Relationship Anarchy, Solo Polyamory, or Just Disorganized Attachment?

So, I’ve done it. I’m back in the US, away from my ex and officially and now safely single. Great. Fantastic news. I’m free. I can do whatever I want. I can see whomever I want. I… uh… hmm.

Well, this is just a whole other can of worms, now, isn’t it?

I was with my ex in actuality for six years and then stuck more or less under his thumb for an additional six years. That’s 12 years since I’ve been truly free to do whatever I want romantically or sexually or some combination of the two. I’ve done an incredible amount of self work since I was last single, and learned so, so much about people, relationships and my own issues and patterns. And what seemed like just the natural quirks of my own personality that would sort themselves out over time when I was in my 20s have now come to feel somehow both suspect and nonnegotiable. In equal extremes. And it’s confusing me. A lot.

I’ve always been goosey about traditional committed monogamous relationships. It’s not the monogamy itself that bothers me so much — I have absolutely no issues being faithful to one partner. I don’t find it difficult or even limiting in terms of sexual activity. I do find it limiting in terms of being able to bond in whatever way comes naturally with other human beings, but we will circle back to that. For the most part, it’s all the stuff that comes with monogamy that makes me feel a little tight in the chest. In a vacuum, all on my own, I don’t feel any kind of urge to build my life around or even with another person. I don’t need an other half, and I already have a handful of life partners in the form of trusted friends. I would love for a romantic partner to join their ranks, but I don’t expect one to ever outrank them.

The main thing that I rail against is the feeling of having my life invaded by another person. And just hear me out, because I promise I’m not a sociopath. But traditional monogamous relationships come with a set of expectations and a predetermined path that just skeeves me. It has always skeeved me, and it skeeves me way more now that I feel like I have finally, using all of my strength, managed to wrestle my life back from the man who took it over for more than a decade.

I like my house. I like living in it alone. I like my life. I like my time to work. I like eating on whatever schedule I feel like. I like not having to make travel plans, or even daily plans, around another person. Sometimes I like staying up all night to write, like I’m doing now, without feeling like I’m causing a ruckus or not being there for a partner the way that I should be (in bed beside them). I don’t like feeling like I’m chronically letting someone down by just living how I want to live, and I really, really, really don’t like arguing over the laundry or the dishes with the person I’m fucking.

Then why not just stay single? Fair question, I guess. Because I like being in love. I like having that deeper connection with another person. I like having sex that is not just physical. I just don’t like all of the weird and, to me, unnecessary restrictions that seem to come part and parcel with all of that.

To me, those are small things. I don’t want you in my face all day every day, but if you call me at 3am because you feel like you can’t breathe, I will be on the phone (or by your side) for as long as you need. I don’t want to mix my finances up with yours, but if someone makes you feel like shit, all you have to do is give me the go-ahead and I won’t stop until they are crying. I don’t want to negotiate a chore schedule with you, but if you come to me and say you need help hiding a body, I won’t ask you one single question until we have the job done.

I will push you to pursue your dreams and do anything I can to help you get there. I will tell you as many times as you need to hear it that you are good and worthy of love. When you cry in front of me, you will never cry alone. But goddamn, I do not want to have to have dinner ready at 7pm every single night just because that’s what time you get home from work.

Isn’t that enough? Shouldn’t it be? Because I know of a lot of relationships where the mundane parts of all of that listed above are present, but the deeper parts are not. I’ve been in one of those relationships myself. And I just did not get the point.

But I seem, especially at my age (and especially as a woman), to be an outlier. A weirdo. A person with issues.

There are a couple of sets of terminology that help me feel like less of a freak, though. The first one is relationship anarchy, which was coined a little over a decade ago in the informal setting of a Tumblr post, but which, nonetheless, has resonated with a lot of people. Basically, this concept applies the base principles of anarchy to relationships, resulting in what a lot of people might mistake for chaos, but what, for me, seems to be just fucking logical. Essentially, you allow your relationship with each person in your life to be what it wants to be.

A prime feature, for me, is the concept that your romantic partner will not automatically and necessarily outrank the other relationships in your life. There is also no other-half nonsense — you are a whole and autonomous being, all on your own. And the boundaries and expectations of the relationship are determined cooperatively between the partners, without any mind toward what a relationship is “supposed” to be, as defined by heteronormative patriarchal practices.

The other extremely niche term that helps me summarize how I feel in something less than a paragraph is solo polyamory. The whole standard polyamory scene is not for me. At all. It seems messy and sadomasochistic and primed for weird dynamics. (I understand that sounds judgmental, polyamorous folks, but don’t at me. These are my preferences we are talking about, so I’m allowed to make judgements. I didn’t hear you lot piping up when I was bawling out monogamy a few paragraphs up, eh?)

Solo polyamory, on the other hand, is pretty much what it says on the tin. The easiest way to understand it is that you are open to multiple romantic and to varying degrees committed relationships at once, but instead of having a primary partner, you are your own primary partner. The key feature of solo polyamory is the lack of relationship escalation. There is no predetermined path, where dating leads to exclusivity, and exclusivity leads to cohabitation, leads to intermingling finances, leads to marriage, leads to children etc. etc.

It is not the same as just dating or sleeping around, however. Generally speaking, a solo polyamorist prefers to have long-term, stable relationships. Just not necessarily with one person, and not on the traditional path to marriage and the total commingling of all aspects of life. I like getting in deep with people. I like feeling some amount of security and trust. I just don’t want to… well. We don’t need to go over all of that again. You already heard it. You get the point.

You can be both a relationship anarchist and a solo polyamorist at the same time, and I suspect that, at the moment, that is precisely where I am situated. I suspect, in fact, that it’s where I’ve always been situated and probably should have stayed. I didn’t have the terminology to describe all of this before I was married, but I was more or less living it out. I had just allowed society to convince me that there was something wrong with me for it.

Which begs the question… is there something wrong with me for it?

Now, it gets dicey. Let’s talk about disorganized attachment.

Also known as fearful avoidant attachment, it is one of three insecure attachment styles, the other two being avoidant and anxious. Attachment styles are complex, and I am far from an expert on the subject, but more or less, anxious attachment is characterized by what might be commonly called neediness or clinginess, while avoidant attachment is typically characterized by detachment or chronic pulling away.

Disorganized attachment is the rarest of the three, and it is pretty much what it sounds like: a big ol’ mess. While people with anxious attachment styles tend to go overboard seeking connection, and avoidants tend to always be worming their way out of the same, people with disorganized attachment styles have an overwhelming desire to have deep connections with people, but also a tremendous fear of those same connections.

Disorganized attachment is caused by childhood trauma, specifically the kind that relates to a primary caretaker becoming an object of fear. When a child is put in the position of both seeking out care and protection from a parent and feeling like they have to protect themselves from the same parent, the wires get crossed in a very confusing way. The resulting attachment style is chaotic because the child’s understanding of what it means to be loved is chaotic. They never know what to expect, and have to be ready to switch “modes” at the drop of a hat.

The unhealed resulting adult remains ready to switch “modes” at the drop of a hat, whether or not they need to. They can seem eager and engaged one minute, but at the first sign of impending rejection or attack, they can flip instantly to an ice-cold self-protection mode. They are constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, and can even go so far as to try to make it drop just to get it over with.

They can instinctively pull away whenever they feel they are at risk of becoming “too” attached, not because they don’t want the intimacy, but because they are afraid of the potential fallout from the relationship going badly. They have trouble mediating their level of attachment, so they carry with them a potent fear of both rejection and being subsumed and engulfed by their emotions or another person. They also struggle with being vulnerable and asking for what they need, as they have learned that it will only result in pain and rejection and the feeling that their expectations are too high to be met. Even when they are basic.

I can speak to all of that from experience.

So I have these issues. I know that I have them. I am actively working to heal them. But is all of this relationship anarchy solo polyamory stuff just another way to mitigate and cope with this insecure attachment style? Is it a direct result of it? Would I still feel the same way about relationships if I didn’t have these issues?

I don’t know. I know some of the worst habits I have in relationships are for sure the result of an insecure attachment style. For example, seeking out entirely unsuitable and frankly just blatantly bad partners, because it gives me a sense of control in that at least I will know what is coming. I don’t have to wait for the other shoe to drop or the big reveal. I already know where the whole thing is going from the start. I don’t have to deal with the chaos and exhaustion that comes from constantly switching modes, because I just stay in self-protection mode the whole time. Easy peasy.

That was where I started, and in a lot of ways, my marriage was an experiment in venturing out of that territory. My husband was the first — and remains the only — person I slept with who I was also in love with. He was, I thought, for once a sensible choice. He was a good man who I had to face the insecurity of not knowing what to expect with. I had healed and was overcoming it all. I was taking the big risk and finally loving in a healthy way.

Except. Oops.

It turned out that with my good, sensible choice, I ended up reenacting all of the exact childhood trauma that gave me that sense of insecure attachment in the first place.

So now what? Am I dragging around the same old issues and just calling them by new, fancy names?

I genuinely don’t think so. Because even in a anarchistic, solo poly relationship, I’m still going to have to deal with my instinct to mode switch. I’m still going to have to face the unknown, so long as I’m not allowing myself to intentionally seek out unsuitable partners to bring about a predetermined ending. I’m still going to have to fight the urge to self-sabotage, and push myself to be vulnerable and voice my needs.

Am I still protecting myself to some degree by keeping some distance in place? Maybe. I’m not really sure on that one yet. But I have time to figure it out. And if nothing else good came out of my marriage, at least I gained the knowledge that I can push past all of my bullshit when I really want to. And that even when it blows up in my face, like the most fearful part of me always knew that it would, I can survive it. So there’s nothing too much to be afraid of, in the end. And that will be the most important thing I carry with me going forward. Alongside all my baggage, of course.