CafeMom
by Adriana Velez
“I am zero percent interested in my new relationship becoming strictly monogamous,” my friend revealed to me recently. A decade after her divorce, a decade of healing, dating, disappointments, and soul-searching has brought her to a place where she feels open and excited about exploring polyamory. But what makes her feel ready? And how does one even get started?
I asked my friend, a mother of three teens, what had changed for her. She said she’d done a lot of internal work and had finally arrived at a place where she felt like she could take care of herself and make herself happy. She feels settled in herself, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. “My life is beautiful and wonderful as it is, so let’s see what we can find and explore and pull into myself.”
But it’s more than that. She’s also felt a shift in how she wants to relate with other people. “I just feel like I really love having intensely close relationships with people, and that’s what I do in my work, and that’s how I behave in my life, and I’m just now having the courage to say that’s what I want.”
I think it’s crucial that my friend is in this very grounded state of mind. She has just begun a relationship with a like-minded man and is looking forward to their adventures. This got us wondering about long-married couples who are also interested in exploring polyamory. How do you get started, and how do you make it a positive element in your relationship, especially if you’re married?
We asked some experts for their advice. Here are their tips.
1. Make sure your relationship is in good health before you try anything.
“The key to any marriage, monogamous or polyamorous, vanilla or kinky, starts with safe attachment,” says Jeffery Sumber, licensed psychotherapist and author of the forthcoming book, Renew Your Vows: Seven Powerful Tools to Ignite the Spark and Transform Your Relationship. “The experience of feeling safe with your partner, both safe to be yourself and safe to explore being someone else, is vital to the success to any long term partnership.”
Dedeker Winston, a relationship coach, author of forthcoming book The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Polyamory, and member of a polyamorous community, also says that this is an important first step. “Take inventory of your relationship. How well do the two of you communicate? Do you trust each other? Do both of you have a similar vision of what the ideal romantic or sexual life would look like? What excites you about the prospect of opening up your marriage and what terrifies you? What are your insecurities?”
2. Think about why you want to try polyamory.
“Be as honest and vulnerable as possible,” Winston advises. “Be aware of whether you are making this choice to bring more love, affection, intimacy, and adventure to your lives or if you are making this choice to fix something in the relationship.”
3. Do some research.
Winston recommends looking for stories from people who are practicing polyamory in a healthy way. “There are plenty of communities online, as well as numerous useful books.” She recommends Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cecilda Jetha and The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy. Winston is also a co-author of the informative blog and website Polyamory.com. …