i dont think anyone has an Expected experience with polyamory bc it is A Thing without societal guardrails. The Expected thing is that it's something you cannot practice, to be best observed as a curiosity. It's not surprising to have experiences with it, then, that feel like fumbling around in the dark. What perspective you have to glean from forebears is incomplete and messy and maybe ineffective for the emotional reality of what you're trying to accomplish. Things implode for a variety of faults and reasons. Your mother tells you she "thinks you were monogamous, anyway", trying to comfort you.
I love my mom, I'm lucky to have her in my life! She's wrong.
As someone obsessed with communication, specifically Putting Words in the Right Order To Express the Idea (uncharitably, because theres a strong part of me that treats Communication as a thing I can Win), I find myself sometimes at a loss to express what I want. What a future looks like to me. There are words for the technical definition but not the emotional one. I spent months chewing over the idea because the feeling is too much of a meal to swallow in one bite. Humans are too complicated and beautiful to fit on one plate, and words like "friend" and "love" and "sex" aren't boxes but flavors.