PhoenixStGeorge
New member
It’s been a while since I’ve been on here. I joined back in January/February when my now-nearly-nine-month-long triadic relationship was new and I had never considered myself polyamorous (just playfully open minded, *wink *wink, perhaps generally non-monogamous). I was enjoying what was happening but trying to find context and vocabulary for this new dimension of my world. I still, btw, consider myself non-monogamous but only polyamorous for our GF, not poly by nature.
Back then, I was sorting through the experience of expanding vague ideas into more articulated ideology (i.e. where I stood on sharing, compersion, etc) in order to either feel more comfortable going forward with my new relationship or decide whether evolving the definition of my marriage would ultimately be unhealthy or unwise for us.
Now we’re nine months into our love. I don’t know how to express, especially succinctly, the beauty of the triad we discovered. None of us has been in a poly relationship before. None of us were looking for one. But the draw of the unbelievable personal connections between our three natures, the combination of somehow actually all falling evenly in love with each other, is irresistible to all of us — anything is possible, but I’m not sure a triad like ours could ever happen to any of us again: a perfectly partnered married couple with a girlfriend who so exceptionally meshes with the various natures/interests/desires of each person in the marriage, which affords us what I think is an insanely rare gem of evenness, where not all angles of, well, us are equal but are somehow even.
Of course, the exponential joy requires exponential work. It’s worth it, but we talking about things like the sustainability of the relationship - making sure it’s additive and not detrimental to our lives. Anyone reading this, I’m sure, is familiar with the temptations of amazing intense relationships and their effect on the responsibilities in the rest of our lives. And because none of us were looking for this, there are a lot of unanticipated elements to our lives, whether an evolution/greater understanding of outside open friendships or the creation of the vee that is now my GF’s world, she has us, her couple (who are also separately her BF and her GF—we spend time as three different couples and as a triad) at one end of the vee, and her long-time other-BF on the other end. (So less shaped like a V and more like a molecular structure: a V with a triangle on the end of one leg.)
[Gosh - this is hard to do without pronouns - I’m going to do my best here but if it’s confusing please just say so kindly and I’ll clarify!]
It’s the ‘outside open friendships’ part that brings me back here now. When I was last hanging out here at good ol' polyamory.com/forum, I was wrapping my brain around the concept/articulation of compersion, and exploring the variety of ways poly ‘ships are carried out via writings here— informing myself on the lifestyle potentials based on the existing culture surrounding the ideology, so I could decide for myself if this was something I wanted to pursue. In the process of all of this articulation, we (intended as the triadic we unless otherwise noted) ended up needing to define a long-standing intimate friendship of my husband’s. His longest, actually. Over two decades. They are BFFs. She was his best [wo]man at our wedding. He and I have a history of on/off play with her(BFF) and her husband(BFFhusband). He(mine) has a history of play with BFF, spanning the spectrum of cheating on people with each other to being parts of each other’s open marriages.
[Let me interject - I said we are not self identified as poly people by nature, and by that I mean our default preference is not poly over mono relationship, and here I reference his and my relationship being open. There is an evolution of our(his+mine) path from monogamous to various degrees of open to current poly triad. So there were times he and I did not play with even her(BFF), also there were times BFF+husband were having sex with my husband+1stWife. I too was at times having sex with my husband+1stWife, but that’s mostly just a tasty tidbit and only pertinent here in that I did not come into this with expectations of monogamy.]
Back to the recent (Feb ’16) articulation of this long standing intimate relationship between my husband and his BFF. The articulation was painful in that it happened in waves of personal revelation to myself, my husband, BFF, and GF, all at different times leading to a great deal of “serious conversation” and a fair bit of confusion. To me, it revealed an intimacy that I had not fully realized always existed between them (mine+BFF). I was put off by being so blind for so long about the intimacy of their “I love you.” They had each compromised my trust through actions unrelated to each other, and this was the icing on the cake. My response was not to limit their relationship, but to remove myself from the sexual intimacy of it (sex and sext) entirely, intolerant of even flirting that involved me or was in any way demonstrative in front of me. (They both love me and were instantly sensitized by my reaction to the point they’d assume any given thing was not ok or not welcome, and I appreciated that but also felt overbearing.) This is differentiated from the emotional intimacy that I had previously been ignorant of and was never a part of so separation wasn’t necessary. (I think they also were ignorant of the fact I was never actually a part of said emotional intimacy- not exclusive, just unaware.)
Also, removing myself from the sex balanced things well so that when mine+BFF were together (rare, long distance geography), elsewhere my GF and I were together, no one was on their own. Eventually this all settled into a space where I was no longer attracted to BFF (there is another conversation that could be had about to what degree I was specifically attracted to her vs open to being intimate with her because she was my only female lover for a long time when I didn’t yet identify as bisexual). I knew she wanted in my husband’s pants, my GF’s, mine, all of ours together, any combination she could get her hands on and that put me off along with the original issues of ignorance and blindness. My trust issue with her was unresolved too. My GF was not comfortable with the nature of their(mine+BFF) relationship either which validated my disillusionment and did not inspire compersion.
Now, many months later, my GF is comfy with their (mine+BFF) relationship, based on inclusivity in the intimate details of their relationship (though as yet undecided on whether she’d ever jump into bed with them/all of us), perhaps even compersive but for my lack of it. My husband’s BFF and I have put effort into clear and honest communication to the point she’s grateful even when my honesty is IMO brutal, and I feel there is no ambiguity in our understanding of each other and our boundaries so future ignorance shouldn’t be a problem on either part - we’re on par with casual friends who know a metric ton about each other over more than a decade. My husband and BFF are flirty and probably sext each other to orgasm a couple times a week, besides all the rest of the talking-every-day-about-all-your-news kind of friendship. My husband has decided he won’t be physically intimate with her until/if/when I am completely 100% compressive for him/them, but has made it clear he hopes I’ll get there because he is definitely interested in continuing their sexual relationship in person (when geography allows). And I…… am not compersive. I want to be, and yet am constantly triggered (unpleasant heart racing kind of trigger) by the idea of their intimacy. I want him to have this relationship he’s always had, that is part of the fabric of him, unchanged, and to not be the wife who says no (after a decade of being nuetral-to-welcoming of it). I want to be ok with something I was once ok with. I recognize that nothing has changed, BFF and their relationship is not a threat to me in any way or detrimental to my marriage...
I feel like I need to stop there, at least for now. What comes next is a bunch of conjecture about feelings I haven’t sorted out yet, and you and I don’t know each other, so that’s maybe not stuff I want to dig into here until I’m sure it’s true. I’m interested in perspectives of all sorts — I know I’ve kind of skipped posing any question, and may have left you feeling unfinished (certainly not my reputation
— I’m thinking someone might respond in a way that helps me language something differently and then I can continue this to fruition in another post…. or something….
Thanks!
Phoe, triadic wife + girlfriend
Back then, I was sorting through the experience of expanding vague ideas into more articulated ideology (i.e. where I stood on sharing, compersion, etc) in order to either feel more comfortable going forward with my new relationship or decide whether evolving the definition of my marriage would ultimately be unhealthy or unwise for us.
Now we’re nine months into our love. I don’t know how to express, especially succinctly, the beauty of the triad we discovered. None of us has been in a poly relationship before. None of us were looking for one. But the draw of the unbelievable personal connections between our three natures, the combination of somehow actually all falling evenly in love with each other, is irresistible to all of us — anything is possible, but I’m not sure a triad like ours could ever happen to any of us again: a perfectly partnered married couple with a girlfriend who so exceptionally meshes with the various natures/interests/desires of each person in the marriage, which affords us what I think is an insanely rare gem of evenness, where not all angles of, well, us are equal but are somehow even.
Of course, the exponential joy requires exponential work. It’s worth it, but we talking about things like the sustainability of the relationship - making sure it’s additive and not detrimental to our lives. Anyone reading this, I’m sure, is familiar with the temptations of amazing intense relationships and their effect on the responsibilities in the rest of our lives. And because none of us were looking for this, there are a lot of unanticipated elements to our lives, whether an evolution/greater understanding of outside open friendships or the creation of the vee that is now my GF’s world, she has us, her couple (who are also separately her BF and her GF—we spend time as three different couples and as a triad) at one end of the vee, and her long-time other-BF on the other end. (So less shaped like a V and more like a molecular structure: a V with a triangle on the end of one leg.)
[Gosh - this is hard to do without pronouns - I’m going to do my best here but if it’s confusing please just say so kindly and I’ll clarify!]
It’s the ‘outside open friendships’ part that brings me back here now. When I was last hanging out here at good ol' polyamory.com/forum, I was wrapping my brain around the concept/articulation of compersion, and exploring the variety of ways poly ‘ships are carried out via writings here— informing myself on the lifestyle potentials based on the existing culture surrounding the ideology, so I could decide for myself if this was something I wanted to pursue. In the process of all of this articulation, we (intended as the triadic we unless otherwise noted) ended up needing to define a long-standing intimate friendship of my husband’s. His longest, actually. Over two decades. They are BFFs. She was his best [wo]man at our wedding. He and I have a history of on/off play with her(BFF) and her husband(BFFhusband). He(mine) has a history of play with BFF, spanning the spectrum of cheating on people with each other to being parts of each other’s open marriages.
[Let me interject - I said we are not self identified as poly people by nature, and by that I mean our default preference is not poly over mono relationship, and here I reference his and my relationship being open. There is an evolution of our(his+mine) path from monogamous to various degrees of open to current poly triad. So there were times he and I did not play with even her(BFF), also there were times BFF+husband were having sex with my husband+1stWife. I too was at times having sex with my husband+1stWife, but that’s mostly just a tasty tidbit and only pertinent here in that I did not come into this with expectations of monogamy.]
Back to the recent (Feb ’16) articulation of this long standing intimate relationship between my husband and his BFF. The articulation was painful in that it happened in waves of personal revelation to myself, my husband, BFF, and GF, all at different times leading to a great deal of “serious conversation” and a fair bit of confusion. To me, it revealed an intimacy that I had not fully realized always existed between them (mine+BFF). I was put off by being so blind for so long about the intimacy of their “I love you.” They had each compromised my trust through actions unrelated to each other, and this was the icing on the cake. My response was not to limit their relationship, but to remove myself from the sexual intimacy of it (sex and sext) entirely, intolerant of even flirting that involved me or was in any way demonstrative in front of me. (They both love me and were instantly sensitized by my reaction to the point they’d assume any given thing was not ok or not welcome, and I appreciated that but also felt overbearing.) This is differentiated from the emotional intimacy that I had previously been ignorant of and was never a part of so separation wasn’t necessary. (I think they also were ignorant of the fact I was never actually a part of said emotional intimacy- not exclusive, just unaware.)
Also, removing myself from the sex balanced things well so that when mine+BFF were together (rare, long distance geography), elsewhere my GF and I were together, no one was on their own. Eventually this all settled into a space where I was no longer attracted to BFF (there is another conversation that could be had about to what degree I was specifically attracted to her vs open to being intimate with her because she was my only female lover for a long time when I didn’t yet identify as bisexual). I knew she wanted in my husband’s pants, my GF’s, mine, all of ours together, any combination she could get her hands on and that put me off along with the original issues of ignorance and blindness. My trust issue with her was unresolved too. My GF was not comfortable with the nature of their(mine+BFF) relationship either which validated my disillusionment and did not inspire compersion.
Now, many months later, my GF is comfy with their (mine+BFF) relationship, based on inclusivity in the intimate details of their relationship (though as yet undecided on whether she’d ever jump into bed with them/all of us), perhaps even compersive but for my lack of it. My husband’s BFF and I have put effort into clear and honest communication to the point she’s grateful even when my honesty is IMO brutal, and I feel there is no ambiguity in our understanding of each other and our boundaries so future ignorance shouldn’t be a problem on either part - we’re on par with casual friends who know a metric ton about each other over more than a decade. My husband and BFF are flirty and probably sext each other to orgasm a couple times a week, besides all the rest of the talking-every-day-about-all-your-news kind of friendship. My husband has decided he won’t be physically intimate with her until/if/when I am completely 100% compressive for him/them, but has made it clear he hopes I’ll get there because he is definitely interested in continuing their sexual relationship in person (when geography allows). And I…… am not compersive. I want to be, and yet am constantly triggered (unpleasant heart racing kind of trigger) by the idea of their intimacy. I want him to have this relationship he’s always had, that is part of the fabric of him, unchanged, and to not be the wife who says no (after a decade of being nuetral-to-welcoming of it). I want to be ok with something I was once ok with. I recognize that nothing has changed, BFF and their relationship is not a threat to me in any way or detrimental to my marriage...
I feel like I need to stop there, at least for now. What comes next is a bunch of conjecture about feelings I haven’t sorted out yet, and you and I don’t know each other, so that’s maybe not stuff I want to dig into here until I’m sure it’s true. I’m interested in perspectives of all sorts — I know I’ve kind of skipped posing any question, and may have left you feeling unfinished (certainly not my reputation
— I’m thinking someone might respond in a way that helps me language something differently and then I can continue this to fruition in another post…. or something….Thanks!
Phoe, triadic wife + girlfriend
