New relationships while marriage is in crisis

sweetmama

New member
A little background:

My husband and I have been poly throughout our marriage. About seven months ago things got really rocky - he made some really poor choices, crossed some major boundaries, and trust was broken. We have been sleeping separately and in marriage counseling since then, and things have been really tough. I am trying to work through PTSD from the incident, and he is starting to look at his own issues that let things escalate the way they did.

A few months ago he started talking about wanting to date new people. I expressed concerns about the idea, mostly because it seems likely that the NRE will be a major distraction from the work we are trying to do in our marriage. You can't fix a broken relationship by adding another one. But I also told him that I did not want to be in the position of giving the ok or making the decision for him. Well, he ended up meeting someone who started out as "just friends" but at some point it became romantic. He didn't do a very good job of communicating with me about it, and things progressed really rapidly with very little time to process.

On their third date, 24 hours after I was informed things had become romantic, he ended up staying overnight at her place without telling me what was going on. I woke up in the morning to discover he had never come home and there was no communication from him. Overnights have always been handled very carefully with lots of communication, and staying out without telling me anything was a huge slap in the face, especially considering we have children and had no answer when they asked where he was. It was a major trust violation and it very nearly ended our marriage.

This was a few weeks ago, and somehow I am still hanging on trying to see if we can work things out. But he has continued to date this woman, and I am struggling with some really big emotions around the relationship. Every time I think about it, all the hurt and anger about how he handled things and how little my needs and concerns seemed to matter just come right back. We have talked extensively about the situation, both in therapy and out, and communication has improved and he is making an effort to take my needs into consideration more, but the negative emotions are not going away for me.

We have plans to go to a poly event tomorrow and she is going to be there. I thought I could handle it, but now I'm really struggling and not sure I can be around the two of them and manage my emotions. I really don't want to let this situation keep me at home, but I also don't want to torture myself. Any advice or perspective on how to manage this situation, both at the event tomorrow and in a bigger picture way would be much appreciated.
 
Oh, that's rough. I can imagine how distressing all that has been if the marriage was in crisis already. How did things go yesterday?

What concerns me about what you wrote is you'll need time to heal yet you also say everything is happening so rapidly. Also, those negative emotions you're stuck in may need something quite substantial to transform them. That might not be possible for the time being.

Only thing I can think to say is to keep trying to call upon your love for him and let that play its role in your thinking as much as possible. I know it might seem like the hardest thing, given what's going on. It's also not going to miraculously fix things. However, whatever capacity you can manage may help buffer the worst of all this.
 
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