Taking Breaks (but not Breaking Up)

Polyamory is amazing for so many reasons. One of which is the freedom it offers to each partner at any point in time. The truth is, people are supposed to ask for what they want from each other, and the best polyamorous relationships are those that involve people simply fulfilling each other’s dream requests, while still having enough time and space to allow other people to do the same on other levels of life and love. Thus, a co-existing, co-created, expanding and contracting web of beautiful kindness and honest emotions is cocooning us all together in some sexy collective of polyamorous perfection, even though it’s always improving and evolving. Never being actually perfect is the perfect state of polyamory, and that leads me to my point: Separation’s sweet necessity. It happens to the best of us, and the worst of us. It must happen to us all.

Polyamory preserves the absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder aspect of love better than almost anything else in life. There is a complacency that occurs with married folks and people in long-term relationships that settles in when there isn’t enough energy and electricity and evolution in a connection. There are many reasons that can inspire space and distance, whether it’s a job, a change in home, an online dating situation, or protection before trust manifests. And for people who are together, there sometimes needs to be space because the balance has shifted, and the emotions have followed suit. It happens to the best of lovers and friends, a shift in the energy that one can dedicate and offer to the relationship, and sometimes, one person just doesn’t have the opportunity and ability to offer the relationship an equal amount of time and space. These shifts are inevitable on one level or another, whether it takes a week, a month, or a year for it to occur. Every relationship has to negotiate shifts in availability at some point or another. Even high school sweethearts who promise to stay together their whole lives have to deal with things like going to college, finding employment, choosing a career, getting married, and buying property. So, do they want to do all of that together, every single step of the journey? That would be very rare for two people, much less more.

It’s a switch of trust, but it’s even more infused with faith because the separation is temporary.

The trust switch happens in a variety of ways, whether ending permanently or temporarily. When polyamory needs to practice its beautiful possibility of making space, one can usually transition into a space of non-intimacy more honorably and respectfully than just cutting off all emotional connection and extracting the person from one’s life. It’s not necessary to separate completely in polyamory. It’s possible to just shift or switch one aspect of the relationship, and this is a level of maturity that is afforded only a few compassionate hearts in this world. To be lovers, then friends, then lovers again when the time feels right is one of the most special relationships that can happen in this life as a human. Who knows when it will feel right? Nobody knows… but the heart.

Trust it, my beautiful friend. And thank you for all the wonderful love we shared. Until the next hug, kiss or moment we make love, stay sweet.

Love,
Addi Stewart

Tell us what you think

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments