Relationship By Choice

For all of you who know me in real life I'm really not into the "hippy-dippy infinite love and world peace for all" zeitgeist, but this is one warm and fuzzy concept I do dig.

Sometimes I think people forget that their commitment to their relationships is a choice. Instigating a relationship does not mean that there is no room for change in its form or appearance and if the relationship no longer works for either parties, whether it be romantic or platonic (and I would even extend this to familial relationships as well but obviously there are other layers going on there too), they have the choice to dissolve the connection.  I am thankful to have met and made connections with many amazing people, to whom I make a conscious effort to acknowledge their graciousness in choosing me to be their partner, lover, or friend, and I hope they do the same for me.

Prior to becoming polyamorous (about this time last year actually!) this concept hadn't even crossed my mind. My partner and I had been together since we were 14 and we both assumed that's how it was and would always be. We locked ourselves into routines, patterns of communication, and ultimatums based upon the "fact" that we had certainly made the choice to get together in the first place, but we never thought of our relationships continuation and the model we followed to be anything more. As I've become more conscious of my own relationships I can't help but notice how other's treat theirs as static, immovable, unquestionable, unbending and overwhelmingly above their own personal growth and independence.

While the human capacity for healthy and loving connections may or may not have a ceiling, we certainly do have logistical limits like time. As a busy woman I have to budget my schedule day-by-day between work, family, friends, and my more intimate relations. I treat my time as precious, which it is as is yours, and only give it to people and projects that I feel are deserving of it and have learned to appropriately and unselfishly drop hindering projects and people out of my budgeting process. Assuming that other's do this at least to some extent I treat other's allowance of their time to me as a special connection, one that they consciously chose, as I have.