If I could go back and tell myself one thing about starting polyamory it would be this: don’t worry about fairness, worry about what you need. Balance is not the same as equal.

I thought, to be healthy, we had to have the same things. Equal time with different partners. It was only fair.

It was horrifically imbalanced and met none of my needs. It almost broke me.

Two years down the road and I’ve learned a lot. About myself. About my partner (that’s right, singular). About what I need, what I want, how to communicate, and how to identify the difference between a need and an expectation.

I’m a homebody. Eilan is not. I need way more sleep than Eilan does to function properly. I’m monogamous. Eilan is polyamorous. And *gasp* these two things are not exclusionary. In fact, they are complimentary. Because they are authentic.

My need to be monogamous, to be wholly devoted to one person is simply how I am. It’s how I function best. I love to surround myself with friends and loved ones but deep down, I have one partner.

Eilan is polyamorous through and through. His best and most authentic self has many partners of varying commitment. I love this about him. We are not together ‘despite’ his polyamory. We are flourishing because of his polyamory.

Because of polyamory 1) our communication has increased tenfold. We both went to individual therapy to deal with the things affecting us and learned how to communicate with each other. Now we can not only talk to each other and understand, but truly share who we are and our desires and needs without fear of backlash or emotional reactions.

2) Our sex life is incredible. I’m not going to get too personal about this one, because there are lots of poly blogs and pages that focus on sex and this isn’t one of them. But not shockingly, learning how to communicate and feeling free to express ourselves has led to fucking amazing sex.

3) surrounded our children with so much love. Eilan and I were married and had children before we started this road. We get asked frequently ‘what about the kids?!’ and it just makes me chuckle. Yes. They are suffering so hard by having a variety of trusted, loving adults who adore them. It is so rough. We might never know how they manage to cope.

4) led to incredibly liberating introspection. When you strip everything that you have been told, taught, forced to repeat until you believed it was your opinion, you’re left feeling quite exposed. But also free. Free to try things you never would have. (Threesomes can be awesome.) Free to express yourself authentically. Free to follow your heart. Free to find your own spirituality in the world. (Turns out I am very much not a Christian. I’m a witch!) Free to try things once, or even a few times, and decide it’s not for you. (I am monogamous. Tried the triad. With some absolutely amazing women who are dear friends to this day. Just not my jam.) And my personal favorite, free to be as weird as you fucking want to be.

5) polyamory has brought so many amazing women into my life. (Eilan is straight, so his partners are all women.) Some of my absolute best friends are his current and former partners. Ambitious, creative, kind, beautiful, amazing women I would not have met otherwise. These women are beyond incredible. And I love them.

I love polyamory. I love what polyamory has brought to my life. And I love knowing that I am monogamous and secure in my relationship. Because we are different people with different needs and so, so much love for each other.

And that’s really what I want this space to be about. Our differences and how they bring us together. I want to be a safe place for poly families, poly parents, poly curious, and poly lives to be accepted and cherished. Polyamory is not just about sex and frankly I’m tired of the lack of representation of poly families. Of the beauty of metamors. Of the wonder of knowing yourself.

That’s what we’re here for. So tell me about you. Where are you in your story? What have you learned? How do you feel?