Lost

The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.
-Paulo Coelho

For five years, I invested. I loved, I learned, I grew. I was patient, grateful, open. I loved. I gave my energy, my time, and my heart to a lifetime relationship with a man who loved me. I believe he did, love me. I still believe he does.

He also loved another. So did I. We tried, in our brokenness, to build a triad that fit the three of us. The truth is, though he and I had known each other longer, their relationship was stronger. They built a life together that included each other, every single day. I was part of that life, but not in person, not in the day to day living; it wasn’t possible, or desired. The transition to triad, while sorting out three different couple relationships, was hard. It was really hard. In a year of deaths and tragedies, of stresses and changes in jobs, homes, and plans for the future, we didn’t do a great job of communicating. We didn’t talk often enough about how that triad should work, or how the individual relationships should work. We argued. We cried. We tried. We really, really tried.

We failed.

She gave up first… abandoned the triad and me, in her efforts to salvage them. He fought for months, to find a way to make us fit… him and me, our love. Then he gave in.

The last time we talked about us, he asked for time… to get his head in a good place… to mourn the loss of what he’s hoped for, what he was building his life around before she gave up… and then we could talk about starting over, building something different, something less…

His life is busy, with wedding plans, life changes… with the busy that all our lives demand. My life is busy, with my nesting partner, my family, my own stressful life demands. But my heart is lonely, broken. I feel abandoned, rejected, and penniless in terms of a five year investment of my heart into him, while also, still grieving a failed two year attempt at a relationship with her. I feel dumped.

My relationship philosophy is that if I really love someone, and their life changes, I don’t close a door. I leave it open, and wish them well, hoping they find happiness. Maybe, at some point, he will discover there’s room for me. Maybe he never will. It’s the only thing I can do, in light of what he’s chosen to do in regard to the life we’ve built together, and now cannot have.

So, I grieve. I move on. I may, or may not, have a promising new relationship to focus on. Truth is, that’s not really going anywhere right now. His busy life demands more than he can give, and there’s no room for me, today. Maybe someday that will change. I hope. All I really want is to love someone, deeply, fully. To be understood as a polyamorous being, and loved for it, not in spite of it. I want more than this, and I’m afraid that the journey to find it… begun again, after five long years, will be hard. I may not be so lucky as I have been.

I wonder, as I’m looking… I’ve been looking, for a very long time… is love really also looking for me?