Love or Lust or Something In-Between?

the polyamorous man post, part 1

There is before him and there is after him. Whatever it was between us, it changed me.

4 years ago I fell in love with a married man. Yes, I fell. And it felt like falling. Into an abyss that would take me on the biggest underworld journey of my life.

He was married. But it was an “open” marriage, consensual. Everyone agreed. His wife liked that he fucked other women. While that might have been true, once she realized that what had developed between us was more than sex, I learned that she wasn’t as okay with it all as he had said. About two months into our relationship, she revealed to me that she felt pressured to open her marriage. Duress is the word she used. That if she didn’t agree, her marriage would end.

He knew this. He never said it verbatim, but he knew her true feelings. They were married for twenty years. He knew. And still he went after what he wanted and called it “progressive,” called it “spiritually awake.”

She called it selfish. I do too.

At times I still want to scream this at him. How fucking selfish he was and probably still is.

But he is a mere phantom now, long vanished from my life, only to resurface with a random text in those rare periods where I don’t have him blocked. Why I’ve blocked and unblocked him is between me and my inner darkness alone- that little part who still believes that true love comes from something outside. Her and I are having conversations now and have come to understand that is not the way.More and more I am understanding and integrating that wisdom.

I was partnered from age 19-34. Less than a month after my breakup with my long term partner, I started seeing Nate (this is not his real name, but it’s the name I’m using in my novel. Yes, I’m writing a whole novel about this relationship). I thought, he’s married, it’s nothing serious, there’s no risk.

The Universe had other plans.

I’m opening with my anger (and maybe judgement) towards this man. But the truth is, I did love him. I was in love with him and ultimately walked away for a number of reasons but one of the biggest ones was because I knew that that was least harmful thing I could do for all involved. I didn’t want to walk away. Letting go was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I told you before I ditched heroin. This was waaaaay harder.

The rare times I think of this relationship now I still wonder if it was lust or love. Certainly it was some of both.

There is one part of me that believes this love affair was pure lusty obsession, a twin-flame attraction that burned like a wild fire devouring everything in its path with not a care for what it touched and charred. Not true love, but something else, an attraction of wounds and blackness that drew us to each other like moth to flame, though that fire consumed us both, changed us both forever.

The other part of me believes down to her bones that our love for each other was real. Pure. True. I still feel an ache for the raw intimacy we shared, like we were looking inside each other’s souls completely unfiltered, completely whole. Undeniably I loved this man.

There was a time on our road trip- we were in the midst of an excellent psilocybin experience- where he turned to me and asked me about my ex, whom I was recently separated from, a man I loved dearly, but in a very different way. He told me, “There’s nothing you can’t tell me.” And I felt it as true, not just in that moment, but that’s part of what I loved about him: there was nothing off limits. I could bring my whole self, my shame, my fears and my hunger. He would take it all. I had never experienced that in a man before and haven’t since.

He was married. Happily married. With three kids. I loved his family and I loved that he loved his family. I wasn’t a secret (at least not to his immediate family). His wife and I were friends. His brother knew about me.

She was a mirror for me in a lot of ways. As everyone we attract into our lives is. Of course, at the time, I didn’t want to look in it. Instead, I got angry that she wasn’t brave enough to speak her needs and voice her truth. I didn’t know how hard that was yet. I thought I was doing that- that I was good at it. But I hadn’t experienced truth telling when the stakes are high. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I’ve since learned my lesson the hard way.

We broke up many times in the short period we were together. First was in August, when I met him and his wife at a park. It was the first time the three of us had spent time alone together. Listening to their easy banter that can only exist from twenty years together, all my wounds were triggered. I don’t belong. I’m not wanted. I’m not important. I’m not lovable. No one will ever commit to me. I fled the scene holding back tears and mumbling to him that “I can’t do this.”

He convinced me to stay in it, painting a picture of a how a future together was possible. Land. A homestead. Me not having to work- he would be the provider. Everything I wanted. This was before his wife admitted to me that she was pressured into an open marriage and that this whole situation was essentially being forced on her. She never said she had a problem with me. It came out sideways later when him and I took a three week roadtrip and she was left to stay with their three kids. In short, she freaked out and thought he wasn’t coming back. Reasonable. But he did come back (and it was downhill from there, at least where I was concerned).

You don’t see all this when you’re in it. You sense the pings of incongruence, the red flags catching in the corner of your eye. But you’re too consumed, like quicksand, you’re sinking and you’ve got horse blinders on, not to mention your brain is flooded from love hormones from the best sex of your life. I couldn’t see what was going on. That, and I loved him. That, and I didn’t want to let go.

You don’t experience the kind of grief I did if you didn’t truly love someone. Two solid years of being constantly devastated, if not on the surface, underneath my insides were raw and being gnawed at by his absence and by the fact that he was still happily married and having sex with this beloved everyday.

Well, now we’ve gotten to the core of my childhood wounding. Her and not me. My first sexual experience was with one of my step-sisters friends. Blonde, floppy hair, blue eyes, tall. At fifteen I thought surely this is love. Deep down I think I knew he didn’t really like me, certainly I knew he didn’t love me- but all of this in hindsight. We had sex. Just once. Not long after he revealed he only slept with me in hopes of getting closer to my step-sister. Her not me. That same pattern manifested in several more romantic encounters, where I was the second option, the one they settled for or used, not the one who was truly desired.

So, of course my inner fifteen year old wants to be chosen. I’m sure the wound goes much further back than fifteen, but in all my work, I can’t find the origin. More and more I wonder if we need to find the root incident to heal. Can loving ourselves right now, unconditionally be medicine enough? Need we torture ourselves going back through thickets of thorn and weed to maybe glimpse some root cause of the residue we carry now (that’s ruining our lives)? Can’t we simply cleanse ourselves with love and acceptance and move on with forgiveness?

Life is a motherfucker. A beautiful, enchanting, wild, lustrous motherfucker that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

I wouldn’t trade this love affair for anything. Because, for as awful and painful as it was it was one of the most profound and life-changing experiences of my life. For as much grief as I moved through there was an equal amount of joy and bliss.

It initiated me into a new life. One where I know that nothing and no one outside myself will complete or heal me. I learned how to let go. And now, I am sure that I can let go of anything, because I let go of him (the thing I wanted most). Grief, in all her beauty, teaches us to hold more and open more to the wild, gut wenching paradox of life.

Whether the love him and I had other was real or purely obsessive lust, I may never know. But I do know that I am better for having gone through it and I’m guessing he would say the same.

Photo by Dương Trần Quốc on Unsplash