Dated 3 years. Opened things up a month ago. He was Poly before me so I expected it. He was seeing two other people, but the second I met someone I was interested in we fought a lot. We broke up. That’s just simply a bad case right?

Yes, this is simply a bad case, not a general trajectory of how “opening up’ a relationship always goes.

One seriously frustrating thing about being part of any minority group is that you’re seen as representative of the entire group. This XKCD comic sums it up pretty nicely.

I often hear people tell me “polyamory is toxic, it never works” and then relate one bad experience someone they know had…but you never hear “monogamy is toxic, it never works” even though we all know someone who was cheated on, or ended up in a too-possessive or even abusive relationship, etc.

It’s okay if this experience made you decide that polyamory isn’t for you, or if you need to take time to heal and process! But please don’t think that this is how all polyamorous relationships go, and if you do want to try a polyamorous relationship again, don’t assume that they’re all fated to go this way!