The Quad – My Poly Origins (Krys)

polyamorySince Venice and Ryan asked if The Quad could contribute to their blog, I’d been trying to think of something their readers might be interested in.  As a group, we answered a question, and if any of you have any other questions you’d like us to answer, please feel free to submit them.  We enjoyed answering that one.  In the meantime, I figured I’d let you all know how I came to realize I that I was polyamorous.

When I met my husband Gun, I was a rather innocent 20 year old.  He’d told me since we started dating that if I wanted to explore, we could talk about it and he’d be open to that.  He figured I’d bring it up back then.  Nope.  I brought it up on (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend in 2011.  About a month before that, I’d started the journey to take control of my life and get healthy.  I’ve always been a bigger, curvy girl, who was shy and very unsure about herself.  Some health issues started popping up that summer, so I knew I had to do something about it.  In starting to shed some pounds, and feel good about myself, I decided I wanted to bite the bullet and see if someone else might be interest me.  On a whim, one evening just before Thanksgiving weekend I signed up to the website Plenty of Fish.  Within hours I had messages from a bunch of guys.  I chatted with a couple, but one in particular piqued my interest.  He was married, and looking for a friend with benefits (FWB).  His wife had had one for a few years, and he wanted one as well.  They were open and communicative with each other.  I couldn’t ever meet him without Gun being aware, so by the end of that weekend I knew I had to tell him.  We were home from dinner at his parents place, our kids were elsewhere in the house, Gun was playing Xbox, and I was sitting near him and getting more nervous by the second.  I was trying to wait for a slowdown in play, or a cut scene, but neither were happening in the game he was playing.  After he died one time, I just took a deep breath and kind of blurted out, “you know how you’d said when we started dating that I could explore elsewhere if I wanted to? Well, I think I found someone I’d like to do that with.”  He kind of sat there dumbfounded for a few moments, then said “okay.”  We talked a LOT those first few weeks.  I even told Gun if he wanted to find someone to have fun with, to go ahead.  We set out a few rules for ourselves and ventured forth.

For reasons outside of my control, I only saw this guy a handful of times, and only once intimately.  After that, I was chatting with a few guys, saw one or two others in various capacities.  Gun wasn’t having a much luck finding a sane female, who wasn’t cheating on her husband.  We’d been listening to the podcast Life on The Swingset, and decided to sign up to a swingers website and see if we could find a couple that we could both have fun with, along with making new friends.  We had various types of success and what I call “learning experiences” over the first few months of doing that.  I signed up for an anonymous Twitter account that summer as a way to vent frustrations, and express myself.  I obviously couldn’t do that on my vanilla accounts.  Gun started his own account a few days after I did.

Within a few months, we found a great community on Twitter.  We started meeting a few couples in person and were having an interesting time.  It was around then that I met a guy from one of the swinger sites we were on, and he became my FWB.  We chatted often and I saw him on my work lunch hour sometimes.   A few couples on Twitter who were swingers or were interested in swinging, started talking about a meet and greet in Niagara Falls that winter; we decided to go as well.  Because of our kids, we could only go for one night while most of the other couples were there for 2 nights.  We got there early Saturday afternoon and promptly got to meet the others in person.  We hit it off right off the bat with Bob and Lexxi, and with another couple Charlie and Angel.  At the end of the evening, Bob and Lexxi invited Gun and I up to their room.  Needless to say, we accepted, and had an enjoyable time 😉  We exchanged cell numbers the next day, and were texting the whole way home.

The four of us started to visit each other’s’ homes about once a month.  There was no denying that we all had a connection that was different than what any of us had experienced in the past.  Feelings started to deepen as time passed.  With communication being so open, we all discussed it with each other as it was progressing.  Around then, things with my FWB were getting awkward, something was missing for me. I wasn’t happy with what he could give me and Gun didn’t like the vibes he got off of this guy, so I broke it off with him.

The big turning point for myself in realizing I was poly was the long weekend we all spent on a houseboat for Lexxi’s 40th birthday.  That was the first time that we slept swapped (there were two double beds next to each other at one end of the boat, Gun and Lexxi had one while Bob and I had the other).  It was a fun, relaxed, amazing, weekend full of laughs, lots of hot sex, and tequila body shots.  A couple of weeks after that I ended up going to Bob and Lexxi’s on my own for a night.  When I left that weekend I had to hold back saying “I love you” to Bob.  I knew my feelings had deepened, but it surprised me that it felt natural to want to say that.  That summer, we all realized we’d been sliding down the same path.  We had visits that included our kids, some alone, had a wife swap weekend, and even an entire week where Bob and Lexxi stayed at our house (sans kids to boot!).

Gun and I had wished we had a couple that was closer we could hang out with, but after a while realized that we now had a bunch of great open-minded friends who lived at various distances, and we really weren’t focusing on finding couples anymore.  We deactivated our accounts on the various sites we had been on.

At some point later, Gun decided to sign back up to a few dating sites to try to find a female FWB in our area.  I had played alone with Chad, who is a good friend of ours, a couple of times that spring.  Other than that though, I had been feeling like something was missing for me and was wondering if a relationship of my own outside of what we now called The Quad, was it.  Lexxi had never really played separate from Bob (other than within The Quad, and with Chad) and was curious, so she and I each signed up on Tinder, and then OkCupid.  For myself, I chatted with a few people, met one guy for a coffee, but ultimately was discouraged and decided to deactivate the two accounts at the end of that summer.  A month and a half or so later, I reactivated my OkCupid account and soon after found Erik’s profile.  I found it smart and funny, plus the percentage match between us was 99% as we both had answered a lot of their questions similarly.  So, I messaged him.

We chatted easily over text, and then hit it off in person.  Over the next while, we went on various dates together, Gun and I had dinner with Erik and his wife Mia, plus they both came over when Bob and Lexxi were visiting.  As the months passed, I could see patterns in myself where I knew my feelings were starting to deepen for Erik.  Last spring, almost a year ago now, I really realized that I am truly polyamorous. I was in love with, or in the process of falling in love with, 3 guys and also had a deep relationship with a woman. Plus I had some good friends who I care for immensely.

To say the past four and a half years have been eye opening, is an understatement.  Between realizing that I am polyamorous, and now also discovering my kinky submissive side, I finally feel like I’ve found myself.  It feels natural, and I feel freer than I ever have.