He slept with someone before we've really started having a poly relationship

C

chamomile

New member
Hello there,
I need someone to talk to. My husband and I were just opening up on the possibility of a poly relationship. In August I talked to him about it for the first time. He was surprised but not antipathetic with the idea. Primarily, I felt like I didn't want to commit myself to having a romantic relation with just one person, to be able to be phisically close with someone without feeling guilty about it. I also thought it would somehow be an enrichment for our relationship and love life.
We then didn't really speak much about the topic for the next two months, just sometimes talked about people we find attractive, but since it hadn't taken on contour yet, we hadn't made any rules or guidelines for our poly relation yet.

Now, he just told me tonight that he slept with a mutual friend of ours' yesterday (while I was ill at my parents' with the kids), and I'm heartbroken and disappointed. Not so much about the fact that he slept with her (even though I can't say that it doesn't bother me at all, either) but mostly because he just went ahead and did it without my knowing. I had kind of thought that we would slowly walk into this, meet somebody else while the partner knows what is going on. I feel like I've been thrown into deep water before I could learn how to swim.

He feels very bad about it now and says he doesn't want to have anything to do with open relationships anymore and that it just happened spontaneously and wasn't planned at all. At first, he also didn't want to tell me about it, he says. I think he could have spent one little thought on me before doing it, and maybe he could have realized that I don't want to be taken by surprise but liked to know beforehand if he's keen on hooking up with a particular person. He also doesn't want to have a relation with her, which makes it even harder for me, because it feels like he just wanted to try it out because he was "allowed" to, not because he was interested in polyamory.

I'm glad they had a good time, yet very jealous at the same time. And disappointed and puzzled, because it was me who introduced the idea of opening our relationship and now he just went ahead and took advantage of me being sick at my parents' and not being able to come home a day earlier as was planned.

It also feels to me as if he's deprived me of the possibility to take further steps with others because I'm thinking it might make him feel as bad as he's made me feel now (even though he says it would be fine).

I'm not sure what I want to hear from you, I just wanted to write this down somewhere.

Thanks for reading.

chamomile
 
Now that I slept on it for a night it feels even worse for me. I've come to the conclusion that I'd probably feel just the same if he'd slept with someone without us two having had this conversation on a more open relationship back then.
If I'd known he was going to hook up with that person beforehand, I still could have said I'd changed my mind if I'd had a bad feeling about it. But I didn't have that chance. I feel totally left out.
 
I don't have any insight to give you, but that seems kinda shitty of him. :/ He scratched an itch and didn't really involve you... Do you know/need to worry about if they were safe?
 
Thanks for your reply, LillyFM. I'd nearly started thinking I'm not allowed to feel that way now, since I was the one who wanted to open the relationship, after all.
Yes, they were safe, at least that he didn't forget about..
 
Welcome Chamomile, I am sorry you had a bad start, but what if he had the same thoughts and feelings? Just for a guy to talk to his wife about it is scary. Admit it a lot of women would say, 'you don't love me, you want to have sex with someone else?'
You opened the door and he jumped in... a little too fast, but he did tell you, not keeping it secret?
My wife and I had this conversation on our first date. Actually she came over and we were going to go out, except we wound up naked and in bed. That was 19 years ago. She started the conversation with I was in a 3some, the guy was an ass, but she was nice and I tried Bi and liked it. That opened the door.
I realized that all my life I had thought about two women, could have related to and loved two women. I had always pushed that though to the side, thinking I was pissed at my other at the time, I was unhappy or unfulfilled.
I think 10X faster than my wife and go to depth, so it appears that I am pushy sometimes.
The biggest thing I have seen with us opening to poly is that communication is so much easier and better. We can talk to each other about anything. After you have been naked and having sex with another person.. what is left? Give it some time and about jealousy. I takes time, we had some small flare-ups in the beginning. We talked about it, realized love and sex can be different. She knows I can love another woman, we had a live in for awhile. She wanted to be told that I loved her in front of my wife, not a problem. My wife knows I can love her and another woman, she just can't figure out how I fell in love with her with her so fast. I had an emotion-little family growing up. I let my emotions out. And my grandmother gave me second sight... I now listen to it. If I had my ex-wife would have been only an ex-gf and not had the chance to screw with my life and our children.
Let poly evolve in your relationship, you may want to think of the other person as a sex aid. I can't tell the number of times we were horny and I let the other guy do the work, because I was tired from work. OK start her motor running I will jump in a bit.
 
I am sorry you hurt. It's understandable to feel hurt in this situation. He jumped the gun. "Talking about Opening" doesn't mean "We are Open now." While good that he told you promptly, it's still cheating on agreements.

I don't know if this helps any

http://felislunae.org/relationships-love/coming-clean/

He feels very bad about it now and says he doesn't want to have anything to do with open relationships anymore and that it just happened spontaneously and wasn't planned at all
Click to expand...

He might feel horrible about it, but pushing away all the yucky feelings and trying to shut it all down is not taking personal responsibility for his behavior choices and for the consequences of his choices and how they affect you.

Has he apologized? Have you forgiven? Have you decided to give opportunity to make amends? What does he have to do to rebuild trust with you and demonstrate self control and ability to plan?

If you guys can heal from this, would you still want to Open and have him as a poly partner? Does he actually have the skills to do it well or is it always going to be like "impulsive loose canon?"

Galagirl
 
Last edited:
Maybe I'm just being cynical and bitchy (I have that tendency sometimes, especially when I have a migraine), but to me him saying he doesn't want anything more to do with being open comes across like "I had my fun, so now I'm going to take away your opportunities."

Communication, as you've probably realized, is the most important part of any open/poly relationship. In my opinion, if he was interested in this other person, it would have been better if he'd talked to you about her beforehand. That might be a boundary you want to set for the future: Talk to each other *before* getting involved with a new person.

It doesn't matter which of you brought up opening the relationship. He did something behind your back. That's dishonest, and kind of a dick move, in my opinion. You have every right to feel the way you feel.
 
I'm not saying there aren't other possibilities. I'm just giving my knee-jerk reaction to him saying he doesn't want to be open *after* he's already fucked someone else. And I did mention I'm feeling cynical and bitchy today.
 
Hi chamomile,

Is it possible your husband misinterpreted what your August talk about poly meant? He did not realize you only meant it as something to think about, he thought you were giving him the go-ahead?

Do you still want to try poly, after what your husband did? Are you inclined to forgive him?

Just some thoughts.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
Thanks for all your responses so far. I've had the whole day to think, to talk things over with a friend who's had open relationships etc. And decided to clear things with my husband first, before I go and spend a few days with someone I would probably end up in bed with.

@TheWind: He didn't have those feelings before I started the poly topic (and we've always been very frank about thoughts and feelings). But yes, he told me straight away - I'm glad at least afterwards he could be open. We do have a strong connection and we just need to find a better way of communicating and dealing with things.

@GalaGirl: Thanks for the link. I'll read it tomorrow.
We figured out he only feels bad because it has made me feel bad and hurt me. So if he's saying now he doesn't want to do anything in that regard anymore what he's actually saying is he doesn't want to do it like that again without communication, because it's hurting everyone.
Yes, he's apologized and I can forgive him. He will have to work on building up trust again, though, he knows that.
And yes, I still want to open and have him as a poly partner. As for skills - I can imagine it all working out with him, if he wants to.

@KC43: He's had his fun, but he's been telling me he's totally fine with me trying out poly in the future while he isn't. So he's not actually taking away opportunities - it just felt like that to me yesterday.
I did know he found her interesting. But just telling the partner who you find interesting so far hasn't been enough to go ahead and have sex with them.
Thanks for your support - you're right, he did it behind my back and it had actually nothing to do with an open relationship. Well now I know what it feels like to be cheated on. But he's only human. I'm not saying this could never happen to me, who knows. I actually would like us to be able to be spontaneous if the situation "is asking for it" and if it turns out to be okay for us at some point in the advanced poly future - after all, being sponatenous is part of what sex is about.

@Kevin: It's possible. I guess we should have said back then that if we consider going further with someone we should have another conversation about things. As I said, we hadn't made any agreements, we just ended up saying we'd like to be open about possibilites (but also about communicating things - which he might have mistaken as communicating afterwards is okay). He really might have thought it was okay and now didn't want to admit it so he wouldn't look stupid.

I still want to try poly, for sure. Now that the first shock has settled I don't feel that bad about things anymore. He's pretty much forgiven already, but the trust issue will probably occur a couple of more times in the future.
 
Thanks, GalaGirl, for that link - it was very helpful to read, also to my husband.
He's been doing a lot of thinking and reading ("More Than Two") the last two days and has a lot more understanding already. We have talked a lot (and not just talked..) and have grown together a lot - it's strange to think it's been only two days since he's told me. It feels like it's been two weeks.
I've realized that it's mostly the trust issue that messed things up, really. I don't feel so bad about him having slept with her now. In fact, it kind of turns me on.
He's gonna meet up with her on Saturday in a public space to talk things over, for neither of us is interested in ending this friendship with her. But it's gonna take longer for me to build up trust in her again, for sure.
As for him, he's surely realized how important trust is and is also doing things to get me put trust in him again - but it will take more time.

Kevin, it turned out today your were completely right - he kind of took it as "Let's just go and see what turns up - it will be fine as long as we're open about it", meaning open as "not conceal it" afterwards.

Oh well, so now after this rather bad start it can only get better, I guess. And I can't believe after how I felt just yesterday morning how I can now be so much more (relatively) at ease with things. Good night, folks :)
 
GalaGirl said:
It sounds like you are going to try to work on communication before trying other Openings. This one was just a mess. Maybe doing some more reading could help?

He jumped the gun -- that's a pitfall.

Other links:

http://www.practicalpolyamory.com/downloadabledocuments.html
http://www.kathylabriola.com/articles
https://www.morethantwo.com
http://openingup.net/resources/free-downloads-from-opening-up/

Galagirl
Click to expand...

Cheers! Looks like I'm gonna do a lot of reading tomorrow.
 
That's wonderful, chamomile, I'm happy that things have improved. Hope they'll continue to do so.
 
I wonder if this is pretty common. The same thing happened to me. I thought we were in the talking about it phase. She thought we had agreed. In the end that part of it was just a small bump in the road.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top