For as far back as I could remember, as a tiny tiny child,
I was angry and frustrated at being born a girl.

This situation was exacerbated greatly in my home where my male parent was constantly pushing for the use of drastic physical punishments and my female parent’s only successful intercession on our behalf was that he couldn’t do those things because we were girls. So when I expressed that I wanted to dress in boys clothes and be called Andie ( short for Andrea-Jayne) the answer was a firm “NO”.

Mum is an amazing seamstress and my sisters and I were always impressively dressed in very pretty dresses. I felt so guilty for not fully appreciating the effort these clothes cost her and I was angry that she was forcing me to be someone I wasn’t. I only found out many years later that she was trying to keep me physically safe.

I was forever being told what a beautiful girl I was.
This grated on me badly and I wished I could become invisible.

I had some gender based soul crushing rejections in my childhood. The worst of these were from the Catholic Church.

In my house the only way to leave home was to marry someone of the “opposite sex“. There was no moving out with friends allowed. I needed to get out of that house.

I was one of the boys. I worked on cars, cleaned gutters, climbed trees and could talk on any subject they could. That, plus being a “ pretty girl” it was easy to get boyfriends. I married young to the first guy who was able to get me out of home.

When I turned 18 and started uni I had a bit more freedom. I changed my name to AJ which was allowed since I drew the idea from Mum labeling our lunches, ‘AJ’ and ‘GL’ to differentiate between my sister and I.

By 20 I was out of the frying pan and into the fire as I married someone who absolutely did not accept the girl/boy that I was. He outlawed all the boys clothes, chose my wardrobe and turned me into a trophy wife. One by one all the “boy” things about me were cut out, including my major love, working on cars.

Then at 21 I became pregnant with my first child.
It’s very hard to be in denial about one’s gender when pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding and being a stay at home mum.

My husband desperately wanted to have children young and after my music career had just just been annihilated due to a permanent injury I agreed. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my children and I don’t wish them away for a minute. They are both wonderful adults who make the world a better place and I cannot imagine my world without them.

The minute I became pregnant I set about doing my utmost to be the best mother I could be. This was no mean feat as literally nothing came naturally to me. I read and learned as much as I could and tried with everything in me to do a good job.

When my youngest was 4 months old I ended up In psych ward with post natal depression.

I could write for ages on the struggles of negotiating motherhood with gender dysphoria and I probably will at later date and maybe in a different forum, but for now I am attempting to do an overview of my life.

After my divorce in 2005 I realised that I had quite literally lost myself in the very ‘female’ life I had allowed myself to be forced to live.

Notice I said “allowed myself”.

I woke up one day, looked at myself in the mirror and realised that I did not know who I was anymore.

I jumped on the Internet and looked for some of my old tomboy mates, the ones who knew me when I was a little boy, up trees and under cars.

My regular readers will know that I found and old friend who I ended up marrying. I refer to him in my writings as JayBear. I told him my story to date and he pledged to help me rediscover my true self. I too, did the same for him as he was stuck in a life that was so far from who he was meant to be also.

I still had periods of intense anger at being a female and these “bad patches” could last anywhere between two hours and two weeks. There was nothing I could tell myself to lessen these, I just had to ride them out.

In 2014 I came out as gay. I’ve written a lot about this time and you are interested in the details please feel free to go back and read “ Where did I come from” and “Where do I begin”.

About a year after coming out it occurred to me one day that it had been a full six months since I had felt any of the anger and frustration that was part of my life.

Upon analysing myself I concluded that the major cause of my anger is when people EXPECT me to act in a traditionally “ female “ manner and a major expectation on me was that I would be straight.
I was coming from a Malaysian family with a Christian/Catholic background and being heterosexual was the only acceptable way to be.

When faced with the freedom to choose, I decided that I did not want to transition my body to male, but that I very much did not want to live as a woman either.

My husband is amazing, as my regular readers already know, and he has honoured his pledge to help me discover my true self even when it has taken us down some scary paths. If you’re wondering how I’m in a “till death do us part, soulmate relationship “ with a man despite being gay and not a typical female, the answer is that our love is a love of heart and soul. I love all of him despite the fact that he has a man’s body and he loves all of me even though my physical body doesn’t match my gender identity.

These days I live in a gender fluid state. In my house I don’t have any expectations on me to act as a male or female.

I’m free to work on the car, cut wood with my own chainsaw or sew my own clothes if I choose. My house is a very safe place for me.

My non verbal autistic son has missed the gender role stereotype brainwashing from society and therefore appears very gender fluid as he happily exists in a world where pink and purple are his favourite colours, he has a beautiful vase of flowers in his room and he can chop wood like a boss!

I’m only comfortable describing myself using the terms ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ despite being 50 years old. Both ‘man’ and ‘woman’ feel foreign.
I’m not sure why this is but as I get older I’m finding that this is terminology that other people find difficult to accept.

The only times I experience frustration or sadness is when I’m judged based on a gender expectation by someone else.
This goes up and down in frequency depending on what is happening my life

I still use the she/her pronouns and these days I have chosen to retain a more female look despite now having the freedom to cut my hair short and wear exclusively male clothes.

This is a fact that puzzles people.
I’ve had them argue with me!
“No you can’t be a boy because you wear pink, purple and skirts”.

My most comfortable existence is that of being gender fluid and sexuality fluid.
JayBear in his wisdom has told me I shouldn’t strive for any “absolutes” and just allow myself to “be my authentic self “ at all times.
He is right and I am lucky to have him.

He call me his girl-boy!

It makes me smile! 🙂

Signing off for the first time as

Andie-Jay
(birth named Andrea-Jayne)

I was like any new convert to a philosophy that resonates deeply. So excited to find that the beliefs that had been at the core of my relationship makeup for years actually had a name and was a “thing” and just like a new Christian or a new Vegan I wanted to convince everyone I knew that this was the ultimate way to live!

I’ve learned a lot in the last 4 years. Even then I’m sure I’ve only learned a fraction of what there is to know. As always I’m going to speak only my own truth and firsthand observations and I hope that you will be a discerning reader and read widely on the topic in search for your own truth.

There are two factors which need to combine for a person to live a poly life.
Poly is an orientation

When I was quite young I realised that my heart didn’t follow the conventional pattern of “ one at a time”. My feelings for someone did not die just because theirs did for me, nor did they die when I developed feelings for another. When I was 12 I tried out the notion of having a boyfriend and a secret boyfriend. The secret boyfriend incidentally was the guy that is now my husband ( we’ve known each other since aged 7) but it didn’t last long due to my guilt of it being “wrong “. The experiment was so brief that he doesn’t in fact remember it. I think he might have had a crush on another girl at the time and I found out 40 years later that he’s a one girl kinda guy!

I don’t love very easily, and for the most part I do not initiate love, only return it. Once I do love someone however, that sentiment never seems to go away. I remember saying as early as in my 20’s “If you ever truly loved someone you will love them forever”and getting very strange looks for my comments.

I couldn’t explain it any better than that and no-one, not ONE SINGLE PERSON ever agreed with me.

That was my very first poly inkling and nowadays I have many ways to describe it:

My love for you is like a beam of light from above. It’s like you’re standing in a spotlight. But when I love someone else they are standing in their own beam of light. Yours doesn’t get dimmer, in fact my “sun” is more empowered the more lights I shine as your love feeds back to me. I receive your love with gratitude and return it with enthusiasm

And this:

When you only have one heart, you tend to think everyone else also only has one heart, so when you see someone loving more than one person you picture that one heart broken down into sections and there is less love for each partner.
When I say I love you with my whole heart I literally do. I have a heart with your name on it and it is reserved only for you.

But I feel like I have more than one heart!

The more love I receive from you and others the stronger my hearts grow and with it the ability to give love.
In my cluster of hearts love literally gets multiplied, not divided.
The best thing you can do for me is to encourage me to seek as much love as possible as this is how I thrive.

My personal goal is to surround myself with as much love as possible. I had a very rough start to life with too much fear and loneliness and not enough love. I have a beautiful soulmate love with my husband ( nesting partner) but there are corners of my mind which are literally starved, having never seen the light of love and it makes me very sad.

I do not believe that one person should be put under pressure to be “ everything” to another person. I feel that in subscribing to that school of thought we set ourselves up for disappointment over unmet needs. This could be one reason the divorce rate is so high.

I try and surround my husband with as much love as possible because he is also from a very emotionally damaging family. I do not for a minute think that I can single-handedly fill the voids left by all of them.

I am grateful for the love he has for me and I have no intention of contaminating that love with disappointment over needs he cannot possibly meet.

Being polyamorous IS an orientation. I am still polyamorous even when I am only in one relationship in the same way that I am still gay even when I am not in a same sex relationship. It’s simply who I am.

However orientation is not enough to lead a polyamorous life.
Poly has to also be a choice

From what I have observed the last 4 years there are a lot of people whose orientation is at the very least slightly, if not definitely poly. They love multiple parents, children, friends but societal conventions still prohibit the notion of loving more than one partner.
However orientation can only transition to lifestyle when one makes a conscious choice to defy their programming and go against the tide in our hetero-normative monogamous society.

I have observed this over and over again as these are the people who are often attracted to me. They hear about me ( as I lead a transparent life), they seek me out, they get to know me and then inevitably break my heart as they come to the conclusion that “ poly is not for them”.
In some cases I can see this is true but in most cases the truth is that they do not have the courage to make the choice to live according to their orientation.

It’s not really a surprise. In the past there have been many whose orientation has been “gay” who led straight lives because they did not feel that they could choose the life that matched their orientation .

An openly poly life is perceived to be as risky as an openly gay life used to be.

So what holds them back?
The answer is fear, and if you remember back to an earlier article, fear is powered by the possibility of loss.
Loss of family approval, loss of employee approval, loss of being socially “acceptable “, just to name a few.

They then find themselves in a lose / lose situation .

If someone denies their poly orientation, they will lose the potential to partake in a life of loving which fits their true heart (s). They will sentence themselves to a life of limiting love and resenting their one partner over unmet expectations.

I really hate those movies where someone is in love with two people and are forced to choose. If they are in love with two people they are most likely poly. As if they were mono they would have fallen out of love with the first person as soon as they fell in love with the second.

Don’t get me wrong- mono is a valid way to live if it truly matches your orientation.
However if you default to it out of fear then it could be a very lonely road.

We only get one life.
Being true to ourselves is an important factor In determining our happiness.

Many people who reject the notion of polyamory sometimes, even halfway into hearing the description, do so with the dismissive statement “It’s all about sex”, accompanied by a frown and disapproving look!!

Everybody’s truth about polyamory is different, but the word in itself literally means “many love” and in the world I live in, love certainly is the main factor.

Now monogamy may certainly be mainstream, more socially acceptable and by many considered to be the “moral high ground”. It seems to work for some people, but judging by the divorce and infidelity statistics it appears to not be an overly successful way to live, despite its popularity.
However, to many of us it just doesn’t make sense.

When we are born we are allowed, yes encouraged even, to love our parents equally. My children love 3 parents. When their step dad came along they were allowed to love him as well as their biological father without having to choose between them. If you have more than one child, you are allowed ( in fact expected) to love them all 100% and love them equally.

So why, when we love as adults, are we forced to choose one and only one person for the rest of our ENTIRE lives?
And if at any time we feel love or attraction towards someone else, we are forced to choose, often leaving a trail of wreckage, broken hearts and broken children behind.

Every other aspect of our lives would indicate that we are hard wired for multiple love and those of us living in polyamory are simply acknowledging that fact in our relationships.

I am not trying to convert anyone away from monogamy.
You know I have said many times that I respect that everyone walks their own path, but as my path is constantly under fire I do feel the need to explain:

         IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE

There are so many ways to “do” polyamory that it would take a whole book to define them and even then so much would be missed. There is a lot of terminology which I am still trying to wrap my own head around.  I have also discovered that as soon as you use a known term, people make an assumption that may not be completely accurate.
All I feel qualified to do is to tell you about the poly that is my truth.
And if this is the only article you have read about polyamory bear in mind it will not qualify you to say “oh yes, I know about polyamory “!! (I had a counsellor once who dismissed it as “that threesome thing” because she read an article about it in a magazine once).

For us it all started with a very simple statement made by my husband after I came to him with the life altering news that I was actually a lesbian, but did not want to leave him.

Long before we had even heard of polyamory this beautiful man looked at me and said:

” We have enough love to include another person”. 

It was such a pure statement which has indeed been the basis of the core value of our new relationship with one

“We have enough love to include other people” 

This simple statement was much more easily said than done, and the purpose behind writing this blog is to share the massive amount of new skills that we have had to learn to make it a viable reality.
We are still learning new skills as each new scenario presents itself, but I’m going to tell you about where we are at right now.
My house is made up of three people, my husband, myself and my son who is 24, partially verbal with autism. Both my boys are very loving, affectionate and loyal and I am lucky to have them.
One thing that makes my marriage different is how much access other people have to my husband.

You know that “thing” us  girls have where if we’re friends with a married man we have to be so very careful about how his wife will perceive the friendship?

Well, that simply is not a factor with us. Our friends can find a safe, cuddly, understanding male where they are free to have exactly the friendship or relationship they want and need.

The same goes for me! Obviously being lesbian I have personal limits on my friendships with men but with women I am free to have the  relationship I choose.
All the big questions get answered in this blog:
” Don’t you get jealous”
” What if he/ she falls in love with someone else and leaves you ”
” How can you call yourself a Christian ” etc.. All of these are answered in separate articles but the one fact that underpins all the answers is
IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE!
Our love is so strong that we simply would never make a choice that hurts the other.
Both of us have been asked by a woman to ” get rid of” the other but the answer is always no. The answer comes from whichever one of us was asked  NOT the partner because we don’t need to govern each other’s friendships and relationships.

If we choose to leave each other alone with someone else that is our choice but neither of us will ever throw the other one out!
At the end of the day if you love someone you will always want to put what they need first,  even if it means we have to sacrifice something that we perhaps want or need.

A funny thing happens when you make a habit of doing this- the other person is highly likely to reciprocate and try to help you get your needs met!
I read a lot of opinions in poly forums where people are advised to be true to themselves.

We believe that our love IS about helping the other person be true to themselves.

It takes time and self-sacrifice, but because we have a true and mature love, polyamory is a life that is ALL ABOUT LOVE!
This is a very broad overview of the philosophy that is behind our poly life.

Like I said, everybody’s poly is slightly different so I am only sharing what works for us in our relationship that started as a friendship, between two 7 year olds, a very long time ago.

Stay tuned for more articles on the “how to’s ” of the skills that we are learning in order to navigate the tricky waters of this life.

My journey into alternative relationship styles would not be well rounded if I ignored the elephant in the room. That thing that shapes our very early perception of relationships and in most cases determines how we do life. FAMILY.

Family for me, overall, is not a positive word. The biggest hurts in my life have come from my blood relatives and blood relatives of the 2 people I have married. This is true of those closest to me too. I have witnessed so much pain being inflicted on people I love…It’s heartbreaking.

So, what happens when our culture tells us”blood is thicker than water” and “if your family doesn’t love you, who will”? It leaves many people feeling like there is no hope of being loved in this “magical special way”  that they’ve  heard about but never experienced.

This year my journey of self discovery led me to believe that everyone is free to walk their own path and are responsible for their own choices. As people come and go they may share our path for a time but ultimately the factors keeping them there should be entirely their own choices. We rejoice in time spent with someone as their path lines up with us but wish them well when their journey diverges. It’s our responsibility to surround ourselves with people who will enrich our lives and reinforce our positive choices.

I simply could not apply this to love relationships and friendships and ignore family, the primary influence of all our relationships.

There is no choice in family.
You are born there.
You are stuck there no matter what they do to you.
Right??

WRONG!!!

If every other relationship in our life is a choice why shouldn’t family be?

Granted we do have certain obligations, to children who are underage and adults who are disabled. But that’s really where the obligation ends. As adults we should assess  all our relationships and ensure they are heathy and positive so that we can maintain an emotionally stable life. This is OUR responsibility. No one is going to do it for us. And just because someone is related does not mean that you have to include them in your life.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Imagine you have a friend with an emotionally abusive partner. They tell you story after story of how this person makes them feel  and it’s pretty much all bad. Your advice? Easy!! ” You should definitely leave- you deserve so much better “.
Now, a friend with an emotionally abusive parent. They tell you story after story of how this parent makes them feel  and it’s pretty much all bad. Your advice? ” Ohhh.. This is not good…but….it’s your Dad” (or Mum)….and the sentence trails off accompanied but a sigh and a shrug.

Is anyone else seeing the inequity in this? Why on earth do you we “deserve the best” in our friendships and relationships and then have to settle for pain and hurt in our families.

We hear the word “love” a lot when people talk about families, but rarely the word “like”.
Likability is so important in an ongoing adult relationship.
Why would you have someone in your life that you don’t like?

I feel lucky that I like some of my family as people. And especially lucky that I like both of my adult children ( and I think they like me too!!). My son is non-verbal and autistic so I’m really just talking about my daughter now . But if she didn’t like me I would not expect her to stay in a relationship with me out of obligation. Knowing that she choose to be in a relationship with me leaves me feeling way more special than thinking she is only there because she is a blood relative and she has obligations that she has to steel herself to keep.

A relative of mine recently told me she can no longer be in a relationship with me. Estrangement from family members (or family in-law) is not unfamiliar to me. In my life I’ve experienced it probably more than an average amount. However, this is the first time I have handled it well. This was my response ( it was a text conversation )
” I don’t subscribe to the ” family is everything ” mindset. If I love you I love you, related or not. And I do love you xx But everyone has their own journey so if yours doesn’t line up with mine I respect  that. Take care, and you know where to find me. “

I actually do respect her honesty and her decision and I am not angry, just a little sad, but not even hurt. She is taking care of herself and no-one is going to do that for her. I am not ruling out her path lining up with mine again at some time in the future. There are no closed or locked doors.

At the end of the day we are all responsible for our own path and who we choose to have in our lives is our responsibility. We need to make those choices carefully, based on our assessment of whether someone is good for us or bad for us.

Whether or not the good people in your lives are blood related or not should not make a difference.

I’ll leave you with this, the original text of a very misinterpreted quote:

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

This entry began on a plane as I was listening to a Missy Higgins album. The very first song from the album ‘On a Clear Night’ was called ‘Where I Stood’ and the line that jumped out at me was “coz I don’t know who I am, who I am without you. All I know is that I should “

I have been there before. After 18 years in one relationship ( from aged 18 to 36) I woke up one day when it was over, looked in the mirror and realised that I had no idea who I was anymore. The clothes I wore, the way I did my hair, even the food I ate were all bi-products of me compromising so much of my natural evolution in a desperate attempt to stay compatible with the person I made vows to fresh out of childhood. The reality of that is had we not made those ” to death do us part ” vows we would have both outgrown that relationship in another 2 or years or so.

Again I thank him again for having the courage to set us both free because that was the event that led to me going in search of my true self.

My initial email to Jason whom I had been friends with since aged 7 but had no contact with for those 18 years went like this :
“Hi Jason do you remember me? And if you do remember me do you remember what I used to be like because the events of the last 18 have changed me so much I don’t know who I am anymore”
Luckily he did remember me!! Not only that but he was in a similar boat to me so we set about helping each other find our ” old selves” and have then gone on to support each other as we keep evolving in a manner that stays true to ourselves.

Living within ownership love we run the risk of compromising  so much of our natural evolution in a desperate attempt to stay compatible with the person we have vowed to stay connected to. I’ve basically repeated this sentence because I feel it is the key to my message in this entry.

So what is our “natural evolution” ?
Life Is full of choices, from little things like what we are going to eat and wear, what our hobbies and interests are , to major things like where we want to work and live.
Some of us change our mind a lot!! My “Facebook memories” remind me that this time last year I was joined at the hip to my sewing machine, the year before it was my guitar and this year I’m busy writing  online about polyamory and also progressive Christianity. If we are still alive we are growing and changing.

Natural evolution is unencumbered growth.
We tend to chain ourselves to a lot of “have to” and much of this is in an attempt to stay on the same page as the person with which we have joined ourself. We forget that the person we are with was attracted to us because of our uniqueness and we strive to either stay the same as we were or the same as they are. This can cause us to make seemingly “little” sacrifices which have the danger of adding up to a complete loss of self outside of that relationship.

Now of course we do have some responsibilities, especially when we have young children. I for one have an adult non verbal son with significant autism who lives with me full time so I am not just free to take off around Australia like I would love to. But within those responsibilities we still have choices and we owe it to ourselves to live a life in keeping with most authentic self we are at the time.

Assuming from this point on that this rings true for you I have the following advice:

For those of you who are single try to avoid trapping yourselves into relationships that stunt your ability to be your true self. This might sound obvious but it never ceases to amaze me when a friend decides that some guy is ” the one” even though he cannot live with “xyz” about her and she rationalises to herself that it’s all ok and she will just change for him.

For those of you in relationships already it is entirely possible to evolve your relationship, hence this blog being called “The Relationships Evolution”.
All of these concepts are essential if you want to evolve your relationship to polyamory but also a much happier way to live in monogamy if that is what you choose.