polyamory final girl
i want to be the last one standing
Happy Halloween! For dating purposes, this is a joke :)
The Final Girl is tough and cunning. She’s resourceful. She’s determined. She perseveres, and she outlasts everyone else. In the context of polyamory, she is who I want to be.
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If you’re polyamorous for long enough — or not very long at all — it isn’t unlikely that you’ll get dumped. Maybe it’s only casual and you’re lucky enough to have them end the connection with direct communication. Maybe it’s a situationship with someone who just ghosts you. Maybe they’re a more serious partner and the two of you consciously uncouple. Regardless, you’re no longer seeing this person anymore. You could be feeling heartbroken, relieved, angry, indifferent, confused, lonely. You might be feeling all of these ways and more.
If whoever you were dating is still seeing someone else, it’s natural to feel jealous. It’s a feeling that comes up for nonmonogamous people too, after all, whether we’d like to admit it or not. I know I’ve felt more than enough jealousy in my time out here.
People seem to like ending things with me. I have a history of getting cut from people’s rosters while others remained. It could be a consequence of connections that have been more casual than not — easy come, easy go. Sometimes I was given a reason, and other times I wasn’t given so much as a text to let me know. How was I not supposed to feel a bit jealous of the others who didn’t get a knife to the heart?
Polyamorous folks point out that love is not a finite resource, but time and energy are. When you’re the one who gets axed, it can hurt to watch the time and energy they were putting towards you go to someone else. Just for once, I want to be the last one standing!
I don’t think it’s that unreasonable of me to want. It’s a very human desire to be desired. Is it so bad that I would like to feel like more of a priority? Admittedly, wanting to be the sole remaining member of a polycule is not very compatible with nonmonogamy, where we ideally try to play nice and share our time with each other. To quote a tweet I saw about polyamory: Mom said it’s my turn on the girlfriend.
Does it sound like I don’t want this? The thing is, I’m a slut for attention and affection, and nonmonogamy is a better way to get those needs met. Besides, I’m not out here quietly yearning for monogamy because while it works for many people, I know perfectly well that it doesn’t work for me. I’ve cheated and been cheated on, and all of that felt worse than some of the hardest moments I’ve had in nonmonogamous connections. I want to fuck around, and I’d rather communicate with my partners about that than hope they don’t find out.
So, maybe this means a small, toxic part of me is going to want to have all the attention and affection someone has to offer romantically, when the option to spread it out between multiple people is there. Or if not, maybe I just want to be the favorite. I can work with that.
Polyamory is not a competition, but still — I want to win.
Now, I know what all of this implies. It’s not that I hope someone I’m with goes through a breakup, let alone multiple. And of course I would never do anything to interfere with their other relationships. It’s not a possessive thing either — I’d truly want whoever I’m dating to experience all the love and fulfillment that can come from having multiple partners (as if they wouldn’t feel enough of that with me). If things just so happened to end with those other partners though, I would be ready for my time in the spotlight.
They need more care and company? I’m on my way over. Those weekly date nights with that girlfriend aren’t happening anymore? Well, I happen to be free those nights too. They’d like to process and tell me more about that relationship that they hadn’t because of good boundaries? They can share whatever they need (I want the goss). It sucks that they broke up! They’ll be sooo glad it wasn’t with me though. I want to be there in their time of need, so I’ll even make some extra time for them in between dates with the other people I’m seeing.
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In media that makes use of the Final Girl trope, our protagonist and a group of others are being pursued by a villain. One by one, the other characters meet their grisly ends. The bad guy is closing in on our heroine; we’re fearing for her life. But in a climactic ending, she’s able to beat the person, the entity, or whatever evil is coming after her. Or, she gets saved. One way or another, she lives to see another day. She surveys the damage around her, her fallen friends, the beaten baddie. She manages to walk away.
By invoking this trope in a nonmonogamous context, I’m implying that there’s a villain. Who, or what, is out to get me? Polyamory itself? The person I’m seeing??
I think a number of things could be behind the metaphorical villain’s mask, the simplest being a breakup. The possibility of breaking up is always following you — sometimes it’s far off in the distance, and other times it’s right behind you. Mononormativity and some monogamous beliefs and expectations that can be damaging in open relationships might also be sneaking up on you. These things are all lurking in nonmonogamous sex and dating, and occasionally there are close calls. In some cases, too, it’s possible the antagonist is the person you’re with. Run!
If polyamory sounds like a horror movie to you, I could understand. The check-ins, the processing, the syncing of google calendars. “Metamours,” “NRE,” “compersion.” It isn’t the genre for everyone. Some of us want that thrill though, that rush of adrenaline and the relief when the danger passes. And some of us secretly hope to be the Final Girl, as problematic of a fantasy as that is.
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Maybe one day I will be the girl who outlasts the other members of the polycule. I’ll be the one walking away, hand in hand with my partner, as the credits roll. The thing is, though: when it comes to polyamory, there’s bound to be a sequel.
