Feeling cold and alone
Just got back from therapy with Ponytail. It was awful. It was a really difficult, painful session. We talked about how Ponytail still feels like he is in so much pain and how that's not what either of us wants. The session culminated in Ponytail saying, very calmly and definitively, "I'm not poly. I can't be in a relationship with you if you are poly. I cannot be in a relationship with you if it is more than you, me, Glasses, and the girls. I cannot be in a relationship with you if you are in a relationship with Whiskers."
Our therapist asked me if being in a relationship with only Glasses and Ponytail was something I could do. I said it wasn't.
Our therapist started talking about how this isn't a failed relationship, we have just reached a fundamental incompatibility. He compared it to one person wanting kids and the other not.....to one person wanting to live in California and the other wanting to live in Minnesota, etc. That ultimately, if there isn't room for compromise, then breaking up is what happens and it doesn't make us failures, it just...is.
I was crying softly and nodding as our therapist talked. Then Ponytail said, "Well, I don't consider us broken up or anything."
I must have given him the craziest, "WTF" face ever. I was like, "Uh, you just said unequivocally that you can't be with me if I am poly and [our therapist] just asked me if I was willing to not be poly and I said no. So....." And Ponytail said, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I want to break up." Our therapist said, "Ponytail, what you have here is irreconcilable differences. You've said you can't be with her unless she isn't poly and she's saying she's poly. Therefore, you can't be with her."
Ponytail was still confused as to why we were breaking up and (of course) it was the end of our session and we had to leave.
We cried in the parking lot. And went our separate ways. I'm more confused than ever.