Love and Triangles

10 May 2024

I recently ended the first relationship I’ve ever had where I fell in love with a man. Beyond that there were a lot of other firsts and I grew as a person in the 5 months we spent texting or audio/video calling every day.

Ultimately a few things brought it to the ground:

1. Distance. I was skeptical from the start I could handle dating someone who lived out in the Niagara Region, a little over an hour’s drive from Toronto. I gave it an honest try but despite them being not that far away, it was too much like a long distance relationship.

2. White lies. While I don’t think my partner was a blatantly dishonest person, he withheld information a few too many times and it started to add up to major distrust. Patterns repeated that I couldn’t stay naive about any longer.

3. A toxic love triangle mislabelled as polyamory. My ex was extremely busy with work, a divorce and a child. Nonetheless he was intent on having 2 partners both of whom he couldn’t see enough. This other partner and I never spoke but I was blocked one day on socials without a word. I suspected it was out of jealousy that he and I went on a fancy date one night and shared photos. I can’t blame her either because I would feel jealous of her too at times. I’ve tried to stay open minded to different kinds of relationships beyond classical monogamy, but there’s a lot of people just playing it selfish and pretending like this is the same as being authentically polyamorous. I felt at times like he was testing the limits of my patience, both trying to keep me on hold but never really having sufficient time or energy to carve out more physical space for me.

After having evening plans changed from a Thursday evening to during my work day, and our following Tuesday evening plans completely cancelled without any backup plans, I started to see a pattern emerging. My kindness was being exploited for weakness. I was getting less because I was tolerating it. For one of the first times in my life I had met someone who fulfilled so many of my validation needs as a trans woman that I was going blind to some of mistreatment and marginalization happening simultaneously.

I broke it off Tuesday morning and wept uncontrollably for hours. Collapsed in my shower and sobbed as hard as I could, cursed his name, and grieved the loss of potential. I grieved the loss of connection and not feeling fought harder for. Then another thing happened - I started breathing sighs of relief. The many stresses I’d let stay on my shoulders as I navigated the “polyamory”, the distance and the lies of omission started to fade away. It became clear the relationship was worse for me than I could see clearly from the inside.

I will end this with some gratitude. I am grateful for the confidence he gave me to love myself in less makeup, without my long blonde wig on, wearing only sweats. I was never not beautiful in his eyes no matter how little I tried. I know this is something that has taught me to want more for myself and expect men to see beauty in me without a big facade of clothes and makeup.

It has been such a wonderful year so far and it’s not stopping now. Upward and onward!