I Love Him, But I Couldn’t Live With Him

There are reasons that I live with James and not Nat

Sometimes opposites attract. In the case of me and my polyamorous partner Nat, this is true in spades. I often say that we are completely different from each other, except for the few ways that we are exactly alike. I liken it to the taijitu (the Yin/Yang symbol). We are night and day, with just a drop of the other one within us but together we fit to create a cohesive whole that works despite the differences.

Nat and I have been together for nearly 6 years, and in that time we’ve had to work through a lot, most of it related to being so very different and to going about relationships in ways that aren’t native to the other person. He’s extremely independent and although Nat is very people-oriented, he’s not relationship-oriented in the same way that I am. My interpersonal dynamics with others, from clients to lovers and everything in between is the single most important thing to me, but that just isn’t how Nat sees the world. He’s devoted to the people he loves, but he still doesn’t see everything through the lens of the relationship in the way that I do. This has led to more than a few misunderstandings because things that are no-brainers to me just aren’t obvious to him and vice versa.

The fact that we are both married to other people and now live far away from each other is actually less of an issue than the fact that we just don’t go about a lot of life in the same ways. He’s a very friendly and community-oriented person, who is also quite shy at times. Nat has a hard time talking about his feelings, and the more he feels, the harder it gets. I’m quite comfortable with emotions and with expressing them freely but I like to keep a smaller circle of close friends.

A lot of people scoff at astrology, but I have to say, Nat is a quintessential Aquarius man, an unorthadox sexy, nerd with a wicked sense of humor and itchy feet that make it hard for him to stay in one place too long. I am in many ways the stereotypical Cancerian woman, someone who is very home-oriented and craves comfort and stability, particularly in love relationships.

We’re both a bit moody, but also both extremely loyal. However, he’s not very predictable by nature, and I very much like to know what the lay of the land is. We’ve each had to learn to understand and accommodate the other’s way of being in the world and in a relationship. On the other hand, James is a Pisces and he’s a lot like me in many ways — sensitive, intuitive, caring, and a bit zany, we have a host of inside jokes between the two of us.

Nat is always on the go, and he definitely gets energy from being with other people, making him an extrovert, despite his quiet side. I’m a very social person too, but I also need a lot of time alone, and mostly, I’m happy just being a homebody. Fortunately, my husband James is very much the same. He’s more extraverted than I am, but he too loves to just hang out together at home, with a few forays here and there to keep things interesting. James and I could be quite happy having a long, leisurely breakfast in bed just like the couple in the picture above. I don’t really see Nat doing something like that, at least not if the weather was good. Maybe on a stormy, rainy day if nothing else too interesting was going on.

He’s up at 4 am getting ready to go for a run or to the gym, before heading into the office around 7 to get a start on the day before everyone else arrives. My alarm doesn’t even go off until 7 and there’s no way I could survive on the 6 or so hours of sleep that seems to work just fine for Nat. My ideal sleep is somewhere closer to 9 hours. If I had his 4 am alarm waking me up every day, I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, and I’d be serioulsy dragging.

When James and I go on vacation, people often ask us what we plan to do while we’re away. The answer is always the same: sleep as long as we want and wake up when we’re ready (not because of an alarm), eat good food when we want, enjoy being together uninterrupted, and yeah, we’ll probably do some sightseeing or an activity of some sort but we also probably aren’t going to plan for that ahead of time because we don’t want to have to be on a schedule. That’s why it’s a vacation.

James and I now live on the other side of the country from Nat, and so this really is a non-issue at this juncture, but I do often think that even if he were around the corner, and we weren’t both in a committed nesting relationship, that I could still never live with him. We like a lot of the same books, music, and TV shows but there are places where Nat and I just sort of shake our heads around each other’s choices — something that James and I rarely do.

We love sci-fi, but James and I much prefer Star Trek to Star Wars. Nat is a total Star Wars superfan. He’s also crazy about Dr. Who, something that with only a few exceptions, I find way too campy and overwrought to truly enjoy. James agrees with me about both. One of my all time favorite books is Neil Gaiman’s mystical “coming to America” road trip saga, American Gods. I’ve read it at least 3 times and think it’s just genius. Nat read it and liked it OK.

Although I could live with someone who didn’t have my exact same taste in TV, books, and music. It might be complicated at times to pick a show, but it’s not like I can’t stand the stuff he enjoys — it’s just not my favorite. I don’t really want to listen to hard core punk too often and he doesn’t go for some of the folk music that I like, but there’s plenty of room for us to meet in the middle with the contemporary Alt music that we both really gravitate to. Neither of us is big into country music, but he is a dyed in the wool Waylon Jennings fan where I much prefer Willie Nelson.

But more than that, it’s the way that we use our time and energy so differently that really would make it challenging to live with him. In addition, for me, my home is my sanctuary, and I want it to be as attractive and comfortable as possible. For Nat, home is a haven, but more as a landing pad for the next activity or adventure. The pace he lives at would exhaust me, and mine would probably bore him silly.

I have polyamorous acquaintances who share a home with both of their loves, and although a part of me thinks that would be incredible, another part of me knows that it would probably take an awful lot of adjustment for us all (were that even on the table as a possibility). So perhaps it’s just as well that living with Nat isn’t really an option, for a variety of reasons. As much as I love him, I’m quite content living with James. We fit together on the domestic front in a way that I don’t think Nat and I ever would, and I think he would agree, so I guess it’s just really all for the best.

As Father John Misty, one of our favorite Alt artists says (song clip here):

“I’ll never try to change you As if I could, and if I were to, what’s the part that I’d miss most?”

Sometimes I wish Nat was a bit more like me just because it would make a lot of things easier, but I don’t really want him to be different than he is because then he wouldn’t be the person that I love — one of the two people that I love and have pledged to share my life with.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2021 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.

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