Day to Day in the life of my polycule.

I am polyamorous which means that I have multiple meaningful and intimate relationships. Everyone I am involved with knows about everyone else, we all have open and honest communication. Here is what a typical week in my life / polycule looks like:

Monday Morning

I roll out of bed at the sound of Sato’s alarm and saunter off to the kitchen to make him a pot of pour over coffee. Like clockwork, I find him in the bathroom getting ready and hand him a steaming cup of joe so that he can portion out the appropriate amount of honey. The plastic bear full of honey permanently resides on my bathroom counter now. Partially because of ritual, and partially so curious house guests can wonder why the hell I consistently have honey on my bathroom counter. After a warm embrace and some Sato kisses, I crawl back under the covers of my queen sized bed and drift back to sleep until it’s time for me to wake up and do the whole ritual again for myself. We have become very good at existing with one another.

Sato and I have been dating for almost two years, he has been my anchor partner. We live separately which allows us to better maintain our own autonomy. On average, we spend a few nights a week with each other, switching between his place and mine. We both have other relationships and dialogues separate from ours that we each maintain.

Tuesday

I wake up to good morning texts from Chase, we carry on conversations while at work exchanging tidbits from our days, gushing over food and excitedly chatting about our upcoming date. I enjoy these exchanges throughout the day.

Sato meets me at my house after I get off of work, we make dinner together. I end up painting and writing on my computer while he plays video games and researches materials for the projects we are working on. We catch up on each others’ day and fill one another in on future plans we have in the week. This week, we happen to each have separate dates planned with our other partners. Our regular debriefings are unguarded and open; the honest communication keeps both of us in the loop and allows us to talk about our feelings and nurture a healthy relationship. I crawl into bed shortly after midnight. Waking up briefly as Sato crawls in beside me hours later, stroking my side and to tell he loves me as he pulls me close.

The bulk of our days are like this, existing and coworking in a shared space with one another. Talking, laughing, eating, tickling and cuddling. It sounds so simple, but our friendship is one of the most beautiful, intimate, and fulfilling parts of our relationship. He is after all my best friend.

Wednesday Evening

Lynn comes over with a cute hand wrapped gift, we haven’t seen each other since before my birthday. We’ve been comets with one another for a year now, casually showing up in each other’s lives and beds while having long periods of absence in between. My heart fills with warmth when she talks about her music, work, and other partners. I don’t see Lynn often, she lives on the other side of the country, but when I do, our interactions are tender and her presence in my life fills me with happiness.

I relish that I have multiple relationships consisting of different types of intimacy and love. It has shown me how important and fulfilling nonsexual intimacy is. And how love isn’t always defined by the standards or checklist I was taught growing up.

Thursday Evening

Sato is on a date with someone he has been seeing for a long time now, they’ve had an intimate relationship for going on seven years. These dates always leave him smiling and I find lots of compersion in their relationship knowing how much happiness they give Sato. I am the type of person that needs and rather enjoys some alone time. I spend the evening with myself, taking a long shower, cleaning my house, catching up on tv shows, practicing calligraphy and going to bed early. Exchanging more sweet texts with Chase, who I just started a dialogue with and have been swimming in the butterflies that come with NRE.

Friday Evening

I spend Friday eating dinner with Chase, it’s our date night. We are still in the beginning stages of our relationship, the getting to know each other but increasingly head over heels stage. We discuss the amazing food we are both enjoying, the art we’ve recently come into contact with, our future goals and what we both are looking for in a relationship. We dance around each other making one another laugh and smile. I sleep over, enjoying the intimacy we are forming by learning how to interact and open up to one another.

Saturday Evening

After work, I crawled into bed with Sato. It’s been a few days since I’ve seen him and his cuddles are rejuvenating. I gush all about my night with Chase, and he tells me about his date. We order our favorite Indian food and spend the night in, doing laundry and co-working with one another until we pass out in each other’s arms.

I think some people have a misconception that polyamory is easy and is all about having lots of sex, and it’s not. It’s about building and maintaining multiple, meaningful relationships. It requires massive amounts of communication and processing which is usually a lot of hard work.

Sunday

I go and hang out with my close friends / intentional family. A decent size group of humans that are like-minded, the majority, but not all of them are polyamorous and have been friends for years. We love and support each other through deep friendships and a variety of intertangled polycules. We regularly get together on the weekends to be able to spend time, catch up and deepen our friendships. Having other friends that are open minded and also practice ethical non-monogamy has been extremely important for my support structure.

I know I am privileged to have a close group of people who choose to lead alternative lives that love, support and accept me that I get to call my tribe. Not everyone who is non-monogamous or is in any sort of alternative lifestyle is lucky enough to have a support system and I am extremely grateful for mine.

Other Thoughts

I have struggled posting this because I feel like the time span I talked about doesn’t adequately include all of my relationships. I have many close friendships of various intimate degrees that I devote time and energy too that I couldn’t fit into the week described above, which often happens in my life, there’s only so much time. Many weeks look like the one I described, other weeks I don’t see my two main partners as much and I’ll take more time to myself for my mental health, art, and to spend time backpacking and being immersed in nature. Or I’ll devote time with my close friends, we will get together and watch horror movies while stuffing our faces with pizza, cuddle on the couch, catch up on the phone, drink wine, break bread and exist. Or how one of my metamours and I spend our days sending each other voice texts over messenger. There are many intertangled complexities, just becasue I didn’t mention them above doesn’t denote their importance.

Another thing to mention is this is a week in my life, other humans who practice polyamory might have a different relationship structure, where their lives take on different colors and paint a different picture. One of the beautiful things about poly is you get to create a relationship structure that fits you, your life and your needs. My version of polyamory is ever-shifting, it is different now then when it started and is still evolving, especially with my new relationship with Chase, where Sato and I have had to re-evaluate so that I can happily spend time and energy on a second relationship.

Definitions

Polyamory: Is a practice of non-monogamy in which one believes that they can have multiple meaningful and intimate relationships. And where everyone involved knows about everyone else. Some people define it as ethical non-monogamy.

Polycule: Is a term referring to polyamorous relationship structures. If you were to draw our a polycule it would look similar to a molecule structure, hence the “cule” part of the term.

Anchor: Straying away from a hierarchical view in poly, this is the partner that you tie your boat to essentially. Your rock. The term doesn’t put other relationships second.

Autonomy: Freedom from another’s or external control, freedom to choose to live your life how you see fit.

Dialogues: A broad term used when referencing that you are talking, interested or getting to know someone. But can be used for anyone you have any sort of relationship with (i.e. a co-worker, someone you’re dating, a friend, a partner).

Debriefings: Open and objective conversation where we talk about our feelings before or after an event.

Comet: A partner or relationship that comes into your life semi-regularly but isn’t a weekly consistent relationship. Essentially a relationship that comes into your orbit but doesn’t always stay there.

Compersion: Often referred to as the opposite of jealousy, its the joy one finds in other peoples relationships and through other people joy with others.

NRE: Means New Relationship Energy, it’s the butterflies and “honeymoon” phase of a new budding relationship and can last for different amounts of times for different relationships.

Metamour: The term used in the poly community to describe a partners partner. And helps define humans in context and relationship to one another. Example: Sato is dating me and K, K and I are not dating, therefore K and I are metamours.

– Ciao –

Gyne Andro

Email me at gyneandroblog@gmail.com