Healing from Infidelity in a Poly Relationship (very long)

[Emmy]

Clearly we can rule out the " move in " as some sort of trigger point.



The narrative: I'm sure it did/ they did feed each other. Also would it be in his personality to take on the victim role ??

If anything, I would say he was more of a champion. Nothing seemed to bother him and he seemed happy to see me happy. He was the guy who made breakfast for all of us in the morning, helped me do all the set up for our parties, even reassured potential partners that he was glad to see me happy. Actually, I was surprised at how quickly he adapted to polyamory.

But now as I'm talking to people, he was deeply unhappy and confiding as much to a few others - all young, female fringe members of my group. That's what drew my former best friend to him. In fact, she was part of a small clique that came from the same high school and we'd had problems early on with a few of them - all high drama types.

When I asked him last night why he didn't just come to me... he said that he didn't feel like he had the right, given that we've always been poly and he couldn't reconcile why he was feeling badly since he is genuinely happy for me and really does like my boyfriend. He takes responsibility for his part, but says that in his lowest moments, which were usually at our parties, my friend gave him a lot of "you deserve better than that" or "I can't see how you can put up with her being affectionate with someone else" which aggravated his emotions. He enjoyed that attention to his feelings that I was oblivious to him needing at all.

With me, he was always happy and looking forward to the next event.

We clearly have a lot of work to do to help him understand his irreplaceable role in my life, to redefine our relationship to one another and with others and to keep the line of communication open.

He swears he does not want to be monogamous and I told him given his desires in the BDSM world I think he should be open to finding someone who shares those desires. I'm relieved because I don't think I could give up my boyfriend nor do I think that would be fair to him. I would be deeply unhappy in a monogamous relationship, which he acknowledges.

We talked about how unproductive it is to complain about your spouse to other people and the effects that can have not only for us but for the people around us.

I asked him to engage with a counselor and he's open to that. If he can't process his emotions or advocate for himself, this is going to happen again. I told him that if it does, and I'm aware and looking for it now, I will absolutely leave. There is no reason to cheat on me because I will consent to him exploring and being in relationships with others. I don't need to meet them, necessarily, but I do want to know the timeline as the relationship progresses and I want them to know that I... exist

I'm still very hurt and confused about what he's done, I don't understand why he didn't come to me first or come clean about things earlier, but I feel better about the prospect of my marriage recovering from this.

 

[kdt26417]

Hi Emmy,

I think it's very generous of you to give your husband a second chance; I don't know if I could do it, given the extent of his dishonesty. I'd think that he could easily continue his affair with my ex-friend, all he'd have to do is take it underground. He's good at lying through his teeth, and he's good at pretending to be content and happy when in reality he's not happy at all. These are not good signs for the future. Technically it's possible that he could turn over a new leaf. But even if he resolved to do so, how long would his resolution last? These are some of the things that would bother me. They probably bother you too, you're just being more generous than I think I could. I know you have kids to consider.

I hope your husband turns over a new leaf, and sticks with it.

Sincerely,
Kevin T.

 

[Ravenscroft]

There is no advising you until you admit to & let go of persistent delusions.

He says that he wants to save our marriage

Has he said yet that he only kept the infidelity secret from you because he didn't want to hurt your feelings?



Liars lie, cheaters cheat. By that, I mean that they will continue to do so even when circumstances appear to change: that's how they avoid being responsible adults. Like roaches: if you see one, there's likely many more that are just better hidden.

That he's so ready to justify his cheating by blaming YOU for finding someone who makes you happy shows severe (likely irreparable) flaws in him. It's HIS failure to not have addressed his poor bruised little ego to you, to seek you out as a trusted friend. It's HIS failure to not go out dating, to not find other stuff to do to fill up his "poly" life, to communicate openly & honestly with you.

He's clearly willing to lie to your face, and stridently -- explicitly dozens of times, implicitly for many months constantly. It's as "nonmonogamous" as any boring monogamous affair. It's NOT polyamory, "ethical" or otherwise.

You can't fix him -- that's garbage. He MIGHT be able to fix himself with lots of professional help.

 

[Emmy]

There is no advising you until you admit to & let go of persistent delusions.

Has he said yet that he only kept the infidelity secret from you because he didn't want to hurt your feelings?



Liars lie, cheaters cheat. By that, I mean that they will continue to do so even when circumstances appear to change: that's how they avoid being responsible adults. Like roaches: if you see one, there's likely many more that are just better hidden.

That he's so ready to justify his cheating by blaming YOU for finding someone who makes you happy shows severe (likely irreparable) flaws in him. It's HIS failure to not have addressed his poor bruised little ego to you, to seek you out as a trusted friend. It's HIS failure to not go out dating, to not find other stuff to do to fill up his "poly" life, to communicate openly & honestly with you.

He's clearly willing to lie to your face, and stridently -- explicitly dozens of times, implicitly for many months constantly. It's as "nonmonogamous" as any boring monogamous affair. It's NOT polyamory, "ethical" or otherwise.

You can't fix him -- that's garbage. He MIGHT be able to fix himself with lots of professional help.

I know I can't fix him.

Much has happened in the past few days. I've had a few moments where I needed to check on his activities and found nothing to be concerned about. He's apologized to his mother - to my mother - to my boyfriend. He's apologized on social media. He takes full responsibility and recognizes that there's no excuse for what he's done to me, repeatedly and intentionally. He's consumed books about infidelity and his attitude has changed quite a bit. He has answered every question I've asked without hesitation.

His relationship with my former friend is over, according to him. He harbored some ideas that maybe in the future something could occur but she's gone full crazy on him, threats and all - and he says the reason she wrote me her horrible email was because he broke it off. She still calls - from other, not-blocked numbers, but he hangs up on her and calls me immediately to let me know. She doesn't contact me at all.

He's out of state at the moment but he calls me every morning to check on how I'm doing, and sometimes I've called him at 2am. He's been receptive and a healer.

My trust in him isn't 100%. It's not even 25%. But, I see contrite and genuine caring that I think we can work with. He knows that if anything else comes out or it happens again he'll be moving in with his mother and we'll be getting a divorce.

And that will be on me.

 

[Ravenscroft]

No.

Absolutelely not.

He gets his shit together, or he doesn't.

He has wilingly drawn benefits from LYING TO YOU.

Repeatedly.

Constantly.

Now, how is he going to come back from that? Let's have some specifics.

Your "best friend" can either continue trying to rope your "partner" (ugh) from you, or she can admit to being a total SHIT who is taking advantage of "polyamory" to rope herself a monogamous mate.

 

[Emmy]

No.

Absolutelely not.

He gets his shit together, or he doesn't.

He has wilingly drawn benefits from LYING TO YOU.

Repeatedly.

Constantly.

Now, how is he going to come back from that? Let's have some specifics.

Your "best friend" can either continue trying to rope your "partner" (ugh) from you, or she can admit to being a total SHIT who is taking advantage of "polyamory" to rope herself a monogamous mate.

She can try, but I highly doubt I wouldn't detect it. Please don't think that I'm not maintaining hypervigilance. I worked for a major news outlet as a researcher. I know how to recover deleted texts and I've found her supposed "private" journal account. I found his secret email account, with all their exchanged photos. I know more about their affair than they think I know. I will know if things resume and neither of them knows all the cards I have in my hand.

I'm done hinging my self-worth on him. Either he does what he says he will do or I will find out and can him. I believe he has earned a second chance. I'm not some stupid wilted flower blindly trusting everything that he says.

With luck, he'll give me no reason to doubt him. He knows the stakes and I'm prepared to deliver consequences for messing up on me again.

I've stumbled plenty up till this point, but it won't happen again - believe me.

- Emmy

 

[JaneQSmythe]

looking back at my life (I'm now 47), I see where I basically treated other women as competition when I was in my teens and twenties; not really seeing them as people. Back then, the old saying "everything's fair in love in war," really WAS par for the course. I had affairs with married men, rationalizing to myself that their wives "deserved" it for not taking care of their spouses. Of course, Karma bit me in the ass eventually.

I just shake my head when I read or hear about younger women who state that don't have many female friends; they get along better with men. There are any number of reasons for the lack of female solidarity at that age, I suppose. I do find it sad. Hopefully, this former friend of yours, in a decade or two, will look back on her behavior and feel shame.

Truly, I feel for you. Be kind to yourself.

This was, to a slightly lesser degree, me - I never had an affair with a married man, but did I did have NSA sex with boys who had girlfriends (and, once, a fiance). My best friends were female but the majority of my "friends" were male (some of whom I was having sex with, others that I wasn't - by my choice not theirs - I was afraid of attachment, on their part).

MrS and I used to have grand debates over this, back in the day. My position was that it was the responsibility of the person IN a relationship to enforce the boundaries of that relationship. So random sex with people who happened to be in a romantic relationship wasn't a problem for me. His position was that if you like someone enough to sleep with them, then you shouldn't encourage them to break their promises.

Looking back from what I know now - I didn't need to actually like someone to be sexually attracted to them, I have the capacity to be a selfish lover - casual/NSA sex is fine with me, no emotional attachment needed. MrS is somewhere on the a-/demi-sexual spectrum. He actually can't fathom having sex with someone that you are attracted to physically without an emotional connection.

Now your case is different because she was supposed to be your bestie - so your ARE in a relationship with her as well, even if it was not sexual/romantic.

Full disclosure: I would find your rules, veto power, etc, totally unacceptable for me...Having rules like that is a guaranteed setup for failure, IMO. I'm curious as to why he felt he needed to hide that relationship. Would you have vetoed it from the start?

For the record, I don't see where she said "veto" in her post.

I don't think I used the words "skin crawls" but rather that I had difficulty concentrating on enjoying it instead of the graphic contents of her email playing over again in my mind.

Actually, you did, (Post 5 in this thread:

...
Another thing that bothers me is that I can't stand for him to touch me right now. I allow it, but sex with him makes my skin crawl...

Liars lie, cheaters cheat.

Yes and No. Serial liars lie, serial cheaters cheat. Some of us make mistakes, recognize them, and atone for our sins.

I was the "cheater" - I fucked up royally - once, in 20 years. (You can read about it in the "Jackassery" portion of my "Journey" blog here.) In my case it was 3 months and not 3 years, and didn't involve penetrative sex.

My MrS managed to forgive me and Dude and things ended up working out - but it wasn't easy for any of us.

I speak on this in my old thread Trust Broken...and Re-Built

 

[Emmy]

Actually, you did,

I didn't say that to him. Context found in preceding posts.

 

[JaneQSmythe]

I didn't say that to him. Context found in preceding posts.

Re-read. Got it.