Three years

Three years ago, to my complete surprise, I started developing feelings for the warm, sharp-witted man who is now my boyfriend. That makes it not only three years of a happy relationship, but three years since I considered my marriage not just non-monogamous, but polyamorous. It is a measure of how much I love and admire him that our relationship has changed me so fundamentally.

And not just me, but as the title of this blog suggests, my whole family. My husband and I don't want to be just a nuclear family any more. We don't want our connections to be just about love, sex or romance, but about drawing these connections into our family. We can now see how much our daughter thrives from these connections, and the attention of so many wonderful, loving people. This is a big change from how this blog started, when I just didn't know how having a child would affect my relationships, or quite what role our friends and lovers would play in her life. And as I wrote there, in the first entry in this blog, even that was a change from how my husband and I began, where we were (quite frankly) non-monogamous purely for the sex. I was so settled with my husband that I couldn't imagine falling in love with anyone else. I not only didn't desire it, I didn't think I was capable of it.

So I have grown in many ways that I am grateful for, and I am full of appreciation to the two most important men in my life for their role in this. To my boyfriend for giving me the love that proved me wrong, and my husband for being nothing but supportive and encouraging when he saw me falling for someone else. Thank you to them both for the best three years I've had so far.