Permission

I wanted to be so cool.

I wanted to only feel excitement and support and compersion.

After all, I’m the one who opened this door wasn’t I?

It was me who fell in love with someone else.

It was me who kissed someone else.

It was me who realized it wasn’t a one time situation.

That a part of me had awoken, and I didn’t know how to put it back to sleep.

It was me who started dating.

Me who had sex with someone who wasn’t my husband.

Me who had an overnight.

Me who took all the steps first.

So I don’t deserve to have feelings about him dating too.

I shouldn’t get permission to set boundaries around pacing and crossing thresholds.

I’m fine! I kept saying.

To my husband.

To myself.

Then it happened.

He kissed someone else for the first time.

And the reality of it hit me like a train going full force.

In my brain, I felt fine.

In my heart I felt fine.

But my nervous system freaked the FUCK out.

It took two whole days for it to stop ringing the danger alarms and telling me that I was not safe, this was not safe.

I felt ready to call the whole thing.

I don’t know if I can do this, I thought.

Is this what you’ve been holding this whole time? I asked him.

Yeah pretty much, he said.

And then he shared how appalling it was for him to realize what I’d been holding all this time.

Going out, connecting with someone new, taking steps with them…

All the while feeling so guilty, like I’m cheating on him.

Then coming home, and having so much of my own experience to process, yet having to hold a tender and supportive space for his feelings and reactions.

Is this what it’s been like for you?He asked.

Yeah pretty much I answered.

We thought since we’d been through all of this with me, as I deepened on this path, that we’d be all set when/if he decided to start that journey too.

Turns out, my process doesn’t just translate to his.

Actually, we have to start from scratch all over again.

We were both in awe of each other, of the space we’d each been holding these past months.

And bewildered at the idea of now holding more.

His path opening meant we now each had to oscillate between these two roles: the supporter and the experiencer.

We’d done so much work in this one dynamic, had built a whole framework for processing and navigating it.

Yet my process looked and looks very different than his.

And we are our own people.

What he needed from me as I took steps with others may not equate to what I need from him as he takes those same steps.

Oof.

That was a hard pill to swallow.

It made me realize I still hold so much guilt and shame and self-loathing around the beginning of this journey.

There is a part of me that still feels like it’s all my fault.

Like I ruined our beautiful monogamous marriage with my mid-life poly awakening.

Like I was selfish and greedy for needing anything more than the treasure that is our partnership.

I thought I’d let those beliefs go, but surprise!

They’ve hung around, and lingered just beneath the surface.

My husband is trying so hard.

To give me permission.

To counter all these internal beliefs that tell me I’ve done something wrong.

To create space for me to have all my feelings about this, the compersion and the fear, the excitement and the grief, the delight and the guilt.

But it’s just so difficult to receive that permission, to internalize that I am worthy of being held in those complexities.

I was raised by a wounded mother.

From a very young age I was taught that:

1) My body, men, and sexuality in general were not safe, under any circumstances.

2) My feelings were too much, and not allowed to be expressed.

3) I was selfish and unworthy of receiving love.

4) Nothing I could do – and I mean nothing – would ever be enough to convince my mom that I loved her.

5) If my mom was upset, and she often was, it was always my fault and my job to apologize – even if I didn’t know what I was apologizing for.

I’ve been in therapy for over two decades now, and done so much healing work around these beliefs.

I’ve moved through them in many beautiful, profound, and transformative ways.

Yet the pathways they formed in my brain are still there, always primed and ready for new material to latch onto.

Hungry for fresh evidence that those old messages are still true, and I am the unworthy, selfish, inadequate human I grew up believing myself to be.

Unbeknownst to my conscious brain, they have grabbed onto this poly experience with full force.

Working under the surface to convince me that this is a selfish choice I’m making at the expense of my husband’s heart and wellbeing.

That I’m indebted to him, for rising to this new level of relationship with me and allowing me to explore this part of myself.

That I owe him.

And if I owe him, how could I ask for anything in return?

As my awareness around these beliefs grows, I’m realizing just how deep they go.

How my mother’s voice still echos in my head, even after all those therapy sessions, even after all the healing I’ve worked so hard to find.

I thought I was done.

I’m realizing I likely will never be.

Even now that I’m conscious of how they have become entangled in this ENM journey, it’s taking so much effort and energy to reframe them.

My husband has to push and probe and pull it all out of me – my true feelings, my triggers, my needs.

Has to constantly be verbalizing explicit permission to not just be “fine”.

As I let it all surface – slowly, tenderly, with the self love I’ve worked so hard to cultivate…

All I can think is wow, what a fucking catalyst for growth this expansion is.

How it unearths the deepest desires and also the deepest wounds in us.

How it asks us to look at our belief systems and emotional frameworks and cultural norms, like nothing else I’ve ever been through.

This journey of ENM can be difficult and deeply demanding at times, but I wouldn’t go back.

God, Spirit, Universe – keep it all coming.

The learning.

The untangling.

The raw humanity.

The epic beauty.

The profound deconstruction and reworking of all I thought I knew.

I’m here for it all.

Bring it.