"New Relationship Energy" is a term that polyamorous people use to define a feeling that is familiar to most people - the rush of desire and excitement that kick starts a new romantic relationship. When you become infatuated with someone, neuro-transmitters such as dopamine and serotonin can result in the other person being almost an addiction - with all the pleasures and torments that suggests. Sometimes, once all this has burned away, there isn't anything left, but sometimes it ignites a long and loving relationship.
For monogamous people, feeling this way about someone other than their partner is a problem - it either means that the new feelings must be ignored or suppressed, or it means the end of the existing relationship. One or the other must go. But for those of us in non-monogamous relationships, these complicated, often delicious feelings are an unavoidable complication of starting new relationships when others are also on the go.
The excellent blogger The Goddess of Java, who blogs at The Polyamorous Misanthrope wrote about how having a baby might affect a poly relationship , describing the feeling of becoming a parent as that "like being in NRE up to eleven". It's a great article, but I think that the analogy leaves a lot to be desired. Although the new feelings of parenthood are also hormonally driven, I don't think the feelings are at all similar. Unlike the mellowing of infatuation into love, nothing about that early passion I had for my daughter has diminished. The biggest difference between my feelings now and then is that I'm no longer in shock. (I'm sure it was prolactin and oxytocin that caused me to fixate on caring for her, because my brain definitely wasn't working that well.) The analogy suggests that there will come a time when the parent will stop placing their child at the centre of their universe and stop thinking that their child is something supernaturally precious. They won't. The only thing that will change is the practical demands the child places on them.
And the key difference between the new relationship between parent and child and the thrill of a new romantic contact is the uncertainty of it all. Let alone from her birth, from the moment of taking that pregnancy test, I knew how our relationship would turn out - I was going to love her for the rest of my life. And those feelings of love (more crucially, unconditional love) were there within a few days of her birth, and have neither grown or abated.
NRE isn't like that. When I started falling for my husband, I didn't know what our relationship would become. I could see that we were likely to fall in love, and I hoped that marriage and children were in our future, but I couldn't know for sure. To be honest, I didn't like it. I hated the uncertainty. The possibility of not only heartbreak but having the future with him that I wanted taken away made enjoying our NRE difficult for me. I wanted him too much.
So it's possible that the NRE I had with my boyfriend is the first time I've felt free to really enjoy it. I was already married, and already planning a family. I didn't have a preconceived role that I was hoping he'd take up, or a schema I wanted our relationship to grow into. I hadn't expected to ever fall in love again, and so it was nothing more than a delight to find out that there was more happiness to be had. Perhaps the lack of danger made it less exciting, but I was far more free to enjoy it, and let it be whatever it wanted to be.
It's possible that I'll never feel that thrill again. Maybe that's a shame, as I've only recently learned how to enjoy it, but I'd be okay with that. I know from how I feel about all three of them that love is far more valuable.
