If we are meant to be monogamous, why do so many people cheat on their partners?
If we are meant to be polyamorous, why does it hurt to share your lover with another?
The only sin here is not exploring your choices with sincere curiosity then honoring your truth with honesty and integrity. Elica and Amitayus did!
Their final destination? The path of monogamy blessed in a beautiful Thai wedding.
Names: Elica & Amitayus
Status: Married
Been together since: 2016
Life and open relationships on the Tantric Thai island Koh Phangan
Amitayus: I’m from Portland, Oregon in the States. I have a degree in Religious Studies from university, so I have always been interested in spirituality. Around two years into really starting to open up to the spiritual journey and transitioning from intellectual interest to embodied practice, I headed out to an island called Koh Phangan in Thailand.
I was heading there for yoga teacher training and was fresh on my path. Everything felt new and exciting!
On this island, spirituality and alternative lifestyles are embraced. Many people have a Tantric way of life and open relationships are very common. Personally, I wasn’t heading there for love, I was seeking wisdom.
My plan was to go back to Oregon after my training and settle down. Those plans sure shifted and I ended up living on the island for many years, studying and teaching yoga and doing many other things.
During those years, I was in many different states of mind. When I first got there, I’d started dating a woman. It wasn’t until our third date that she’d told me that she was seeing other people. I was left with the option of either ending it or continuing with her in an open relationship.
In the community there, most of the people I’d spoken to always mentioned the spiritual benefits of open relationships. I decided to try it out.
Amitayus: There are many beautiful aspects of being open to multiple people. It allows you to observe how you interact differently with different people and teaches you how to handle many different energies. You also really learn how to communicate transparently and very honestly. It leaves you with an appreciation of the fact that while love is infinite, time and energy are not and you need to prioritize them.
When you have one relationship, everything is hard enough.
When you have more than one relationship, everything becomes exponentially more difficult.
The process did indeed give me a lot of growth and I had some beautiful experiences and connections. But I must admit, my observations also left me with the feeling that most people were not practicing open relationships, they were really just practicing openness.
In general, I would say Koh Phangan is not a place where there is a lot of depth in terms of commitment. It’s a very transient place. People are never sure how long they will be there for: A few weeks, months or years, so it is really not a good place for anything long-term.
Even the women there; although many of them would say that they are frustrated about the situation and are looking for more depth, if they were pushed and asked, “Well, why are you here then?” it might turn out that perhaps that’s not what they’re really looking for either as they’re coming to a place where it’s clearly not available.
Amitayus: Many different people get into open relationships for different reasons and communication is one of the most important aspects of any relationship. Knowing this, I personally was very clear for my reasons for practicing it and whenever I engaged with someone, I had to know their intentions too.
In contrast to many people there, I felt I wasn’t interested in a constant flow of new people and possibilities. It was very clear to me that I was looking for a relationship, one that had deep connection.
So while I was meeting new people, exploring new things, learning about myself, practicing lots of yoga, I was always longing for that depth.
I had a few longer-term relationships along the way but nothing that stuck. Either my partners were really into me and wanted to marry me and I wasn’t, or they were the ones to break my heart. This actually was a recurring theme in my relationships my whole life until I met Elica.
Elica: While he was doing all this on the island, I was in Australia, where I’m from, engaged to be married to someone else. Yes, I had very different wedding plans.
As fate had it, it didn’t work out. I decided I needed to get away, take a break and clear the slate so I could start a fresh chapter.
Some of my good friends who’d been to Koh Phangan told me about it. I thought, “Oh, that island sounds nice. I’ll go there and do some yoga for a couple of weeks and come back.”
That was three years ago and while I did go there as planned, I never went back to my old life again and still live between Australia and the island. Koh Phangan has a way of altering your reality for sure.
How we first met
Elica: It was December 2014. The couple of weeks I had planned on staying had already turned into most of the year, with just a few months break mid-year.
Amitayus: I had been in Koh Phangan for about five years by then.
Elica: During this time there was a guy that was flirting with me, as they do there. He took me to an acro-yoga jam on the beach. And who was leading it? Yours truly. That’s how I first met Amitayus.
Amitayus: Very shortly after we met, I asked her out.
Elica: That was actually one of the ways that Amitayus tried to get me to date him: He would ask me to do acro-yoga with him.
Amitayus: She said no, she said wasn’t interested.
Elica: I was taking space and not seeing anyone, trying to heal from my break-up.
One day just around the time we first met, we bumped into each other outside the yoga hall and ended up sitting together and chatting. He was telling me how wonderful it is to have your heart broken. It sounded pretty terrible to me!
Amitayus: I was quoting from Gibran’s book ‘The Prophet’ on love.
Elica: We then started talking about kids and I asked him how he would expect to manage kids in an open relationship? I can’t remember what his answer was but I remember saying again, “That sounds terrible,” and him saying, “No, that sounds great!”
Amitayus: I asked her out again and she stood me up.
Elica: When I stood him up it was because I honestly completely forgot! I really didn’t mean to and I actually felt terrible about it!
Amitayus: I asked her out again she said yes, then canceled last minute.
Elica: I’d been on the island for a while by now. Although I hadn’t had an open relationship before, during my first year there I did take casual partners as a part of my recovery, moving on and expanding process.
Saying that though, deep down, I knew that being in open relationships was not going to be my ultimate path. My star sign is Cancer and being a water sign, I find I’m very deep rather than broad. Many people will go the more horizontal way, but for me to connect, I need to be deep.
Meanwhile, I caught myself out a few times with Amitayus. Once, I actually stalked his Facebook, as you do. When I saw photos of him officiating his best friend’s marriage ceremony, I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if I’ll marry him one day…’ This jolted me into, ‘What am I thinking?!’ and I immediately got off Facebook!
You know how you have all those insights, knowings and suggestions and you just ignore them and put them away? It was like that.
One night we were in a hall and I was helping with a ritual. He took a photo of me and I didn’t know at the time but he apparently kept it. All these little subconscious things were happening to both of us.
Elica: The reason I would always say no when he asked me out was because intuitively, I felt things might be different with him. I knew as soon as he made me do partner yoga with him, I’d be too attracted to him and I’d want to go deep. So I said no all the time; I wasn’t ready for ‘deep’ yet because of the previous experience I’d had.
We drift away but life doesn’t allow it
Amitayus: Meanwhile, I was still following my path which took me to India for a while. Wanting to try out giving some workshops and doing some teachings in a western environment, I then made my way to Australia and ended up in Melbourne. Elica happened to be there at the same time—the first time she’d returned since she’d left for Koh Phangan. This was completely unplanned, a genuine coincidence.
Elica: Yes, it was.
Amitayus: We hung out in Melbourne casually a few times with friends. I asked her out again to the Art Museum. She said she had to do her taxes.
Another time, we ended up hanging out with a mutual friend. Elica’s a pretty good astrologer and she was looking at my chart. She said, “You know, you should be with a Cancerian woman with a Gemini rising.”
Elica: That’s me!
Amitayus: Which made me wonder, ‘Is she hitting on me?’ She claims that she wasn’t.
Elica: I wasn’t! I was really just reading his chart.
Amitayus: Sure you were.
She told me later she was actually starting to consider asking me out around then.
Elica: At this point, it would have been about a year since we’d met and I was slowly beginning to have a change of heart about him.
There were a few reasons for this.
One was that I was healing and it opened me up to something real again. Plus, I also knew him a little bit better. But most importantly, I had this gut feeling which I really couldn’t explain. I knew that he wanted to go out with me and I knew that once I said yes, it would be serious, it wouldn’t be a fling—I just knew it.
That’s finally where I was at and I said to myself, “Maybe it’s time… maybe I’ll ask him out.”
With this intention in mind, I soon went to our mutual friend’s house.
I asked her, “Is Amitayus still around?”
She said, “No, he’s just gone to Darwin.”
I thought, ‘Oh well, maybe it just wasn’t meant to be…’ and went on my way.
We had a lot of these misses and when I eventually returned to the island, he was still somewhere in Australia.
But one day, he also returned…
How we almost drifted away again, this time for good
Amitayus: I did return only to leave good.
After seven years of living there, I decided I was done—I was leaving Koh Phangan! I had a month there and it was to pack everything up and cut ties with the island for good.
Amitayus: I got rid of all my stuff, donating some and shipping the rest back to my parents’ house in the States. There was nothing left of mine anymore, I was ready to be outta there!
Elica: It was at this time that we had a falling out.
When my ex-fiancé and I separated, he also decided to spend some time in Koh Phangan, where he met Amitayus. One day, several months later back in Australia, Amitayus spent the day hanging out with him.
Amitayus: I’d actually met him because he’d attended one of my masculinity workshops on the island.
Elica: Which I had actually paid for…
Amitayus: So, he was both a client and could also be considered a friend.
Elica: At first, I was accepting of my ex-fiancé trying to befriend my friends. But the new year was coming up and for this new year I had made a new resolution. I decided I was doing an internal cleanse and I knew that all the old energy from my previous relationship had to go.
Some of my friends were really on the fence so I approached them and told them how I felt.
“I really need this energy out of my life and that means no social media stalking and no mutual connections. Please don’t take it personally but I need to do what I need to do.”
Amitayus: I was one of the people she approached. Basically, she gave me a choice and said, “You need to stop being friends with him or I’m going to have to stop being friends with you.” I said, “Sorry, that’s not cool and I’m not going to do that. I’m keeping this connection.”
Elica: When he said no, I said fair enough and promptly defriended him on Facebook. I think he was a bit shocked that I did that.
Amitayus: She actually defriended me!
My peaceful Libran side courted her back to me
Amitayus: My rising sign is Libra and by nature I don’t like conflict and people not getting along. Plus, in addition to being very attracted to her, I really liked her as a person.
I contacted her and told her I was leaving the island in two weeks and would be gone forever.
“It would be great if we could leave on good terms. Can we can we get lunch and just talk about things?”
She said, “We can meet for a shake.”
Lunch was too much of a commitment.
Still, I was delighted that she’d accepted to meet and talk things through.
I was leaving in just three days and we finally met in a little place for a shake. That meeting turned into a three hour conversation.
Elica: That was the longest we’d had hung out together alone and I liked him so much more than I wanted to.
Amitayus: The funny thing is, we didn’t even talk about our falling out! We just talked about other things.
Amitayus: At the end of it, I asked her out one last time for the next night.
She finally said yes!
When we ended up with a date, I thought, ‘How did I do that? That’s just great, that’s awesome!’
Elica: Go me! I think it took me around a year for me to say yes to our first date.
Amitayus: We got together the next night.
Elica: We had a beautiful Italian dinner date.
Amitayus: No, that was the next night.
Elica: Oh, that was the next night… Well, what did we do the first night?
Amitayus: We just had sex.
Elica: Oh, God!
Amitayus: She came over to my place and we were both surprised at the power of the connection we had. We had both assumed it was going to be a one night stand because I was leaving in two days. But the next morning I asked her if I could see her again that night and again, she said yes.
Elica: I think he had about five different options lined up at that stage.
Amitayus: Yes, I had to disappoint some ladies. That was the night we went out to a very nice Italian dinner. We spent most of the night staring into each others eyes, starstruck.
Elica: We just couldn’t stop smiling! It was really cute.
Amitayus: After dinner she had a client appointment so she had to go home and do a therapy session but she came right back to mine after that.
We spent another night together.
The next day, I left.
Elica: We knew that the connection we felt was real and even though he was leaving, I knew that was not going to be the end of it. We hadn’t discussed it at that point, it was intuitive—I just knew.
What was funny was, I assumed if there was going to be an ongoing thing there, it was going to be open relationship. Since my last relationship had too many issues around jealousy, fear and control, Amitayus also assumed we were going to have an open relationship as he thought that’s what I wanted.
So he assumed I wanted the open relationship and I assumed that he did and that’s where we were.
Amitayus: My next stop on my way back to the States was India. I went back there to do a season with Prem Baba who is a teacher. His name literally means, ‘the father of love.’
Meanwhile, any Internet connection I could get, which was something you never knew where you would find in India, Elica and I would be chatting on Facebook or Skype.
I was going to stay in India for six weeks and after that I was heading to Korea for a week to do a workshop. After Korea, I would be heading back to the States on a one-way ticket.
I told Elica, “I can’t leave this continent without seeing you again. Will you come to India?”
She keen on seeing me, but really wasn’t keen on India as a meeting point.
I said, “Well, what about Korea? I’m going to Korea after India to do a workshop.” And she said yes.
Elica: Before my trip, a good girlfriend of ours was doing a workshop that I was leading. She was very happy to see me again and we were catching up with our news. She’d met his guy and was very excited about him. She said, “Well, this guy is really great. I mean his not like an Amitayus, but he’s still great.”
Amitayus and I hadn’t told anyone about us at this point so when she casually dropped his name into our conversation, I jumped. My friend also has Pisces in her chart and is quite intuitive, so I was left wondering if she knew about Amitayus and me.
When I finally told her I was going to Korea to meet him she got terribly excited. She also gave me an important insight and said, “Elica, just a quick heads-up—you know he really likes kids. If you’re going to go see him, have a think about that before you go.”
I said, “Thanks for the tip.” It was good to know.
Amitayus: I extended my stay in Korea by one week since she was coming to see me. This would give us nine whole days together.
Elica: We thought we hadn’t had enough time together. To explore this properly, we had to spend more time with each other and see how it went.
Amitayus: Those nine days in Korea were really amazing. We spent a lot of time exploring the temples and sites. Well, when we weren’t in bed.
Elica: Looking back, it was truly beautiful. It really felt like a honeymoon.
Amitayus: On our third or fourth night together, I asked her if she wanted children. This is definitely something I want in my life, so I wanted to make sure that we were compatible there.
Elica: Motherhood was definitely something I wanted and I had been planning to have kids with my ex-fiancé. When that relationship failed and I was getting closer to my late thirties, I had to do a 180 turn in my mind and face the possibility that I might never be a mother. I had to make peace with that.
When Amitayus suddenly came into my life in this way and he asked me about kids, I had to do another 180. Maybe the universe did want this to happen to me.
It was great that my friend had given me the heads-up so when he brought it up I wasn’t surprised and told him we were on the same page.
Amitayus: On our last night in Korea, I asked her if she would like to come to the States to be with me. She said yes, but told me she couldn’t make it for a while as she had already committed to doing a yoga and psychotherapy workshop in Koh Phangan.
Elica: I was creating something at the time that was going to take a couple of months. We decided that I would fly to see him as soon as my workshop was over.
Switching from polyamory to monogamy
Elica: When we came out of Korea, we were still in an open relationship.
When he was in India, he’d been with two other people. During this time, I’d also had a couple of other lovers. But after Korea, I didn’t want to be with them and on my return to the island, I didn’t reinitiate anything with them.
It was around two or three weeks after our parting that I went into a bit of a crisis. I sat with the feeling for a while so I was very clear within myself.
I’m a psychotherapist and I use a very specific modality called Internal Family Systems Therapy, which involves working with the sub-personalities inside of you.
My friends used to have a joke about me and would say anyone who was going to date me is going to have to know what their core wounds are because I wouldn’t want to be with someone who didn’t deeply understand themselves in that way.
I had already started transmitting this to Amitayus; a part of me does this and the other part does the other. We’d started communicating and working with each other in these terms because this was the language that I understood.
If I was to have a relationship, I needed to go deep with the person in a committed way because healing work would be a fundamental part of the journey for me.
Elica: I couldn’t deceive myself that this would be possible in any other way—if I was to have a conscious relationship which involved healing work, I couldn’t have this relationship with my partner be an open one.
This was not something I could keep to myself.
‘I’m going to have to tell him this. There’s no other way—I’m just going to have to fess up and say it…’
In full realization of the fact that this could be the end of it, I asked him if he would meet with me online because I wanted to talk to him about something.
I was very open and walked him through how I felt. Then, I stepped back and gave him the time to think about it.
Amitayus: After leaving Korea, I didn’t want to be with anyone else either but I’d assumed that that’s what she needed.
I remember telling a friend of ours beforehand that I wasn’t sure if I was interested in open relationships anymore because I was really looking for depth and a commitment—not in terms of time, but a commitment to each other in terms of presence and intimacy. So, unbeknownst to her, that was already on my mind.
When she first brought it up, my initial gut reaction was, ‘That’s great! That’s also what I want,’ but I wanted to give it some time to make sure I’m not agreeing just to agree.
I explained all of this to her openly and I told her that I didn’t think it was going be to be a problem but that I wanted to honor the question by giving it careful thought. We were to get back to each other in 24 hours about it.
Elica: We took this decision really seriously.
I really gave him the space to think about it. It was during this processing time that he put his thoughts on paper and they were eventually published in an article.
He also did a Tarot reading about it.
Amitayus: The reading was to see if it was going to be good for us. What came up were some negatives, but these were drowned out by many of the beautiful positives that we would receive from it.
Elica: We spoke after 24 hours. He said that that was okay and we were going to give it a go.
Amitayus: It was a great decision and I’m very happy with it!
From polyamory to a monogamous marriage
Amitayus: When I went back to the States on a one-way ticket, she went back to Koh Phangan. We were apart for two months. It was really hard to be apart. Perhaps it was a little easier for her since she was working 60-hour weeks building her project up but I was really feeling it…
Elica: It was very hard for me too—it was a really long time and was particularly difficult because it was the beginning of our relationship and everything was so romantic, so exciting but we were so far apart. Skype is not the same.
Amitayus: In May, the day the workshop finished, she got on a plane and flew to the States to meet me in Portland. We had three months together there.
It was about a month into that trip.
We were in Portland, in the guest bedroom of my cousin’s house, cuddling in bed. That was the first time I asked her to marry me and she said yes.
I say ‘first time’ because I proposed to her a few times.
Elica: In astrology we have a joke:
What does the Cancerian say after sex?
“When are we getting married?”
We’d actually joked about this the first time we’d spent the night together too.
Part of me felt a proposal was going to come, but I didn’t expect him to get there so quickly. So when he asked, although I was surprised and wondering if he was serious, I said yes because I was serious.
Amitayus: I can’t remember the second time exactly but the third proposal was after we went to Arizona and I bought her an engagement ring. She also told me later that that’s when it felt real to her; when I gave her the ring.
We flew down to Arizona where my family lives and made the announcement to them. One of my cousins put a photo on Facebook announcing it to the world before we had a chance to. Her family in Australia still didn’t know and that’s how they found out.
Elica: We then put a video up of ourselves on Facebook personally announcing our engagement. This shocked the entire Tantric community and it was absolute pandemonium! The collective shock was, “We don’t get married on Koh Phangan—we just sleep with each other!”
Amitayus: Even when we did a conscious stag event with a men’s circle, one of my friends said, “I didn’t even know you we’re allowed to get married in Tantra.” That was always the perception.
This sentiment followed us at the actual wedding: One of our friends and teachers who heads a yoga school there was saying that by getting married we had created a foundation of something in the community which others could follow. It would create the potential for depth and commitment.
After our stay in the States, she had to go back to Koh Phangan because she was working on the workshop. We flew back together and started planning the wedding. So much for me leaving the island for good—I’m still stuck going there to this day!
Alchemy and our blessed wedding ceremony
Elica: We had many people asking us about our ceremony.
Amitayus: We got together in January 2016 and got married in March 2017, a little over a year after we got together.
Elica: If you’re a Tantric person that works with the energy you will know that you need to take the wedding ritual very seriously. In line with the Tantra teachings, we were very careful about that.
Elica: Getting married really does alchemically change the connection between two people, there’s no doubt about that. It opens up a magic space which allows things to grow where they couldn’t be grown before.
We did the astrological chart for the wedding so that our marriage would take place at the most beneficial space in time for us.
Amitayus: We had a seven minute gap where our celebrant had to get us to the point where we said, “I do,” otherwise the chart would have changed.
The ritual really is important because it transforms. Even before we were married, we felt that we were committed for life. But having the ritual added a different layer of depth, a different energy, an even more profound knowing.
I have to say, our wedding ceremony was an absolutely blessed event.
Another thing we wanted to do was make sure we had the right name for us. Your name is one of the ways that you interact and interface with reality, the cosmos and God. Changing your own personal name can change your vibration.
Elica: This is why when some women get married and take on their husband’s surname, everything goes bad.
Amitayus: With this in mind, we recently took a new surname.
Elica: We chose it together and it’s a name that we know is good for both of us.
Solving relationship problems with conscious tools
Amitayus: The teachings that are shared in the Tantric community is that polyamory is all about non-attachment. I can see some of the truth in that, but there are also many teachers that teach how being dedicated to one person is also a beautiful spiritual path. This is also what we also teach in our workshop ‘Path of Partnership’.
Elica: I hear so many people who complain, “Oh, I wish I could get a partner who also wanted to grow and evolve, who would stick out the hard stuff and work through their true fears.” People really want that and they’re always struggling to find a partner who will ride out the tough waves together, peeling back the projections that they have on to each other and handling the challenges that come up.
There’s so much conditioning from our families, society and culture about how things are supposed to be and I can understand why relationships didn’t work out with the last generation. People got disillusioned, got divorced then went to marriages two and three. They didn’t have the tools to help them work though challenges.
I really feel we’re very lucky to have each other because our relationship has been graced by the fact that we’re on similar levels of evolution. We’re both seeking the same type of growth through our relationship.
In the last decade or two, conscious relationships have come such a long way and there are so many tools that can be worked with now that I believe we are at the beginning of a new era in terms of relationships.
While it’s important to view a relationship as a vehicle of consciousness, maintaining polarity is equally important. We actively work on keeping the polarity alive to maintain the Tantric elements in our relationship like taking space away from each other and sleeping in different spaces some nights.
Amitayus: There are going to be hard times, times that you are triggered. But when we have fights or when we get triggered, our focus is on understanding why it happened and where that trigger came from.
Elica: I think it’s really important to find someone who’s in a similar level of having ‘done the work’ because as you grow in your levels of consciousness, you have different realizations.
You might be at the level of realizing that every single trigger you have with your partner, as much as it may seem like it’s their fault, actually has nothing to do with them and is something that you have to deal with yourself. But if your partner doesn’t have that deeply embedded realization, you’re going to be a banging your head against the wall.
We have a similar level of relationship awareness so that when challenges rise up, we can let it unfold knowing that the work will get done and everything will be dealt with.
From the moment we decided we were getting married, we knew that we were signing up for that and our wedding ritual reflected that intention. We just have a very, very strong commitment to inner work, separately and together. That’s what makes the difference, it’s really does.
Amitayus: We have worked through three or four of these loops where something that I do triggers her, and then she reacts in a way that triggers me. When you’re in this loop, it would be too easy to say, “This is too hard, let’s just break up.”
Amitayus: But then when one of us goes and does the work on that to open that issue up and process it, that gives the other person the opportunity to open their work up too and as a result going forward, that issue isn’t a trigger anymore. Next time we are in the same situation, the thing I do doesn’t trigger her anymore and she doesn’t react as she used to, which in turn gives me the opportunity to really see what I’m doing.
Prem Baba says, “You should be happy 51% of the time in your relationship,” while other teachers put this figure at around 70%.
On a different note, Eckhart Tolle says, “The function of the relationship is not to make you happy, it is to bring consciousness.” So, in terms of happily ever after a lot is relative to that.
It’s really amazing how far we’ve come in our relationship. I can honestly say with all the yoga and meditation that I’ve done, this conscious relationship has brought me the most growth, the most understanding, the most of everything. It’s very powerful.
Elica: Same! We have similar values, we work on the polarity, and then we do the inner work for issues and that three-pronged approach seems to working.
Amitayus: I agree.
What we’re focusing on now is trying to decide where we’re going to live. We’ll be going back to the States for a few months to check out the different places. With everything else out of the way, that’s our biggest question mark at the moment, where to be.
We trust that we’ll know the right place when it shows up.
Read the article Amitayus wrote as he and Elica decided to transition from polyamory to monogamy over here.
Amitayus and Elica are dedicated to the psycho-spiritual path, and bringing that to others, through psychotherapy, and workshops focusing on the merging of the Vertical and Horizontal Paths, Relationships as Vehicle for Spiritual Growth, Men’s Work and more. Equally important to them are music, art and animals, especially dogs. Here are their websites if you are interested in finding more about them and their work at www.meetamitayus.com.
(Interview & write-up by Bianca)
