It’s been 113 days since I last saw your face, but how many days has it been since I last saw your heart? When was the last time we connected deeply, unfearfully. When did my soul last see yours fully, no walls up, simply just showing ourselves raw, and deep and vulnerable.
It’s funny how our attempts to prevent the end was probably what ended it. I desperately wanted to connect with you at the end. The amount of times I hoped that this would be the day, the phone call, the visit where I would see the uninhibited you, the one who was vulnerable and open and would share all your fears and wants and worries with me.
In hindsight, that moment you asked me not to share things that were happening with a new connection was the beginning of the end. I didn’t know at the time but that would spiral me deeply into a belief that you could never fully accept myself as I was. It became so hard for me to believe you really loved my non-monogamous side after that. I believed I would have been perfect for you if I simply was monogamous. I realise now that was just my fear, my own inability to love that part of myself that was speaking. My ego convincing me you never could love me truly. Her lies had me convinced. It was impossible to see her lies for what they were.
I also didn’t know that your request to not hear about my new connection would also be the thing that gave your mind the space to believe your worse case scenarios that were never my reality, or what I ever wanted. Your ego too was at play convincing yourself that you would be replaced by someone else. That I would abandon you because you weren’t enough. You couldn’t see his lies for what they were either.
I know, nothing, no connection with someone else could ever actually come between us or ever replace the deep deep love we had and the deep deep love I still have for you. I know the thing that could only ever pull us apart was ourselves. Our own fears, our own insecurities, our own pain, our own egos and that’s exactly what happened.
Having someone break up with you is impossibly heart breaking but so too is breaking up with someone you are still deeply in love with. Staying steadfast in a decision I never wanted to make is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Knowing we were becoming unhealthy for each other, triggering each other, and inadvertently changing ourselves for one another was never what we wanted. Never what we set out to do.
I never wanted to give up on you. I was screaming internally, and continually asking externally for you to show me you. To not worry about me, my feelings, my other relationship, just to give me yourself whole heartedly, all your needs, all your wants, all your fears and let me decide whether I could be there in that space with you. I guess what I didn’t understand at the time was that your fears and your inner monologues were seeing all my moments of slowly distancing myself (my own inner self at work trying to protect me) as me abandoning you and this was giving you anything but a comfortable, safe space to give me all of you. I am sorry I didn’t realise this sooner.
I am sorry. I have so much to be sorry for. So many mistakes I made.
I am sorry for my inconsistency in the patience and space I gave you to express your emotions and your reality. I know sometimes I was amazing and had the space and self awareness to allow you to explore depths of yourself you never thought possible, but I now see at other times I was so consumed in my own emotions and fears I gave you anything but space to hear yourself. I am sorry for this and I know this inconsistency would have again been triggering for you.
I am so sorry for sometimes trying to be your emotional guide rather than just your supportive partner. I realise now after months of reflection I have been trying to rewrite my past by helping those I care about so deeply process their emotions, triggers, traumas, realities, experiences at a pace that I deemed necessary (FOR ME!!) Now I can see instead of just being there for you, my own shit was at play. You didn’t need another psych you just needed a supportive and loving partner. I am so sorry I wasn’t just that for you.
I am sorry I didn’t have enough skills or self-awareness around myself, and my other relationship to approach our poly relationship from a better beginning. I didn’t realise my own guilt complexes, my perfectionist issues and my need to replay my past was coming up in these relationships continuously. I am also sorry I didn’t see how co-dependent I was with my nesting partner and how that would have been so hard, practically impossible for you to work around. I’m honestly so grateful you even tried.
I am sure there is so much more I stuffed up. Some I’m sure I don’t even know yet. In another 3, 5 years time I am sure I will look back and be like “Wtf, I can’t believe I approached CNM that way”. The thing is, I can now apologise with hindsight, and growth, and pain, and 4 more poly/emotional relationship books under my belt. Ultimately my reality before this was; I was new just as you were to having a poly relationship. I was working with the very limited tools I had in my box. Just because I had identified as poly for years didn’t mean it helped me know how to navigate a relationship style that had never been modeled to me, one I never had experience before. I am sorry I didn’t have more tools for us but I truly did try my hardest. I searched for information, any amount of books, research papers, podcasts to grow my knowledge in this area. I literally spent a year only researching CNM for my thesis. I had too many people I didn’t want to let down. I now see though, the burden I put on my shoulders wasn’t one for me to carry alone. All 3 of us entered this brand new, fresh, uncertain as to what was to come and we all let each other down in different ways, but most importantly we let ourselves down.
When I love, I love so deeply and it takes all my energy to finally admit defeat. In the end my reality was that my current life space with a 4 year old and a nesting partner, that for the first time was having his own insecurities coming up around non-monogamy, wouldn’t allow for the space we needed. Or more accurately the space I needed. Having my nesting partner’s own issues arise every time I now went and saw you and any time I talked about you, was throwing me into a worm hole I never knew could exist in my other relationship. The energy it took holding my own emotions, his emotions, your emotions and those of my 4 year old was impossible. This space wasn’t a space for healing us. It was a heart wrenching realisation that I didn’t have the energy in me anymore to give us the time to heal more. To keep on our own healing journeys. In another lifetime where you didn’t live 5 hours away, and I didn’t have a 4 year old or a nest family that needed me and our time wasn’t limited 2 days every 3 weeks together we probably could have gotten through, but I knew the energy I had left in the tank wasn’t enough to make this environment work for the kind of healing and growth needed together in this lifetime.
I am so sorry I didn’t tell you more what was going on at home in my nesting relationship. I should have given you the choice of whether you were willing to except my need for real space to heal myself, and my nesting relationship. I realise now I didn’t trust you to hold your own space and speak your own truth and needs enough. I thought I chose to end it so you wouldn’t get lost and have to sacrifice yourself in our relationship while I struggled to repair myself and my other relationship. I now realise I chose ending it over feeling the guilt I would feel every day if you chose to stick it out while I focused wholly on myself and my other relationship. I am so so sorry for this.
I’ve always been someone who has wanted to grow, challenge myself, understand myself and unfortunately it took this break up to help me see so many mistakes I made and so many areas for growth. Some moments thinking back where I thought I was giving to you, doing the right thing by you, loving you so deeply, being a martyr, I now realise was just again my fears, my inability to deal with my guilt complex and my lack of love for my non-monogamous self, showing up in more palatable ways.
For me though it’s never been about forever but about embracing and acknowledging the deep love and what it is in the present and going with the ebb and flow of relationships. I would always rather end things early than continue on and do irreparable damage to each other that will take years to unravel and work through before we can actively not let it affect us in other relationships.
I will always be sorry for the role I played in the end of us but I know I am not alone in the mistakes. I know it always takes two to tango and I am still so mad at you for so many things. So terrifyingly mad at you.
Most of all though I am so mad at you for how you behaved at the end. The things you said to me I wouldn’t even say to someone I hated. The ways you pushed my boundaries and the choices you made to give into your hurt, pain and fear and let that turn your behaviour into something unpredictable, erratic and scary. That week has truly left a deep scar. It has left me not only questioning whether I truly know those around me, but it has also left me questioning myself, and my choices in the people I let into my life, and most importantly my son’s life.
I have truly never been so afraid for mine and my family’s well-being. That week of such intense emotion and erratic, spiteful behaviour thrown at me left me questioning what you would do next. I changed all my technology because I was so afraid you would use your know how in a moment of hatred to f*** me in some other unforeseen way. I told work about what was going on, out of fear of you rocking up and doing something you might regret. All those moments where I thought “surely you wouldn’t do that” to then have friends and family remind me “well you didn’t think he’d do any of this” were so beyond confusing for me. In the end my fear of your unpredictability pushed me to that space, the only space where I could cut it off like I did and that’s why I am mad at you. I never wanted to cut it off, I always thought after time healing we could still be in each other’s lives in a positive way, even if it was from afar, but your behaviour was cruel and unfair and no amount of self-reflection from my end will change the fact that your behaviour was not ok! Not ok for anyone! Let alone someone you loved for 3 years. You don’t behave that way.
My heart and mind are so confused by so many things. The deep deep love I have for you still, the understanding that both of us were to blame, the awareness of how much growth I have to go in my own journey, the want to heal what was lost, and the fear that still crops up from the very end. All those emotions mix together and I end up just lost in whirl pool of emotions. Emotions that I am slowly letting come back in, slowly letting myself feel despite the pain. The pain is there literally every day. I feel it sitting on my chest, right over my heart, at moments its harder to breath because of it, and in other moments its like a warm friend that reminds me that what we had was so real. It was truly love. It reminds me despite this pain it was all worth it to at least experience that love in this life time. Today was the first day I have been able to look at a picture of us since that week and God we were without a doubt truly happy and in love.
Chicks, Dicks and Pricks 