I am currently without a primary so I'll discussed how it used to work in the past and how it works now.

The first thing that I have to say is that polyamory requires communication. Any it is at times overwhelming and that is okay. Our former system of my primary and I is that we would talk openly about all of our relationships. It was impossible to believe that if I came home from dealing with a stressful, or joyous, or trying part of my relationship with someone else that it wasn't going to effect my partner. Being able to talk about it was crucial.

We became primary with one another when we were dating other people. That isn't to say that we were exclusive, but we lived together and shared a lot of the common problems of any couple living together. We also dealt with jealousy and insecurity like in every other relationship. We spend our "family" life together. If there was a situation that called for gathering like we were family then we would spend that time together, the two of us. We did spend a good deal of time talking and working through what polyamory meant in our relationship, and tried to not bring in people that wouldn't or couldn't agree to that.

Is poly for everyone? No. Did we make it work? Yeah, I think so. Are we still together since I talked about everything in past tense? No. It wasn't really a fault in the relationship's structure, just that we grew distant and agreed that the distance wasn't something we could overcome.