Polyamory After an Affair
Increasingly, Libby hears from folks who are interested in polyamory to solve a problem: either they or their partner cheated, and they want to repair and stay together, and nonmonogamy seems like a solution. In this episode, Libby outlines why it's rarely that simple.
Transcript
In some ways, like in our culture, it's one of the worst things you can do is like cheat on your love. And you know, the expectation culturally is that if you are cheated on that, that is the end of the relationship and that you should leave. And then there's also the cultural narrative of if you are cheated on, then you should be ashamed because you aren't enough for your partner in some kind of way. So there's a lot of shame around affairs.
As of this recording, it is Sunday, October 29th. It is almost Halloween and finally, I am releasing the first podcast of the season, almost a full month, more than a full month later than I was planning. And I'm not gonna hand ring in Maya culpa about it because y'all know the deal. I have two kids. I'm running a business as a solopreneur and hard sometimes. Also, I've been experimenting with posting more on social media. If you follow me on Instagram, you've probably seen more stuff there than there have been in the past. And, you know, I find that I can only kind of do one thing at a time. So here we are. But I am so excited to be sharing this season of the podcast with y'all because my brain has been exploding with ideas and I have no idea because I was planning on starting this season in mid-September and having it continue through until December, and then taking a little break and then starting back up again in like February and having like a winter slash spring 2024 season.
But now it's all messed up. So I'm so grateful that you're just willing to go along for the ride with me . So thank you for that. I have a lot of exciting things coming down the pike that I just wanna share with you briefly before we dive into today's episode. But if you just don't wanna hear any of this, just, you know, you know, you can fast forward, you know that that's what you're gonna do. But if you wanna hear what's going on with me first of all, do check me out on Instagram if you are a podcast listener because I do post some stuff there that I don't post anywhere else. And so it gets you a better idea of what's going on with me. I'm also running right now monthly open community calls. So if you are a person who wants to connect to other folks who listen to making polyamory work and like have a real time interaction with this community that you are a part of, whether you know it or not go to my website and register for an open community call.
I do them once a month. I will be doing them every month for as long as I am capable because I am just really passionate about us all getting together. I'm also planning on offering some workshops in the new year, and I have rebooted the relational non-monogamy circle as foundations of open relating for wild and tender hearts. Oh, that is such a mouthful, but I, I like it. It also, the acronym makes "for with", which I really like as well. So if you've been curious about how you can deepen your personal work around some of the concepts that I share on this podcast and you would like to do that in community with other awesome people, foundations of open relating for wild and tender hearts is your ticket. And unfortunately cohorts are closed for 2023, but I will be opening new cohorts in January, 2024 and I'll be putting registration up for that relatively soon.
So if that's something you're interested in, also, I have completely revamped the program. I'm gonna be putting more information on the website soon about how the new version of the program is going to look. I am constantly taking the feedback from previous participants who have pretty much universally had a good experience, but have said, Hey, like, we want this, this, and this, and this would've made this even better. And I want you to know, , I take your feedback, y'all, and I use it for the good of the future folks who end up doing my programs. So thank you for that. I'm going to stop jibber jabbering now and get to the episode. But again, I just want to thank all of you who are listening now for sticking with me. I am coming up on my fifth year as a podcaster, which is very exciting and a little surreal 'cause I never thought I was going to be in the podcasting realm. But here I am, year five, approaching 100 episodes this season will have my 100th episode, as well as some amazing topics and some fabulous guests that I cannot wait to introduce you to. But for now, let's move on to today's episode.
Buckle Up My Loves. Today we're gonna talk about cheating and polyamory. Specifically, I've had an affair.
Does that mean I should try polyamory? I can't tell you how many people have reached out to me with this question or some version of it. I have had people say, I am a habitual cheater. I have cheated on my partner multiple times, and I'm realizing maybe that might mean that I'm polyamorous. Or I've had people reach out to me and say I've met someone, I'm in love with them and I realize I can love more than one person. And so now I need to tell my established partner that I am polyamorous or I've been having a long time affair with someone and I'm realizing I want to bring this affair into the light with my existing partner. And how do I do that? And, you know, could we do polyamory together?
I'm even wondering what comes over you when you hear scenarios like this. I imagine for a lot of you, what the first thing that comes up is a lot of judgment because we do, as a culture, have a lot of judgment around people having affairs in some ways, like in our culture, it's one of the worst things you can do is like cheat on your love. And you know, the expectation culturally is that if you are cheated on that, that is the end of the relationship and that you should leave. And then there's also the cultural narrative of if you are cheated on, then you should be ashamed because you aren't enough for your partner in some kind of way. So there's a lot of shame around affairs, both for the hurt partner, the and the person who is cheating. I take a really nuanced view of cheating.
I see cheating as just one form of betrayal of many kinds of betrayal that can show up in relationships. And I don't necessarily know if I put it in a category that is objectively worse. Like yes, there are certain kinds of risks that can come with cheating specifically sexual health concerns and also making other human through pregnancy concerns that don't show up with other types of betrayal. But like for me, I would much rather have someone cheat on me than steal my money, or I'd much rather someone cheat on me than disparage me to my community or not stick up for me in some key ways. Like, I don't know, I, I think for me, again, I just put cheating in the category with betrayal. And it always hurts to be betrayed by someone that has said that they're gonna love you. It always hurts to have your trust breached as well though. And I think those are the two things that are painful about cheating are betrayal and also feeling like, I don't know what the hell's going on now and I've been, it has been kept from me what I'm actually in. So it's like my consent has been violated because I don't have informed consent anymore because I don't have the informed part.
And yet as Esther Perel writes in her book, state of Affairs, as I know through my work with couples and through my training as a couples practitioner, a lot of people stay with their partners after being cheated on. And some of them stay and they don't actually ever repair it. And it continues to be this painful wound between the two of them. Other people stay together and they repair it. And on the other side, they're stronger and happier than they've ever been. And some of those folks, the person who cheated leaves their affair partner and resumes a monogamous relationship with their existing partner. And sometimes it works out that the partner who had the affair realizes they're non-monogamous and their monogamous partner decides to either enter a mono-poly dynamic with them or enters into a non-monogamous or polyamorous dynamic themselves. All that happens.
And yet it is way complicated to get there. And so I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about how could you get there? Why might you not get there? And so we gotta understand a little bit about cheating and why it happens and how you could move from cheating to polyamory and why you might not be able to. So first, let's talk about why people cheat, because there's not just one reason. And a lot of people think that it is just like a self-control issue. Like you just couldn't control yourself. Of course you wanna fuck other people. Of course, it's all about sex and a lack of self-control and a desire maybe to manipulate, pull the wool over the eyes of the person that you love. And so it's all about the lies and the sex that it's usually not that.
I mean for some people, sure, I do think there are some people who cheat because they have a compulsive relationship with sex and, and I say compulsive relationship with sex rather than sex addiction because I, I am not convinced that sex addiction actually exists. And feel free to come at me if you disagree. But that's my position for now is that I don't, but, but you can still have a compulsive relationship with sex where you have just a need to have sex with people who want to have sex with you. And you just, you have a, you feel out of control with it. And that's very different from a person who cheats because they're lonely and they can be lonely and love their partner and feel super committed to their partner. But they feel lonely either because maybe them and their partner have grown apart or maybe they feel lonely because they're overwhelmed with their life, or they may feel lonely because they've gotten into a rutt either with their partner or just with themselves.
And so they have this longing and sometimes the longing is to connect to a part of themselves that they've lost track of just along the journey of their life. And maybe in the context of this one relationship, especially if they've given up a lot of parts of themselves to be in their relationship or they've given up a lot of parts of themselves to be in their job or in their family or to have children or or what have you. And then they meet someone and it just sparks a remembrance of other parts of themselves that they've forgotten about and they wanna connect to them. And so they wanna connect to this other person. And sometimes that can lead to an affair. Sometimes an affair is a result of unmet needs that the person either hasn't been able to talk about within their relationship or maybe hasn't even been aware of within themselves, or they just don't feel comfortable or ready to directly ask for those things from their partner.
I've talked before about rocking the boat and how hard that can be. And sometimes an affair is a way of avoiding rocking the boat. I've also talked before about this idea of sort of moral licensing and having a split between doing the right thing and doing what you really want. And I think an affair is a really good example of how sometimes people can do that. They can feel like, well, I've done all the things I'm supposed to do. I've checked all the boxes, I've met all of my partner's needs, and now I have these needs of my own. And the only way that I can really do them is if I do them separate and do them off to the side over here and have them kind of be in that bad place. But I've earned my right to be bad. And so I'm gonna go over here and I'm going to have this affair and it's gonna feel good and I'm gonna feel alive, but I'm also gonna feel bad about myself and that's gonna fuel me to be the loving, upstanding, stalwart partner that I know that I'm supposed to be.
A last one I'll mention here is that some people do cheat because they're actually either non-monogamous, polyamorous or in some kind of way, and their needs aren't being met with one other person. Like, so that's a specific unmet need, which is that they do actually need to be in relationships with multiple people. This is not me saying that this is okay. I think if you're non-monogamous and that's who you are, then it's important to enter into relationships where everybody is agreeing on that. That being said, we do live in a compulsory monogamous society. We also live in a heteronormative society, and I've talked to a lot of people who just thought that what they had to do in order to be loved, in order to have a family, in order to have the type of relationship and security that, you know, society tells you you're supposed to do, you have to be monogamous and often you have to be straight . So they do that and then they find that it just doesn't work for them.
I want you to notice here that I don't actually have a lot of judgment around cheating . I don't think that people who cheat are bad. I don't think that they're inherently manipulative or narcissistic. I believe it hurts like hell to be betrayed and lied to. And I also think that the people who do it usually at worst have a sense that what they do doesn't matter and that they, you know, and that they and or, or a, a lack of care for how their behavior impacts other people. But I don't think that usually their meaning to hurt anybody. They just have stuff that they haven't figured out and they are doing the best they can, which still may not be that great. And usually when people who have cheated are then trying to make a move towards non-monogamy, their intention is actually to make it right.
They don't like the lying, they don't like the betrayal. They don't like the ways in which they're hiding themselves from their partner and they want to bring it to the light. They want to bring themselves into integrity, and they want their partner to know what's going on to know them. And it never really is quite that simple in my experience. And let me tell you why. A couple of reasons. First of all, when you come forward about the truth of what's really happening and who you really are or what you really want, your partner is not going to be ready to process or receive that information. A lot of the time they will probably be blindsided, overwhelmed, hurt, scared, unsure, and possibly ashamed, possibly angry. All kinds of things are gonna be happening for them. And so they're not gonna necessarily be ready to restructure how your relationship works because they're just gonna be reeling from a major type of new information that they were not expecting and that they don't know how to put into the, an easy compartment of where it's supposed to go, depending on the person.
You know, some people aren't surprised when their partner tells them that they're cheating and maybe they're not fussed about it, but I think that's, those folks are in the minority. For a lot of people it's pretty substantially shocking and overwhelming. And then they have to deal with the scripts of what society and culture tell them to do, which is to kick your ass to the curb and what their heart might want to do, which might also be to kick your ass to the curb or what they might wanna do, which is try to repair it and figure it out, repair. But it's really, really hard and, and, and it's even I would describe an affair as traumatic for the relationship because it can be so unexpected. And it's sort of like a big, the way that I describe it is you're, you're, if you thought of your relationship as the floor that you walk on, like you know it's there, you feel secure in it, you feel good, and then all of a sudden one day your foot goes through the floor and you just were not expecting a hole to be there, or a weak spot in the floor where the floor couldn't hold you anymore and now you're hurt from your foot going through the floor.
You're also scared because you did not realize that there could be holes in your floor and now it doesn't feel like okay to just walk on the floor anymore. So your system is now all the time sort of worried and concerned for your safety and unsure of the floor, which can be so destabilizing. And if you can just imagine what that would be like and all kinds of things can cause you to relive it to get a whoosh of emotions and depending on how the affair is revealed and what information is revealed about it, some people, you know, experience a lot of pain around the knowledge that their partner has been with someone else when that wasn't what they were expecting or wanting. So it's worth being aware that, that that is a, that that reeling experience, that just the reeling of it can make it really hard to move into something else.
And I can't tell you how many times I've had a couple come into my practice and wanna work with me and the person who has had an affair who has realized, oh, I, I think I'm actually polyamorous and I think that's what I wanna do and how I wanna be. And they bring their partner who is reeling from just finding out that their partners had an affair and is really struggling with everything, really wants to keep the relationship, really loves their partners, really wanting to work on things, but is just otherwise like so reluctant to do anything even repair. And the person who had the affair is thinking that I'm gonna help their partner who they betrayed feel better about polyamory. And usually they're surprised when I'm like, whoa, actually let's slow down here. There's a lot of repair that needs to happen here and we need to hold a lot of space for what your partner is going through.
And we need to figure out how to support them in what's happened to them before we can think about what happens next. They're usually surprised , I don't know why, but it usually is very reassuring to the person who's been hurt. Another reason why it can be really hard to transition from an affair to non-monogamy of any kind is that your several steps ahead of your partner. You've been thinking about non-monogamy for a long time. You have actually been covertly non-monogamous for a very long time, and your partner has not been considering this most likely for your relationship. And so they haven't done any reading, they haven't listened to any podcasts, they haven't done any thinking about it at all, and they don't have any experience with it potentially. Usually they thought they were in a monogamous relationship and that's what they were gonna be doing for the foreseeable future.
And so you're ahead of them and they need to catch up. And again, the catching up that they might need to do maybe really severely impacted by the betrayal, the trust, the pain, the reeling, they might not be able to even figure out what they could possibly want moving forward until some of that stuff is addressed. The last reason why I think it can be really hard to transition from cheating to polyamory or any kind of non-monogamy is that you've been lying to your partner, which means that there's something that got in the way of you bringing up the things that led you to cheat up to your partner. Now, I'm not gonna put that all on you. It could be within your relational dynamic. I'm not, I don't think that there, we need to lay blame here. However, there's something in your dynamic with your partner that caused you to feel like you couldn't rock the boat or you didn't want to rock the boat.
Or there's something within you that makes you feel like you can't own or discuss or bring up your needs or wants because you didn't do it ahead of time. You did it on the backend after you'd already taken action in a covert way. And again, I don't know why that might've happened. There are all kinds of reasons why it might not have felt like okay or safe or possible to bring this up before the cheating happened. And maybe the cheating was the catalyst that helped you realize, I have to bring this up, I have to talk about this. We have to do this differently. It can be a real big wake up call for you, but waking up doesn't necessarily mean you know exactly what led you here and how you need to shift as a partnership to get out of it.
And I talked about this on an Instagram reel a few months back. What you may need in order to move into an overt rather than covert, non-monogamous dynamic with this partner, if that's what you're hoping for, is nothing short of a revolution in your relationship. Because if you haven't been able to collaborate on getting your needs met both your needs, if you haven't felt like you've been able to be your full self in the relationship, what I would be asking is why, why is that happening and what needs to shift so that you are able to fully express who you are, what you want, what you need, all the parts of yourself. And that doesn't mean that you, again, you have to have perfect compatibility with your partner on all things like that is one reason why you might want to be non-monogamous.
But you, if you're hiding parts of yourself, if you're not speaking things that are true for you, if you're not owning your desires, your wants, your needs within the relationship, and it doesn't feel possible to do that, that's something that you're gonna need to address in order to successfully do any kind of overt non-monogamy. Because if you've been listening to this podcast, if you've been checking out any other non-monogamy resources out there, you'll know that non-monogamy requires a high degree of transparency and communication and honesty and trust. And again, you might not have been telling your partner about your desires or needs or wants or dissatisfactions or whatever because you may not have felt like there was room for that. You may have felt afraid, it may not have felt like they would listen or receive it from you. Well, that needs to change if you're gonna proceed to have a collaborative non-monogamous contract with each other.
And again, that might not be about them. It might be about you. There might be something about you that you've learned in your life that tells, that tells you, I can't say what I want or what I need unless everybody's gonna already be okay with it . So again, I don't wanna lay blame, but I just wanna take a, I would wanna take a look at, in fact, that would be one of the first things that I would wanna do, is take a look at what made it impossible to do this overtly from the beginning. Why did this affair happen? How did we get here? And then what's been happening in the relationship since this has been revealed? Because there's all kinds of things that can happen after an affair has happened that, again, if it hasn't been resolved, if it hasn't really been repaired, there might still be a wound there.
And the wound can be, in some cases worse than the affair because the person who is cheated on just doesn't ever feel safe, doesn't ever, doesn't ever feel like they can trust their partner. They might have become like hypervigilant. They may have started looking at their partner's phone or tracking their location. They may have just their nervous system might be on overdrive feeling like, when is the next thing gonna happen? I don't ever feel like I can be safe. I don't feel like I can ever trust this person. Or they can weaponize the affair and just constantly bring it up whenever they're upset. And then you could be on this loop of just like making this person feel terrible for what they've done and then that person feeling terrible, but then maybe getting upset about having to feel terrible. And then you could just be on this terrible loop of just kind of both of y'all making each other feel terrible over this affair.
Or you could go into a avoidance, like you just don't talk about it. And so then you kind of go back into the very problem that maybe got you here in the first place, which is we don't feel like we can talk about things and share our truths. So those would be some things to address as well is like, what has been happening since the affair and how can we un undo those patterns? Because you can't move forward into a place of trust and collaboration if you're constantly weaponizing how the person messed up over and over and over again and the person can never apologize enough. I will say that oftentimes you need to apologize more than you think you do when an affair has happened, I think it can take, they usually say one to two years before the person who is recovering from being cheated on can really feel like totally okay again.
And so having an accountability practice with each other where you say, yeah, that hurt. Yeah, that happened. I see why that happened. Here's how I'm addressing it. Just kind of over and over again reminding the person, you know, with a lot of love and a lot of care, yes, that hurt. Yes, that was wrong. Here's how I'm doing better. How can I support you right now? Rather than getting like resentful or defensive, like, when are you gonna be over this? Why do you keep bringing this up? Am I ever gonna be free of this? Like, I really wanna trust the process of the grief that someone who's been cheated on is experiencing. And also, again, that reeling feeling that like, I don't know if the floor under my feet are gonna, is gonna be okay. And sometimes it just takes time of walking back and forth over every inch of that floor again before you can really feel like, hey, okay, we fixed the hole and now it's better. And again, at the same time being like, if you are the person who is cheated on being aware, like there's a point where I have to forgive and trust if I'm gonna stay here. I can't keep holding it over this person if I love them.
And at the same time, if they're not doing anything differently, then, you know, might be not a reason to feel healed and repaired. Now you'll notice nowhere in here have I talked about actually starting to do polyamory yet. And this is the thing that the people who have cheated and now wanna step into polyamory usually don't wanna hear from me, is if you've met someone and you're in love with them and you're hoping that if you just come clean with your partner and you give them a chance to meet this person that you've fallen in love with and you just put it all out in the open that then now you'll be able to continue to see that person in open dynamic. My lovely sweet human. I have not, I have one person that I have met where that has actually worked.
And I think that that's just such an exceptional case that I think it's so rare that that's actually how it could possibly work from the fact that the person that you're introducing them to is someone you betrayed them with. And that's always gonna have how they're gonna feel about this person potentially. It's something that they're always gonna be reminded of. May mean that you may not be able to be with this person in a polyamorous dynamic. If you wanna be with your existing partner, you might have to choose. That sucks. I don't want to have to tell you that, but just from my experience with how this realistically works, it usually doesn't work like seamlessly. Hey now I'm all in the open, now I'm putting it all out there. So now you should just be okay with it. No, there's a lot of repair work to be done.
There's a revolution in your existing relationship to be done. There's a lot of accountability that is needed. And then there is the partner that you cheated on having to search their heart and see if non-monogamy is something that would actually truly work for them in their life with what they need. And that may not be possible, and there would be nothing wrong with that person saying, look, no shade against you. I don't love that you cheated on me, but I can understand how you got here with all the compassion in my heart and I don't think I can do polyamory. That's not what I signed up for, so I'm sorry this relationship can't continue. If that's what you want, that is a completely valid outcome to coming clean and telling the person that you've been cheating, but that you'd like non-monogamy. But let's say your partner is open to it, is open to repair, is open to revolutionizing your relationship and is open to considering whether non-monogamy is possible.
There's still a lot of repair to do and I don't think that if you have all of this history of lying, not being able to be honest with yourself, not being able to be honest with your partner if you've got existing dynamics that churned out cheating in the first place, all of that I think has to happen. Well, maybe not all of it, but a substantial chunk of it needs to happen before you start exploring non-monogamy. If you start exploring non-monogamy and you haven't addressed why you felt the need to lie to your partner in the first place and hide who you are and what you needed, if you haven't addressed the root cause of what caused the cheating to happen, then even if you're not technically cheating, you're gonna struggle to be honest about other things that can crop up in a non-monogamous relationship.
Like let's say you fall in love with your other partner, and you are afraid that that'll be really hard for your existing partner. You may not tell them right away, or what happens if you have like a, some kind of mistake that happens like a condom breaks or a slips or something that, you know, a previous agreement that you had that didn't go perfectly well, you might feel compelled to hide that because you don't wanna rock the boat and you don't wanna upset your person. Or what if you've made an agreement and you realize it isn't working for you and you wanna change it again, that's basically what you've already done. You made an agreement to be monogamous and then you didn't like it, and so you changed it on the back end first and then came clean about it later.
If that's your habit and you haven't addressed the root cause of that habit, then I don't think you're gonna have a lot of success with non-monogamy. And I don't think your partner is actually gonna feel secure practicing non-monogamy with you, even if they're willing because their system, even if they're not conscious about it, their system is going to know that you haven't addressed this part of yourself. This, this tendency that you may have to be dishonest to conceal, to not be upfront, to not rock the boat. And so that needs to be addressed and that takes time because usually there's something deep in there that caused that to happen. And so I don't wanna be the bearer of bad tidings, but I think it's just reality that it's highly, highly unlikely that you're gonna come clean about an affair in January and that you're gonna be practicing polyamory happily together in February.
And in fact, if you are, I would be worried about you. It's just probably a much longer and harder road than that on top of the need to repair and revolutionize your relationship. You're also gonna need to learn what polyamory or non-monogamy really is. Learning about boundaries, communication, openness and trust, how to confront jealousy, how to release control of your partner, how to release feelings of ownership. All of that can take time to unpack. And the thing is, what if your partner also wants to be non-monogamous and they never have before? It's actually, I say this a lot, it's a very different skillset to be ready to be polyamorous and have multiple partners. It is a different skillset to be ready to have your partner have multiple partners. So again, there's a lot to work through before I think that you would be ready to make that shift.
And also I think it's gonna be so important to be so, so, so, so kind and patient with your existing partner. If they are willing to give this a try and stick it out, you're gonna have to take the time. You're going to recognize that you both are gonna need to grow and also there's gonna be some healing that's gonna need to happen. And if you rush things, that's probably going to impede the healing that needs to happen. Now, if you are the partner that's been cheated on and you've decided to take the courageous step towards trying to make this better, trying to repair and maybe even being open to non-monogamy, maybe that's even something you've been wanting as well, but have been holding off on 'cause you thought it was verboten. That's wonderful. And I also want you to be kind to yourself and allow yourself to go slow.
And also if what you're feeling is resentful and like you're being dragged into this and like, this is not your choice and this is against your will, don't say yes to it. There's nothing worse, I think, honestly, than being in a relationship where the part it just can't work. And the only thing that you're gonna be doing is just reminding that person how disappointed you are in them, how miserable you are to be with them, and how resentful you are for the things that they are making you do just so that you can stay with them. Now, I recog I wanna just recognize here that, that it's easy for me to say that. And also sometimes what happens when we're in a long-term relationship is we've created a lot of shared investments. We have children, maybe we have finances. Maybe it's hard to leave because you don't have the financial security or independence to live on your own separate from a partner.
And maybe there are other types of substantial power imbalances like that that make it feel like you can't stick up for yourself or put your foot down and say, no, I'm not willing to do this with you, and this isn't okay with me and I need repair. If that's your situation, obviously what I would encourage you to do is get support, get help so that you can move out of that disempowered place into a more empowered place so that you can get out of that situation if it's not working for you. I, again, I just think it's one of the most painful things ever to be in a dynamic that you can't get out of, but that is not working for you and is just going to churn out resentment and pain and this feeling of being trapped and anger and resentment. Like who needs that in the place that's supposed to be your safe harbor.
But if you have decided that you wanna take a step forward into repair, into accepting your partner as they fully are and maybe accepting yourself as you fully are and revolutionizing the relationship, I wanna say there's nothing wrong with that. I have seen people who have moved from an affair into the best version of their relationship. I have seen that happen. I know it can happen and it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of courage, but there's no shame in it. It's a beautiful thing to be willing to do. And it just takes the commitment and the willingness to really open your heart to forgiveness, open your heart to repair. If, if you are willing to move through it, but you wanna kind of continue to hold this over your partner and make them feel terrible about it on repeat, that will be a much harder road, that will be a road full of pain for both of you.
Again, that doesn't mean you have to forgive right away. It doesn't mean you have to let it go right away. You have to honor your nervous system. You have to honor the fact that this is a trauma that you have to heal from and that healing isn't linear and that it can take time. It's also just so important to be open to repair and really believe that that's possible. Lastly, while I don't think every single relationship growth moment requires the support of a professional, in the case of recovering from an affair and moving into non-monogamy, I highly, highly recommend you get the support of a competent and experienced couples coach or therapist. This can be especially important because if you're just trying to make your way through it on your own, your friends might not understand. There's not a lot of support for making this kind of move, and so it can feel extremely lonely and I think it can be really, really important to have someone on your side who can walk with you through this extremely difficult time and help remind you of the path forward and help you stay patient and focused on the goal that you have together of making this work.
So to recap, yes, you can move from cheating into a more overt non-monogamy or polyamory, but it takes work. It takes time, it takes courage, it takes a willing partner, and it takes frankly, a revolution in you and in your relationship. If you're willing to go slow, be patient, be kind and compassionate, and take the time and allow for repair and healing, then what can happen on the other side of that might be nothing short of amazing, but you have to be willing and brave enough to do the work. And even if you do, it might not work or it might work, but you might not be able to stay with the person that you had the affair with. And that doesn't mean that anybody failed or that anybody did anything wrong. Sometimes it actually just can't work. But I think either way, it's worth it to confront all of this and take it as an opportunity for growth and an opportunity to be an integrity with yourself so that the next time you find yourself in a relationship, you do have the opportunity to do it differently.
