TOLYAMORY

Tolyamory — The Story I Never Knew I Was Living

By Jemma Hardélle

I used to believe I was in a polyamorous relationship, conscious, expansive, evolved. Three hearts intertwined, love multiplied instead of divided. That’s the story I told myself, and for a while it felt true. But looking back now with the clarity I have as a therapist and as a woman who lived through it, I can admit the truth: it wasn’t polyamory. It was toly-amory, a relationship held together by tolerance rather than alignment. A dynamic built on survival, not intention.

When I found myself in multiple loves, it wasn’t some simple affair dynamic. It was already an open relationship, only it wasn’t open from stability. It was open because I was emotionally starving. Because my marriage felt lonely. Because I had a brain tumour, wasn’t working, and felt frighteningly isolated from the world and from myself. So when another connection arrived, it felt like oxygen. I didn’t choose polyamory from empowerment; I chose it because it kept me from drowning.

But a lifeline is not the same as a foundation.

The three of us were never built for the structure we found ourselves in. We weren’t a conscious poly unit, despite trying to be. We were three anxious-avoidant, people-pleasing adults with poor boundaries and attachment wounds louder than our logic. We told ourselves we were evolved, but really we were doing what people do when they’re scared: clinging to each other, tolerating what wasn’t right, hoping love would fix what poor communication couldn’t.

There were moments of real tenderness, of presence, of love that felt electric and addictive. Moments that convinced me we were doing something meaningful. But they were just flashes, snippets of the life each of us wanted but none of us could sustain. The reality was chaos, dysregulation, avoidance, emotional exhaustion dressed up as “freedom.”

With my lover, there was secret boundary crosses with friends, hitting girls on the side, telling me about it under the guise of “unmet needs.” When something triggered him, he needed hours and days of reassurance, every family holiday I had resulted in a complete nervous system collapse . My nervous system was wrecked by the constant managing, soothing, explaining, containing. And yet he told me I wasn’t “his person” because I was over forty and had a child, while still leaning on me as if I was his emotional home. The actions and words were conflicting and confusing, I was too in survival dressed up as love to walk away. My avoidance and burn out kicked in, discounting the significance of the situation and the toll it was taking on everyone.

With my husband, there were multiple dates with women I never met, vague communication, no inclusion, and an unspoken expectation that I should be okay with all of it because of my “other love” I didn’t feel held in my marriage or considered in the openness. It felt like abandonment from two directions.

For someone with deep abandonment wounds, it was emotional demolition. I was holding two opposite relational styles, one partner anxious, one avoidant, while abandoning myself in the middle. I for the last year I didn’t sleep due to anxiety, I barely functioned. I cried almost every day. I was almost broken. Imagine two people you love dating other people, having sex and giving them the quality time I craved so badly.

The cruel irony is that I stayed because I loved them both. I stayed because I didn’t know how to disappoint people or claim my needs. I stayed because the fantasy felt safer than the truth. I stayed because leaving felt like losing everything, my marriage, my lover, my identity, my hope. I stayed because I thought I was the problem, not the dynamic.

But no amount of endurance can turn misalignment into compatibility. And no amount of “openness” can compensate for the collapse of your boundaries.

I had to break it off with the lover, I was completely broken.

As part of my healing I trained in the UK’s first in-depth research-based polyamory and open-relating training course, based on modern relationship dynamics. Halfway through the course, the facilitator said something that landed like a lightning bolt:

“If your body is in constant collapse, you’re not in polyamory, you’re in endurance, polyamory should bend you but not break you”

That was my truth.

I wasn’t living polyamory.

I was living tolylamory:

Tolerating misalignment.

Tolerating abandonment.

Tolerating behaviour that didn’t align with my values.

Tolerating my own steady disappearance.

And I realised something heartbreaking: many people are tolerating other styles of relationships too. Relationships, held together by fear, people-pleasing, and the belief that leaving will destroy everything, that their feeling of aliveness will suddenly stop.

Polyamory isn’t inherently evolved. It doesn’t make you enlightened. It magnifies what’s already inside you.

When your foundations are shaky, openness exposes the cracks.

When your foundations are secure, openness becomes a very different art, intentional, regulated, grounded.

I didn’t have those foundations then. None of us did.

I Became the Therapist I Needed

In the middle of the chaos, in the thick of my breakdown, I desperately needed a therapist who truly understood:

• attachment wounds

• open relationships

• desire and shame

• poly dynamics

• abandonment

• people-pleasing

• nervous system collapse

• the sexual, emotional, and psychological layers of modern love

But that therapist didn’t exist for me at the time in one person.

I needed someone who could sit with the complexity of loving two people.

Someone who could hold both the chaos and the possibility.

Someone who understood kink, non-monogamy, secrets, intensity, shadow desires, the pull of the erotic, and the collapse of boundaries.

Someone who wasn’t shocked, or judgmental, or moralising.

Someone who could help me navigate the life I was actually living, not the life textbooks describe.

And because I couldn’t find this…

I became her.

I became the therapist who knows these dynamics intimately.

The therapist who can spot tolerating within minutes.

The therapist who can hold complexity without flinching.

The therapist who understands open relating, erotic honesty, attachment injuries, and relationship power in real time.

The therapist who can say,

“You’re not broken. You’re overwhelmed. Let’s make sense of this together.”

My mess became my method.

My pain became my purpose.

My breakdown became my blueprint for helping others navigate what I once survived.

I became the therapist I needed, so my clients don’t have to go through it alone.

I share my story so you know you’re safe enough to examine your own.

Because when the masks come off, clarity comes in.

And clarity is the beginning of coming home to yourself again.

Whatever your relationship style, if your nervous system is running the show, reach out and let’s get it back to regulation.

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