I grew up surrounded by my parent's relationship that was fundamentally broken on a lot of levels. I knew that I didn't want that in my own relationship: the codependency, the narcissism, the addiction, the lying, etc. This is a troubling one in a sense, because a lot of people tend to go, "a-ha! That's why you don't trust monogamy. That's why you don't think love exists." etc. etc. It's a nice little scapegoat for what appears to be "problems" in the way I live my life, and therefore it could feasibly be fixed. I had an exemplary model of what I didn't want in my own relationships via my parents. However, I also didn't see anything I wanted in so-called "functional" monogamous relationships, either. When it came time for me to start forming my own relationships, it was essentially like starting from scratch. Therapy lady and I like to equate it to an empty lot of land that you can build a house on. Knock down the old and build the new, don't keep trying to replace and/or fix the old, because it's falling the fuck apart and you'll wind up buried. (In this scenario, the broken house can either be equated to my parent's relationship model, or to the standard societal narrative that I'm trying not to get crushed by. Your choice. Imagination is fun.)
I've never been physically hurt by somebody else just because I was different (in this case, read "different" to mean poly, kinky, queer). I dislike the idea that seems persistent in "counter culture" that being different makes you somehow completely misunderstood by everybody all the time.
But in my own experience, it's made me a little more cautious about everybody all the time. Who do I tell about certain aspects of myself, and who do I not tell?
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