Don't Call Me a Unicorn Hunter

So how do I write this without sounding like a whinny bitch? I spent a good five minutes trying to figure that out before deciding that perhaps I would simply allow a bit of whine to leak out, so I apologize in advance. -WST

The last year has taught me some interesting lessons about life, relationships, polyamoury, and what I'm looking for in my emotional and romantic life.

A year ago my primary relationship, a poly triad that had existed for over eight years, ended when our husband left us. I'm sure I don't have to elaborate that this sucked. Hard. It was a complicated situation, made much more complicated and difficult by the ways in which our spiritual Work and our relationship overlapped, or more accurately were interdependent.

In the time since our husband left, I've come to accept that there was much about our relationship that was not healthy for any of us. Although I miss him terribly, in the past year I've been free to be myself in ways that he never allowed me, and I'm more comfortable in my skin than I ever was when I had to closely modulate my behavior for his comfort. Likewise, while the three of us were together my remaining partner was not permitted to explore his gender identity, and the divorce, painful as it was, freed him to begin the process of transitioning.

We have also greatly expanded our extended poly family. The people who we consider to be “family” have enriched our lives in a way that I never really imagined, and brought me many unexpected joys.

Through that though, there has been an aching hole in our lives, and fear for our future. My partner Fire and I are not cut out to be a primary dyad. We liked being part of a triad, it was the relationship we were looking for from the time we first got together, and we looked for a 3^rd for two and a half years before we found our now-ex-husband, and only then with divine assistance.

Most of our friends and family have told us that another triad is likely just not going to happen. Most unicorn hunters never catch a prey, lest catch two, and a queer guy who's down with cis & trans guys, on the same page with our spiritual and magical Work, poly (because we're not giving up our extended poly family for anything), and very kinky, is a pretty tough beast to find. There are even more considerations, but I'm not going into all of them here, and to be honest, some of those things could be worked around and others not-so-much.

People have been telling us that we should just enjoy our extended family and be a dyad, or each get a boy or sub, and while I in particular would like a submissive, it is not a substitute dynamic, but an additional relationship. We've been accused of simply trying to “replace” our ex-husband, an accusation I find odd, and uniquely poly. When a monogamous person gets divorced and expresses a desire to remarry in the future they are rarely told that they are merely trying to replace their old relationship.

The three of us got together when we were in college, a simpler and more direct time in our lives. A time when we'd never heard the term “polyamoury” and didn't know that there other people out there doing what we were doing. Strangely, I find it much harder to imagine finding a third primary today, steeped in poly, queer, and kink community, than I did then. Maybe because now I know the odds and then I was ignorant.

There is of course another factor in the discussion, and that is my Patron. She had a pretty big hand in making the triad happen in the first place and She has given indication that She would have a hand in doing so again. But that brings matters of faith into the discussion, a hard thing to do when the people you love and trust are telling you that you'll never have the kind of relationship that you desire again.

I am not saying that if we found ourselves in another kind of relationship that was fulfilling, we'd abandon it simply because it was not a primary triad. That would be foolish and self destructive. However, we know that the triangle as a core relationship is a form that works for us, and a dyad does not.

I know that our friends and family are trying to be helpful and supportive when they tell us to forget about having a triad in the future. I know that they are warning us off from chasing unicorns and missing out on other wonderful possibilities that don't quite fit a particular vision. We aren't looking with singular focus, but letting go of the idea of a multi-person primary is a heart wrenching idea.

I don't know what the future will bring. There are days when I have hope, and days when I have faith (not always the same days) and other days when the statistical reality of what we desire brings with it a crushing feeling of loss.

I know that Fire and I were lucky, we got together looking for a third and we found someone and while it ended rough, it wasn't always that way. I hope it isn't asking too much of the gods and of our Lady in particular to have that stroke of Luck a second time.