This isn’t a topic I really intended to approach again, but a writing that passed by my feed seemed to call for a comment from an old email I once sent, and it’s a pretty good email. So now I’m sharing it. Keep in mind this was a specific context I was discussing with/about someone I knew well, so while I think it can be applicable in MANY situations one encounters in a relationship where one party requires something they do not believe affects the other, it’s not written to be universal. If you’re interested in more universal takes, I’ve a few other mono/poly things in my writings. (Short context on my background for those new here: my relationship started poly, and it is now monogamous. I would under no circumstances do polyamory again in my lifetime, but didn’t know that when I tried it and am glad I at least tried. My Owner is ambiamorous—if He could not have been happy monogamous, we would not still be together.) Please, I beg of you, read the rules of engagement I post in the first comment before you comment or message.
One might imagine this as a response to: “How do I get them to understand that my love for them is never going to change? No matter how I phrase it, they don’t seem to understand that this wouldn’t change my feelings. Don’t they trust me?”
I am about to mix metaphors egregiously, and some of this may come off as harsh. I do not mean to do the second and do not apologize for the first.
Some people are born into places where they grow up hearing both English and French and/or something clicks when they first hear French and/or they’re talented linguists, and they are fairly close to fluent in both. Some have a high school knowledge of French and like it, but wouldn’t get by in France long past a vacation. Many people in a modern world know how to speak some form of English out of necessity, but fluency and comfort vary. Some English-speakers emigrate after many decades and suddenly feel at home.
Here, I see you saying that even were someone in their own roles with you in sexually and emotionally intimate ways, nothing could ever take the place she holds for you sexually, emotionally, and responsively, and that you’ve tried to make that clear to her. She probably does understand this, in the same way that–she and I being speakers of English–we know how grammar works and that French, as a language, also has grammar and that it indeed somehow works. But an explanation of French grammar will make very little sense to someone who speaks no French. It will not *ever* make sense unless they actively choose to learn French, and even then, learning a language as an adult is difficult and something some people can’t ever do, despite really wanting to. (Hence why I am not in a doctoral program at this moment.) You can ask them to try, but some brains will not work that way. They just will not ever achieve the comfort and practice level necessary to carry on much of a conversation.
That’s poly to her. And no matter how many times you tell her how the grammar works, no matter what teaching methods or patience or enthusiasm you try with, it will not process. Now, this doesn’t mean she doesn’t believe you *completely* that yes, French really does has strong grammar. But it doesn’t matter. She may never metabolize what you are saying. It may never go past theory in her head. And what you are left with then is an English speaker picking out sounds that are familiar to them and walking away with an understanding that fits their own paradigms of language, that may be nowhere close to what you want to get across.
I know now there was no world in which I could ever *feel* truly Loved while poly, even if I *believed* it. None. Ever. I tried. I persuaded myself I did, for a vacation or so. But my high school knowledge didn’t get me farther than la bibliotechque, and I was then confused AND lost. And so I was left in the pain of unrequited Love but constantly. I had the ability to stay with the person I Loved forever, but was facing feeling that always if things stayed as they were. No chance of resolution. No chance of ever feeling safe.
If even one party is bilingual, it can work if they decide to speak in the other’s language. If neither are, both always miss out on truly understanding what is being communicated to them. What you have then is a lot to think about, I s’pose, unless you believe that you are unequivocally French and cannot learn fluent English, or unless I am wrong about her language learning abilities. Either of those being the case, then there either solidly isn’t or is hope.
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Submitted with a warm hat tip to my dear old friends, both of whom I’ve no doubt will read this sooner or later. I hope you are doing well. I hope you are understood.