FROM MONOGAMY TO L I

I want to start with a disclaimer that this is not how every swinger, open, or polyamorous relationship starts, but the following is my personal experience with these different lifestyles.

Since 9th grade, I always knew my best gal friends meant more to me than they meant to others. I just chalked it up to having a big heart. We had sleepovers, like most girls do at young ages, and cuddled while watching movies. Throughout the years, my boyfriends would continuously get jealous about the time I spent with my best friends, saying, "You shouldn't spend as much time with them as you do with me." But that's all I have known my whole life.

I felt you could love more than one person in different ways and that there were different "degrees" of love. Until my early twenties, when I began my journey to selfdiscovery, I thought I was wrong for feeling this way. I finally found the verbiage to explain this.

The Self-Discovery Journey

Monogamous relationship after monogamous relationship, they ended the same way every time. I'm too friendly with others, and I'm a "flirt", I have too many friends for the liking of my significant others, etc. I felt tired of masking whom I was and toning myself down at the expense of my mental health. I had spent all of my emotional energy being a social chameleon, changing to the expectations of others, and I never honored my expectations or my reality.

It took four years after this realization; I found the man who checked all my boxes. We began to explore life together. We talked about who and what we aspired to be, what we liked sexually, and what our future looked like together. You could say we were a bit infatuated with one another! Everything seemed perfect.

Inevitably, jealousy reared its head with individuals the other was attracted to, looking at, or interested in. We both had high sex drives but worked from dawn to dusk every day. Working full-time took such a toll on our sex life, communication, and relationship. We started to explore porn together and loved bonding over that experience. Slowly, our relationship became more intimate again. We briefly discussed bringing others into the bedroom, but neither of us knew how to go about it. We didn't move forward with the notion at the time.

What's a family without communication? After trying for two years, we successfully birthed two children in three years! We felt happy, whole, overwhelmed, and yet something still felt missing. Growing up, our grandparents lived near our parents. Our parents had a village to help raise their children. We had so much less than a village. In fact, it was just the two of us. I stayed home with the kids, and he worked to support us all.

To say we didn't have the chance to communicate could be slightly fabricated. We didn't realize how much time we weren't making for one another until our youngest turned 2. We didn't know much about one another anymore, like our passions, preferences, or personalities. Our lives have revolved solely around our children, whom we had been working so hard to make sure they had the best childhood possible. We forgot about us.

A common misconception as parents is that if we take care of the kids first, we'll be fine. We learned the hard way, and we were not fine. Suddenly our conversations were blurred by misunderstanding. Who had we become? After we both sought professional help from therapists, we learned more about ourselves as individuals and began to heal from things we didn't know had traumatized us from the beginning.

Slowly we learned more ways to communicate effectively with one another. The biggest part of our therapy was learning that we didn't have to know; we weren't expected to have an answer for every problem. But trying to understand why and wholeheartedly listening to each other was key. *therapy isn't for everyone, but it has helped us tremendously*

In learning to communicate effectively and constantly practicing, we became stronger than ever. We learned to speak our truths. The idea of adding other people to our "extracurricular activities" in the bedroom came up again! I felt sheepish at first as I shared fantasies and my various attractions with him. However, after learning his fantasies and feeling heard when he listened to mine, I felt truly liberated. This was the breakthrough for us. After being together for a decade, we were finally able to open up without fear of retaliation because we knew we could trust one another.

Before finding the Swinger Society podcast, we researched open relationships and what went into them for months. I had previously listened to an open relationship podcast run by women, but was intrigued to hear something from both parties in a married couple. From the beginning, I had never imagined myself being intimate with someone I hadn't had an emotional connection to. This is where our polyamorous relationship discussion began.

I joined polyamorous Facebook groups, did my research, and started to think this was what I wanted. My husband did not want to open up so deeply to another individual, so he wouldn't be participating in relationships other than FWB. We discussed our boundaries and agreed they could be revisited in the future when we felt a shift change in our needs. Starting boundary conversations can be scary at first, but when you know at the end of the day it's you and your partner who are going to be there, and you know you'll be focusing your energy on maintaining that foundation, it feels much easier to do.

Fast forward seven months, and we now have poly "friends" (my husband prefers no label) who help us be our true selves. Upon meeting these individuals, we discussed nothing but boundaries, communication, and the importance of meeting our spouses' needs while expressing ours. We knew we found our people.

After twenty-five years of monogamous relationships being all we saw and knew, I can honestly say that opening up our relationship and now being in a poly relationship with the most kind and understanding individuals we've ever met is a 180-degree turn for us.

It wasn't easy getting here, but we made it. We never gave up on one another, even at our weakest moments. Now we know what to do and how to truly live our lives as our authentic selves.

TESS JOSEPH, WRITER FOR WOODHULL FREEDOM FOUNDATION