The Wrong Kind Of Love
I believe it started when I was around six years old. My parents often had “friends” over in the house. I didn’t know they were polyamorous. One day, I was outside playing, got hurt, and when I ran inside I caught my parents making out with some random guy. They told me they have other adults that they love and it’s a completely normal thing. Me being a child, I just accepted that. But the thing is, it was far worse than it seemed.
They gave up being secretive and their partners would constantly be around, even joining on outings. I remember that on my 10th birthday they invited three of their partners, one of whom I’d never seen before, and for the rest of the day my parents just withdrew from my party and hung out with them. I never saw them doing anything explicit again but they would kiss their partners, hug them, make flirty comments, something that would be normal between parents but not with many more people.
Sometimes I came home from school and my parents were gone and there was some random adult in our house. Some of them seemed surprised that my parents even had a child. I always hated it, but since my parents had told me this was normal, I assumed many adults probably did similar things and that it’s just an adult thing all kids hate. Later they had fewer partners and eventually seemed to stop.
I didn’t think about it anymore. A year ago I started therapy for other reasons. As per usual, the topic of my upbringing came up and it brought back many feelings I wasn’t aware of. I realized that although my parents were always good to me, I had never really felt close to any of them and still have a lot of resentment that they made me feel like I had to compete for their attention with random strangers.
A while ago, I visited them and they told me they are going to take part in a documentary about polyamorous families and that the producers would like to include interviews with the children, so they would love if I could agree and tell everyone that polyamory “doesn’t mess kids up.” All my resentment bubbled up, and I exploded.
I said that I cannot agree because I would not be able to say anything positive. My parents looked shocked (I had never brought this up before) and asked why, and I unloaded all of it. I said that I always felt pushed aside and we barely had any family time without strangers intruding. It turned into an argument and I became loud and yelled that the truth is they did mess me up and they shouldn’t have had a child if their number one priority was their other partners.
My mother cried and my father said I should probably leave. So I left and was shaken up for the rest of the week but also felt regret because I’ve never made my mother cry before. Later my father sent me a message that was like “We are sorry you feel that way, can we have a calm discussion about this soon?” Even though I tried to, it’s like I can’t reply, this argument brought something very emotional up in me.