Am I Safe, Am I Loved, Will You Stay?

For the past two years, I have been exploring open relationships.

It has been one of the most beautiful, challenging, confronting, and transformative journeys of my life.

Being in an open relationship has taught me so much about love, but even more about myself. It has taught me about attachment, safety, my nervous system, jealousy, control, freedom, abandonment, self-love, and the many subtle ways we sometimes ask another person to create a sense of security that we have not yet learned to fully create within ourselves.

There are moments when open relating feels like an incredible abundance of love. I can have two beautiful partners in my life and feel deeply supported, seen, held, loved, and cared for. I can experience different forms of connection without feeling that love has to be scarce or limited.

There have also been moments of heartbreak.

Sometimes one relationship is going through something painful while another partner is there beside me, supporting me and helping me find my way through it. Sometimes my partner is unavailable for different reasons. And sometimes I have found myself moving through pain connected to two relationships at the same time.

Those moments have probably taught me the most.

When the fear gets loud

Lately, there have been nights when I have been lying awake in bed and my mind starts going.

Am I loved?

Am I in the right place?

Does this relationship really give me what I need?

Why do I feel so alone right now?

Nothing dramatic necessarily has to be happening in that moment. Sometimes it is simply that there has been less contact than I wanted, my partner is somewhere else, or I am already tired and emotionally overloaded.

But when my nervous system is stretched, the feeling can become very real.

I can lie there and feel the old abandonment wound waking up inside me. My mind starts searching for explanations. It wants certainty. It wants reassurance. It wants someone outside of me to make the feeling go away.

And this is where a lot of my work has been lately.

Not pretending that I do not have needs.

Not convincing myself that everything is fine when something actually needs to be talked about.

But learning to stay with myself long enough to ask: What is actually happening right now? What belongs to this relationship? And what belongs to an older wound inside me?

That distinction has become incredibly important.

Learning to create safety inside myself

I have worked with attachment theory for many years. My attachment pattern has historically been fearfully avoidant, although I feel that over time I have moved closer and closer toward secure attachment.

Still, attachment patterns do not simply disappear because we understand them intellectually.

When I am rested, grounded, connected to myself, and my nervous system feels safe, I relate very differently. I have more perspective. I communicate better. I can feel my emotions without immediately making them mean something catastrophic about the relationship.

But when I am exhausted, overwhelmed, working too much, or carrying too much responsibility, old wounds can suddenly become very loud.

This summer reminded me of that.

I had been working a lot. My schedule was full. There was a lot happening in my life, and my nervous system was already stretched. As my capacity became smaller, familiar wounds started appearing again.

Fear of abandonment. The need to feel chosen. Wanting reassurance. Wanting someone else to make the uncomfortable feeling disappear. Wanting to control something outside of myself so that I could finally feel safe inside.

And this brought me into another layer of self-discovery.

Instead of only asking, why isn’t my partner giving me what I need, I started asking different questions.

Where am I still abandoning myself? How can I love myself more deeply here? What does my nervous system actually need right now? How can I create more safety inside myself without demanding that another person regulate every difficult feeling for me? Where is it healthy to ask for support, and where am I outsourcing responsibility for my emotional safety?

These are not always comfortable questions.

But they are powerful ones.

This is not only about open relationships

I think open relationships can bring attachment wounds very close to the surface.

There is less of the traditional security that can come from the idea of having one partner who is expected to be available in a certain way. There may be other partners. There may be separation. There may be uncertainty. There may be moments when someone you love is choosing to spend time, intimacy, or attention somewhere else.

So yes, open relationships can be incredibly activating for the nervous system.

But attachment is not an open-relationship problem.

It is a human relationship theme.

Some people were fortunate enough to grow up with enough consistency, affection, emotional availability, trust, and safety that closeness feels relatively secure to them.

Many of us did not.

And then we enter adult relationships carrying those early strategies with us.

Some of us become anxious and reach for closeness when we feel afraid. Some of us become avoidant and move away when closeness or conflict becomes overwhelming. Some of us move between both.

And then we meet people whose wounds interact with ours.

One person reaches. The other withdraws. The withdrawal creates more anxiety. The anxiety creates more withdrawal.

And suddenly two people who genuinely care about one another are standing inside a nervous-system dance that began long before they ever met.

My triggers have become teachers

I have started seeing triggers differently.

Of course I do not enjoy being triggered. In the moment, it can feel incredibly painful.

But increasingly, when something activates me, another part of me becomes curious.

What is this showing me? What old belief is underneath this reaction? What part of me is afraid? What does she believe is going to happen? What does she need from me? And what can I do differently this time?

Because every trigger gives me a choice.

I can react automatically and repeat the same pattern.

Or I can use the moment as an entrance into deeper work.

For me, that has meant learning new nervous-system tools, exploring attachment more deeply, discovering new books and teachings, practicing self-regulation, creating stronger self-care rituals, and becoming more aware of what happens inside me before I turn that feeling into a demand toward someone else.

Over time, something changes.

The things that once felt unbearable become survivable. Then manageable. And eventually some of them stop being triggers altogether.

That feels like freedom.

Jealousy, control, and the need to be chosen

Open relating has also asked me to look very closely at jealousy and control.

Jealousy is such an interesting emotion because underneath it there can be so many other feelings.

Fear. Grief. Comparison. Insecurity. A longing to feel special. A fear of being replaced. A need to be chosen.

And I have learned that trying to control another person rarely creates genuine security.

At best, it temporarily removes the thing that is activating us.

But the wound underneath remains.

For me, part of this journey has therefore been learning how to give my partners freedom while also learning to claim more freedom for myself.

Not abandoning my needs. Not accepting things that genuinely do not work for me. But learning the difference between a boundary and control. Between asking for reassurance and demanding proof. Between choosing commitment and trying to remove every possible threat.

That distinction has changed me.

There is also so much beauty

I do not want to write about open relationships only through the lens of wounds and healing, because there is also so much beauty.

One of the things I love most is the generosity that can exist inside this way of loving.

I have experienced partners genuinely wanting me to be happy, even when my happiness also includes another person.

And sometimes something quite beautiful happens.

When I am struggling with one partner, another partner can become almost like a wingman.

He listens. He supports me. Sometimes he helps me understand the other person’s perspective when I am too emotionally involved to see it clearly.

And what touches me deeply is that the intention is not:

Leave him and choose me.

It can actually be:

I love you, and I want that relationship to work for you too.

There is something incredibly expansive about that kind of love.

It challenges the idea that another person’s love needs to diminish because they love someone else.

Love can sometimes multiply. Support can come from unexpected places. And relationships do not always have to compete with one another.

I do not know where this journey will lead

I do not know whether open relationships will be part of my life forever.

Maybe they will. Maybe they will not.

I do not feel that I need to decide that today.

For where I am in my life now, it fits me. I travel a lot. I spend time in different places. My life does not always fit neatly into conventional structures.

And I value the freedom to meet another human being, feel a genuine connection, and be able to explore that connection without automatically believing that doing so takes love away from somebody else.

At the same time, I am learning that freedom without responsibility is not the kind of freedom I want.

I want honesty. Care. Clear agreements. Emotional responsibility. Communication. And consideration for the nervous systems and hearts of everyone involved.

For me, open relating has never simply been about having more partners.

It has become a path of self-discovery. A very confronting one at times.

It has shown me where I still seek safety outside myself. It has exposed my jealousy, my fear, my desire to control, and my longing to be chosen.

But it has also shown me how much I am capable of loving. How much freedom I can allow. How deeply I can learn to care for myself. And how much more grounded I become every time I choose to meet an old wound with awareness instead of letting it unconsciously run my life.

I am still learning. I am still discovering. I am still becoming more secure.

And I want to share more of that journey here.

In future posts, I want to write more about attachment styles, the tools that have helped me regulate my nervous system, jealousy, self-care, creating inner safety, boundaries, communication, and the realizations that have changed the way I relate.

Not because I believe open relationships are right for everyone. They are not. And not because I have figured everything out. I definitely have not.

But perhaps something I have learned along the way can support someone else in understanding themselves a little more deeply too.

Whether you are monogamous, polyamorous, somewhere in between, or still figuring it out, underneath the relationship structure there is still a human nervous system asking some of the same ancient questions:

Am I safe?

Am I loved?

Will you stay?

Do I matter?

And perhaps one of the deepest parts of relationship work is slowly learning to answer some of those questions from within ourselves too.