BleedingHeart2
New member
Community, I need your help.
Like so many of you here, I acknowledge the powerful wants and needs about myself and choose to share them with my partner — knowing that only by sharing these truths and working with them, can we have a truly fulfilled life together. But - while, I know that I lie somewhere in the spectrum of desiring openness and sex with more than one, I am new to this, and I kindly, and urgently request your guidance.
After close to a year, with who I will refer to as my “queen”, we are deeply interlocked in love, with real plans to change the world, start a family and more. But - today after fears, frustrations and anxieties around openness have built up and risen to intolerable levels, we’ve found ourself in dire threat of complete collapse.
Tonight we have time set aside for an immensely important talk, a life changing talk and we need your help.
My queen is incredibly fun and enjoys sex parties and has proclivities for some openness, but finds herself being mostly monogamy oriented in our relationship. I find myself further on the side of non-monogamy. While I’ve had genuine compersion in events that include myself, other men and my queen, she’s nearly always had immense triggering reactions to events, or even the thought of possible events that include us and other women.
She doesn’t want to feel this way. She is trying so incredibly hard not to. We’ve deeply talked through these triggered events from a place of compassion, love and understanding and put real guidelines in place to reduce or stop the triggers from occurring again. But the reactions continue. Immense anxiety is crippling her from recurring thoughts of the past, and possible future events. We meditate, we read books, I reassure, she is seeing a therapist to try and work through these fears, we have closed the possibly of openness now and only leave open learning about it — but the discussions are so triggering for her, we are on the absolute brink of collapse.
We have established that I need to have sexual connections with others for me to be truly fulfilled in the long run. I know it’s true, and I feel by not having at least a version of that - we put our possible future marriage at very real threat of collapse. We’ve also discussed how, having this, in a way which we both feel secure and good about, could incredibly strengthen and protect our relationship. It has been intense work to get to this point. She understands this conceptually, but the feelings in her body strongly fight against it. She cannot sleep at night, she can barely work during the day, she is showing physical signs of exhaustion and distress - she feels she is on the verge of a mental breakdown.
I am exhausted as well. Not on the level of my queen, but this is terrifically intense and frustrating as the conversations that we conceptually resolve come up again and again because the fears and anxieties remain. I also feel, if we are to get through this — the things that are established and agreed upon now will become foundations in our relationship and so it is critical that they are based in the full truth, whatever that may be.
After reading articles on polyamory yesterday, I questioned if only non-emotional sporadic sexual connections was in fact enough for me in the long term. I explained calmly that I still feel like this is the case but I can't say for certainty yet that this is true and that I needed to bring it up now so that we can look at it in the light and decide how to proceed.
This destroyed her.
She’s clearly considering leaving. Tonight we will discuss, and the outcome likely decides that. She loves me incredibly, but she doesn’t think she can do this. I am asking her that we learn more and try and see if we arrive somewhere that feels good for us. There are real time constraints at play, we must decide if we are willingly to try. We know if we do, it will take work and time. Time she feels like she doesn’t have if this takes long to figure out.
We request your guidance and support…
- Is it possible for her to overcome this and be actually happy about it given how she is feeling now?
- What can help her to overcome it? What can I do? What should we read? What should we do together?
- How do we handle my admission, that I don’t know enough about open relationships yet to say firmly that unemotional sporadic sexual contact with others is enough to fulfill that need?
- How do I better understand my needs around this, and give my queen the security that I will not evolve into something that is outside of what is acceptable for her after we build a life together.
- In the past, some events with other women and her were very triggering to my queen and there were things I needed to have done different. We talked these through and put strategies in place to protect from them in the future — but haven’t tested them in the real world yet because there’s currently so much fear around this in general. What do we do so she can have trust in me and actually dissipate energy from the past?
- Is there any of you who have experienced this and made it through who might be willing to take us under your wing and discuss further?
Thank you all, sincerely.
Like so many of you here, I acknowledge the powerful wants and needs about myself and choose to share them with my partner — knowing that only by sharing these truths and working with them, can we have a truly fulfilled life together. But - while, I know that I lie somewhere in the spectrum of desiring openness and sex with more than one, I am new to this, and I kindly, and urgently request your guidance.
After close to a year, with who I will refer to as my “queen”, we are deeply interlocked in love, with real plans to change the world, start a family and more. But - today after fears, frustrations and anxieties around openness have built up and risen to intolerable levels, we’ve found ourself in dire threat of complete collapse.
Tonight we have time set aside for an immensely important talk, a life changing talk and we need your help.
My queen is incredibly fun and enjoys sex parties and has proclivities for some openness, but finds herself being mostly monogamy oriented in our relationship. I find myself further on the side of non-monogamy. While I’ve had genuine compersion in events that include myself, other men and my queen, she’s nearly always had immense triggering reactions to events, or even the thought of possible events that include us and other women.
She doesn’t want to feel this way. She is trying so incredibly hard not to. We’ve deeply talked through these triggered events from a place of compassion, love and understanding and put real guidelines in place to reduce or stop the triggers from occurring again. But the reactions continue. Immense anxiety is crippling her from recurring thoughts of the past, and possible future events. We meditate, we read books, I reassure, she is seeing a therapist to try and work through these fears, we have closed the possibly of openness now and only leave open learning about it — but the discussions are so triggering for her, we are on the absolute brink of collapse.
We have established that I need to have sexual connections with others for me to be truly fulfilled in the long run. I know it’s true, and I feel by not having at least a version of that - we put our possible future marriage at very real threat of collapse. We’ve also discussed how, having this, in a way which we both feel secure and good about, could incredibly strengthen and protect our relationship. It has been intense work to get to this point. She understands this conceptually, but the feelings in her body strongly fight against it. She cannot sleep at night, she can barely work during the day, she is showing physical signs of exhaustion and distress - she feels she is on the verge of a mental breakdown.
I am exhausted as well. Not on the level of my queen, but this is terrifically intense and frustrating as the conversations that we conceptually resolve come up again and again because the fears and anxieties remain. I also feel, if we are to get through this — the things that are established and agreed upon now will become foundations in our relationship and so it is critical that they are based in the full truth, whatever that may be.
After reading articles on polyamory yesterday, I questioned if only non-emotional sporadic sexual connections was in fact enough for me in the long term. I explained calmly that I still feel like this is the case but I can't say for certainty yet that this is true and that I needed to bring it up now so that we can look at it in the light and decide how to proceed.
This destroyed her.
She’s clearly considering leaving. Tonight we will discuss, and the outcome likely decides that. She loves me incredibly, but she doesn’t think she can do this. I am asking her that we learn more and try and see if we arrive somewhere that feels good for us. There are real time constraints at play, we must decide if we are willingly to try. We know if we do, it will take work and time. Time she feels like she doesn’t have if this takes long to figure out.
We request your guidance and support…
- Is it possible for her to overcome this and be actually happy about it given how she is feeling now?
- What can help her to overcome it? What can I do? What should we read? What should we do together?
- How do we handle my admission, that I don’t know enough about open relationships yet to say firmly that unemotional sporadic sexual contact with others is enough to fulfill that need?
- How do I better understand my needs around this, and give my queen the security that I will not evolve into something that is outside of what is acceptable for her after we build a life together.
- In the past, some events with other women and her were very triggering to my queen and there were things I needed to have done different. We talked these through and put strategies in place to protect from them in the future — but haven’t tested them in the real world yet because there’s currently so much fear around this in general. What do we do so she can have trust in me and actually dissipate energy from the past?
- Is there any of you who have experienced this and made it through who might be willing to take us under your wing and discuss further?
Thank you all, sincerely.
