Polyamory, Personality Disorders, and Fictives
By Tremere
Originally posted here on July 21, 2024.
I've known for a while that my approach to my (okay, my husband's, mostly, but also my) polycule is... kind of weird, I feel? Only in the last few days, though, have I really sat down and thought about it, and this essay was the result. In it, I'm going to talk about polyamory, communication, how getting put into a system has changed things, and how having a personality disorder or two can make things... complicated, or at least different. I mention the existence of sexual relationships but don't really get into explicit detail--it's sort of a 13+ kind of situation.
So, I'm Tremere. I'm Goratrix's husband. I have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and he has borderline personality disorder (BPD). If you're unfamiliar with these, I'd recommend doing a quick Google and coming back, with a healthy dose of remembering that people are really mean about cluster b personality disorders for absolutely no reason. Having a personality disorder means that you have symptoms, not that you're a bad person, and trust me, if I'm having symptoms that you don't like, I also do not want to be doing what I am doing. No one is more aware than me (nowadays, anyway) that the thing I'm doing is not ideal.
Anyway. I tend to describe myself as "not terribly polyamorous," as in, I like sleeping with whoever I please, but I can't wrap my head around being romantically attached to more than one person at a time. I get that people do that, and they can find it easy and comfortable, but it just doesn't click with me. I'm not built like that. I'm romantically attached to Goratrix, and I'll sleep with people I think are hot and/or my friends or whatever. He's fine with that, I'm fine with that, sometimes we bring someone back and have a nice night all three of us, it's a nice arrangement.
Goratrix, however, is extremely polyamorous. He's sexually and romantically interested in a variety of people. His BPD has a habit of latching onto one specific person in an occasionally unhealthy way, and that's almost always me, but sometimes he'll loop someone else in on it. Not usually, and it doesn't crop up with everyone he's romantically interested in--and never in people that he's only sexually interested in. This can be a bit of a struggle, and he can have jealousy problems when he perceives someone he's latched onto in this way as giving other people attention and not him--but, critically, it's not a problem if he feels that he's getting attention as well. It doesn't even need to be at the same time--he just had to feel reassured that they're going to get back to him soon.
Back in the day when we weren't in a system together, in, oh, the 800s and 900s (yes those are years), this was a big problem for him. I was a very, very busy man, and neither of us had any idea that we each had a personality disorder. I was caught up in my own shit and always thought of my own feelings first (huh, it's almost like I have "think about myself first" disorder and didn't know to work on "thinking about other people" because I had no idea) so he had to fight to ensure that he got the attention he needed to be happy, and he was needier than your average person would be, because, uh, he has "needs more attention" disorder, and again, had no idea, and thus could do zero work to manage it. These days, now that we're aware that we Have Symptoms, we can work to mitigate them, and that's improved our communication drastically. Sometimes one of us would need something and wouldn't know how to ask, or would expect that the other would just Magically Know and if they didn't then they Didn't Really Love Us. That's not a healthy perspective to take, and now we know better and don't do that. Additionally, now that we're in a system together, our miscommunications have been reduced to zero. Navigating a relationship when the two of you have different personality disorders is hard and requires good communication--communication we didn't have back in, uh, medieval Europe, but do now. It's really let us slot back together easily and work together perfectly in all things.
So, one of those communication problems was me, "everything has to be about me" disorder, getting jealous of everyone Goratrix has been with, right? That's something I have to actively work on even now, right?
Right?
Uh, no. I've literally never ever been jealous one whole time.
I know, it's weird! You'd think I would! But NPD can manifest a lot of ways, and it's mostly quiet when it comes to Goratrix's other interests. It doesn't care. In fact, I love seeing him with other people. It's like, "yes, see, that's my husband, isn't he perfect? Don't I have incredible taste? You have incredible taste too, I see. Do you want to hang out? I'm glad you can give him some of the love and attention he deserves." It makes me FEEL GOOD to know he has other people to take care of him! Especially now that I'm AWARE that he genuinely just needs more love and attention than most people and isn't just being a weird dick (yes this was a bad perspective to have, I'm sorry, I didn't know better). I know I can't provide for all of his emotional needs because I am, you know, just one guy, and pretty busy on top of that (mostly in-source, but out here to some extent too), so it really helps to know that, when I'm not around (or even when I am!) there are other people to be with him and make him happy, too.
He's never really been jealous of other people being with me, either, even in his worst times. He used to get upset when I spent a lot of quality time with someone, not when I had a one-night-stand with them. I guess it's because we both understood that it didn't mean anything, commitment-wise? I don't know. Again, not a problem now, we've figured out communication, and it's easier now that we're in the same head together. Used to be, we did have a telepathic link, but we'd close off a lot of our emotions from each other when we weren't feeling great, for a variety of reasons that we've worked on, so we no longer do it.
I don't know! I really like that Goratrix has other partners. I like getting to know them, I like spending time with them, I like all of us spending time together, I just... like knowing that he has other people that care about him. He's struggled with that his whole life, so it's a huge relief when he's just... happy. Sure, sometimes I get sexually involved with his partners (he has good taste, invariably. What can I say?), and I have a friendship-style (or maybe slightly to the left of that) commitment to them, but never ever anything romantic. I can't imagine developing something like that, I don't know. I'm just not built that way, and that's okay.
All this to say, we make it work. It's weird, and our struggles are tied up in it, and it all relates to what it's like being a fictive, too. We've had a lot to forgive each other--and, most of all, ourselves--for, but I think it's going to be smooth sailing from here--for both of us, and, I hope, for the rest of the polycule, too.
(Watch out, though--Goratrix is always on the hunt for more, haha! :p)