A friend said to me something that sparked a thought. She said that she’s exploring polyamory now because she kept ‘failing’ at monogamy.
I think that our collective social understanding of relationships failing, is that they are short lasting, end in acrimony or when only one party to the relationship wants to stay in it.
What if we re-frame this mindset?
After all, only very few people get so lucky that the first relationship they have is also the most healthy, compatible and happy that they could imagine. Sure enough, the Disneyfication of romantic relationship leads many to believe in that fairy tale and seek it out, which is part of the problem.
For the vast majority of us, our late teens and twenties is when we learn by doing – we date, start and end relationships, struggle with the push and pull of our insecure attachment meeting our partner’s insecure attachment.
What if this is exactly as intended?
What if ‘failing’ is really learning and growing by making some mistakes, taking wrong paths and then applying these lessons to future relationships?
If I can borrow a term from the marketing world, what if we referred to this phase of dating and having various forms of relationships, A/B testing?
When done monogamously, it’s Asynchronous A/B testing and then practiced as multigamy (non-monogamy) or polyamory, it’s Synchronous A/B(C/D…) testing.
We do this to iron out all the bugs in our own system – figuring out our relationship values, learning how to develop, set and communicate boundaries, practicing conflict resolution etc.
It’s normal then to pick partners that will challenge you to learn and grow. So long as you have awareness of your lessons, process and apply them, then this is the path of growth.
