New Relationship Energy

This was originally an email I wrote to a group I was in about five years ago. I cleaned it up and decided to post it here.

New Relationship Energy (NRE) is a common term in the world of polyamory. It describes the excited emotional and sexual attraction one feels in a newly established romantic relationship. Many poly people have learned through personal experience to both fear and respect NRE. They conscientiously work to control the intense emotions that NRE brings as it can influence a person to act irresponsibly, undermining the attention they give to their already established committed relationships.

I've met people who seem to be fairly addicted to the experience of NRE. They find themselves in a pattern of falling in love quickly and often, getting swept off their feet by overwhelming feelings of adoration and attachment to the object of their desire, only to find that the NRE soon wanes and they fall out of love, just as quickly as they fell into it.

You won't find this girl bad mouthing NRE though. I love experiencing it. To me, it feels like connecting and relating to another on a real, soul to soul level. I see in another and another sees in me a spark of who we really are. A reflection of our true potential. I feel happy because it's like I've found myself through another. We find them and they find us so damn exciting, only in fact, because we are! Scientific research has shown that the chemical composition of our brain changes when we fall in love. But revelation of what's real, through altered brain chemicals or not, doesn't mean it's an illusion. But some naysayers denounce NRE as being no more flattering than receiving attention from a drunk at a bar.

After many years together, I love that my heart still frequently goes pitter patter when I get those glimpses of my husband as how he appeared to me when we first met and were falling in love, all caught up in NRE. As far as I'm concerned, that is the real him that I sometimes lose sight of.

Fortunately, our love has grown and there is high level of resonance between us. We work well together, even when we are caught up in our mundane, sometimes boring, sometimes exciting but all in all very comforting and stable life together. It's satisfying to have a primary relationship like this.

Sometimes, there is another that we may fall into relationship with and the NRE carries us along for a day, week, month or year, but when too much of the mundane settles in, we may find that we don't care to share that person's particular way of being in the world on a day to day or even week to week basis. But this doesn't mean that this other really isn't the fascinating creature we once saw in them. It just means that in this human condition, in this physical realm, during this particular time in our life, there are other things to be considered.