Solo Polyamory

A form of polyamory in which an individual chooses to be their own “primary partner,” building connections without the assumption of progressing up the “relationship escalator” with one or more. Often includes the assumption of living apart from all partners. -readyforpolyamory.com

We were lying in our queen bed in the front bedroom of the first house we ever lived in together. It had a small backyard that I threw flower seeds all over the fence line that summer, a cement walkway all the way to the back gate, a towering rose bush that bloomed in December for no reason.

We were talking about threesomes.

I don’t know if I want you to touch anyone. Maybe I could just be the one who touches the person, my partner says.

Oh, yeah, okay. I don’t know, I say.

I just don’t know if I can handle it, he says. And my stomach drops and it is solidified that I will never get to have sex with anyone else ever again. Maybe not even kiss anyone. I can’t see my partner ever being okay with it after hearing this from him.

We weren’t even talking about going solo, we didn’t even know what it was to have an open relationship, and we were years away from it without anticipating it. We were talking about how I wanted to watch him fuck someone else, how a threesome could be what our dwindling sex life needed, how maybe we were just too couply to begin with.

I brought it up two more times over the next couple of years, each time being met with a reaction of disgust from him. Perhaps in another life, I would keep telling myself.

Compersion

Happiness at the joy of one’s partner in another relationship; sometimes referred to as the opposite of jealousy. -readyforpolyamory.com

The sun is burning on my skin. I’ve draped myself over a butterscotch yellow lawn chair I found at the dump, a glass of water next to me and a book in my hands. Chess is floating naked on a pink raft in the blue pool.

Will you take a picture of me? He says.

I sigh in mild annoyance, because all I wanted to do was lie in the sun with him and not be bothered.

Sure, I say, because if I don’t, he will whine and say why not, you’re not doing anything at all right now. To which I would respond, I’m just so tired of looking at my phone all the time. To which he would respond, then stop spending so much time on your phone if you hate it. I don’t think I’ll win, so I get up from my chair and walk around the edge of the broken bluestone patio to take some shots of him.

It is so bright outside, the sky clear, about 1pm on a summer Monday, that I can’t even see the screen when I’m holding it above him. The screen just looks black. I hope that the camera is taking in the shimmery aquatic lights and shadows and the hot pinkness of his translucent float, the curvatures of his muscles and the way he can barely keep his eyes open, him winking directly into the aperture.

He will use the photos for three things: to post on his close friends stories on Instagram, to admire the body he made and to send to the people he’s fucking. Gifted Nudes.

I click the screen twenty times in different angles, moving his float with my foot while balancing, trying not to fall in, telling him to change his facial expression or his position, and then say There, I’m done. You look amazing, they turned out so cute. He does.

The butterscotch chair is now only three-quarters in the sun when I return to it; I slide it closer to the pool’s edge and out of the shadow of the garage that is casting coolness onto the vinyl woven strips it’s made of. I pick my book back up and continue reading, a light flutter in my stomach. I smile.

New Relationship Energy (NRE)

The excitement and giddiness that comes with a new relationship and its early stages; some scientists believe it is the result of oxytocin and vasopressin. It is potentially obsessive and similar to limerence, except that it occurs after a relationship has begun. It can be extremely positive, but also for some people jittery and challenging. -readyforpolyamory.com

I can’t stop thinking about them. I check my phone every five minutes to see if they’ve texted me. Do I text them first or do I wait for them to send me a photo of the golden light filtering through the trees, speckling onto the siding of the house they are about to rip off and replace with more beautiful smooth-glass windows? I would do anything for them. I would drop whatever I’m doing in a hurry, just to go be by their side, if they are feeling sick, if they are missing home, if they are having a bad day. If they are lonely, if they are tired, if they can’t lift their own fingers to make a sandwich to nourish themself after working twelve or thirteen hour days outside, in the cold, ripping apart a house that was once a home to make it a home again. Meanwhile in my own home, my partner is annoyed. He’s angry, even. He’s disappointed that I can’t hold the same kind of ecstatic energy for him as I can for them right now. I’ve never had to do that before, give myself to a partner while also trying to give myself to a new crush. It’s pulling me in every direction imaginable, it’s stretching me until I am paper thin, my veins showing through my olive-toned skin. I can feel myself splitting in two. I am in the middle and I can’t seem to please anyone from this position I’m standing in.

Relationship Escalator

The default set of societal expectations for intimate relationships. Partners follow a progressive set of steps, each with visible markers, toward a clear goal.

The goal at the top of the Escalator is to achieve a permanently monogamous (sexually and romantically exclusive between two people), cohabitating marriage — legally sanctioned if possible. In many cases, buying a house and having kids is also part of the goal. Partners are expected to remain together at the top of the Escalator until death. -offtheescalator.com

I don’t understand the Relationship Escalator the first time they say the phrase. Relationship Escalator. I say it out loud because it sounds silly, like a spinoff ride that you go on after you’ve gone through the Tunnel of Love. It’s like, you date, you move in, you get married, you have kids, that kind of thing, they say, and I say, Oh, that’s not at all what we’re doing, but since it's the only thing I actually know how to do, I fall into the pattern anyway.

They want: a fantasy, a comet perhaps, an escape from their grueling job, someone to distract them from the other bullshit that’s going on in their life that they’re probably not going to share with me.

I want: a fantasy that turns relationship, someone who is going to fall deeply in love with me, reflecting my own obsessive tendencies, someone who is going to want to risk it all for me, someone who is going to want to keep me in their life forever.

I don’t want to do the relationship escalator thing, that’s not what I’m looking for, they told me.

Me neither, I said. It’s not that I lied, though. It's just that I didn’t know the difference.

Metamour

The partner of one’s partner; from the root “meta,” beyond - so literally “beyond love.” Often abbreviated meta. -readyforpolyamory.com

I wonder what people on Instagram first thought when Chess started posting pictures of him with another woman who wasn’t me on the beach in a bikini, on romantic dates over beautifully plated food and candle lit tables, in the hotel room together overlooking palm trees below. The first thought that came to my mind was malicious. I bet people are going to be so confused. Why do I think it's funny to shock people with the truth? Maybe it's because I want them to be uncomfortable like I have had to be; I want them to question why they are so taken aback by something that doesn’t make sense to them immediately. I want them to question themselves.

We don’t make an official announcement or anything when it happens– do we really have to? I remember meeting someone once with ninety-thousand Instagram followers who had just gotten engaged. We haven’t announced it my followers yet, I don’t know how I’m going to tell them, as if all ninety-thousand followers were his closest friends and family. Did it really fucking matter? Was it really my job to make this big post on the Internet explaining that Chess and I fuck other people and we’re both cool with it? Is it too fucked up for me to let them worry about Mommy and Daddy’s relationship instead while I sit behind my screen, choosing not to correct people’s assumptions just because I literally don’t care? Am I a bad polyamorist? Am I like one of those gay people that say I don’t need Gay to be my whole identity, when like, how could it not if you are? Am I a Gay Republican but polyamorous?

With time they will see me in the bikini on the beach, me on romantic dates, me in the hotel room. And once that gets posted online, everything will be balanced out again and people will understand and I won’t have to do this whole thing on Instagram, I won’t have to be forced into a perfectly currated carousel, an announcement that will ultimately get our business Likes but will make me feel performative. Do I really owe the Internet an explanation of me and my partner’s and my partner’s girlfriend’s life? Is there a way to be visible without acting like its a big deal, when in reality, this feels so normal to me?

Polycule

A network of interconnected relationships; can be used to refer to the network itself, or a chart illustrating the same. A portmanteau of “poly” and “molecule,” because of the varied possible configurations and how they can resemble charts of the chemical structures of molecules. Groups and networks larger than four people often simply use “polycule” or “constellation” to describe their network, rather than using one of the specialized terms for smaller units, as the shapes can get complicated. -readyforpolyamory.com

Polycule is your girlfriend’s wife getting their haircut from your boyfriend’s girlfriend who lives down the street from them and your girlfriend, with her husband who invites you and your boyfriend to their house for Christmas Eve to spend with his family and his wife and his girlfriend. Polycule is all of you being in the same room together and being cool about the fact that everyone is in different levels of intimate and romantic relationships with each other. No one belongs to anyone, really; we all belong to each other.

***

A reminder: if you sign up for the $5/month paid subscriber option, I will mail you a risographed version of every month’s substack essay/post! Sometimes they’re in the form of zines, posters, brochures, and even art prints. ;) <3 Ash