Last night, in a slight vodka punch haze, Steph and I got into a deep (see drunken) conversation while laying in our bed at the Drapers. Sparked by an offhand comment, we talked about primary and secondary relationships and the level of equality, respect and attention that they get and deserve.
There are poly people I know that don’t do the primary / secondary thing. They treat each relationship as equal, for what it is, and really I suppose that’s how we do it, leaning a bit more toward marital primaries. There are things that obviously Steph and I have together that we won’t have (at least not for the time being) with other people. We share a house, a car, three cats, and almost all aspects of our lives with each other.
Where it still to this day becomes confusing is when thinking of the other relationships and how they fit. When they’re more casual it’s easier to leave them that way. You needn’t worry about life details and bills and all that jazz, but when they’re more serious that stuff sort of creeps up on you. The whole notion of the numbered labels really throws me off as I don’t consider any of the people I care about to be less important to me than he is.
Now slightly unrelated, as I don’t really remember what else we talked about on that topic so we’re moving on – vodka punch haze you see; one thing that Steph said really struck me. We started talking about the possibility of us not staying together. Not that there’s any plans in motion for us to separate, but it’s still interesting to talk about. He told me that wherever I am to end up, and whomever it’s with, he just wants to know that I’m happy. Not to say that he wouldn’t fight for me and that it wouldn’t hurt, but he’s convinced that even if we weren’t together he’d still be in my life until the end.
After an intense conversation about our feelings about our relationship and our other relationships I needed nothing more than to hear him say that to drift off into a peaceful, content slumber.
Well, maybe a Tylenol would have been handy too but let’s not get greedy.
