Hello, I am wondering if anyone has been through issues similar to mine. I really appreciate any feedback. I have no one I can talk to IRL about this because my partner and I are not out to family or any of my acquaintances. I apologize for the length.
My partner and I have been poly for about 10 years, since he discovered the BDSM/Kink community and embraced his queer and kinky identity. Before that we had been in a vanilla, monogamous relationship for 10 years. Although we experimented, I wasn’t as interested in kink and we agreed to open our relationship for play partners and long term sub and dom partners. I intellectually agree with the concept of poly because it seems like basic fairness and if you love your partner, why deny them the potentially great experiences they can have with other people? However, I’ve always struggled emotionally with it and have had a lot of insecurity and jealousy with some (not all) of his partners. Since then, he has had many play partners, doms, and subs, and I haven’t dated or pursued anyone myself. He has had very bad luck with most of his partners, most of whom take advantage of him. He will start out relationships as a dom or sub, but then he ends up becoming a “life coach” for his partners, who want him to fix their addictive behaviors, other broken relationships, etc. His last two partners he supported through ugly divorces (not related to the poly), getting through law school, alcoholism, and depression, and was completely drained.
The past 5 years, I have also been disabled from a back injury and he has had the burden of caring for me through severe chronic pain and depression. I’ve been completely focused on coping with the pain, searching out new doctors and potential treatments over and over (to this day I’ve never gotten a diagnosis), and trying to just keep my job and health benefits. I realize now I’ve been a terrible partner and haven’t fulfilled his sexual or emotional needs during this time. I became just another one of the user partners in his life.
Almost a year ago, my partner started a Tumblr to write erotica. One of the readers contacted him and they started conversing via comments and then moved to WhatsApp and phone calls. This is the first person my partner has had that he has never told me about or negotiated about with me. After a few months, they broke up because the reader saw no future in the relationship (she knew he had a partner and she’s not poly, and she lives on a different continent). The first time I found out about this metamour was when my partner was devastated by the breakup. I was completely blindsided. He said he didn’t tell me about her because he thought it was just a harmless flirtation, they would never meet in person, and he didn’t realize until they broke up how much he actually cared about her. He has never fallen in love with another partner before now. He says she reminds him of himself at that age (she is more than 20 years younger than him) and that they are completely compatible sexually and kink-wise. Also, she showers him with attention and lust and worships him, and he misses getting that from me. He said “anybody else” would have just cheated on me and that this is my fault for neglecting him. I think he *did* cheat on me, emotionally!
The metamour decided she couldn’t live without him and he gladly got back together with her. Still shellshocked, I felt I had no choice but to acquiesce--after all, we *were* poly, and how could I obstruct his happiness if he really loved this person?-- but I had a lot of resentment. My partner told the metamour that I was his primary relationship, and she said she didn’t want to interfere with it, but she didn’t know if she could be poly. She could never “deal” with meeting me or communicating with me, and my partner assured her that everything was fine with me because we were poly and I was fine with their relationship (I wasn't, but at my best times I was trying to be). Thus started about 8 months of her waffling on poly and breaking up with him multiple times a month because “it can never work” but then always getting back together with him. She texted and called him incessantly, including times we were together or having a date, and he refused to set any boundaries. She has a lot of mental illnesses and was stressed out by finals and family drama and sucked up a lot of his time--he would talk to her on the phone for hours every night to make it easier for her to fall asleep, since she has a sleep disorder. He was both completely infatuated and worried about the effect on her mental health if he set any boundaries.
Eventually, the bloom wore off the rose with his metamour as her problems became a huge source of stress and took over his life. He finally “broke up” with her but in order to soften the blow (and maybe leave the option open for us to be an “official” poly family in the future) he said that if she acknowledged my existence, committed to poly, and created a support network to become stable and self-supporting, that maybe poly was an option. They took a few months off and she worked on her life while we worked on our relationship and planned to get therapy. Everyone made progress, and he was much less stressed out.
Then she asked him to come visit her so they could meet “at least once” in person. I told him that the poly ship has sailed for me--I have a lot of anger at both of them and I don’t feel comfortable being in a relationship with someone so unreliable and having to pretend that I was OK with her from the beginning (because if we came clean, he’d have to admit he lied to her). He said that I should be able to suck it up and pretend, because he’d been sacrificing his own happiness for me and this was a trivial ask in comparison. But ultimately, he decided that trying to make the two relationships work is too stressful, that he bungled it from the beginning, and that since she’s leaving to work in Africa anyway and still can’t really even commit to trying poly, that it’s better to let it go. So he’s visiting her overseas to break up with her, but he would still want to try the poly family thing with her if I was OK with it.
I don’t think that they will stay “broken up” (they never have before) and I just don’t know what to do when they inevitably get around to trying to be a poly family. I've lost trust in both of them. Besides being jealous and resentful, I don’t want to be in a poly relationship with someone who has massive problems that need professional support and that my partner isn't qualified to deal with, is only “trying” poly because she worships my partner, and has never shown any interest in even meeting me for the year she's been quasi-poly with my partner.
My partner and I have been poly for about 10 years, since he discovered the BDSM/Kink community and embraced his queer and kinky identity. Before that we had been in a vanilla, monogamous relationship for 10 years. Although we experimented, I wasn’t as interested in kink and we agreed to open our relationship for play partners and long term sub and dom partners. I intellectually agree with the concept of poly because it seems like basic fairness and if you love your partner, why deny them the potentially great experiences they can have with other people? However, I’ve always struggled emotionally with it and have had a lot of insecurity and jealousy with some (not all) of his partners. Since then, he has had many play partners, doms, and subs, and I haven’t dated or pursued anyone myself. He has had very bad luck with most of his partners, most of whom take advantage of him. He will start out relationships as a dom or sub, but then he ends up becoming a “life coach” for his partners, who want him to fix their addictive behaviors, other broken relationships, etc. His last two partners he supported through ugly divorces (not related to the poly), getting through law school, alcoholism, and depression, and was completely drained.
The past 5 years, I have also been disabled from a back injury and he has had the burden of caring for me through severe chronic pain and depression. I’ve been completely focused on coping with the pain, searching out new doctors and potential treatments over and over (to this day I’ve never gotten a diagnosis), and trying to just keep my job and health benefits. I realize now I’ve been a terrible partner and haven’t fulfilled his sexual or emotional needs during this time. I became just another one of the user partners in his life.
Almost a year ago, my partner started a Tumblr to write erotica. One of the readers contacted him and they started conversing via comments and then moved to WhatsApp and phone calls. This is the first person my partner has had that he has never told me about or negotiated about with me. After a few months, they broke up because the reader saw no future in the relationship (she knew he had a partner and she’s not poly, and she lives on a different continent). The first time I found out about this metamour was when my partner was devastated by the breakup. I was completely blindsided. He said he didn’t tell me about her because he thought it was just a harmless flirtation, they would never meet in person, and he didn’t realize until they broke up how much he actually cared about her. He has never fallen in love with another partner before now. He says she reminds him of himself at that age (she is more than 20 years younger than him) and that they are completely compatible sexually and kink-wise. Also, she showers him with attention and lust and worships him, and he misses getting that from me. He said “anybody else” would have just cheated on me and that this is my fault for neglecting him. I think he *did* cheat on me, emotionally!
The metamour decided she couldn’t live without him and he gladly got back together with her. Still shellshocked, I felt I had no choice but to acquiesce--after all, we *were* poly, and how could I obstruct his happiness if he really loved this person?-- but I had a lot of resentment. My partner told the metamour that I was his primary relationship, and she said she didn’t want to interfere with it, but she didn’t know if she could be poly. She could never “deal” with meeting me or communicating with me, and my partner assured her that everything was fine with me because we were poly and I was fine with their relationship (I wasn't, but at my best times I was trying to be). Thus started about 8 months of her waffling on poly and breaking up with him multiple times a month because “it can never work” but then always getting back together with him. She texted and called him incessantly, including times we were together or having a date, and he refused to set any boundaries. She has a lot of mental illnesses and was stressed out by finals and family drama and sucked up a lot of his time--he would talk to her on the phone for hours every night to make it easier for her to fall asleep, since she has a sleep disorder. He was both completely infatuated and worried about the effect on her mental health if he set any boundaries.
Eventually, the bloom wore off the rose with his metamour as her problems became a huge source of stress and took over his life. He finally “broke up” with her but in order to soften the blow (and maybe leave the option open for us to be an “official” poly family in the future) he said that if she acknowledged my existence, committed to poly, and created a support network to become stable and self-supporting, that maybe poly was an option. They took a few months off and she worked on her life while we worked on our relationship and planned to get therapy. Everyone made progress, and he was much less stressed out.
Then she asked him to come visit her so they could meet “at least once” in person. I told him that the poly ship has sailed for me--I have a lot of anger at both of them and I don’t feel comfortable being in a relationship with someone so unreliable and having to pretend that I was OK with her from the beginning (because if we came clean, he’d have to admit he lied to her). He said that I should be able to suck it up and pretend, because he’d been sacrificing his own happiness for me and this was a trivial ask in comparison. But ultimately, he decided that trying to make the two relationships work is too stressful, that he bungled it from the beginning, and that since she’s leaving to work in Africa anyway and still can’t really even commit to trying poly, that it’s better to let it go. So he’s visiting her overseas to break up with her, but he would still want to try the poly family thing with her if I was OK with it.
I don’t think that they will stay “broken up” (they never have before) and I just don’t know what to do when they inevitably get around to trying to be a poly family. I've lost trust in both of them. Besides being jealous and resentful, I don’t want to be in a poly relationship with someone who has massive problems that need professional support and that my partner isn't qualified to deal with, is only “trying” poly because she worships my partner, and has never shown any interest in even meeting me for the year she's been quasi-poly with my partner.
