Metamour relationships

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MrsBrightside

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Tell me your metamour stories, struggles, successes!

What kind of meta relationships do you prefer, BFFs or just on casual acquaintance terms? Have you ever had a meta cross the line/boundary with you in some way, how did you handle it? Have you ever had a meta that you just didn't like or get along with, how do you deal with it while your partner continued to date them? What are some meta 'red flags' for you?
 
ofredandblue said:
Tell me your metamour stories, struggles, successes!

What kind of meta relationships do you prefer, BFFs or just on casual acquaintance terms? Have you ever had a meta cross the line/boundary with you in some way, how did you handle it? Have you ever had a meta that you just didn't like or get along with, how do you deal with it while your partner continued to date them? What are some meta 'red flags' for you?
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I've had 3 metamours with my current partner. The most recent metamour was the shortest relationship of the three. We met, were friendly, but really had nothing in common outside of our shared partner. Her/my partner's relationship fizzled out after a couple months.

I clicked really well with the metamour prior to that. She & I became friends outside of our shared partner quickly... and we eventually ended up in a closed triad. It was a really beautiful picture of how poly can work. She's since moved away.

My first metamour was an acquaintance prior to my dating our shared partner. They'd been dating for awhile. We were friendly until I started dating our partner (with her knowledge and consent.) She had mental health issues and things got crazy quickly. She harassed me on social media, called and text me all hours of the night. It was horrible. I finally ended things with my partner because of the drama...unfortunately, that didn't work and she continued to harass me even after I broke up with him, and still after he broke up with her.

I'm a fan of kitchen table style poly so I'd prefer to know/be friendly with my metamours and have my partners know/be friendly with one another.
 
well my husband isn't poly, but he enjoys sex with others so he has either fwb or fuck buddies. over the years many of his lovers were friends of mine already so of course i liked them and enjoyed fun group outings, sometimes there would be many of us together that had sex with him currently or in the past.

seems that most of the people that he met for hook ups i have either not met or when I did meet didnt really care for. Last summer Nate dated a woman briefly, i had met her at a huge event in town and she didnt like me and while i didnt have any chemistry with her I didnt have issues until nate told me some things that she said that were negative about me.

Another woman that he started sleeping with last fall and had started having sex with again after several months of not talking, I didnt like. it wasn't her fault, it was the fact that nate had started being disrespectful to me when he started seeing her and ignoring my boundaries and that really triggered me because of a cowgirl experience i had with my ex plus the fact that the birth control i was taking was making me nuts. when he started seeing her again I made the effort to meet her (i had previously a few times before they started seeing each other and already determined that she wasn't friends material) because i wanted to get over the hard feelings I had for her. After the outing I decided that I didn't want to hang out with her again, not that there's anything wrong with her but because she isn't the type of person i care for.

Nate met a woman named jane a few years back on meetme and he asked my bestie to get her a job so she moved here and lived with my best friend. the fact that we worked in the same industry and that she lived with my best friend meant that we had a lot of time together. we became good friends and over the years she's spent many many nights with us, we did a lot of group stuff with our kids, and quite honestly she became a best friend to me. she and i were much closer than nate and her. she and I had a friendship and nate and her pretty much only hung out when i invited her along. she's decided she didn't want to be friends with nate but she and i still are.

ultimately if nate met someone and I clicked with them and they wanted to be friends with me that's great. if he met someone I didn't like then i wouldn't care because i would never have to be around them if i didnt choose to. it's up to me the level of involvement i would have with a metamore, i choose who comes into my home and who doesn't
 
Until I started seeing Boots, I'd never had a metamour. My two previous boyfriends weren't polyamorous, and as stated in my signature, Hubby is monogamous. (I'm not calling the boyfriends monogamous; one enjoyed sex with other people but usually stuck to one-time encounters with them, and the other... who the hell knows. He sure doesn't.)

Hubby's been the one with metamours until now. He and I met Guy the same night, and Hubby and Guy considered each other friends even though they were only around each other a couple of times and rarely communicated. Hubby and S2 respected each other, but for some reason S2 tended to set off Hubby's "alpha male" behavior the few times they were together (which only happened three times: the night I introduced them, the day Alt finished cosmetology school, and Country's end-of-year school banquet). Hubby and S2 didn't have any other contact besides those three times.

I've only met my metamour, Glow, once, and that was just a few days ago. But Boots had told each of us quite a bit about each other, and we got along very well. I told her that one of my biggest worries about meeting her had been that she would think I wasn't good enough for Boots (she's helped him through a very rough time and is protective of him), and she said that even if she thought that, she would never interfere in any other relationship any of her partners had unless she thought it was either unhealthy or abusive, and even at that she would only express her opinion and wouldn't try to tell her partner what to do. When I met Boots for lunch yesterday, he said Glow told him she thought I was a good person and liked meeting me, so that's a plus.

I don't anticipate much interaction with Glow and her other partner Shine, but at least I know if it happens, it'll go smoothly. Glow and Shine work hard to minimize drama in their polycule, and they try to make sure those who have contact with each other can get along, if not become actual friends.

I've spoken to Boots and Hubby about them meeting, and they're both okay with the idea, so it's just a matter of setting it up. I think they'll probably get along, but I also know, because of how Hubby is, that they most likely won't have any contact after they meet.
 
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I'm not sure if I have a preference. I do know I like to have some alone time. I still haven't met any of Sprite's guys. I think Elle used me a couple of times to make some guys jealous. Cat prefers to keep us all separate.
 
I'm in a closed V so I just have one metamour, Brother-Husband. We don't have tons and tons in common but we get along pretty well. Sometimes we watch TV together, Californication is our favorite show currently.

In the early years of our V, 2006 to 2008 or so, I struggled with my relationships with both Brother-Husband and Snowbunny. I was paranoid that he (the lawful/legal husband) would veto me, and maybe he thought I would veto him, who knows. Things got better little by little. It helped that I had my own place to live for awhile.
 
I feel like I'd need to be able to talk to my metamour at least. I'm not sure I could do DADT poly without feeling threatened. I'm the least threatened by what I know. And I'd like to be able to talk directly about things that affect us or problems I might have without having to go through my hinge.

Guitarist doesn't have sex buddies, but if he did I'd feel less inclined to want to meet them or have much to do with them.
 
My longest-term metamour is Lora, my partner Jon's ex. I think she has dependent personality disorder, and she was verbally and emotionally abusive to Jon. They broke up earlier this year.

My relationship with her started out hopeful, went downhill, went back uphill after a huge throwdown around Christmas 2013, where she admitted that she'd been being really awful and promised to treat Jon better and start getting to know me (she'd been saying that she wanted to get to know me for months, but admitted that she didn't want to, as she was convinced I was out to get Jon, so had been doing her level best to avoid me while proclaiming to want to be my friend), and then went back downhill again last fall when she started being increasingly abusive, controlling and dependent, ending in Jon breaking up with her. By the time Jon broke up with her, I would only speak to her about factual things (like if we had any toilet paper, or where the kitty litter was - we lived together at the time). We were going to have to cease living together, I'd decided. Had Jon continued to date her, we'd have had no contact for at least six months, probably longer, as she got help for her problems (in theory. even though she's still in therapy, I don't see much in the way of signs of her really admitting to having the levels of problems she has or working on herself. she'd rather blame other people).

I really hope to never have another metamour like her again.

My metamour Jared used to be someone who I dated. I dated him and his wife Issi together for about a year and a half, then (at my behest) Jared and I transitioned to a friendship. Issi and I are still dating. He's super-awesome. We have a great relationship, and we're...honestly, probably we're friends first, metamours second. Issi and I have been friends for years, and Jared and I got to be friends about five years ago, so we were friends before lovers, and we're now just better friends than we were before we dated. If I had more time and energy, I'd love to spend more time with him one on one, hanging out, because he is such a cool guy. I really enjoy the emailing that we do back and forth, and I love seeing him whenever I do see him.

I guess I sort of have a third metamour, my love/friend Aaron's wife. Aaron and I are more than FWB, but less than actual dating partners. We live on opposite sides of the country, and don't get nearly enough time to talk/email/etc (one of those "in a perfect world, we'd be so much closer than we are" situations). Aaron and his wife don't quite have a DADT, but she doesn't really have any interest whatesoever in knowing details about his lovers or knowing them at all, so I don't know her at all. That feels kinda weird to me, and I think that, were he and I closer, it would bother me. But as we're not (and there's little chance we would be closer, at least not for years), it's OK the way it is.
 
What kind of meta relationships do you prefer, BFFs or just on casual acquaintance terms?

I don't have metamours and prefer not to have metamours, but I have had some in the past. I prefer a casual passing aquatintance.

Have you ever had a meta cross the line/boundary with you in some way, how did you handle it?

Oh yes several times and I cut off the relationship with the person I was dating.

Have you ever had a meta that you just didn't like or get along with, how do you deal with it while your partner continued to date them?

Yes I just ignored their existence she was her partners problem not mine.

What are some meta 'red flags' for you?

Telling me what shape my relationship can take and dictating rules and boundaries heck anything that effects me and my relationship is a huge red flag.
 
I thought I would give this thread a bump by sharing my own metamour experience.

Zed and I just began our poly journey back in January. He and Pixie have been together around 4 months now. They fell really hard and fast for each other. It's been wonderful to watch his growth with her and I never want to be anything less than supportive to them.

However, I am quite emotionally reserved and I tend to be very laid back about my time with Zed. Recently, this past Monday, I had a bad day and my usual easygoing demeanor was interrupted by my sudden need for his companionship. I felt very strange about this because I do not like interrupting their relationship and I pride myself in my own independence. Zed, knowing how I am, went and spoke to her on his own to reestablish some boundaries.

The conversation seemed to go quite well because she came by that evening to talk to me and presented me with a gift. A pair of earrings. Beautiful earrings that I would absolutely wear. But it wasn't the earrings that were so special. It is the history behind them. They were made by a very good friend of hers 15 years ago who ended up killing himself about two years later.

She and I bond through her love for him because I also lost a love in my life almost 3 years ago. The gift of these earrings were more than just an apology. They are a token that speaks worlds more than just wardrobe adornment. I couldn't contain myself and immediately started crying. Every part of her gift told me that she understood and I needed nothing else.


The next evening Zed took Pixie and I both out for dinner and I reveled in the compersion. It seemed like Pixie was doing the same because she text me on the way to the restaurant:
"It's so adorable to see him revel in his life."

She and I really enjoyed making him feel special that night and we all ended up co-sleeping considering Dean was out of town on a business trip.


I'm really thankful for my metamour and the level of friendship we seem to have growing before us. I am very glad that Zed has her in his life. :)
 
What kind of meta relationships do you prefer, BFFs or just on casual acquaintance terms?

I prefer it when we are friends, but I don't require it. I do require enough friendliness and civility that we can be polite and cordial to each other in group social situations. The completely separate, never-to-encounter-one-another strategy makes me uncomfortable because I'd like to be cool with all my partners' friends and family members that they actually hang out with; just because sex and/or romance are involved doesn't make NOT getting the opportunity to get to know that person any less weird to me. It probably makes it MORE weird that there be a person in their life that is "off limits" to me somehow.

Have you ever had a meta cross the line/boundary with you in some way, how did you handle it?

The way that I learned the above answer was that I had a meta who had a diametrically opposed viewpoint in that regard, and it caused a lot of tension. She often crossed a line (from my perspective) by assuming that my attempts at reaching out to be friendly were actually being malicious or trying to shove my relationship with our shared partner in her face, and she would act out to our partner. She also tried to limit what (otherwise public) events I could attend, because she didn't like to be reminded of my existence. I handled it by realizing that it was my PARTNER'S problem that he was tolerating this behavior and leaking it onto me, and realizing that while HE was choosing HER, I was choosing HIM and that I could un-choose him at any time to save myself the stress. I decided to do so and basically walked away, and he followed me.


Have you ever had a meta that you just didn't like or get along with, how do you deal with it while your partner continued to date them?

Unless something the meta is doing is directly affecting me (in the previous case, it was that she was trying to limit what events I was "allowed" to attend), I would write it off as "not my problem" and shut the connection with the meta down to "cordial acquaintance" when I need to share space with the meta. If the meta IS doing something that directly affects me, I would tell my partner the problem, give my partner a chance to fix it by addressing the problem with the meta, and if it continued and it was really that big of a deal to me, I would choose to walk away rather than be slowly poisoned.


What are some meta 'red flags' for you?

- Wanting to pretend like I don't exist.
- Throwing a fit if our shared partner does something nice for me. Taking my communications in the most negative possible way they could be construed.
- Refusing to share even a large public space with me.
- Acting happy if they learn I was hurt by something (basically, an overall lack of compassion or empathy).
- Exhibiting body language that is possessive of our shared partner when we are all together (placing themselves between me and the partner, trying to pull partner closer to their direction if partner is in the middle).
- Exhibiting exclusionary conversational tactics (flaunting inside jokes, discussing details of events I am not invited to; i.e., general discourtesy).
- Making negative comments about me to shared partner that are not in the vein of "is this something we can work on?"
- General twisting of the truth to make themselves look like the victim who deserves reparations at my expense.

^ This is not to say that I have never been guilty of any of the above. And it is also not to say that one or two occasional occurrences of the more minor offenses necessarily signify a meta who is always going to be difficult. They are just some things that I have encountered that have made me wary.
 
Ooh, I think this is a great question. Sadly, my metamour experience is fairly abysmal.I love the idea of being friends.
(My version of the story) Instructor was insecure and controlling. Then there was some drama. He and I met for coffee to talk about things. Terrible idea. It was made clear to me he did not value his wife, therefore he certainly didn't value my relationship with her as beneficial, and it was only allowed to go on until he decided otherwise. I ended things with her because of him, which was apparently catalytic. Launched a fight that lasted 6 months and ended in a massive marriage overhaul, that includes me as valued secondary. Happy ending, yes. But I'm still not sitting down with the man for coffee ever again.
On the flip side, I've been getting introduced to her swinger friends, which is a whole group of FB metamours. That's been a fun challenge. They aren't all sure what to make of poly. Or butch lesbians. But I'm winning them over. ;-)
Doubt I'll ever have a metamour from Rocket Scientist. She is welcome to another partner, but unlikely to find one.
 
I guess I broke up with my friends with benefits (now Dom) a few years ago. I had just met someone else who I really hit it off with and my FWB had agreed months before that he would do more initiating of dates, since I was sick of being the only one who initiated. He never did step up. We got back together after he ran into my husband last year at a bar. The D/s stuff started in July of this year.
 
Hm,
With Irishcoffee, the metamors were no problem, we all talked socially and politely but didn't have enough in common to be best friends but we were fine with that.

With Trip, well, that's a work in progress. My life is simpler keeping us seperate because of the fact I do not consider her to be someone I see as potential friend, and not because she's a metamor. We have very little in common and I am a very go getting person, who tends to look at the bright side of things, and she is very negative. Our sense of humours don't match up and she was incredibly rude to me the first few times meeting, so yeah. Not worried or focused about her, she is Trips concern not mine.
 
My metamour relationships so far range from strong irritation to being interested in being friends. My girlfriend (whom my wife is also dating) has multiple romantic relationships, and it seems like so many of them are simply opportunities for people to be dismissive of her. It's extremely irritating to me (and my wife) that she seems to be repeatedly hurt by these people.

There is also a high amount of drama in her life and social circles that simply doesn't exist in mine. It can be baffling at times. Like, "how about everyone stops being fucking children for a minute?" baffling. I'll admit to a little resentment and unease that such drama is infiltrating at least the periphery of my life when my adulthood so far has been spent leaving such drama far behind.

My attitude is almost certainly affected by depression and increasing work stress, of course. Incidentally, despite good poly news and activity in my life, that's why I haven't updated my blog here in forever.

But then on the other side of things, my social interaction with my wife's other girlfriend and said girlfriend's husband has been very pleasant so far. After having them over for an evening of dinner and gaming, I could see myself actually being friendly with both of them. A lot of that may be due to good first impressions plus the fact that I'm far less "involved" on that end since that's my wife's separate relationship.

I would prefer to be civil and at least acknowledge the existence of metamours. It's just hard for me to be gracious when I feel that some of these people are being shitty to someone I care about.
 
So, it depends on how your metamour/s are treating your amour?
 
kdt26417 said:
So, it depends on how your metamour/s are treating your amour?
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Yeah, it's definitely having an affect on how I perceive them. In the end, I can only control myself and how I conduct myself in my relationship with my girlfriend. I try not to worry so much about what my metamours are up to, as it's not my personal business. It does lead to some irritation and exasperation that I try not to let bleed over too heavily into my relationship-related conversations with my girlfriend.

She's in a rough spot, and I want her to feel empowered and valued in her relationships. But that sentiment makes me feel paternalistic. I feel that things are good between her and me, and her metamours aren't fucking with me and our relationship, so I should probably just leave it at that.
 
So, your relationship with the metamours is probably already as good as it's gonna get. Is that right?
 
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