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R ebecca Ammon
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Conversations about
Sex, Love, and
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August 27, 2011
Acknowledging the Unicorn: by Erzulie
I was raised monogamous. An interesting contradiction since I was born of an adulterous long-term relationship between my mother and a married man. After my mother married, my mother and stepfather were swingers in the free-love of the 70s. She also continued to see my biological father on the side in secret. So as you can see, monogamy wasn't a practiced concept in my home.
As I started to date in my teens it was a serial dating scenario much like any other teenager. Sometimes overlapping, but mostly serial monogamy; one relationship after the other. I married young and had my first child at 20 years old. Monogamy didn't work well for me. But I didn't know any other concept. I now know that I was "practicing polyamory" but without the knowledge, consent, and acceptance of my husband. So really not polyamory by definition. To be fair to myself, he was the first to cheat and his escapades were strictly cheating. My relationships were just that - relationships. Ones with feelings and emotions, not just casual sex. My first marriage ended nine years later because he became a substance abuser and I refused to support him if he wasn't going to hold down a job and keep his cock where it belonged.
During the year it took for my divorce to proceed through all the legal wranglings and court dates, I met the man who would become my second husband. He was completely different from my first husband, or so I thought. This man I knew would never cheat on me. From the moment he put an engagement ring on my finger, throughout our 18 month engagement, and through over 9 years of marriage I was completely faithful to him. What I failed to see was his utter and complete dependence on my physical presence in his life. When I got "the job" offer, that one job that will change your life for the better, I had to relocate across the country. The plan was for him to follow soon after. However, his mental state began to deteriorate without me there; he became obsessive and possessive of me and my very little spare time. This was the beginning of the end of marriage number two.
As most people would, I turned to my friends for support. My long-term married friends; the only people I knew in this new locale. And in those friends I found not only support, but love and acceptance. And from there it became more. The three of us began a totally new exploration into true polyamory. A loving, emotional, and physical relationship between three consenting adults. Therefore making me - gasp! - "the unicorn".
What is a "unicorn", you might ask? A unicorn is a bisexual female who agrees to become involved with an already existing paired couple. This could be a married couple or an existing long-term established relationship. Most commonly a male/female pair who then add the unicorn to create a FMF situation. This could be a short-term arrangement or a long-term situation. For us it is a long-term proposition.
Another way we go against the norm is that we do not utilize a primary/secondary hierarchy within our relationship. Many polyamorous relationships are set up with the original relationship's same gender partner as the primary and the added person as the secondary. Another option with an unmarried pair is whichever of the same gender partners spend more time with the other gendered partner, that person is then primary and the one that spends less time is secondary. For example, some might consider me to be a secondary partner because my partners were already married when we began our relationship.
For us, primary/secondary terminology is demeaning. It implies one partner is more important or deserves more time and affection than the other. We are all deserving of equal, yet sometimes different, love and attention from each other. If we, as the female partners in our relationship, had to define ourselves, even though we shouldn't be forced to do so, the term co-primary would be our chosen label. Neither female is better, more important, more deserving, more loved, than the other. We are three unique individuals that complement each other well in a loving relationship.
That doesn't mean we don't have bouts of jealousy or feel lacking for affection. We haven't perfected compersion - the feeling of being happy your partner is spending time with their other lover - but we have moved beyond pure jealousy for jealousy's sake. As humans, jealousy is learned at an early age. We want something someone else has and we do not. But when we realize that jealousy is a problem that we own ourselves, and not something someone else causes, then we can learn to handle those feelings more effectively. This can then lead to feelings of compersion towards our partners.
Choosing to be polyamorous in a monogamous society is a brave undertaking. People don't understand polyamory. They understand cheating, swinging, and one-night FMF explorations. They even are beginning to accept homosexual men, lesbians, and bi-sexual women. Yet they fail to comprehend that adults could choose a relationship model that involves open, honest, multiple partner sexuality. I'm proof that it can be done and it can work. It won't be easy, but sometimes you have to work for the best things in life. Acknowledge the unicorn. She might broaden your horizons and change your life...just like the mythical unicorn of old.
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