I've recently had a few different people ask me how and when I knew I was poly. For me, it wasn't all of a sudden, and I don't think I woke up one morning and decided it was the lifestyle for me. Honestly, I'm not even completely convinced it is a choice. Like being attracted to certain kinds of people, I think being attracted to more than one person at a time is just a part of my nature. For the longest time, I didn't even have the word polyamorous in my verbal arsenal. All I had was, "I feel this way about you... and you and you!" And quite frankly, there were times when I didn't even have that! The issue first came up when I started having sex which was at a young age, and so I didn't know shit from Shinola when it came to communication.
The first person I had sex with was D, and he and I were two members from a group of four that spent an immense amount of time together. D and I were clearly in a relationship, but I had just discovered sex. And this meant anything and everything was fair game. I wanted desperately into C's pants, but it just wasn't happening. We kept spending more and more time together, and I realized that I was starting to fall in love with C too. Meanwhile, I was still very happy with D in spite of the usual teen love drama. C wasn't the reason D and I broke up, but it did add fuel to the fire. I couldn't express clearly how I felt and what I wanted, and even if I had I don't know if we could have made it work. But then along came K, and the two of us were happy. I was still very happy with K when D came back into my life. I loved and sexed them both, and this about tore poor K apart. I ended up not seeing D anymore and just pursuing the relationship with K.
It wasn't until I was with Y that I learned about open relationships. Unfortunately, ours was very stifling, so all the reading I did was in private. I didn't share anything I learned with him but instead read the stories of other people's lives and pined for a day when I could live my life like that. When I broke up with Y, the door was suddenly thrown wide open for me. I could do or be whatever I wanted. I decided to go down the road of the ethical slut, and while it's been more than I ever could have anticipated, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I still feel like it's a part of who I am that's constantly changing and growing.
