Polyamory Insights: Relationship Transitions and Negotiating Breakups

Zoey Trope
sad girl polyamory
Published in
3 min readOct 4, 2019

When I was going through my divorce, I had a lot of grief to process. It manifested in my writing which became quite dark. My anger was mixed with sadness and I spent most of last year wallowing in it, too afraid of letting it go because that would force a transition. I intentionally delayed my relationship transition. You know how when you get engaged, people shower you with affection and attention? It’s the same when you’re getting a divorce. You almost don’t want to get to the other side of it because then you become just like everyone else.

This year, I finally moved out of our shared home over 2 years after he moved out. I watched as strangers emptied my dream home and painted over our initials on the walls as if to reboot this story for someone else. Except our story doesn’t have a devastating end. We reconnected a few months ago as we had promised to remain friends. It felt natural, comfortable, just as we always were. Parts were bittersweet; he accidentally called me “babe” when I left my bag on the table and it felt weird to not show any physical affection.

My partners were extra sensitive to this, providing extra support and check-ins, and I was glad to see that my ex had that support as well. I was proud of us for reaching this point and will make it a goal in every relationship I have in the future to reach this sweet spot post relationship transition. So how do we get to that? By negotiating our breakups.

It’s hard to think about how and when my current relationships will end. I sometimes feel the strain of time and resources will finally be too much. I fear that spending a handful of hours each week isn’t enough to sustain a relationship I’m this invested in; in other words, the relationship ROI is not there.

So this exercise is to negotiate my breakup with them.

First: Are we breaking up? Or do we need to take a break?

The difference? One is a break up. The other means we’re still going to hold ourselves accountable to address changes that need to be made to continue this relationship and to stay together.

Things I want answers to:

  • Will you let me know if there are changes that need to be made to sustain this relationship and avoid breaking up? What are our challenges? Should we try counseling to help us?
  • If breaking up, are we going to remain in contact? How much contact is preferred?
  • Would you consider what your personal boundaries are and let me know how you’d like our interactions to be? Do you wish to remain friends? Do you wish to remain aromantic sexual partners?
  • Can you please delete my nudes?

Those are the things I need to process a breakup. I don’t want confusion over where our boundaries are or whether or not we’re going to be hooking up. I especially don’t want to bear the burden of being someone’s emotional support if we’re no longer in a relationship.

With my 2 most recent breakups, I didn’t employ this exact tactic. I suppose I do have the answers to these based on the breakup discussions we did have. I don’t have lingering questions post-breakup so I assume this is the satisfactory bittersweet spot of getting to the other side of a relationship transition.

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Zoey Trope
sad girl polyamory

making things happen for #lapolyamory. formerly #queerthirstla.