This is a story of WTAF?

Yesterday was a day, guys. 

You may or may not recall Jace and Kiley, who were our longest standing poly connections. They’re a couple we met about four months ago and have been seeing regularly ever since. While I never really felt fiery passion with them, I did feel a great deal of affection. Truth be told, both Romeo and I loved them. We thought that they would be in our lives for the foreseeable future. 

Yesterday, they were planning to come over in the evening, and before they came over I wanted to update them on our recent sexual activity, for safety reasons. Communication is an important part of being ethically non-monogamous, and notifying current/ongoing sexual partners anytime you add new partners (whether they end up being short or long term connections) is important. 

As my readers already know, it has been a busy month for us, in terms of sluttiness. We didn’t set out to have sexual encounters with a bunch of people, but our search–well, mostly my search–for an additional consistent partner has been tumultuous to say the least. The result is that since our last round of STI testing, we’ve had intercourse with five new people. (Specifically, I’ve had intercourse with four new men and he’s had intercourse with one new woman.) 

Two of those people are Gerry and Nadine, who we met months ago and were building our connection with more slowly. Another was Wilbur, who we also met months ago and due to scheduling issues we weren’t able to spend time with him until a few weeks ago. 

Atlas was our unintended one-night-stand who strung us along for two weeks before dropping us because he met a girl and decided not to be non-monogamous anymore. Jamey also ended up being a one-nighter, basically breaking my heart after telling me lies about his emotional availability and intentions. 

So there you have it, that’s five. 

When I told Jace and Kiley about our recent activities, I also told them that I realized it was a lot of new partners and that we would totally understand if they wanted to hold off on sexual activity with us until after our next tests. I would never hold that against anyone! 

I never expected what happened after that. 

Where to even start? 

The shift in his communication was instant. He went cold, just like that. He referred to themselves as “myself and my partner,” as if we didn’t know who Kiley was. He didn’t ask questions, or try to have a conversation. He just abruptly ended our romantic/sexual relationship. 

After my last text above, he offered to have a video call to talk. We called them and it quickly became apparent that there would be no true discussion, only them reiterating why we’re not in line with their lifestyle. 

Romeo expressed his disappointment that they didn’t communicate the desire or expectation of us to basically be a closed polycule. We had talked to them often about our other explorations, so they knew that we weren’t exclusive. To suddenly act like we did something wrong that made us no longer worthy of a relationship with them… well, that was brutal. 

The worst part was when he said, and I wish I was kidding guys, but he said: “I don’t think you guys are really poly, I think you’re actually swingers.” 

At that point I interrupted him to defend myself. Literally, I just said, “we are poly, though.” He decided that this was unacceptable and started walking away, saying that he wasn’t going to have a conversation with someone who is interrupting him. I started sobbing and Romeo hung up on them. 

What. The. Actual. Fuck. Just. Happened?

They never acknowledged my suggested compromise. They never gave us a chance to decide if we wanted to change our approach to poly. (We wouldn’t have, but we should have at least had a say in that decision.) I would have been sad but understanding if they had told us that they realized they wanted a closed polycule. We would have had a chance to express that we weren’t interested in that at this time, and then we could have mutually decided not to continue that aspect of our relationship. 

Instead, they decided to treat us as if we were inferior to them. It is well known within the poly community that “swinging” is very different than polyamory; swinging is specifically two couples swapping partners, and it is all about sex, not love or romance or even friendship. I don’t think there is anything wrong with swinging, but I am not a swinger. I am poly because I want to love many, and to be loved by many. To degrade our identities in that way by labeling us incorrectly was what really did it for me. That was when they went from people I loved and cared for to people I never want to speak to again. 

In the end, they were unable to take responsibility for their lack of communication and self-awareness, and so instead they chose to project their shortcomings onto us. 

Kiley sent another message after that attempting to… I don’t even know, make herself feel better? She said she didn’t feel that we were treating her feelings as valid. You may also notice in the screenshot below that she said something along the lines of that they were “just instilling boundaries.” I guess they don’t realize that boundaries need to be communicated ahead of time. We can’t respect boundaries that we don’t know exist. 

(To be completely transparent, I deleted our chat and blocked them both after this, so I can’t go back and see exactly what she said). 

She ended by saying that she “fucking adores” us and that she is “profoundly disappointed” in the way things ended. Well, Kiley, all I have to say to that is that if this is how you treat people who you adore, then God help anyone who has the misfortune to be adored by you. 

I felt that this whole thing mainly came from Jace, to be honest. I think that Kiley went along with it. I think that she is sad, and I think that she deserves to be sad for this because she allowed it to happen and didn’t even try to fight for us. Jace, on the other hand… I am fairly confident that he thinks he did nothing wrong. He is not the type of person to recognize when other people have more emotional maturity or better communication skills than him. I’m sure he thinks that we’re acting immaturely because he wanted to still be friends, but we got very sad and then pissed off by their treatment of us. And honestly, I no longer give a fuck what he thinks. I loved him, and I never should have because he is not worthy of my heart. 

Anyway, you can see the last message I sent to them below. That really sums up everything I feel quite accurately. 

So that’s the end of that. 

This was blindsiding to say the least. My heart hurts. But as always, I am finding it within myself to go on, because despite all of this complete and utter bullshit that I’ve been through lately, I still believe that poly can be beautiful and that I will eventually find what I’m searching for. 

As for Kiley and Jace? They will never find another couple like us. Sucks to suck, as my lovely friend Nadine would say.