Who Am I? Am I Still Poly?
By Robin Macklepenny
Editor:
This piece was originally written for another project long ago and has been resurrected from the archives. So, if you notice that the style and tone are different that’s because they were written by different people at different times. But… The topics are still just as relevent today as they were then! Enjoy!
Since this is my first article for this publication, please allow me to introduce myself. I am a frmh-hrmph year old woman who is quite tall (6’3”). I am a parent of three intelligent, beautiful daughters from a previous marriage, and now proud to be co-mom to another intelligent, beautiful daughter and a handsome, clever son. My fiancée is a devastatingly smart, beautiful woman who can see deeper into my own soul sometimes than I can. We are currently focused on merging our families and building and deepening our understanding of each other and ourselves. I have been a proud member of the LGBT community since my college days, and before I forget, I am a late-transitioning transgender woman.
My fiancée Jaqui and I have a relationship is somewhat unconventional but very stable. We are deeply in love, both quite poly, and to varying degrees pansexual. Ok, so I lean much more toward the lesbian end of the spectrum (I can’t think of an applicable label beyond, possibly, “pan-flexible”). More than a year after we started dating each other, we find ourselves to be a refuge for each other and have discovered neither of us is looking for anyone else, at least at this time.
That led to some soul-searching. I have had few relationships in my life. The first, a marriage spanning fourteen years, started with someone who I thought understood me. At the time we met, she was fine with me being a bisexual and respected my polyamorous nature. She understood that I was more feminine than most women she had met… but neither of us understood at the time that it was because I was a woman inside. After two years of marriage, her acceptance turned to disdain, and I did my best to hide those bits of myself she found reprehensible. Sadly, it took me far too long to realize just how harmful that was to myself.
After the separation and well into divorce proceedings, I met another woman who was a true force of nature. She, too, was happy at first with my nature, and had actually lived a polyamorous life as well. Together we reached out to the poly community in the Oklahoma City area and began trying to put together a support group which, thankfully, is composed of wonderful, determined people who kept that group together even as our relationship deteriorated. Over time, though, her repeated demands that I be more of a man conflicted too deeply with what I eventually came to realize was my transsexual nature becoming manifest. This time the idea of trying to be someone I was not for the sake of another was abhorrent to me. We couldn’t work things out, and that relationship ended as well.
My third relationship is wonderful. Jaqui accepted my feminine nature immediately. When I came out to myself and to her after finally realizing that continuing to deny my inner self was becoming too much to bear, she was accepting, nurturing, and eager to help me. Throughout my transition she has been there for me, as I have been there for her and the health issues she has due to cancer. We love each other deeply.
Could it be that I had just found the “right person” and that I was actually monogamous after all?
The answer I have come to after all of this is simply, “No.” We are still polyamorous. Just as living as a man and forcing myself to believe I had no choice in the matter did not make me less of a woman, and just as a bisexual person in a monogamous relationship remains bisexual, polyamorous people are that way because of a unique quality within them that gives them room in their hearts to love more than one person. It is quite possible that, one day, we will find that there is a scale much like the Kinsey scale for sexuality, with extremely monogamous people at one end and extremely non-monogamous people at the other.
As society becomes more permissive and flexible I am convinced we will find more people coming out of the poly closet. These people won’t become poly, instead they will come to recognize their nature and embrace it. Happiness, I have found, comes from acknowledging all the parts of myself and embracing them, even the inconvenient bits that society might find unappealing. I am perfectly imperfect, according to the world, and I am perfectly content with being so. Yes, I am poly, since the label means so much to so many, and I am a human being with all kinds of wonderful other facets to explore.
Namesté!