General
Question:
Can polyamorous relationships last or does polyamory end relationships over time?
Answer:
The short answer sounds a bit depressing but please do read on, because it is actually really hopeful.
The short answer is: Relationships don’t last! They just don’t.
Monogamous relationships don’t. Polyamorous relationships don’t.
please read on…
relationships
Relationships end because of… a lack in flexibility
All relationships end (either by the death of one of the partners or by a change in the relationship)
Our lives have extended. We used to not get to be much older than 45. Listen to Esther Perel on Youtube and gain an understanding of the immense changes in our hopes and wants about our relationships.
Our hopes and dreams about our relationships have grown enormously over the past century. From collaborating in a partnership that raised kids in -comparably to today- rather poor economics, to -nowadays- the hopes about endless spiritual growth, hot sex, everlasting romantic kisses and equality, and difference. And if we take our own growth (and decline) over our lifetime serious we have to develop a view on relationships that is quite simple:
We all will need to change our relations over time because we grow and change and live and learn.
Even if we stay together with the same person for a lifetime, we will have to change our way of collaborating, our way of having friendship and sex over time.
As a relationship coach, I can even state that relationships often break because they are too rigid. One, or the other does not want to change the relationship over time. New persons in your life may become be more and later on less appealing. New kicks are found perhaps. New lessons to be learned perhaps. More appreciation perhaps for what is, may give the warmth to be flexible.
Relations and Chewing gum…
- when it gets colder it gets brittle
- when we want to stretch is too hard in too little time.
So the question is how to get a little warmth into the relationship and how to realign the wishes and hopes. If you have the flexibility to change your relationships to your life (and steer your life according to your relationships).
And you will fuck up some things in your relationships because we all make mistakes.
But if you are a bit forgiving to yourself and your partner(s) they are -after all- maybe the “happy little accidents” that Bob Ross talks about.
They might be changes in direction that were needed, to paint new things together in a new way or maybe to mutually agree that a respectful separation is better than a regretful keeping up appearances. And that is why the 2 goals in integrative relationship coaching are:
- find the love and respect back in the relationship (and changing it from mono to poly OR from poly to mono may be ways of relating that are part of that change)
- find respect in the breakup of the relationship (and the change toward new relationships such as ex-es or co-parents)
Monogamous / Polyamorous
So back to the question: Let us have a talk together and align the wishes and hopes. Let’s find out what both of your wishes are (maybe by telling them both to me and then I will talk about the matches and keep the rest out of the conversation). Let us try to get a bit of warmth back in the relation, in the intimacy, let’s get some hotness in the relationship. Monogamous or opening it up, or anything in between, that is something you both agree upon. Don’t change enough and try to keep what you have, that’ll break things up. Force change in your partner, that’ll break things up. Want everything right now, that’ll break things up.
And suddenly -if you look closer- monogamous is never that monogamous because no one can be everything to your partner, and polyamorous isn’t that wild and flexible as you might imagine from a monogamous perspective (both the fears and the hopes are often exaggerated). And the highlight will be on “relation” more than the forms you choose along the way.
So, let’s talk 🙂
Hans
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