VolitileRollercoaster
New member
Hi all! This is gonna be a long one...
I'm a mono person who has been dating a poly man for 3.5 years. We didn't start off as mono/poly, just mono. Until about a year or so ago he betrayed my trust in a big way with a friend of mine whom he'd become closer to. He was hitting on her rather heavily and she reciprocated in kind and it escalated. She also told him things I said in confidence, stoking the fire of his frustration at the time (I was going through a strange situation with my vagina (TMI sorry) and couldn't have sex without having to stop multiple times or stop entirely).
She told him he should be with someone "who wanted him all the time" and was definitely undermining me and our friendship. They talked about sexcapades and some replies from him were "I'd like to do that to you". I voiced my concerns and how their conversation made me feel and I was disregarded for months. During this time, we visited some friends (including the one previously mentioned) and they helped him come to the realization that he was poly.
Soon after this an old flame of his came back into his life and I had given permission (in hindsight much too soon) for him to find someone to have harder BDSM that I couldn't provide for him. It was the understanding that it was to be a very casual, almost businesslike arrangement. We did not research anything prior to any of what I'm talking about, he did not go into this knowing what he really wanted, which was, from what I've gathered from research, a secondary/second girlfriend. This was sprung on me during talks with the old Flame AFTER they had had sex. He hung out with her once for a few hours, asked her if she might be interested and he didn't immediately tell me that is what happened, he hid it from me until I asked him outright, because he was hiding his phone from me. He said it was because he thought it would hurt me.
They had sex for the first time the next day, after I was under the impression from what he said that she wasn't sure and was going to think about it.
We hadn't yet recovered from the betrayal of my trust with my friend whom I had cut out by this time. And with this on top of it I was doubly hurt, feeling disregarded because my opinions and feelings were being heard and then ignored or ignored entirely. I asked him to not do anything sexual with her, and lo and behold, as I had since lost all trust in him, I started invading his privacy by reading his messages (I know, I went off the deep end) to my exfriend and the old Flame, and during another "hang out" he finger blasted her. Another blow to the trust.
We then had the aforementioned get together to talk things out and she said we needed to work on us before bringing in a 3rd person, and said she would think about it and get back to us in a week. During that week my boyfriend was increasingly stressed and mean to me. Nothing I did to assure him he wasn't a bad person helped, he tried to push me into possibly looking for my own secondary and was still disregarding my feelings regarding this new dynamic. I was in a very bad place mentally while trying to support my boyfriend, I was self harming and blaming myself for things that, in retrospect, were not my fault.
Fast forward, the trust was still broken and I've been triggered almost constantly, while also latching hard onto my boyfriend out of fear he will treat me badly again when we attempt to try the dynamic again. We're going to therapy since about February or March, and have just started making some real progress. Though he throws out sometimes "It's been a year" and he's not "seeing any progress" on my side, which hurts to hear since I'm doing a lot of soul searching and trying to deconstruct the mono-centric life that's been spoon fed to me since I was born.
I keep telling him I need time and patience. We both make mistakes, I'm not saying I'm blameless in the situation. I just want to make sure our foundation is fixed before we can really dive into having a healthy, open poly dynamic.
I'm a mono person who has been dating a poly man for 3.5 years. We didn't start off as mono/poly, just mono. Until about a year or so ago he betrayed my trust in a big way with a friend of mine whom he'd become closer to. He was hitting on her rather heavily and she reciprocated in kind and it escalated. She also told him things I said in confidence, stoking the fire of his frustration at the time (I was going through a strange situation with my vagina (TMI sorry) and couldn't have sex without having to stop multiple times or stop entirely).
She told him he should be with someone "who wanted him all the time" and was definitely undermining me and our friendship. They talked about sexcapades and some replies from him were "I'd like to do that to you". I voiced my concerns and how their conversation made me feel and I was disregarded for months. During this time, we visited some friends (including the one previously mentioned) and they helped him come to the realization that he was poly.
Soon after this an old flame of his came back into his life and I had given permission (in hindsight much too soon) for him to find someone to have harder BDSM that I couldn't provide for him. It was the understanding that it was to be a very casual, almost businesslike arrangement. We did not research anything prior to any of what I'm talking about, he did not go into this knowing what he really wanted, which was, from what I've gathered from research, a secondary/second girlfriend. This was sprung on me during talks with the old Flame AFTER they had had sex. He hung out with her once for a few hours, asked her if she might be interested and he didn't immediately tell me that is what happened, he hid it from me until I asked him outright, because he was hiding his phone from me. He said it was because he thought it would hurt me.
They had sex for the first time the next day, after I was under the impression from what he said that she wasn't sure and was going to think about it.
We hadn't yet recovered from the betrayal of my trust with my friend whom I had cut out by this time. And with this on top of it I was doubly hurt, feeling disregarded because my opinions and feelings were being heard and then ignored or ignored entirely. I asked him to not do anything sexual with her, and lo and behold, as I had since lost all trust in him, I started invading his privacy by reading his messages (I know, I went off the deep end) to my exfriend and the old Flame, and during another "hang out" he finger blasted her. Another blow to the trust.
We then had the aforementioned get together to talk things out and she said we needed to work on us before bringing in a 3rd person, and said she would think about it and get back to us in a week. During that week my boyfriend was increasingly stressed and mean to me. Nothing I did to assure him he wasn't a bad person helped, he tried to push me into possibly looking for my own secondary and was still disregarding my feelings regarding this new dynamic. I was in a very bad place mentally while trying to support my boyfriend, I was self harming and blaming myself for things that, in retrospect, were not my fault.
Fast forward, the trust was still broken and I've been triggered almost constantly, while also latching hard onto my boyfriend out of fear he will treat me badly again when we attempt to try the dynamic again. We're going to therapy since about February or March, and have just started making some real progress. Though he throws out sometimes "It's been a year" and he's not "seeing any progress" on my side, which hurts to hear since I'm doing a lot of soul searching and trying to deconstruct the mono-centric life that's been spoon fed to me since I was born.
I keep telling him I need time and patience. We both make mistakes, I'm not saying I'm blameless in the situation. I just want to make sure our foundation is fixed before we can really dive into having a healthy, open poly dynamic.