I didn’t give up writ­ing these last two months. And I haven’t been fight­ing rabid lemurs. I’ve just been going through a lot. I’ll tell you all about it…

Well, okay, I’ll tell you about some of it. 

Some of it is not my sto­ry to tell. Some of it is just Rashomon inter­pre­ta­tions of the same sto­ry. It’s point­less to lay blame and unfair, giv­en the size of this plat­form, to tell my side of the “my side/her side” things. But the details that are not in dis­pute and not sen­si­tive are these:

My rela­tion­ship with one of my part­ners is chang­ing. 

I have moved, and I’m liv­ing in down­town Lafayette. (California—not Louisiana or Indi­ana) 

Work­ing out­side a tra­di­tion­al par­a­digm (polyamory or just a whole lot of reject­ing the sta­tus quo) can be a lit­tle weird some­times. With­in more tra­di­tion­al rela­tion­ship struc­tures, the ques­tion is usu­al­ly, “Can I live with this, or do we part ways?” And if some­one is in a par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mon ver­sion of monogamy where there is an empha­sis on the rela­tion­ship esca­la­tor, the ques­tion is often even high­er stakes: “Am I okay enough with this to con­tin­ue for­ward and move in with/get mar­ried to/have chil­dren with this per­son? Or do I need to acknowl­edge now that my life will be spent unhap­py because of this part that isn’t work­ing, and ‘cut my loss­es’ now?”

In polyamory, though, rela­tion­ships and their meta­mor­phoses aren’t always “all or noth­ing” deals. You can de-esca­late with­out end­ing every­thing. Maybe you moved in and work WAY bet­ter liv­ing apart. Or you just aren’t the type of peo­ple who can make a date every week work out. Rela­tion­ships don’t have to ride the esca­la­tor to “Mar­ried With Chil­dren” to count, so you don’t have to end them if what they real­ly need is dial­ing back.

But also, you may shelve parts of a rela­tion­ship that aren’t work­ing, but keep right on going with the rest. You can change parts of a rela­tion­ship, but not oth­ers. It can be a lit­tle non-bina­ry, and it can even be a lit­tle messy. (Or a lot messy.) Maybe you keep bang­ing, but you know you can’t live togeth­er or real­ly be involved deeply in each other’s lives. Or you have a great entwined rela­tion­ship as long as you are basi­cal­ly lov­ing­ly pla­ton­ic.

Once you throw the rule­book away, things get a lit­tle funky, but they can also be sur­pris­ing­ly sat­is­fy­ing. Writ­ing your own rules means you can cre­ate exact­ly the lives you want. As long as two peo­ple are in agree­ment about what’s get­ting de-esca­lat­ed and what’s stay­ing in play, and nei­ther is sac­ri­fic­ing or tak­ing advan­tage, it can be tremen­dous­ly sat­is­fy­ing to ignore what soci­ety tells us rela­tion­ships are “sup­posed” to be.

Of course, when one per­son wants ONLY one thing to de-esca­late and the oth­er sees that facet of their lives as cru­cial­ly linked to some­thing else, that stuff starts to get a lit­tle messy.

So this part­ner and I are in a “messy” place. We’re not bro­ken up. We’re not exact­ly togeth­er. We’re not offi­cial­ly dat­ing. We aren’t liv­ing togeth­er. We don’t hate each other—although we are hav­ing some trou­ble com­mu­ni­cat­ing. We’re not quit­ting or giv­ing up. I moved. But we some­times hang out and watch stream­ing shows. We’re in ther­a­py. Grief is there, but it’s grief for an idea. We want­ed dif­fer­ent things out of cohab­i­tat­ing. So I am not hav­ing to try to remem­ber to breathe or any­thing like that.

I need to titrate emo­tion­al intro­spec­tion and self-care so that nei­ther wal­low­ing nor avoid­ance is the dom­i­nant force in my pro­cess­ing.
Those are both on me. Just got­ta have those long walks through nature and lis­ten to Fleet­wood Mac songs. Got­ta make sure I’m still exer­cis­ing and eat­ing okay. (Only one night of tater tots and Ameri­cone Dream veg­an ice cream for din­ner.) 

And that’s what’s been hap­pen­ing. Between hol­i­days and big life shifts, I didn’t have a lot of time to sit and write. Pack­ing takes time. Unpack­ing takes time. Big talks take a lot of time. And when some­thing real­ly dys­reg­u­lat­ing is hap­pen­ing, it can be very hard to seam­less­ly shift to spend­ing a few hours writ­ing.