By Maria Padhila
A good share of poly people say they knew they were poly because they never wanted to break up with anyone. I’m still friends with almost all my exes, and I would climb right back in with most of them if it seemed like a smart and fun thing to do. I don’t have so many great people in my life that I can afford to let any go — if I really like someone, I crave to know who they are, what they’re up to, what’s moving them nowadays.
But over the past year I’ve had to begin pulling away from some relationships — some I didn’t know if I wanted to be in in the first place, some I was in out of obligation and duty as well. As Samhain and the season for letting go comes around again, I realize what I’m releasing isn’t the relationship, which really didn’t exist. It’s the hope and dream of a relationship.
There are people in my life about whom I berate myself for not reaching out, for not buying all the presents at the right times (I am terrible about presents, can’t stand giving or receiving them, and the people who really know and love me know that and rarely get me things), for being distant. Then I realize with a shock that they haven’t reached out to me, either. Why am I the one in the wrong, then?
The form of some of these relationships I’m letting go of hasn’t changed. It still looks like we’re doing and saying the same things. They may not know it’s different. But I’ve pulled out my energy, and pulled out my hope that the relationship could be anything real.
For instance, more than 10 years ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer. We have always had a difficult relationship, though it wouldn’t look that way to outsiders. During a phone call, I made the mistake of being honest — I said perhaps this would give him a chance to go back to being an artist in a way he had always denied himself since leaving school. He laughed disparagingly and said that was a stupid thing to say. (I had forgotten that real men aren’t artists.)