Random Babble Post – For the Children

I fixed some typos, otherwise I’m letting this stand, bad grammar and all. Since I first wrote this I have seen many polyam families navigate healthy endings to relationships between polyam partners and children. But I think the central point here stands. Don’t forcibly sever your or  your partner’s parental relationship with children in the polycule just because relationships between adults have ended. Revised Dec 25, 2016

So, I’m too exhausted to think clearly, don’t have a post written, and refuse to be late again. What’s a person to do then? Babble.

In theory, I should be writing another post on pregnancy. If I tried in this exhausted state, what would come out is my own emotions and reactions to my experiences of pregnancy in polyamorous relationships, not all of which were good. I guess if I were to sum up the badness it would be: it was difficult and hurtful for a woman who was supposed to be part of a quad with me, to want me to have nothing to do with her pregnancy, and then want to be heavily involved in my own pregnancy later that same year. Of course, that whole relationship was a disaster. None of us handled the situation well, and a lot of people were very hurt before it ended.

Probably the one who was hurt the most was my husband, who left the relationship, left behind me, his brother, and the two children of his heart who he now never sees, living half way across the country. Thankfully, and due to a series of very messed up circumstances, involving extended family, Division of Youth and Family Services, and a messed up legal system, the children had been living with my parents and had barely seen him for a year, as well as being young enough that now, three years later, they barely remember him, so they weren’t nearly as hurt as they could have been by his leaving. Though, sometimes, a few times a year maybe, my daughter asks for him.

And I suppose if this post has a point, that should be it. There are no legal ties to the children of our poly partners. And if things end, it can be so easy to walk away, so much less hurtful to leave them behind rather then see them constantly and be reminded of what we lost.

But if we chose to bring children into a polyam relationship, whether we are the biological parents or not, we have a responsibility to them. I hear it said so often in polyam forums that a relationship that ends is not a failure if it simply ran its course and everyone moved on . . . but, when you bring children in, whether they are born into the relationship, or brought in from previous relationships, we owe it to them not to let the end of a relationship with our partners, take us away from the children who also have a relationship with us.

There is a little girl who called me her parent, and whose face lights up whenever she sees me, who is not allowed to spend time with me. There are two children sleeping upstairs who have a father they will probably never see again. This is wrong, and I cannot change it. But I can hope and pray that those of you who read this, will do everything in your power to make sure these things never happen to the children in your life.

Because our children deserve better than this.

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