I find myself in the strangest part of my life to date. It's strange in how familiar and comfortable it feels, and how I never imagined myself here.
When I was younger, I was never going to get married. I didn't see the point, and I just thought it wasn't for me. Then I met my husband, and whoops - I was wrong. We've had our ups and downs but we've been together for almost two decades now, and in some ways it surprises me how much we still love each other and want to be together, because that certainly wasn't modeled for me growing up.
Then I guess I thought monogamy was the end all be all for me, or at least I never questioned it, because I never had a reason to. I never really ever had a reason to question it. I'll try not to go on a rant about privilege and systems (and in particular the patriarchy and capitalism) but in a lot of ways I've never had to think twice about much in my life. What you "should" do is pretty much laid out for you. But whoops for that too, I guess, because where I find myself is living happily in a stable, loving, long-lasting, committed marriage that also happens to be polyamorous. And it's a really good fit for me. Not only can I look back at certain parts of my life and notice where the philosophy may have been lurking in my psyche all along, but it's helped me reconnect with myself "after" cancer and learn a lot about myself on a really meaningful level. At least it's a way that's meaningful to me, and trust me when I say that's all that really matters.
It's been...interesting...to say the very least, to jump back into the dating pool at almost 40 years old. Time does not appear to have served it well. But I'm also speaking from a place of having my heart shattered pretty recently, so as with the rest of anything I say, you can take that with a grain of salt.
I expected to be insanely jealous, because I had a lot of experience being jealous in life and monogamy. But along with the other strangeness, it hasn't been an issue for me yet. I won't let myself think it'll never happen because that would be pretty naive and I refuse to let myself be blindsided by it, but every time my husband goes on a date and has a good time or has a first kiss, I'm mostly just excited for him to have some of the best experiences life has to offer (in my opinion), and I'm proud and happy that someone else gets to see and recognize how great he is. Again, speaking from a recently mishandled heart, I am currently jealous that he's having these experiences (in spades) and I'm not (as in zero) right now, but when I considered jealousy at the beginning of this, this was and still isn't the kind of jealousy I'm worried about.
I needed to get some of this off my chest in the dead of the night, in light of this broken-heartedness, because it's one of those break ups that touched on some really core, fundmental shit that I need to sort through. But it hasn't been the right time yet to be "out" completely, thus severely limiting the available outlets for such things. Thanks for listening.
2:10 a.m. - 2022-07-04