Polyamorous literature is full of touching stories of how opening a marriage rekindled a deep and abiding love between the original couple and deepen their relationship.
You think I’m gonna sneer, ain’tcha?
Nope. I’m not. I think many of those stories are quite true and are wonderful tales to tell. I do want to point out a serious problem with these stories. People mistakenly think that opening the relationship was the solution rather than a side effect to other things that couple probably did before opening the relationship.
Plenty of poly people have been guilty of this one. I’ve seen it once or twice among people who were very proud of their emotional maturity, too.
But if you’re bored, if things are tepid between you and your mate, if you’re feeling stifled…
Adding more people is not magically going to help your original relationship.
Oh, polyamory may be the way to go, it really might. But you want to settle the issues between yourself and your mate first! If you don’t want to do it for yourselves, dear Lord, at least think of the people you’ll be getting involved with! Presumably you’re thinking that if you open your relationship you might actually love the people you’re getting involved with. Do you want to drop them in the middle of an unpleasant mess?
Worse, are you really okay with using a person as a band-aid for your original relationship? (I’ll pay you the compliment of assuming not).
So, how’s those communication skills? How are you guys connecting? Do you feel okay with being vulnerable with your mate?
If things are a little blah between you, and you’re willing to do this work first, yes yes yes, you’re going to find a wonderful re-connection and rekindling. It won’t be polyamory that did it, though, but a mutual willingness to open up, communicate and be vulnerable.
And yes, that’ll help the poly part, too.
Just, make sure you get these things in the right order!
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