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Know Thyself, Heal Thyself

Authenticity, vulnerability, awareness & growth through storytelling, sharing of personal experiences, and knowledge on spiritual matters.

How Polyamory Stopped Feeling Safe

“If you have sex with someone else, I will be destroyed”

8 min readSep 30, 2025

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Photo by RDNE Stock project

CW: Mentions of depression, self-harm, suicidality, and neglect.

“Just know,” I sobbed, “if you have sex with someone else while we are in this place, I will be destroyed.”

I’m sitting up in bed, tears flowing down my face, hair tangled, oversized teeshirt hanging off of my useless body. He is walking slowly toward the door of our bedroom — or should I say my bedroom, for how rarely he sleeps here with me.

He says nothing but pauses at my words, shoulders hunched, still not looking at me, clouds and fog and all sorts of darkness surrounding him.

He doesn’t know what to say, what to do, how to respond when I get like this. He doesn’t understand what he’s done in the first place that caused my spiral or my warning.

And in truth, I don’t quite know either… I just know that once again, I tried to connect sexually and emotionally and was left feeling rejected, hurt, and angry. After that, I stopped making sense to either of us.

The influence of trauma

This warning came from a part of myself I’d long since buried. It’s a part that’s stuck in childhood, experiencing the world through a lens of instability…

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Know Thyself, Heal Thyself
Know Thyself, Heal Thyself

Published in Know Thyself, Heal Thyself

Authenticity, vulnerability, awareness & growth through storytelling, sharing of personal experiences, and knowledge on spiritual matters.

Anne Shark
Anne Shark

Written by Anne Shark

Polyamorous and sex-positive essayist, poet, and over-thinker.

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