This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.
I was 23 when I got married, and he was 20. We only dated for maybe nine or ten months before we got married. It wasn’t the most romantic thing: We were living in Georgia and after he left the Navy for medical reasons, he got a job offer in Oregon. I figured, Maybe we should get married, because if I move with you to Oregon I'll just be stuck there, so marriage might make it harder to break up. I didn't have any prospects of getting out of town on my own. So the idea of picking up and going on this adventure to Oregon seemed like a great idea.
At the time I thought we were a really good couple. We seemed to match up in a lot of ways, and I had not dated a lot of people before him. Early in our relationship, he had mentioned a couple times that he didn't think monogamy was natural, that most people would be nonmonogamous were it not for society. I was never religious or anything, but I didn't have great self-esteem. The idea of being married felt safe. I thought of it as a security thing, so I never considered not being monogamous. And he didn't push it.
When we first moved to Oregon, I had a hard time getting a job, so there was a bit of a struggle there because we were really poor for a while. We fought a lot because of our financial situation. Then my mom got cancer and she moved up to Oregon to get treatment. I had never really wanted kids before, but I decided this would be the moment I needed to do it, because my mom was still there, in remission, and I knew she’d like to have grandkids. I had my babies within two years of each other, and then my mother’s cancer came back when I was pregnant with the second one. She got super-sick and passed away right after my second child was born.
That started another period of me and my husband having issues because we no longer had a third adult to help in the household, along with the stress of my mom dying and us having two young kids. My husband was very attentive when they were little tiny babies. He liked to take care of them and it was very sweet. But after my mom passed away, he wasn't great with housework or cleaning, so that was a big issue in our house.
When I was 34 years old, I had a really strong depressive episode. I started therapy and working really hard on myself and dealing with my self-esteem issues I had struggled with most of my life. About a year after that, I decided that I was in a really good place mentally; he and I were getting along pretty well and the kids were doing well and it probably felt the best that we had ever felt.
The more I enjoyed time with other people and I was happy, the angrier he would get at me.
I started thinking about what I was missing and what I had let go of, and this was when I started researching nonmonogamy on my own—listening to podcasts and reading articles and joining a Facebook group about it. I had always felt bisexual and I had never experimented with women, and there were other sexual activities that he was not interested in that I would like to do with somebody else. I was trying my best to emotionally prepare for it, to make sure that I was ready to risk any problems or negative feelings that came up. I researched for probably six months before I brought it to him. He was pretty excited about it. He thought it was a great idea.
Meanwhile, our sex life hadn’t been great. There had been periods where we were kind of passionate, but generally it wasn't ideal for me. He wasn't great at taking direction or criticism. So after trying to explain what I wanted and needed in many ways, I just sort of gave up and went with it because he would get offended and frustrated. It was mostly maintenance for a long time after, especially after we had kids—that is, I didn't really enjoy it. I just did it so that he would be satisfied and in a better mood.
I had a lot of ideas going into non-monogamy. I wanted to talk about sexual health and ground rules. He participated in our conversations but didn't have a lot of input. Eventually we decided to go for it and date separately. I honestly didn't know how it would go at first. He went on the first date and it was super-long—I remember he didn't come home till 1 in the morning. But it felt fine. I was happy for him. I was getting all the details and I thought it was really cool.
After that, though, he didn’t really date anybody. He would go on a first date every once in a while, but nothing really took off. And meanwhile I had two ongoing relationships. One of them was with my girlfriend, who I’m still with today. I read her dating profile, and I remember thinking it was perfect. I read it aloud to my husband. I was like, “This person sounds amazing.” My husband was really excited and was like, “Yeah, go for it.” We started seeing each other at least once a week.
Then, after the pandemic, I started seeing a friend of mine that I used to work with. We fell in love and I began a romantic relationship with him, too. He is busy with work and he has a wife and has stuff going on, but we see each other maybe twice a month.
At first my husband was fine with these relationships, and he was friendly with both of them. But then we started to have tension between us. My husband was seeing a lady whose schedule was super-busy, so he could only see her once a month. We started fighting because she’d text him and say “I’m free tomorrow,” but I would have to work or I’d already have plans. He was really angry at me for not accommodating that schedule. He also blamed me that he had such a difficult time dating because I had held back on the polyamory for so long.
If I had never been polyamorous, I wouldn't have known all the cracks and the bad parts of my marriage.
Eventually, we were fighting about everything. The more I enjoyed time with other people and I was happy in general, the angrier he would get at me. He would be really frustrated when I was happy. He would also accuse me of trying to "win at polyamory," which really bothered me. It wasn't a game to me; I just wanted everyone to be happy. I was developing a really healthy relationship with my girlfriend and falling in love with her in a way that I had not experienced before. We cared about each other and thought about each other a lot and it was such a struggle to do all those things with my husband. My other relationships all felt really healthy and nice, and home was just getting more and more stressful and upsetting.
At one point my husband said we should stop dating other people. And I said, “I can't do that.” We got in a really long, angry fight. He said some harsh, mean things about intimacy and our connection, so I stopped having sex with him, because he was very cruel about it, and I didn't feel safe or good about it anymore.
Before the holidays in 2022, he had a breakdown. We had a huge fight during which he admitted to some extreme mental health issues that had been going on a while and he was having difficulty taking care of the kids. I stopped working and didn't leave the kids alone with him again after that fight. I was trying to just be present at home and help take care of him and give him space. Shortly after Christmas, he got really aggressive with me—didn’t touch me, but he was very scary and threatened to hurt himself. His doctor talked him into going to an inpatient hospital. I hoped that it would help, but it didn’t; he was just as bad as soon as he got home.
And so I started working on an escape plan. I wasn't working. I didn't have money. Our only income was his disability check. I reached out to a lawyer and he got served divorce papers about three months later. That night went really badly—he screamed at me and was threatening me—so I took the kids and went to a hotel. He cut off my access to our bank account, and I only had a little bit in my own bank account. I technically was on medical leave through my job, but I went ahead and quit fully, so I got my 401k to live on until I figured out the divorce situation.
I stayed with my partners off and on, or we would stay in a hotel for a few days, and then, after a few weeks of us hopping around, we stayed in a domestic violence shelter near where we lived. We stayed there for a month. Eventually I was granted custody of the house and the kids. My plan was to sell the house, so we could both live on that money and start a new life with it. After he vacated the house, I realized he’d trashed it. The place was a disaster. The whole thing was really scary.
During this time, my partners helped a lot. They pitched in to clean and fix up my house. They all just jumped in to help me. I would've understood if they'd run off, but they didn't. They stuck around to get me get settled in my new apartment. They saved me.
I feel like if I had never been polyamorous, I wouldn't have known all the cracks and the bad parts of my marriage. Until I had a real relationship with my girlfriend and saw what a healthy relationship was, I didn't realize how unhealthy my marriage was. And I thoroughly enjoy polyamory. I love seeing my girlfriend with her husband and how much she loves him. I love seeing my partner with his wife and how much they love each other. I feel very welcomed into their families. The kindness and love that I found inside the polyamory community was more than I ever thought I would have. I don’t really have much family, so the people that I had gathered in my journey in polyamory were who really got me through the worst time in my life.
I don't think polyamory caused the end of my marriage. I think me being happy and growing caused the end of my marriage. When I say I'm divorced, people who don't understand would think, “Oh, the polyamory is why.” That’s not why. I would have been miserable in my marriage longer or eventually left anyway. I'm sure my husband may blame polyamory because he thought we were okay before that, but it helped me see the bad stuff.
Polyamory is not for everybody. Luckily it went well for me. I found myself in it and I feel very happy. I've learned life is short, and I know now that I'll always be polyamorous.
