Successful relationships aren’t always what you’d expect. In working with people from all walks of life, I can tell you that the best, most successful relationships aren’t necessarily the ones that work out the way both partners intend. If anyone who is alive right now knows, life is always gonna throw curve balls. It’s the inevitable part of existence.
As a young adult, I carried with me all of the relational expectations that one young cis-girl from the deep south would have – the expectation of fidelity, of trust, of compatibility, the idea that my partner would live for me and only me, and vice versa; that I would fall in love with only my soulmate and that I would sacrifice everything for him and he would sacrifice everything for me and that love would conquer all of the tribulations we would encounter. Right? I mean, my parents have been married FOREVER, that line of thinking must be true.
I started out with utter naivete of how the real world works. I was completely unaware of how the real world and other people’s experiences dictated who that person is, not what I believe them to be, or could be, or should be. Learning to accept people for exactly who they are and minimize my expectations of them was probably one of the single hardest things to learn when it came to intimate and romantic relationships.
One of my favorite, albeit most difficult, lessons was the one about letting go. My first marriage was awful. It was no one’s fault it didn’t work, it was just a bad idea. I mean- he was my first true love and the one who encouraged me to follow my gut, to allow myself to love women also, to live for myself, he also wanted me to remain ‘faithful’ and I did so, even when he was paranoid that I wasn’t – to the point of physically attacking me. He wasn’t mentally prepared to be in a serious relationship. Neither was I! He was a man of the world at almost 30 and I wasn’t even 20, I lost my virginity to him and decided that we should get married. That’s what ya do, right?!
Let’s just say it was a hard lesson. I kept coming back to that after we divorced. If I want to survive, I have to let him go. To this day, we are ‘friends’ in that we haven’t lost touch though we have gone years without speaking because life happens. I’m glad we didn’t stay together. We have very, very different views and different lives. And that is okay. Fast forward though, to when I met Chris and Amy:
Christopher is my current nesting partner. And while there may be some dispute on what constitutes nesting partner or primary partner; Christopher and I both do not see each other as ‘primary’ or otherwise hierarchical. When I first moved in with Christopher and Amy, they had been married – the typical open-our-marriage-to-save-it approach as most who’ve had to debate divorce but still get along and among their families and probably even mine, there is still the stigma of – I must have stolen her husband. Well, you can’t steal people away from someone. We are all adults and we made the best decisions we could at the time.
One being, I was moving to Austin regardless of what the two of them wanted to do. Amy, Chris and I had broken up – but Chris wanted to move as well, because before the break-up that was the plan we felt was best for our family. Chris and Amy broke up and Chris came with me. Amy spent months figuring out who she was as Amy and not as Chris’ wife or our children’s mother (this is an important growth opportunity for anyone raised in Abrahamic religious households, as you are raised not to be yourself but to be solely someone’s good daughter, someone’s submissive wife, or someone’s dutiful mother). Amy needed to find Amy before she could find healthy relationships.
We are still very much in each other’s lives. Amy moved several months later and due to extenuating circumstances, ended up living with us until she could move out. Our relationship has become successful as we have morphed over time to become the poly family that we enjoy. We support each other in our ups and downs; we are there for each other in times of pandemics and auto trouble. The trick, you see, is letting go of those relationship expectations. Allowing people to be who they are and if YOU are important to them, they stick with you regardless of how your relationship WITH them changes. It is important to remember to have relationships with People, not Relationships.
To me, that is what a successful relationship is: the ability to still be involved in each other’s lives without holding a typical relationship expectation with them, to truly let them go while also loving and supporting them emotionally, mentally, and even physically.
It is up to all of us to normalize the community or village mindset where we take care of each other and love each other without the expectation of the relationship escalator. Chosen family, regardless of romantic tendencies, exist and are some of the most healthy support systems you can have. What if I told you this was possible? It all begins with being open to change, holding onto your boundaries, and being able to communicate in non-violent ways.
Aspire Life 