How Polyamory Can Expand Our Emotional Capacity

Making room to hold the complexity of both NRE and heartbreak at the same time

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Holding NRE & Heartbreak Simultaneously

We live in a culture that prefers emotional simplicity and clean narratives:
”Grief belongs at funerals. Joy belongs at weddings.”

You’re either heartbroken or head-over-heels. If you’re sad, people rush to cheer you up. If you’re in love, you’re expected to forget all past pain. There’s little space for the beautiful messiness of both/and.

One of the most tender emotional edges in non-monogamy that I’ve encountered (and witnessed in others) is holding New Relationship Energy (NRE) and heartbreak at the same time.

Mainstream love stories rarely make room for this kind of emotional complexity. Breakups are seen as failures. New relationships are painted in gloss and infatuation. There’s almost no cultural modeling for what many of us in non-monogamy regularly experience: the nonlinear, layered, sometimes dizzying reality of holding multiple emotional truths at once.

🎵 “Sing upon joy, sing upon grief.”

That lyric, from Lyndsey Scott’s song Sing Upon Joy, has become a guiding framework for me. It reminds me that joy and sorrow are not opposites—they are companions. Each one deepens the other. And we can learn to sing through both.

Polyamory Stretches Us

Polyamory stretches our capacity for joy. It stretches our tolerance for grief. It stretches our sense of what’s possible in love—and our nervous systems, too.

Sometimes we’re ending a meaningful connection—grieving the loss of a person, a dynamic, or a future we imagined. While also finding ourselves giddy and glowing after a sexy first date, a kiss that lights us up, or the beginning of something that feels like spring in our chest.

It can feel disorienting. Even shameful.
“How can I be so excited… and so sad?”

But here’s the truth: the capacity to feel both is not a flaw.
It’s a gift. A muscle. A spiritual practice, even.

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Creating Containers for the Complex

To hold this kind of emotional terrain, we need containers—spaces where each feeling gets to breathe, be honored, and move through us, without collapsing into confusion or overwhelm.

Here are a few of mine:

• A bath for grief
  I take baths where the only goal is to cry and process my heartbreak. I put on emotional music (like Carry This All by Alexandra Blakely), light a candle, and sink under the surface. That song feels like a hand on my back—an invitation to let it hurt and keep going. It reminds me that I’m not meant to carry this grief alone, and that letting it move through me is part of healing.

• A night for NRE
  I also let myself celebrate. I get dressed up for dates. I gush to friends who can hold my joy without making it mean I’m over the loss. I dance in the mirror to songs that make me feel alive. I write long journal entries about what’s opening, what’s blooming, and what I’m learning.

Each of these is a container. Each allows me to be with what’s true—without demanding I pick one emotion over another.

Don’t Bypass the Grief

When something new and sparkly enters your life, it can be tempting to leap toward it—using the glow of NRE to distract from the ache of what’s ending. But grief doesn’t disappear when we ignore it. It waits. It festers. It shows up sideways—in irritability, numbness, anxiety, or emotional distance from the people we care about.

So take time to feel it. Let yourself cry, journal, walk slowly, listen to sad songs, rage into a pillow. And notice what other emotions show up alongside the grief.

Sometimes what we call “grief” is also a tangle of anger, relief, shame, loneliness, longing, even love.

Naming what’s happening inside is a powerful first step toward regulation and integration.

If it’s hard to identify your emotional state in the moment, this Feelings Wheel can help you explore your inner experience with more nuance and self-awareness. When we can be more precise with our language, it helps others understand and empathize with our experience:

Grief is not an obstacle to joy—it’s part of the integration process. It helps you metabolize the love that came before and make space for what’s ahead.

When you honor your grief, it teaches you what mattered.

When you let it move through your body, it makes room for deeper joy—not the fleeting high of distraction, but the grounded joy of being fully here for your life.

Integrate with Rose–Bud–Thorn

One beautifully simple integration tool I use—both for myself and sometimes with the partner I’m parting ways with—is the rose–bud–thorn reflection. It’s a simple yet powerful way to honor what was, learn from it, and carry that clarity forward:

• Rose: What was beautiful? What did you love about this connection?

• Bud: What potential was beginning to grow? What were you curious about or excited to explore? What did you learn about yourself? What was awakened in you as a result of your time together?

• Thorn: What hurt? What didn’t work? What became clear wasn’t a match?

Doing this together—if the goodbye is gentle enough to allow for it—can bring profound closure and mutual respect. It’s a way of saying: Even if this form is ending, what we shared mattered.

And on your own, this practice becomes a mirror. It helps you refine your desires. It helps you get clearer about what you want to build next:
What kinds of connections feel nourishing?
What dynamics brought out the best in you—and what patterns do you want to leave behind?

This is how we make our relating more conscious.
This is how we evolve into greater alignment, both with ourselves and future relationships.

This Is the Work of Expansive, Non-Monogamous Love

This isn’t about bypassing grief with joy, or denying joy because grief exists. It’s about building the emotional and somatic capacity to hold both simultaneously—something our culture rarely teaches or supports.

But this is the heart of non-monogamy.
This is the sacred stretch of emotional maturity.

One of the most courageous parts of this path is learning to hold it all:

Grief and gratitude.
Loss and longing.
The ache of goodbye and the flutter of a beginning.

Let them sing to each other.
Let them make you more whole.

If you’ve navigated this emotional stretch, I’d love to hear:
What are your containers for big emotions? How do you make space for them?