“Life really does begin at 40. Up until then, you are just doing research.”
—Carl Jung
For the last two-plus years, I’ve been on a bold adventure of self-growth and discovery.
Carl Jung believed that the first half of our life is for learning about the world, and the second half of our life is for moving away from societal standards and expectations to live on our own terms.
In my late 30s, I started questioning many of the cultural scripts I’d inherited around how to structure my relationships, the role of community and friendship in my life, how much my role as a parent demanded complete self-sacrifice, whether I wanted to entangle my identity with my career or family, how often I chose comfort over growth, and more.
Turns out, questioning one thing in life is like a game of dominos: it can lead to questioning everything. And deconstructing. And rebuilding a life that feels authentic.
This questioning all arose from a single decision.
In February 2024, I decided to become polyamorous.
Polyamory: being open to caring deeply for more than one person and to having more than one intimate relationship at a time, with everyone’s knowledge and consent.
I chose to experiment with polyamory because I thought it would be a meaningful way to form and sustain deeper connections in my life. I felt secure and stable in my marriage, ready for a challenge, and confident that my partner and I could navigate it together. I wanted to add more to a good life. More love and connection. More ways of knowing myself and my partner. Opening my marriage felt like an invitation to adventure: supporting and cheering each other on, trying new things, feeling the heady giddiness of a new crush, and experiencing life more fully. It felt like a door to new experiences.
But the biggest benefit of polyamory has been how it’s made me curious about all my scripts and assumptions, and catalyzed my personal growth and self-expansion.
Polyamory is a mindset, not just a relationship structure. It’s shorthand for my values: questioning defaults, making space for growth and change, building community, choosing abundance over scarcity, honoring complexity, being curious, taking risks, and learning about how other people’s minds work.
Polyamory has helped me differentiate from my partner and become more independent. It’s allowed me to embrace myself and my needs during a time in my life when motherhood threatened to engulf me. It’s helped me see through some of the ways I’ve been conditioned as a woman to appease others or gain their approval. I’ve interrogated my attachment style. I’ve become more attuned to information from my body. I’ve learned to take ownership of and cope with hard feelings like jealousy, envy, fear, anxiety, insecurity, and uncertainty. I’ve released some of my desire to control outcomes. I’ve become more open to the idea that change is the only constant. I’ve expanded the role of love in my life.
I’ve learned that I’m queer, which has been a revelation and a delight. (I’m coming out twice in one post!) This was not my original reason for exploring polyamory. But questioning some of my assumptions around sex and love led me to question all of them. I’ve been fortunate to be able to explore this side of my identity, to know myself more deeply.
It may sound wild to say that the mindset shift that came with polyamory is also why I took a career break, started running marathons, and began public writing, but this is true, too.
Polyamory is the lens through which I view most of the topics I write about:
How our culture tends to treat love as scarce: something to ration, protect, and gatekeep rather than something that grows through use.
Designing a life with intention centered on authenticity and personal growth.
Setting boundaries based on our values.
Accepting what we have and savoring the good things in life.
Thinking deeply about how to prioritize time and energy, especially in the context of long-term partnership and parenthood.
Polyamory has changed how I see all my relationships. It’s expanded my capacity for connection. I now show up with more presence, curiosity, and generosity in the many other relationships in my life—including my relationship with myself. I’ve learned to be “aggressively friendly.” I’ve steadily grown in my awareness of my needs and standards for any relationship, platonic or romantic. I’ve learned to want things I hadn’t known to want before.
When I started dating non-monogamously, people would ask me what I was looking for, and I thought, “I have no idea! I’m flexible. There’s nothing missing in my life. It’s all extra.” But as I’ve learned more about myself, and gotten more realistic about scheduling and capacity, the bar has been raised. Now, the people that I spend time with regularly are people who really light me up and bring out my best self. And how lucky I am to have found them.
The logistics are definitely a bigger part of this lifestyle than I thought they would be. A common saying in the polyamorous community: “Love is infinite, time is not.” I’ve had to get radically honest with myself about my priorities, my actual availability in the context of these, and my capacity—both logistically and emotionally. I now think of scheduling and boundaries as sexy. They signal intention and self-awareness.
Balancing multiple relationships has also given me the opportunity to question some of my scripts1 about what a relationship “should” look like:
If we don’t see each other for a while, or we don’t text every day, does that mean the relationship isn’t special or worthwhile?
How quickly should we expect to have sex, fall in love, define the relationship, meet each other’s friends/family? Must we do all of these things? Must they happen in a certain order? Can we do them “too fast” or “too slow”?
Is a relationship that includes sex and/or romance better than one that does not? Is it possible to deescalate a relationship by removing some of these components without destroying it?
Does the end of a relationship mean it has failed?
What does it mean for a relationship to thrive in a world in which exclusivity and other markers of “success” (like marriage and kids) are off the table?
I’ve begun to relax into letting the relationship take the shape that naturally works best for that dynamic, trusting that each person will make the shifts needed to accommodate. And I’ve learned to accept that relationships are constantly in flux and that what works for a relationship at one point in time can and will evolve. Polyamory has highlighted the importance of continual curiosity (about myself, about the other person) and flexibility. It’s forced me not to cling too tightly to any single outcome.
Polyamory is a practice of mindfulness: being fully awake and aware. It exposes all weaknesses and assumptions. It removes many of the shortcuts and defaults our culture offers for deciding what makes a relationship “special” or meaningful. When I was monogamous, I assumed that I should try to meet all of my partner’s needs and that we would default to spending our spare time and energy together. I assumed that boundaries and space were unnecessary, or even problematic signs of emotional distance. I felt guarded and jealous about the idea of my partner spending significant time with others. I worried it would mean I wasn’t “enough.” And during my first real challenge in polyamory, I saw my partner doing things with his new partner that he also did with me, and found it threatening to our identity as a couple. But what makes a relationship special is not really the things you do or the places you go. It’s the unique dynamic inherent to that relationship. It’s the specific combination of people in it, and what each person brings out in the other.
In polyamory, I get to be much more intentional about my choices and what they signify. Now, the time I spend with a partner is time we both want and value. We actively choose each other. I can also be intentional with time we spend apart. I might choose to spend it with another partner, my kids, a friend or loved one, or even (gasp!) myself. Spending time apart from a partner is not a rejection but a choice that helps me be a full human. I’ve started taking myself on solo dates to become more comfortable in my own company. I’ve stopped defaulting to “we” language. I don’t need a partner in the way I used to.
Polyamory has created radical honesty in my relationships—a level of honesty I never had in monogamy—along with the need for boundaries and privacy. Space for us to exist as individuals and, with that, to see, love, and appreciate each other more fully.
Practicing polyamory has also demanded that I improve my relationship skills. I’ve done a lot of introspection. I’m more self-aware, less defensive, and more comfortable with vulnerability. I’ve developed greater emotional maturity and skills for self-regulation. I’ve learned to ask questions rather than assuming. I can listen with the goal to understand rather than to persuade. I no longer subscribe to the idea that proving how well you know someone is a sign of how much you love them.
With all this said, polyamory isn’t a requirement for self-growth or the secret to a full and rich life. It’s not better or more enlightened than monogamy. For me, polyamory has simply been a forcing function. All of these lessons could also be learned in a monogamous relationship in which both partners practice curiosity and remain open to change, renegotiate the relationship’s structure and roles over time, affirm each other’s independence, and encourage meaningful friendships outside of the relationship. The problem is, monogamy is the default. No one opts in. The real value is in the process of consciously choosing a relationship orientation and designing a relationship to meet the needs of its participants.
I haven’t learned everything, and I am not always amazing at this. I write from a space of progress, not perfection. I’m (always) still growing.
“We’re all weird. Everyone’s pretending. No one knows what they’re doing. Do whatever you want. Have you tried that yet? It’s f*cking amazing.”
—Darby Hudson (Instagram)
Where do we go from here?
I’ve been wanting to write this post for a long time. I’ve written multiple versions of it. And I’m sharing it with my partners’ consent. Releasing it into the world feels like exhaling truth. It gives me space to write more openly and honestly about all the topics that matter most.
I will continue to explore many of my favorite topics and themes: questioning inherited scripts, making space for multiple truths to co-exist, and learning to stay present, honest, and responsive as we grow and change. My writing is less about any particular relationship structure and more about how we choose connection, make choices with intention, and welcome abundance in a culture that encourages competition.
I’m also excited to share more about what this relationship structure has taught me and to tell stories about my experiences. There’s so much I have had to hold back or allude to indirectly. Coming out feels liberating and powerful. I feel aligned with my goal to live and love with honesty and integrity. And if I can pave the way for even one person to live their own truth more fully, it’ll have been more than worth it. Thank you for reading.
Recommended resources for learning more about polyamory:
Books: More Than Two (Eve Rickert and Andrea Zanin) is my absolute favorite, a real textbook of polyamory resources and dilemmas, very comprehensive. I would definitely start here. It’ll answer basically any question you can think of. Polysecure and Polywise, both by Jessica Fern, are both rich with information. The first is about attachment specifically and the other is about many other topics within the area of ethnical non-monogamy (ENM). The Ethical Slut (Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy) was the first book I read about ENM and has a special place in my heart; I also just love reclaiming “slut” as a celebration rather than a slur.
More books that aren’t specifically about polyamory: The Other Significant Others (Rhaina Cohen) and How We Show Up (Mia Birdsong) are two of my faves. Both reimagine the ways we can create and sustain significant connections and the roles friends can play in our lives. I’m reading Once Upon a Stranger (Gillian Sandstrom) right now and loving all the research on the unanticipated benefits of talking to strangers (e.g., greater overall sense of community and connectedness). I’ve also got Platonic by Maria Franco on my bookshelf but not yet in my head.
Podcasts: Mistakes Were Made is the first podcast my partner and I listened to when we started exploring polyamory and it remains a favorite. It follows the experiences and adventures of two married Seattle parents who open their relationship (sound familiar!?) and make alllll the mistakes. The narrators, Sarah and Alex, are warm, relatable, and endearing. I also find Multiamory to be very comprehensive: almost any question I have about polyamory has probably been covered in multiple episodes. I’ve also heard good things about Normalizing Non-Monogamy.
Articles: Here’s my favorite, brief yet dense with ideas: The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy (Multiamory has a great deep dive episode on this). And here’s a helpful lil’ article about codependency: The most skipped step when opening a relationship.
The concept of the “relationship escalator” describes the series of expected and socially sanctioned steps or escalations that people take toward establishing a long-term, monogamous relationship. Failing to meet these milestones (usually within a particular timeframe) typically means a relationship isn’t “going anywhere,” no matter if the current stage feels right to the participants or meets their needs. It’s based on the amatonormative assumption that we all want a single, exclusive, lifelong partnership, and that all relationships should either progress in this direction or end.
