But What If You Fall in Love with One of Your Lovers?
TikTok video from 2022-03-15
This is such a good question—and one I get asked all the time.
There’s this ingrained fear, especially for people raised with traditional, monogamous values: What if you fall in love with someone else? In the heteronormative model of relationships, that’s the beginning of the end. Here’s the usual script:
You meet someone. You date. You fall in love. You get married. Maybe you have kids. Then, at some point, you meet someone else and fall in love with them. The assumption is, you have to end the first relationship to pursue the second. So, divorce happens. You remarry. And ideally, you try to live happily ever after... again.
But polyamory rewrites that script.
In polyamory, it starts similarly: you meet, fall in love, get married, maybe have children. But when love shows up again—with someone new—you don’t see it as a threat. You see it as an invitation; an expansion.
You can fall in love again—and you don’t have to burn the old relationship to the ground to honor the new one.
Instead of seeing love as a single, scarce resource that has to be rationed, polyamory treats it like something renewable.
Infinite.
Something that grows when nurtured, rather than something that’s depleted when shared.
When I fall in love with someone new, my husband and I talk about what that means. We define what we each want and need. We check in. We stay connected. And we hold space for love to evolve and unfold—not just between us, but around us.
And here’s something my husband said that really stayed with me:
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Falling in love?”
Yes. That’s exactly the point.
We’re not afraid of falling in love. We welcome it. Because love, for us, isn’t a problem to solve—it’s a gift to celebrate.
So, if (when, actually) I fall in love with one of my lovers? Beautiful. We’ll define that relationship together, and make space for it within the context of the life we’re building.
That’s what makes polyamory so powerful—it gives you permission to keep your heart open, again and again.
