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"You were with your partner and all of his other girlfriends? Did you feel ... I dunno, alone without anyone there for YOU?"
I wasn't there alone without anyone there for me. I had plenty of people there "for me". My partners' other partners are not on "his side". We don't face off like some weird poly West Side Story. My metamours are MY metamours, not just his partners. My metamours are my family. Even the ones I'm less close to. We've built our own intimacy together, our own relationships, our own bonds. Between the strength of our ties and the length of time we have been together, "his side" is also "my side".
Because we're in this together.
After all my past breakups, I typically have 2 outcomes (with few exceptions I'll get to in a minute) when it comes to metamours: 1) I was socially friendly with my metamours while we were together but not really intimate, so when we broke up, my metamours and I remained socially friendly because the poly community is small and we continued to cross social paths. Some have faded out over the years, but no real drama.
Or 2) my ties to my metamours got even stronger and, in many cases, both of us lost all contact with the guy who brought us together but became even closer post-breakup, turning them into metafores. The term "metafore" is a portmanteau of "metamour" and "before". It means a former metamour whose emotional bonds are still close after the breakup so that they still feel like a "metamour" even though they are technically no longer.
Not all former metamours become metafores - only those who still feel like "family" so that you still want to call them by a familial name. Metamours who don't remain that close but who are still friendly and metamours who lose ties completely don't have a special title - friends or "former metamour" is usually used.
One exception to these two outcomes was when my relationship to an abuser ended and I had to cut off contact with his entire side of the network in order to prevent them from passing along information to the abuser that would help him keep tabs on his victim (a former metamour of mine) with whom I was still in contact.
But even then, even knowing that they were enabling an abuser, the loss of that family was devastating. The loss of my entire support group was even worse for me than the breakup with the boyfriend itself. Other exceptions were when the relationship between the mutual partner and his ex was so toxic that she and I either also split apart because of the breakup or we were never close to begin with.
Although, interestingly, one metafore relationship really only developed long after I had broken up with our mutual partner AND as *they* were going through their own breakup a couple years later. He had begun dating her too close to the end of our relationship for us to have the opportunity to get to know each other while we were both still metamours, but we became friendly after my breakup with him, and then when they broke up, she and I bonded and became close. So really, our mutual relationship with him was practically incidental to becoming friends with each other.
I do not develop the same level of close intimacy with all of my metamours. I and some of my partners over the years have been ... let's say popular. I have not been able to keep up with everyone that my partners have dated, especially when you add in the short-term relationships that never really took off. And even with some of the longer-term relationships, we didn't always have a lot of depth to our friendly and genuinely caring feelings.
But when I think of all the times I have spent in the company of the amazing people that my partners have liked and loved over the years, it's never felt like two "sides" squaring up. I've felt that way when I was monogamous and I met a partner's family-of-origin for the first time, but not when I was poly, and I've occasionally felt that way when meeting a partner's *friends* when the social group is not also made of polys.
But hanging out with his other partners? Not that I can ever recall. I've never felt out of place, isolated, alone, overwhelmed, or ganged up on. In the kind of poly that we do, I've always felt like we were all our own individual bodies, weaving in and out of each other's lives, and their presence adds to my own tapestry of life.
And honestly? My luck and skill with choosing partners has been way less successful than my luck and skill at forging healthy, supportive metamour relationships. It's kind of ironic, given my former Chill Girl "I just don't get along with women" status. I mean, I have some good relationships with exes and some not so good, but the majority of my ex-metamour relationships are, at worst, fade-outs and not blow-outs while many transitioned to metafores.
So no, when we all get together, it's never "don't you feel alone without anyone there for you?" It's more like feeling that we are all there for each other and all there as individuals, not on anyone's "side".
It's more like coming home.
#MetamoursAreTheTrueTestOfPoly #AmorphousSquiggle #InternationalPolyJusticeLeague #IPJL #MetamoursMakeTheFamily #gratitude
I wasn't there alone without anyone there for me. I had plenty of people there "for me". My partners' other partners are not on "his side". We don't face off like some weird poly West Side Story. My metamours are MY metamours, not just his partners. My metamours are my family. Even the ones I'm less close to. We've built our own intimacy together, our own relationships, our own bonds. Between the strength of our ties and the length of time we have been together, "his side" is also "my side".
Because we're in this together.
After all my past breakups, I typically have 2 outcomes (with few exceptions I'll get to in a minute) when it comes to metamours: 1) I was socially friendly with my metamours while we were together but not really intimate, so when we broke up, my metamours and I remained socially friendly because the poly community is small and we continued to cross social paths. Some have faded out over the years, but no real drama.
Or 2) my ties to my metamours got even stronger and, in many cases, both of us lost all contact with the guy who brought us together but became even closer post-breakup, turning them into metafores. The term "metafore" is a portmanteau of "metamour" and "before". It means a former metamour whose emotional bonds are still close after the breakup so that they still feel like a "metamour" even though they are technically no longer.
Not all former metamours become metafores - only those who still feel like "family" so that you still want to call them by a familial name. Metamours who don't remain that close but who are still friendly and metamours who lose ties completely don't have a special title - friends or "former metamour" is usually used.
One exception to these two outcomes was when my relationship to an abuser ended and I had to cut off contact with his entire side of the network in order to prevent them from passing along information to the abuser that would help him keep tabs on his victim (a former metamour of mine) with whom I was still in contact.
But even then, even knowing that they were enabling an abuser, the loss of that family was devastating. The loss of my entire support group was even worse for me than the breakup with the boyfriend itself. Other exceptions were when the relationship between the mutual partner and his ex was so toxic that she and I either also split apart because of the breakup or we were never close to begin with.
Although, interestingly, one metafore relationship really only developed long after I had broken up with our mutual partner AND as *they* were going through their own breakup a couple years later. He had begun dating her too close to the end of our relationship for us to have the opportunity to get to know each other while we were both still metamours, but we became friendly after my breakup with him, and then when they broke up, she and I bonded and became close. So really, our mutual relationship with him was practically incidental to becoming friends with each other.
I do not develop the same level of close intimacy with all of my metamours. I and some of my partners over the years have been ... let's say popular. I have not been able to keep up with everyone that my partners have dated, especially when you add in the short-term relationships that never really took off. And even with some of the longer-term relationships, we didn't always have a lot of depth to our friendly and genuinely caring feelings.
But when I think of all the times I have spent in the company of the amazing people that my partners have liked and loved over the years, it's never felt like two "sides" squaring up. I've felt that way when I was monogamous and I met a partner's family-of-origin for the first time, but not when I was poly, and I've occasionally felt that way when meeting a partner's *friends* when the social group is not also made of polys.
But hanging out with his other partners? Not that I can ever recall. I've never felt out of place, isolated, alone, overwhelmed, or ganged up on. In the kind of poly that we do, I've always felt like we were all our own individual bodies, weaving in and out of each other's lives, and their presence adds to my own tapestry of life.
And honestly? My luck and skill with choosing partners has been way less successful than my luck and skill at forging healthy, supportive metamour relationships. It's kind of ironic, given my former Chill Girl "I just don't get along with women" status. I mean, I have some good relationships with exes and some not so good, but the majority of my ex-metamour relationships are, at worst, fade-outs and not blow-outs while many transitioned to metafores.
So no, when we all get together, it's never "don't you feel alone without anyone there for you?" It's more like feeling that we are all there for each other and all there as individuals, not on anyone's "side".
It's more like coming home.
#MetamoursAreTheTrueTestOfPoly #AmorphousSquiggle #InternationalPolyJusticeLeague #IPJL #MetamoursMakeTheFamily #gratitude
