Mya
Member
Me and my two partners have lived together for a year and a half now. I’ve been with rory for 4.5 years and with Hank for 2.5 years. About a year ago rory developed romantic feelings for Hank, but at the time Hank didn’t feel the same way. They continued as friends. Yesterday Hank told me that he’s started to develop feelings for rory too. I freaked out about this a year ago, and even though I did a lot of processing back then, I guess there was a limit how much I was able to process when the situation didn’t go anywhere because Hank didn’t return rory’s feelings. But now he does and I’m freaking out again. Please help.
My initial feeling is that I don’t want to be in a triad. They’ve said that they don’t want to do anything about their feelings at this point, or at least they want to take it very slow. They both understand it’s a delicate situation. They are not “in a relationship”. Yet. (<- This addition is my brain telling me that it’s only a matter of time, but neither of them has said that.) In the last 5 weeks or so rory has been on sick leave from work, so he’s been home a lot more. This has led to rory and Hank spending more time together and the three of us also spending more time together as a group. I enjoy those times, but at the same time I often crave the kind of intimacy you can only get from one-on-one time. For our entire relationship me and Hank have struggled with our different needs when it comes to the amount of time spent together. As you can see from my signature, I’m dating quite a few people, but even now in this situation, I still want more one-on-one time with Hank than he wants with me. Me and rory have almost always spent enough time together, regardless of our situations. Since our desire to spend time with each other matches well, we’ve been able to arrange that in most situations.
I’m not jealous of rory. I get what I want from him, mostly. I am however jealous of Hank in this situation since I’m already not getting what I want from him: enough time. I’m afraid he’ll start spending a lot of time with rory one-on-one, leaving me on my own in a different room when I don’t want to be left alone. And if that happens, I’m afraid I’ll start treating rory differently because he’s “taking Hank away from me” when I’m already not having enough of his time. I hope I can be more rational than that, but I’m scared. I fully understand that I’d have to face this same challenge if Hank started spending a lot of time with someone new who isn’t my partner, but what makes this worse is the above fear – how this can influence me and rory too.
Triads are unstable with so many moving parts. I’m so scared that this development will ruin our family now that there are more emotionally close relationships on the line affecting the outcome.
But of course I want Hank and rory to be happy. If being with each other makes them happy, that is what they’ll have to do. I just need help getting over my fears so that I can be more supportive of them and whatever happens between them. Right now I just need a lot of reassurance from rory and Hank that they're not running into the sunset together and leaving me behind. They're giving me that and telling me it'll all be fine. But if there is someone out there who has experienced something similar, I would really like to hear from you! And even if you don't have similar experiences, advice is still welcome.
My initial feeling is that I don’t want to be in a triad. They’ve said that they don’t want to do anything about their feelings at this point, or at least they want to take it very slow. They both understand it’s a delicate situation. They are not “in a relationship”. Yet. (<- This addition is my brain telling me that it’s only a matter of time, but neither of them has said that.) In the last 5 weeks or so rory has been on sick leave from work, so he’s been home a lot more. This has led to rory and Hank spending more time together and the three of us also spending more time together as a group. I enjoy those times, but at the same time I often crave the kind of intimacy you can only get from one-on-one time. For our entire relationship me and Hank have struggled with our different needs when it comes to the amount of time spent together. As you can see from my signature, I’m dating quite a few people, but even now in this situation, I still want more one-on-one time with Hank than he wants with me. Me and rory have almost always spent enough time together, regardless of our situations. Since our desire to spend time with each other matches well, we’ve been able to arrange that in most situations.
I’m not jealous of rory. I get what I want from him, mostly. I am however jealous of Hank in this situation since I’m already not getting what I want from him: enough time. I’m afraid he’ll start spending a lot of time with rory one-on-one, leaving me on my own in a different room when I don’t want to be left alone. And if that happens, I’m afraid I’ll start treating rory differently because he’s “taking Hank away from me” when I’m already not having enough of his time. I hope I can be more rational than that, but I’m scared. I fully understand that I’d have to face this same challenge if Hank started spending a lot of time with someone new who isn’t my partner, but what makes this worse is the above fear – how this can influence me and rory too.
Triads are unstable with so many moving parts. I’m so scared that this development will ruin our family now that there are more emotionally close relationships on the line affecting the outcome.
But of course I want Hank and rory to be happy. If being with each other makes them happy, that is what they’ll have to do. I just need help getting over my fears so that I can be more supportive of them and whatever happens between them. Right now I just need a lot of reassurance from rory and Hank that they're not running into the sunset together and leaving me behind. They're giving me that and telling me it'll all be fine. But if there is someone out there who has experienced something similar, I would really like to hear from you! And even if you don't have similar experiences, advice is still welcome.