New to this forum; nervous, lost

Starheart

New member
Hi, all. I'm new to this site. Firstly, apologies if I do anything incorrectly here - I'm not well-versed in forum etiquette yet but I will try my best. I will really appreciate guidance from those of you gracious enough to give that. Additionally, I have trouble expressing myself, verbally and in writing, and also with reading, due to a mix of mental disabilities and illnesses including dyslexia, ADHD, and autism. I tend to word things really inefficiently and in roundabout ways because of having a difficult time thinking clearly. It's like my brain is always in a thick fog. Hopefully I will still make sense to others here.

On to my actual introduction:

I'm 23, and I've been in a committed relationship for nearly 4 years. It is my first in-person relationship. Before that, my first relationship was LDR and mostly online, and I was with that first person for 2 years. That first relationship was very real to me, but having a connection with somebody in-person brings a very new level of relation (the ability to have physical intimacy, to communicate via nonverbals, to live together, be domestic, and all that goes along with that...).

I'm nonbinary, meaning that I'm not a guy or a girl, so it's difficult to define my sexuality. (I'm also intersex, so it confuses things on a physical level as well.) Despite telling others that I was for years and years, I've never been straight - just in significant denial. (7 years of Catholic school and bullying didn't help with that a bit.) I'm not sure if gay or bi suits me better; I'm still trying to iron out what exactly my preferences are, and I can't even be sure they will remain the same.
I only have experience with monogamy. I've been cheated on.

My partner is bi. He has been in a triad before, but it wasn't very healthy. They were in high school and didn't have the emotional maturity and communication skills that polyamory requires.

My partner and I have had some rough patches, and have some relationship problems (not sharing physical affection or intimacy anymore, and other things). He says he is wired for polyamory. I have an interest in it, and have thought about polyamory since childhood, but I am frustrated. I know that polyamory takes hard work and a solid foundation. Ours is shaky. Polyamory won't be some sort of quick fix like he seems to suggest it might. If we are having problems, opening up will add complications that will require us to be more connected with ourselves and each other than we are currently. I want things between us to get better, but I don't want to try seeing another person until we have our own problems resolved. Yet I feel as though he won't have the spark that this requires unless we open things up. He lights up at the prospect of opening our relationship; I haven't seen him so enthusiastic about us otherwise in years, and that hurts me. I want to be good enough for him. I'm starting to feel the pressure that I have to open our relationship if I want to see any progress. Additionally, I don't want anybody to feel like they are only involved with either or both of us to fix us. I want any potential partner to feel loved and cared about for who they are, not what they are for us. I want everyone involved to feel whole, and loved, and I feel that branching out is to add and expand that sense of love and wholeness. Not to fix the problems of a couple. I am worried that my partner is not ready for polyamory, even though it's becoming increasingly clear he's not really interested in anything else. Sometimes I think neither of us are ready for the trials of relationships, period.

I am here because I am looking for community, support, advice, stories, etc. It is hard to know what feelings are genuine (and healthy) desires, which feelings are what society has programmed us to have, and which feelings/desires arise from unhealthy mechanisms within ourselves. I think exploring and interacting with others is a good way to help discern what we truly are looking for in our hearts, and to not do things greedily, self-sabotage, or blindly follow the paths that society deems correct for us to our detriment. Hopefully here I will have those discussions and that room to explore what it is that my heart needs and wants.

Basically I want to gather information etc to learn the best way to go about this, or to figure out if it's even right for me/us at all.


Thank you, take care. I hope to hear from some of you soon.
 
Greetings Starheart,
Welcome to our forum. Please feel free to lurk, browse, etc.

It sounds like you currently have some mixed feelings about open/poly. The standard poly wisdom is that you should not open up your relationship until it is on stable ground. Whereas your relationship seems to be floundering. You'll have to use your own best judgment on whether to open to poly while it's still floundering, considering that your partner seems to be unwilling/unable to improve without poly. His desire to go open seems to be counter to valuing you by yourself which is what he should do. I even wonder if this relationship is headed for a breakup, but I hope it's not. We will try to help you in any way we can. Keep us updated as your situation evolves. I'm glad you could join us.

Sincerely,
Kevin T., "official greeter"

Notes:

There's a *lot* of good info in Golden Nuggets. Have a look!

Please read through the guidelines if you haven't already.

Note: You needn't read every reply to your posts, especially if someone posts in a disagreeable way. Given the size and scope of the site it's hard not to run into the occasional disagreeable person. Please contact the mods if you do (or if you see any spam), and you can block the person if you want.

If you have any questions about the board itself, please private-message a mod and they'll do their best to help.

Welcome aboard!
 
It sounds like you currently have some mixed feelings about open/poly. The standard poly wisdom is that you should not open up your relationship until it is on stable ground. Whereas your relationship seems to be floundering. You'll have to use your own best judgment on whether to open to poly while it's still floundering, considering that your partner seems to be unwilling/unable to improve without poly. His desire to go open seems to be counter to valuing you by yourself which is what he should do. I even wonder if this relationship is headed for a breakup, but I hope it's not. We will try to help you in any way we can. Keep us updated as your situation evolves. I'm glad you could join us.

Thanks for your in-depth response. I think you understand my situation well; I am glad that my message was comprehensible.

There have been multiple times that I have considered breaking up. I know it's not in his plans because he has abandonment issues and a fear of being single. He kind of seems to rely heavily on the stability that being in a relationship brings him. Whenever in the past it has even seemed like I might be upset with him, he starts to ask if I'm going to break up with him and he gets very emotional about it. But I think about it on and off. I have been through a lot with him and I feel very tired. Sometimes breaking up feels inevitable, but then we have a good day or three that makes me think I was out of my mind for thinking about leaving such a great guy. :confused: :( It's not a healthy cycle of things, but I keep wanting to put in an effort to get out of this rhythm and back to something sustainable and satisfying. Partly because I genuinely love him and still really want a future with him, and partially because... breaking up when you're living together and your lives are enmeshed is just... it would be such a hassle. That's why I'm interested in trying to do the thing that he seems to really want.

Also, I have a strong affinity for women, and I've been looking forward to the chance to have a deep connection with someone that I could potentially call my girlfriend. The last two times I thought I might have a girlfriend, they realized partway through the relationship that they were trans and I've ended up with boyfriends. Just my luck, lol. Sometimes I think that having a girlfriend would be nice because women are just really special and I imagine that a woman could love me in a particular way that maybe a man just can't. Having both a boyfriend and girlfriend seems like it would be a really nice balance of energies. And maybe if I had a second partner, I wouldn't need to ask so much of him. (Part of our relationship trouble is that I ask for more emotional attention than he can give me.)

In any case, I've told him that before we open things (for real this time, because we tried to open it before but that fell apart), we would need to sit down and have a talk about our relationship and where it is headed. I feel like he is too excited about it. I'm just left thinking, do you not remember all the times you've told me about how troubled your triad in your last relationship was?? Sigh. I know he has grown since then but I question if it has been enough.
 
he starts to ask if I'm going to break up with him and he gets very emotional about it.
I had a lover like that. After the first few times it was brought up "jokingly" (i.e., passive aggression), I said, "Look, I wouldn't even think about it at all except that YOU keep mentioning it. Unless you WANT me to quit, please stop putting the thought in my head." It mostly stopped.

It's a "loser game" where no matter what anyone else does, the person who plays that card gets to feel good about being a martyr. Though seeming to be clingy, he is able to emotionally detach from you (in preparatory "self-defense" for the "emotional blow" he "fears"), so profits both ways.

Please stop BUTting yourself:
BUT I think about it on and off.
BUT then we have a good day or three
BUT I keep wanting
The excuses are getting you nowhere, AND your relationship continues to deteriorate with time. Where were the two of you at three years ago? two years? one year? Can you discern the decline?

You need to decide if you can be happy NOW with the situation... AND if you can be happy with the degraded version in a year, AND the degraded version of THAT in another year...

If you can't, then the time to move is NOW -- rather, it was probably a few years ago. What's happening in your dyad is a lot like skin cancer: almost always really easy to fix (albeit with a little pain)... & unfortunately easy to ignore well past the point it becomes irreversible, & then kills you.
breaking up when you're living together and your lives are enmeshed is just... it would be such a hassle.
Yes, it would. It's NOT going to improve on its own, so separation will only become more difficult with time.

You always have the option to put a pretty Band-Aid over it & pretend it's gone.
That's why I'm interested in trying to do the thing that he seems to really want.
There are some slippery words there, not least being that "he" "seems" to "really" which make it sound like
Though I might gain some direct benefit, I am mostly doing this to shut him up because I don't think it's him talking out his butt (this time).
After all this, I'm still uncertain as to what you -- as in your dyad AND each of you individually -- are hoping for. Will you consider discussing this in another forum?
 
Re (from Starheart):
"I've told him that before we open things, we would need to sit down and have a talk about our relationship and where it is headed."

That sounds like a good idea. Even if you don't open things, you should have that talk.

What improvements would you need to see in your relationship before you would feel comfortable about opening up?
 
Though seeming to be clingy, he is able to emotionally detach from you (in preparatory "self-defense" for the "emotional blow" he "fears"), so profits both ways.

Yeah. Not to make excuses but to explain where he is coming from and what I have dealt with: he has BPD (borderline personality) characteristics, so this kind of thing comes up sometimes (and it used to be worse). He's gotten better about it; he doesn't need reassurance as much as he used to, and he's come a long way from when he used to be afraid of being apart for any length of time or got scared when I showed platonic affection to my friends. But what's left of it is still draining sometimes.


The excuses are getting you nowhere, AND your relationship continues to deteriorate with time. Where were the two of you at three years ago? two years? one year? Can you discern the decline? You need to decide if you can be happy NOW with the situation... AND if you can be happy with the degraded version in a year, AND the degraded version of THAT in another year...

To answer the last question, yes. I often found myself thinking back on how we used to be in our first year together, and wishing that I had that back. I realized this meant I wasn't satisfied with how things are now. I have spent an appreciable amount of time reflecting on the decline. Firstly, out of nostalgia's sake, but now because I'm trying to decide if I'm willing to accept what I have now or... go through a tremendous amount of effort to change situations. A lot of it is coming to the realization that a long-term relationship can't sustain the feeling of being in love for the first time.


You always have the option to put a pretty Band-Aid over it & pretend it's gone.

Sadly, this is what I have been doing for a long time. Many times I end up feeling weak for taking this option, but it's taken a lot of silent suffering so I can't imagine that weak is really the right way to describe it. Unfortunately, with the amount of resources I have available to me (read: very few), the option to break things off and move away is almost nonexistent unless I was willing to get rid of all my belongings and then... I don't know what. I don't even have a friend with whom I could live in the interim of finding a new place to live. I've talked to crisis lines when my depression was really bad, and I ended up talking about my problems and their best suggestion was to find a women's shelter. Besides that option being really invalidating for me (I'm intersex and don't identify as a man or a woman), I don't think I would have what it takes to leave behind everything I have just to end up in a shelter. I end up feeling like a coward.

After all this, I'm still uncertain as to what you -- as in your dyad AND each of you individually -- are hoping for. Will you consider discussing this in another forum?

Even I don't know what I want after all this time. Because of brain fog, I'm almost never able to think clearly and I have a really hard time making decisions and having resolve. I get confused easily. My own thoughts don't sit right in my head.

The trouble is, the only parts that people hear if I talk about my difficulties are the difficult parts. There isn't a way for me to convey the good parts to someone - I can't transmit the feelings of love and affection and the goofy moments etc about it to another person so that they can evaluate the nuance of the satisfaction vs dissatisfaction in the relationship. For this reason, while it's hard for me to decide what route is best to take, an outsider who has no stake in the matter can more easily tell me it's not worth it, when the hard parts aren't the whole truth about it. So if I were to leave, I wouldn't just be leaving something that's bad. I'd be leaving something that's good and bad, and everything in life is both of those in some amounts.

Earlier I mentioned he was able to grow beyond a lot of his hardship with BPD. It's taken time but he's gotten a lot better at a lot of other stuff too; my hope is that if I give him the time, he will be able to bring back the parts of the relationship that I've needed but have been missing. He meditates every day to get in touch with himself. He's started a work out regimen with me and a friend of ours. He's gotten himself a bunch of self help books, books on improving relationships/marriage, books on communication (he's taking a university course on communication now over the summer and is really invested in it). At this point I feel like it's just a matter of how much my faith in him can last.

Yes, I'd talk about this in a different forum. Can you tell me which would be a better fit for this topic?
 
That sounds like a good idea. Even if you don't open things, you should have that talk.

What improvements would you need to see in your relationship before you would feel comfortable about opening up?

Thank you for this feedback.

I would need more affection from him, which I'm almost certain I would get: when I told him I was signing up for a polyamory forum, he started to get all charming with me and when I let him read some messages I was sending to this new person we met that we both think likes me, he got more affectionate with me than I had seen in a long, long time. Having an open relationship might be the thing he needs to be drawn to sharing affection; the newness that polyamory brings very obviously energizes and reinvigorates him.

I would need him to affirm that he's willing to sit through difficult conversations, because those will be inevitable. In the past he was prone to shutting down whenever things got hard for him. But we have practiced to some success new communication methods where we set aside an appointed time and take turns talking, and there's a formula etc that we follow and that seems to help him. He has Asperger's, so having a guide to follow makes it possible for him to continue when things are overwhelming.

I would need to see a willingness in him to actively check in with me on how I'm feeling. As it stands, everything is left up to me to bring up. He doesn't really ask about how I am unless he thinks I'm mad at him. I get that I have a responsibility to be vocal about my feelings, but if he could take some of the burden of initiating conversations off from me, it would be a big relief. Sometimes it's hard to interrupt someone who is perfectly content to tell them you're unhappy. If he could check in time to time and ask me if I've got anything on my mind, it would be a lot easier.

There's probably more, but if we had these in place, I would feel comfortable enough to move forward that if I needed anything, I'd have the support and structure needed to actually discuss it and be supported in that.

I really appreciate your comments and questions; they're really constructive and got me thinking about these in a more concrete way. Thanks very much.
 
No problem ... it sounds like you have a good basis for your discussion, the three main things that you need at first: more affection, willingness to sit through difficult conversations, and willingness to check in on how you're feeling. Those things don't sound too hard when you boil them down like that. Hopefully he'll agree!
 
Starheart, I think you have a good enough picture about what you want. You're absolutely right that polyamory doesn't work well on a shaky foundation. It is very proactive of you to consider working on your relationship as a first course of action. It will serve you very well regardless of the outcome (because that always depends on the other person, too).

You might have to go through talking about each others' needs and how they might be fulfilled several times before finding a good enough balance; it takes a lot of trial and error. Don't be discouraged, entrenched behaviours take a lot of effort to change (but they can change).
 
I think you have a pretty good handle...

on what you want/need. You already have half the battle fought when you realize that opening a relationship when it isn't solid isn't a good thing. Bringing in MORE people just complicates things further, and you don't need that when you are trying to fix things.

Anyway, how do you honestly feel about polyamory? Is it something you see yourself doing long term? I mean, just like monogamy is not for everyone, neither is polyamory. It's okay to say that out loud, because in mixed relationships, sometimes it becomes a simple compatibility issue. so that is a conversation you will want to have with him, and with yourself.

Good luck, and welcome!
 
Last edited:
Welcome.

I might be totally off base but FWIW in case it helps you, this is my initial impression...

You seem to know how you want to approach poly and that you aren't getting to do that. Things like...

  • I only want to do poly from solid foundations. We don't have that. Ours is shaky.

  • I don't want to try seeing another person until we have our own problems resolved.

  • I don't want anybody to feel like they are only involved with either or both of us to fix us. I want any potential partner to feel loved and cared about for who they are, not what they are for us.

Yet you don't seem to have those things in THIS relationship.

The foundations are not solid and while he's making some efforts to fix some things, you are concerned that you've been holding things in a lot, that this effort might be too little to late -- like your "still waiting/hanging on/hoping" is gonna run out before he finally finishes those efforts.

You think about breaking up might be inevitable which makes you concerned because actually breaking up will be a drag because you don't have friends or the money to have options other than a women's shelter. (What are your possibilities for better employment and building up some savings?)

The problems are not solved and may not be. It's like you are realizing love alone is not enough. There has to be other things for deep compatibility.

I know it's not in his plans because he has abandonment issues and a fear of being single. He kind of seems to rely heavily on the stability that being in a relationship brings him. Whenever in the past it has even*seemed*like I*might*be upset with him, he starts to ask if I'm going to break up with him and he gets very emotional about it.

It sounds like you remain involved to fix HIM -- is that true?

It's not a healthy cycle of things, but I keep wanting to put in an effort to get out of this rhythm and back to something sustainable and satisfying.

You seem to recognize this dynamic is not healthy.

Long and short of it... despite a few good patches here and there... the bulk of it sounds like you aren't doing well together. You seem to "carry" a lot of the relationship. You don't feel loved and cared about for who you are. Maybe only feeling cared about just for what you are to him -- his "life raft" or "life preserver" person? And maybe you don't want that job any more?

I have been through a lot with him and I feel very tired.

This tiredness... have you been "enduring" or "surviving" but not really "thriving" in the relationship?

Galagirl
 
Last edited:
Welcome.

You could start a thread in the Poly Relationships section. Members check there more often than on Intros.
 
Hi Starheart - and welcome to the Forum! It seems that you are already receiving plenty of advice - and since I have nothing new to offer, I will just say welcome and best of luck on your journey! Al
 
Back
Top