken time to heal and time to understand. I have ended some relationships and strengthened others. I have built some boundaries back up, let some others down, and created new ones. I’ve learned what my priorities are and what I will not compromise on. I still have ways in which I am actively healing and learning how to hold my boundaries. I will always be discovering who I am, what I need, and what I believe.

I now recognize that some of the things I was beating myself up for were not only natural reactions, but situationally appropriate. Sometimes, you feel insecure not because you’re jealous, but because you are lacking security. Sometimes you feel deprioritized, not because you need too much, but because someone says you’re a priority but their actions don’t match. Sometimes you feel powerless to help, not because you’re being selfish or uncaring, but because there’s truly no way to help. Sometimes a person reminds you of a past abuser, not because you’re jealous and projecting, but because they are being abusive.

I’m not saying that everything that I did or felt was justified or accurate. I sometimes projected my anxiety about one metamour onto another. I sometimes focused on a specific action or wanting to do a specific thing when there was a much larger issue that it would never fix. Sometimes I was trying to control situations in order to make everything feel okay. I tried to blame myself for nearly everything, because I thought that if it was my fault, that meant that I could take action to fix it, and then everything would be good again. I’ve taken time to sort these things out, apologize, make amends, and work on the root issues that led me to think that these were the things to believe or do.

I have not fixed everything. Nor am I saying that I have learned every lesson from my mistakes. Hell, I’m sure I’ve made mistakes and am actively making mistakes that I will still need to recognize and learn from. I think that’s what’s important, though. I’m not perfect. I never want to come across like I am, or like I’m pretending to be. I’m not an expert on polyamory or relationships, either. I’m just someone that has a lot of experience with polyamory, including experiences that I hope other people don’t ever have. I want to share my experiences, the choices I made, and the results and consequences of those choices.

I have never been someone that thinks that people get stronger because of trauma. That is not what this is about, and it never will be. I want to show how I am strong in spite of my trauma, and the ways in which I’ve been able to heal and overcome. I will also be honest about the scars trauma leaves behind. I will never heal in a way that makes me like the person I would have been if I didn’t experience trauma. That person doesn’t exist. But I can use my experiences to warn others away from these kinds of experiences, and hopefully I can prevent this pain for another.

I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to start posting more frequently, or how often that will be. I don’t have posts queued up to go, or even a list of what I want to post about. All I know is that I’m ready to start sharing what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown, and I hope that doing so will help someone out there, reading this.