My Intro to Polyamory

Now a bit about my current relationship:

I am not holding anything back!

We have been dating for 5 months. I know this because I have literally counted and marked down every day in my journal… on a calendar. Each event is detailed out to the amount of time we spent together and what we did. I didn’t do this because I am stalking him, but simply because my anxiety is so out of control that this is the only way I could remind myself that there is nothing to worry about, and that he did call a day ago, or that we did hangout a week ago, and that I shouldn’t worry about where things are going because it still has not been that long since we have been dating. This is clear because if I add all of the hours of our meetings together we have only gotten a glimpse into each other’s real lives and personalities.

I wasn’t even attracted to him in the beginning. We made out in front of my car after a party and I thought he was a good kisser. I didn’t think much of it after that until he called about a week and a half later. We talked and both agreed that this would be a non-exclusive relationship and that we would just have fun for as long as we could, and then go our separate ways.

Sounded really simple, right? BOO. It became complicated. I was still making out with people… fun people, while he had not been pursuing anything of the sort. This made me confused. I went through a period of time where I didn’t know what I wanted from a relationship, and struggled with feeling that I didn’t want to control anyone.  Shortly after we began dating, he expressed his confusion and thoughts about sex and polyamory and like a good student, I delved into the literature on the topic. I read soooo many blogs, and informative websites that my head was spinning.

I learned that a lot of the information regarding polyamory related to how I wished a relationship to be. Not in the sense that I didn’t want monogamy, but that I wanted brutal honesty and trust over anything. When I began thinking about it more, I thought it could be fun, and I could potentially gain a lot from experimenting in the polyamorous lifestyle. Hey, maybe I could carry over some of these learned skills in any future relationship?!

There are definitely issues about this though. I could not believe I was actually considering this. What would my mother say?!! I have always had an incredible ability to identify my true feelings and emotions and express them clearly, both to myself, and to others. From this “gift” comes identifying and dealing with the following issues: Am I doing this for him, or me? It has to be for me in order for it to work, I thought. How do I get around feeling used?