On Polyamory and Breakups

“But you have more than one partner, right?” is the most common response I receive when I share that I’ve had a breakup.

The monogamous folks who say this are not trying to be cruel or dismissive of my feelings. But statements like these show that there are still fundamental misunderstandings about non-monogamy that read poly relationships as less significant or meaningful.

The complicated beauty of polyamory for me is that the dissolution of relationship scripts allows me to explore intimacy and connection on its own terms. That means that each of my relationships look rather different from one another.

It also means that every breakup I’ve ever had has hurt in different ways. But they certainly all hurt.

When I had my first poly breakup, I was living with my long-term partner, and I didn’t know if I was allowed to be sad around him. He had hated my other partner, and I could feel that he was low-key happy about their perceived exit from my life.

Although that was a specific context, it started a pattern for me of compartmentalizing my relationships, including any grief from their endings. This hasn’t always worked well in my relationship dynamics, but since my kitchen table is staying low on place settings for now, I’ve managed.

I also have the tendency to fatalistically catapult into worse-case scenarios. So, my initial breakup response (whether I have other partners, or not) is typically, “I guess it’s me and my dog alone, forever.” Mostly, I don’t want my loved ones to have to deal with my nihilistic drama.  The minimization of my poly relationships makes these tendencies to compartmentalize and fatalize harder to avoid.

While poly folks don’t have the same script for break ups as monogamous people, there are other influences we contend with. I’ve definitely felt different types of pressure when relationships end to force the performance of everything being okay.

One of my relationships ended after a slow decline of emotional and physical intimacy, and rather than setting boundaries around that breakup, I ended letting the person keep my house key and softly committed to keep hanging out with them in a platonic/asexual way. That felt like shit, but I didn’t know how to grapple with feelings of having a relationship end with the expectation that everything be chill and fine.

Surely, there was something wrong with me for not being able to pivot emotionally after someone broke up with me?

The response I got from (mostly) monogamous friends was that there shouldn’t be any expectations for continuation of a relationship immediately after a breakup. And, I had more than one partner, so what did it matter anyway?

I did fuck up by not clearly communicating my wants and needs when that relationship ended. But there’s no one way to break up – my friends were right that there’s no requirement to desire a continued relationship with an ex but they were also wrong because sometimes the evolution of a relationship can be meaningful and fulfilling.

I feel incredibly grateful to have humans in my life who love me and care about my well-being. I am fortunate to have the freedom to explore different relationship dynamics, and inevitably, not all of these will work out.

Being surrounded by love and having a good emotional support network does make breakups easier. But that’s true regardless of your relationship dynamics. Poly breakups can still generate feelings of loneliness, loss, and grief, even if you have other partners because people are not interchangeable or replaceable.

If you have a fight with your friend, is it meaningless because you have other friends? Certainly, not. 

All’s that to say is, if you are supporting a poly loved one through a breakup, try not to "silver line" their situation by pointing out that in addition to plenty of fish in the sea and there are still other people in their boat. This diminishes feelings and shows a misunderstanding of relationship meaning, neither of which are great when a heart is already aching.