Navigating my self-identity in a polyamorous Relationship

In any relationship it is easy to lose yourself, to slowly amalgamate into one being. It’s often joked about in the media; two halves of one whole. But, what happens when there’s more than two of you in the relationship? 

Self identity is important in any relationship. It is vital to be able to stand on your own two feet, separate from any one person. It is important to know who you are. When I first moved in with my partners, I wanted to be the version of myself they liked best. Past trauma intermingled with my love for these people, and I was swept up into a whirlwind of feeling like I needed to pretend to be a person I was not. It took me a very long time to realize that these people were in love with me, not the version of me I thought they would like best. 

Some people walk into relationships with very solid ideas of who they are and who they want to be, and they are able to hold tight to those, no matter what. I have always been envious of those people. Personally, I always considered myself more of a lyrebird – mimicking those around me because I was too scared to be myself. In a polyamorous relationship particularly, this can be a really difficult realm to play in. There’s at least three personalities at play – for me, that meant two to choose from. I could steal bits of John and squirrel away parts of Lucy, and I would never actually have to be Jade. It took a lot of patience and a lot of coaxing from my partners to start to figure out who Jade actually was. This is not to say that’s entirely the fault of my relationship, either. I have a lot of past trauma that interconnects with my self identity and sense of self, but that only makes it all the more important to try and maintain that sense of individuality.

Mid-2020, I sat down one day and I cried, because I realised I had no idea who I was. I just knew I was a radically different person than I had been at sixteen. I had blinked and suddenly I was in my twenties, and living a life that teenage me would never have been able to comprehend, and I wasn’t sure if I was happy with it. I knew that I was happy with the partners I had chosen for myself, but I 

couldn’t figure out if I was happy with the Jade that I had chosen for myself. By not putting the time and energy into making space for myself and my self identity in my early relationship, I found myself in a place where I didn’t know what I looked like at all. The things that defined me were all new, and I hadn’t entirely made up my mind as to whether they were all good. In talking with my partners about these feelings, I came to the realization that I had to untangle myself from who I was in connection to them and figure out who I was in connection to myself, and that is very hard. 

For a long time, I had no idea. Throw in a global pandemic, and you’ve got the recipe for a pretty hot mess. All I wanted was to sink back into my people; wrap myself in them like safety blankets. But this wasn’t going to be good for me in the long term, so I persisted. I sat with myself, and my ugly thoughts and feelings. I threw hobbies and personality traits and tears at the wall of Jade and tried to see what stuck. Eventually, I got some traction. When I let the world slow down, when I took a breath and stopped worrying about figuring it out fast enough, I could see small parts of myself emerging separately from anyone else. I like classical history, I really like sharks, I like to collect rocks and acorns. Underneath the person that I had curated for the rest of the world, there was a person who existed just for me. 

That person is easy to lose in a relationship where you are existing with so many personalities. I can only speak to the experience of my triad, but even three competing personalities sometimes feels like shouting into the void. So, it is important that we all do things that ensure we exist independent of one another. We have individual likes and dislikes that make us people beyond our relationship, and it’s important to nurture those. It’s so easy to laugh off codependency at times. “Oh, he’s my soulmate, I don’t know what I’d do without him” or “she completes me”. But, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from my relationship is that another person can’t and shouldn’t complete you. You are enough on your own, and if you don’t feel like enough, then perhaps it’s time to sit with yourself and get a little uncomfortable. It’s going to get uncomfortable before it gets better. 

Figuring out who you are in a relationship is never an easy thing, but it is a vital part of a healthy relationship. Especially a healthy polyamorous relationship, where communication and autonomy are extremely important. Your partners are always going to be there to help nudge you in the right direction, but at the end of the day, you have to figure out your self identity on your own. You don’t exist to be what your partners want you to be. You exist only to be what you want to be, and a good partner knows that.

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