"Anxious obsessing makes you unavailable"

Earning secure attachment in a polyamorous context (again)

“Anxious obsessing makes you unavailable.” — Alan Robarge

Polyamory is funny because you don’t just earn secure attachment in one romantic relationship and then you’re done. You keep earning secure attachment, or trying to, in different relationships. I think this is true for monogamous people too, in that we also earn secure attachment in friendships and other non-romantic relationships, but there is something especially vulnerable in romantic relationships, and they take up a very important position in the overall felt sense of security and satisfaction in many people’s lives.

My journey to secure attachment in my relationship with my partner Jay was a long and arduous one for me. We have been together seven and a half years. In the early years my complex developmental trauma and disorganized attachment expressed themselves in an extremely anxious preoccupied attachment strategy. Jay leans avoidant, and we have always practiced non-hierarchical polyamory / relationship anarchy, which meant I could not lean on the construct of “primary partner” for my security.

Seven and a half years ago, even three years ago, my trauma was still running wild. It was very hard for me to come to a place of true felt trust and security. I am extremely grateful to Jay for their patience and consistency, the way they showed up, owned their side of the street, and offered me endless patience, generosity, and grace as I worked through my sometimes explosive and chaotic attachment issues. I am honestly so fucking lucky to have them as a partner, because I know not everyone would have stayed and worked with me through those more turbulent years. Their willingness to do so helped me build the bedrock I needed for the security we now enjoy. Jay is my ride or die. I love them completely. I trust them completely. I feel so safe in our relationship.

In this past year I fell in love with another partner of mine, C. The relationship started off more casual, and at a certain point I realized that my feelings weren’t casual. I expressed that, and this opened a new element in our relationship. I have had other important relationships in the seven and a half years I’ve been with Jay (this period almost exactly coincides with the amount of time I’ve been consistently polyamorous because I started dating Jay at the very beginning of my poly journey this time around) but this is the first time I feel myself in the throes of earning secure attachment. I trust C. He is responsible and safe and works with me. I love C, and damn, love is a humbling and transformative experience.

I was getting cocky in my recovery from complex trauma and disorganized attachment, because I earned secure attachment with Jay, and I assumed that meant I would be able to transfer these skills to other partnerships. And there is definitely truth to that. I am significantly less chaotic and turbulent in my experience of earning secure attachment with C, and, it is still its own process. I find myself revisiting lessons I already learned and having to learn them again, with a different person and in the specificity of a new relationship. I find myself humbled by the intensity of my feelings and the way I can slide back into old attachment strategies that don’t serve me or the relationship.

Earning secure attachment in polyamorous relationships is different, and more challenging, than earning secure attachment in monogamous relationships. For lots of reasons. We can’t rely on the mono-normative scripts of “one and only” to show us that we are precious to our beloveds, or to build a foundation for feeling safe and secure. Our relationships often look different from monogamous relationships in the day to day as well, and one of the big ways they differ is in available time. Polyamorous relationships often have less time. By its nature, polyamory means investing in multiple relationships, on top of investing in all the other important things in life, and so availability for a given relationship is often less.

Quality time is definitely one of my most important love languages, so I find this aspect of polyamory difficult. I also tend to be attracted to people who are very independent and deeply value their time and their freedom to make decisions about their time. This, in itself, doesn’t have to be a problem. I learned in my relationship with Jay that it is possible for me to flourish in relationships where time together has limits on it. The issue for me is more about maintaining my felt sense of connection, safety, and security, during periods when we are spending more time apart. Periods with more time apart can send me spiralling back into old attachment strategies: anxious obsessing.