Me, my girlfriend and her partner

I'm married, and our child is 5 years old. I also have a girlfriend, and she has a partner. And that partner has one too. That's the topology of our polycule, a "caterpillar".

My wife and I decided that we would live separately but raise our son together. Without fights, hysterics and all that "for the sake of the child" stuff, which personally caused me quite a lot of suffering as a kid.

My wife found another man. A couple of months before that, she told me about polyamory and suggested I get to know a certain woman. I did, and now we've been together for 4 years.

I joined my girlfriend's already open relationship.

My girlfriend's partner is not my partner. And the line here is quite clear: what we have is friendship, cooperation and good neighbourliness.

We live together and share a fairly harmonious home life. We complement each other.

My girlfriend is good with materials and making things cosy, but she doesn't cook at all. I'm a good cook and I do the "manly stuff", like drilling holes and fixing the ceiling. My girlfriend's partner is also a good cook and loves good food. I joke that one of the reasons they put up with me is my cooking. At first we tried to structure our finances, but now it works by itself, in a mode of controlled chaos. I love that mode.

When I was just moving in with them, I read their "manifesto", which had been written by the two of them, for themselves, before I came along. The manifesto described their core, stable relationship in relation to everyone else.

At first I was in the "new" relationships category, but I very quickly moved into the "stable" one. Some changes were made to their manifesto when I appeared.

For example, it had the line: "Our bed is only ours and for us. There will be no one else in it." Now we sleep in the same bed (which, by the way, is gorgeous! It brings us together). That said, we try to avoid awkwardness, and we have sex in a way that doesn't disturb my girlfriend's partner: when they're not there.

My wife and I have a good, friendly relationship. We didn't get divorced because we couldn't find any compelling reason to. Neither of us is interested in a new marriage, and we both have a sceptical, slapdash attitude to bureaucracy. We decided it was simpler and took less energy this way.

Our son has lived in this arrangement since he was one. The arrangement is stable, and it seems our son can't really imagine it any other way. So far I don't see any real difficulties; on the contrary, there are upsides. For example, when I take our son to stay with me, his mum gets total weekends off, rest, parties.

A traditional family with a home overflowing with plenty probably isn't in the cards for me after all. Living apart from my child is sad. But I try to spend as much time with him as I can: I invite him to stay with us for a few days, or we go somewhere together.

Remembering my own father, I understand that what matters is loving your child, giving them attention and making time for them.

Yes, I don't come home to him tired from work every day, but a few days a week we have a great time together. To me, that matters more than living together in a state of exhaustion and obligation.

Falling in love and filling up with that thrilling, powerful energy, the shyness, the fascination with a new person you don't yet know, is an important need.

Entering a relationship and giving up that vivid experience is sad for me.

In monogamous relationships I often used to think about this and felt a note of wistful sadness about no longer having the chance to fall in love again. At the same time, I never cheated and in general never had a strong need to date someone else. I dive deep into relationships and, it seems, become quite strongly attached to a person.

I'm definitely in a relationship, and my girlfriend and I are a strong couple. We're not interested in suffering and all that emotional turmoil. Stability and knowing that we have each other is a good foundation for our couple. We honestly don't see where or why we would go away from each other.

After my previous experiences, I got tired of jealousy (and, probably, in large part insecurity) being a constant companion of relationships. It's exhausting. I lost friends because of it. In a relationship with a jealous girlfriend, I was jealous too. There were a lot of problems because of that strange mindset. I can understand why it happens, but I don't want to go back to it.

That same manifesto said that everyone has the right to decide for themselves about their own body and their relationships with other people.

Feeling joy for my partner instead of jealousy (compersion, right?) turned out to be far more interesting and vivid.