But she's shagging him, how can you be happy with that?

A lot of talk around polyamory focuses on jealousy. But to me, it's a bit like asking mono people 'so you feel ignored by your partner, so why do you even have a relationship?' Mono people (sorry for the labels) also feel jealous, but do we then ask them to justify having any kind of relationship? Clearly it's not a reason NOT to have a relationship. Yeah, it can be a real struggle inside a relationship - fireworks and tin hats time! I've seen irrational jealousy up close, a person acting out on it, and it is a beast when you see it go on the attack, to defend its right to exist. 

Like any strong emotion, there isn't one single lesson to learn from jealousy, but many. And there isn't one single emotion that you can easily point to and say 'that is pure jealousy'. Jealousy is a complex of feelings including: 'doubt', 'disappointment', 'anger', 'anxiety', 'loneliness' etc. It has layers. It hides in the shadows, in the 'what ifs', in endless comparisons, in the insecure measuring of 'do they really love me'. A situation might trip any one or all of these feelings, cascading inside you. Some of them can really catch your breath with their power.

There is also the issue of 'peer pressure'. I remember one of my friends asking me once about my primary partner sleeping with her other boyfriend - 'and you are okay with that?', said in a very doubtful voice, as if he honestly couldn't believe how I could possibly live with it, ever. There was also a hint of masculinity about it, that maybe I'm not really a man, letting another man have at 'my property'. That comment triggered a phase of increased anxiety about the whole thing for me. I think I was internalising his fears and doubt, and that magnified my feelings, to the point where I had to deal with them. I honestly don't remember it being a huge thing before that. But it was a very useful experience, to go down to the coal-face, so to speak.

The external viewpoints that people offer you can trigger that feeling that somehow you are doing something wrong by not being jealous, or that there might be something broken in you if you don't feel it. They then push the question into your mind like an intrusive thought, demanding action, demanding a reaction. But if feelings of jealousy do then become magnified, what you are really dealing with isn't simply jealousy. It's trying to assert yourself in the face of people who are different. And this is where it becomes a political thing. We are not asking mono people to stop being mono. People have the freedom to choose a relationship orientation that suits them, and each of us has the right to say no to mono or poly. That is the freedom we have now, to choose our relationships. Poly people are asking for the same right to follow the orientation that feels most natural for them, without having to justify it at every turn. 

To me, the poly life feels like freedom, in my bones, and it has honestly been an opportunity for more trust, pleasure, meaningful communication, and meaningful relationships in my life, with my primary, with part-time lovers, with friends discussing it, or purely at a recreational level, or however way it is configured. 

Now having said that, finding partners is hard work. That's much harder than coping with jealousy, to be honest. We all live in pretty small bubbles, at the end of the day, no matter how many hundreds of people we are acquainted with. It's a small field, we're all quirky and different, so finding a 'fit' takes time. 

Three times in the last year I've been burned by people seemingly exploring non-monogamy, but actually in the end were unwilling to experience or process jealousy or feelings of being outside, but who nevertheless only discovered this after months of letting me get close to them, which seems particularly unfair and unethical to my mind.

They probably thought that they could handle it and wanted to try at least. I do get that, but it emphasizes the need for some structure in dealing with these things. Some suffering is avoidable. We are all looking to find what works for us, but we should try to avoid breaking hearts along the way. Not always possible, but sometimes, definitely so.

Handling jealousy is not unique to poly life, but it becomes more significant, because you are just going to get exposed to triggers more often. Handling jealousy is a reflection of our general emotional management. Do we hold off on dealing with it until we cannot keep it in anymore, and it explodes in a furious outburst, generating a crisis? Do we go on a stampede laying down all sorts of (often petty) rules in a desperate attempt to wall off those feelings? Or do we try to face them with some mindfulness, discuss them with our partners, put some distance between ourselves and the feelings, accept them and seek ways to 'soothe' ourselves, challenge the fears and doubts, or the catastrophizing. Or maybe we really do need to set some limits, where we are visibly practicing respect. All relationships have their fault lines, but you don't want to be living on the edge of a very active one. The tension needs defusing. The bomb needs defusing.

It was difficult for me to get over those burns, successively so. They had an accumulative effect. Yeah, you don't really know until you know, kinda thing. At times like that, I really have wondered 'why'? Why am I still trying to build things with other people when I have such a great primary relationship? But my life is built around that feeling of connection, and once you've experienced the freedom of having that freedom to follow a connection, it's not an easy freedom to give up. The 'why' question typically comes up when my resources are feeling depleted. When I'm back to my normal self, it becomes 'why not?'. The poly life is additive - it adds meaning, and that process doesn't have to take away from anything you already have. I'll hold to that optimism.

So I've taken a break for a while, sorted my own wounds out, wondered what I can do differently, what expectations might be out of place. I know some people who are really quick to realize the importance of having those tough discussions right at the beginning, so the cards are on the table - but that always seemed like jumping the gun to my mind, like talking about how you are going to practice safe sex after the first signs of mutual attraction.

But I realize that you just have to do that, in some form, to discuss the configurations, the experiences you've already had with jealousy, how you see the whole thing, what you think are the most difficult things to handle. The 'cure' needs to be bedded into the relationship, so when a person feels alone and outside, because your spending time with someone else, they don't fall into the trap of suddenly handling everything unilaterally, because technically, that already kills the sense of 'relationship'. If you put the work in up front, there is already a space in between you where you have approached these things, where you have created a safe space for emotions to breath, live, and transform and mature, when they need to.

I realise more and more that it's the conversations that you DON'T have or that either of you find difficult to approach that so often marks out the real territory that a relationship is in. And different parts of the relationship move at different speeds. So, because I'm always one to follow my inspiration, it's easy for my feelings to get ahead of the other kind of robust elements that are necessary for a relationship to find room to grow. I've had to have a little old pep talk with myself about that... don't let my heart fall off the cliff just because they inspire me, that I appreciate their great qualities. Not easy.

Not every relationship is super serious for me. But these three were situations where my new partner wanted it to be serious, they experienced it as serious and meaningful for them, so I was invited to be involved in that way too. And I was more than happy to go there. But the invite came with conditions in small print, very fucking small print. I'm getting on in years - I don't always carry my reading glasses with me. 

But I have found that the lifestyle suits me. And that it works with me and my primary the way we are configured as 'poly'. I'm an optimist, my hope always returns pretty swiftly, and I always learn something when things don't work out. Who knows if the future will bring an extended and stable poly situation, but I do believe it's possible, because the situation with my primary is exactly that. In poly, there are problems that are personal to the individuals involved, there are challenges that come specifically with the poly life, and it's good to know the difference.

This stuff isn't easy. If you don't care much for communication and emotional openness, you might struggle with it. Your heart can be broken just as in mono - but you get back in the water. You shouldn't lose hope or belief in yourself or what you personally stand for - for me, that is how I care and try to take care of the people that are close to me. You have to be able to assert yourself. I'm the one that draws the line sometimes. In one of those burns, I was the one that ended it, because I saw too many unhealthy responses and nowhere near enough self-honesty or reflexiveness. I get to choose the relationship too. I usually give things time, for understanding to grow, for emotions to teach, but if I see particular traits that I don't like, like excessive acting out, I pull the trigger on the relationship pretty fast. Years of living in a failed marriage taught me that. 

I've put these sentences together after a thoughtful set of discussions with some of my friends. I am grateful to those, mono and poly, who ask me important questions, sincerely, about what drives me, about how to take care of stuff in a poly relationship, how do we protect ourselves emotionally.

I'm not a spokesperson for a lifestyle or a relationship orientation, and it's weird sometimes to find myself seemingly put in that position. But the effort to articulate my experiences, to articulate the ethical framework that is clearly emerging around this lifestyle - it almost always brings more clarity, a sense of finding 'solid ground', which gives confidence in one's life choices, and freedom - the freedom to exercise freedom.

A lot of it is just the same stuff for poly as for mono - learning to take care of ourselves and to take care of other people. xx