The Needy Partner: Illness and Polyamory

NYCindie, we did talk about my need for space, and now Lucy is much more careful about when she comes over. She actually got a place near us, so there is less of an issue. That part has gotten better.

I feel left out still. Mainly, I don't feel like I am on their wavelength. You know how people develop a culture between them? My "culture" with Heath is barely recognizable now. But the culture between the two of them is very strong, with lots of baby talk and inside jokes. I don't feel like I'm in the middle of that. I'm so generally stressed and unhappy, it's hard to imagine getting into that stuff with them. Maybe it's because I'm unhappy, but I actually find it obnoxious.

We tried date nights with each of the pairs in our triad. I wasn't comfortable with it, but I said it was okay because I felt I ought to. And then I proceeded to freak out a little. :(

How do you know when polyamory is the wrong thing for you?
 
NYCindie, I hope it doesn't come to that. I love Heath beyond words.

Yes, I have told him. He says that I will have to ask more now, rather than him just giving it to me. I guess the problem arises during those times we have invited her to be with us, and I don't think I can ask her to go home so that I can be alone with Heath.

Rude, rude, rude.

Would it be rude of me to ask her to leave, I mean?
 
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Err... I have absolutely no experience with what you're going through, so I probably should resist the urge to comment. But...

I think it's always okay to say, "I don't feel okay at the moment. I need some time and space." That's not a rude thing to say at all. It's respectful. It's about you. It's not pointing the finger at other people. It's fine to say that! And sometimes when you have said that, it can help to not have the discussion straight away about why you're not feeling okay, because you wouldn't be getting the time and space that needed if that discussion were to start.

So, maybe it would help if you could say "Is it okay if we talk further about this in a day or two, perhaps when I'm feeling better?"

How do you know when polyamory is the wrong thing for you?
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I don't really know the answer to that one at all, I'm afraid. It would appear to be the case that you get yourself into the best position you can be in, listen to yourself, be faithful to yourself, and resist the panic button, if you can work out how to. Which may lead back into the time and space issue you're currently struggling with. If you're not getting the time and space you need, I imagine the panic button may appear to be getting closer and closer.
 
Hi Koifish,

First (((hugs)))

It's a tough position you are all in. Not many people have a lot of experience dealing with this type of thing, and therefore everyone stumbles, fumbles, gets confused, hurt, angry, on and on.

I'll try to offer something in case it can help everyone.

When you have someone (a loved one) who is dealing with a serious illness, it's a difficult thing. You feel their pain and want to make it all better. You hurt along with them. You get scared. If it's bad enough, or for a long enough period of time, you often find yourself slipping into a caregiver role.

Now this is all fine and well as a profession, because there isn't that intimate emotional connection. But it's extremely difficult when there is. You don't get to punch out and go home at 5:00 to a "normal" life. Before long, you find yourself in a documented state of what's referred to as "caregiver burnout'. Now you have two sick people.

The only good solution to this involves calling in reinforcements. Heath has kind of done that with Lucy. She's helping with his stress and burnout. But you also need someone. By that I mean you need more than Heath. And Lucy's energy is kind of already mostly used up.

So, who else can you bring in? Do you have any family or really close friends? How about a visiting nurse/caretaker situation? Check with your social service agencies. Often times there are volunteers standing by to help in situations like this. Even if you have to spend a little money, it's worth it (if any way possible) because the toll it will take on everyone, long-term, will far exceed money.

Your situation, it seems, is really beyond polyamory concerns. It's a different issue entirely. The fact that you guys are exploring poly just confuses things. Keep your apples and oranges separate.

I hope things turn around for you soon. Repeat the mantra often "This too will pass," and believe it.

Get some more players on the team.

(((more hugs)))
 
Okay. Things have improved. Heath and I feel a lot closer right now. I believe him a lot more when he says he loves me and I'm important to him. I told him how I felt like he was treating Lucy in a way that he used to treat me, but wasn't anymore. And that he was chronically unhappy with me. And we talked some more.

Then Lucy came over, and was feeling very sad and vulnerable herself, and I felt sort of intensely empathetic and caring towards her, and then I suddenly felt the thing between the three of us to be less threatening. :)

I think Heath does feel like a caretaker sometimes, but probably not in quite the way you imagine. Most people who see me think I'm totally normal. That's not quite true, but I feel well enough (and have acquired enough skills) to seem "normal." But I do have these periodic decompensations, where things get really bad really quick. And I need him badly then.
 
This is good progress. I am happy for you. I hope you still continue to speak up to Heath when you need him. Don't let your empathic nature, and feeling bad for her, get in the way of asking for your alone time with Heath.

Having Lucy there 5 nights a week seems like an awful lot, especially since you are Heath's fiancee, and dealing with an illness. You don't need to put Lucy's needs before your own. Just remember that. I just say this because I keep getting the feeling you would rather let things be all nice and smooth on the surface, rather than have to rock the boat by limiting Lucy's time with Heath. You should give yourself permission to voice your concerns. She should be made to understand that you have needs.

And yes, I think it's a great idea for you also to surround yourself with other loving people in your life who can help with what you need.
 
You are right, NYCindie, I do have a strong tendency to want things to feel smooth. I have sort of given in, in the past, and not spoken up for myself. I'm trying to stand strong now.

Tonight, for example, since Lucy was feeling upset, I said it would be okay for us all to spend time with each other, and it was. But I also insisted that Heath and I be able to work on our wedding planning tomorrow, and that we have an additional night to just relax.

A sticking point with the three of us is that, despite her starting to to date us when we were an established couple, already engaged, she kind of wanted to feel primary from the get go, when that wasn't really possible. She want us each to spend as much time with her as we did with each other.

The fact that we're getting married still bothers her, actually freaks her out. Because of that, there is this weird dance trying to work on the wedding planning (the wedding will be in four months), and also spend five days a week with her, and also not actually speak about the wedding preparations at all in front of her, much less do them in her presence.

Ugh... it's stressful.

Heath has been all too likely to put off wedding prep day after day, week after week, in order to hang out with Lucy, and not alarm her by doing stuff for the wedding in front of her! Something has to give here, because the wedding is coming up fast!! We need to spend more time apart from her if our wedding stuff bugs her. But she's going to wonder what we're doing, and neither of us are much up for lying.
 
Ugh, infuriating!!!

Listen, I did all the planning for my wedding and I know how demanding it is! That kind of organization is time-consuming! There are lots of details and you don't want to let things slide to the last minute.

It seems to me that Lucy is really being unreasonable and very inconsiderate to expect an engaged couple not to discuss wedding plans when it is only a few months away.

I think your fiance is giving her too much say over how you and he conduct your relationship. That is ridiculous. It's a huge drain of your time and energy for her to be there five nights a week with the wedding four months away, if she has no intention of helping, and prevents him from helping you, too! I hate to burst your bubble, I really do, but she sounds very selfish. Your fiance might not realize how much work it is to put a wedding together, but still! He seems to be in a fog.

Have you thought about having your fiance read this thread to see some of the input you've been getting? It mght open his eyes a bit.
 
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I think Lucy always came at this relationship from a point of insecurity. I think this relationship does tend to call up feelings of insecurity. I know it does for me.

She wanted to be polyamorous. She wanted to date a couple. (Unicorn?) Monogamy did not work for her. But she wanted the instant stability and simplicity and security of monogamy too. She instantly wanted all of our time and energy to be involved, the three of us together, without any of us being more "important" than the others. She wanted to know, for sure, that Heath and I would not choose each other over her.

A huge problem early in our relationship was that Heath undermined my belief that I could and should talk to her about how much she was staying at our house. He said that we shouldn't upset her and he would find some way to say it (read: that would be better than my way) that wouldn't upset her. But he never did. He let it go on and on. I was going nuts. Now he does not want to upset her about the wedding, and wants us to avoid talking about it in front of her, since it upsets her!

My fiance and I are not ones to emphasize her current sort of secondary status, but neither does she have primary status just by the nature of things, without any of us deciding it would be so. Not that she couldn't ooch in the primary direction over time.

I need to put my foot down about the wedding. I need to be free to work on it and I need his help. I probably need to talk to her directly about it and explain that doing it this way is a real problem for us and the upcoming wedding. I guess I've been allowing Heath to again dictate the communication with her. Oops.

I don't think, having so far done very little of the planning, that Heath realizes how much work it takes to do this thing. He looked at the list of things yet to do, a gazillion miles long, and said "No problem." And I'm still the one that has to be the bad guy and enforce no-GF-we-have-to-work-on-the-wedding-nights. Argh.
 
I can understand if she is a little insecure about the wedding. I mean, you two getting married might call into question her role in your lives. But not even able to talk about it in front of her? That smacks of a cowgirl to me.

Speaking as someone recently married, my boyfriend was completely supportive of hubby and me. For our part, we reassured him that his role in our lives would not be changed just because of a party, a piece of paper, and two shiny metal rings.

Boyfriend wanted to be at the wedding because it was an important day for hubby and me, and therefore, important to him.
 
Having read all the responses over the last days, and having read the portion that came from your last thread, I see some stuff that I wanted to point out for you take or leave as you wish.

It seems that all of you are pussyfooting around issues and feelings, and not being radically honest about what is going on for you. You all seem to have needs that aren't being met because none of you seem willing to put them on the table!

The needs I see here for all of you are as such (and please correct me if I am wrong):

- You need time with Heath that is not involved with Lucy, and is focused on you.
- You need Heath to be present and engaged in you, and your relationship, so that you can make your own plans and be a strong couple.
- Heath needs time with Lucy and on his own in order to re-energize, feel like he has a life beyond your illness, and a future that is his.
- Heath needs to be a primary to himself.
- Lucy needs to feel like she is part of your relationship together, and that she is needed and wanted in your home and in your lives.

So, if this is the case, is it not possible to sit down and divide up time between all of you? Be perfectly honest that these listed needs are what you require to be happy, and then when something isn't about you, you can can know that it will come around to you at X o'clock tomorrow. That way, time is divided into chunks that are workable and fair. You can feel happiness with your compersion that they are together, and knowing that you will have his undivided attention later, because a balance has been created.

I am not convinced that what you have is a triad, really. It is, in terms of relationship, but not romance. I don't hear of anything that makes me think you and Lucy have an intimate relationship, or are sharing something that doesn't involve Heath. However, Lucy is involved with him in this way, and so are you. Maybe redefining your relationship would help?

I am the hinge of a V, yet the two men that I live with, my partners, are good friends and help each other out. When shit hits the fan in my life, they work together to make things easier for me. One or the other gives up their time with me, looks after our child, takes care of mundane daily-routine stuff. They get together and talk, support each other where I am concerned. We are a triad in relationship, but not romantically. Perhaps this is more fitting to what you are in your dynamic.

This really doesn't seem so much about your illness as perhaps you think. It seems to me like a matter of taking on the situation, not feeling sorry and bad about it, getting on with organizing your time, and being radically honest about what is going on.

I wonder why they can't go to Lucy's house. Why does she always have to be at your place? Can't Heath go to her place for a few hours, come back home and spend a few hours with you, and then later you all spend a few hours together? That right there is nine hours of the day. For another three hours, he could do something on his own while you and Lucy spend time together. That is a whole waking day, 12 hours. Maybe planning it out this obviously for a time will shift things and make a natural balance occur.

In my day, I spend the morning with my boy and PN until I go to work; in the afternoon, after work, I spend time with Mono; then I spend time just with my boy; then with the boy and PN; then (after the kid is in bed) some time with PN; and then time with Mono. The whole day is purposely broken up into these little chunks of time. Somewhere in there, some days, I spend time alone or with others. I spend some of my free time at work connecting with Derby (my gf) and Leo (my non-sexual bf), and I often write on here. Such is the nature of my job, luckily.

I hope this has helped. It's a bit scattered. Take it for what it's worth.
 
So Lucy says she wants a poly lifestyle. Where's her sense of compersion? I'm not saying she wouldn't have some feelings of insecurity, but the idea is to work through them, not avoid discussing anything that triggers insecurity. I'm wondering if you're afraid to set a firm limit with your fiance. Are you afraid he might choose her over you if push came to shove?

It sounds to me that your lovely wedding day isn't going to be so lovely if it can't be talked about, shared, properly planned for, etc. It seems to me Lucy could be given a choice of being around your place and dealing with the wedding planning going on with her there, or staying away more, if it's so upsetting to her.

I think Heath needs to get a backbone on some of this, too, if he really does care about how it's affecting you. Lucy can't make anything happen or not happen in the relationship unless he goes along with it.
 
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Some compersion all around would serve everyone well, but really that doesn't come, in my experience, until everyone's needs are being met to the best of everyone's ability. I hope you get there!
 
I think what we have is working towards a triad. I felt so alienated from the situation for so long that it was difficult to feel at all romantically towards her. She was just part of this thing that made me totally miserable.

We have resolved many of our issues with talking, and accordingly I've felt more relaxed and have gotten closer to her. I liked her and now I'm starting to love her. And I'm really attracted to her too.

We tend to have sex together, rather than in couples, and it's generally very good.

So there's that.

We are pussyfooters extraordinaire. Heath is a very empathic person. He happened to grow up in a culture where there was a lot of caretaking going on, and not much outward conflict permitted. So he's good at reading people and good at soothing people. But he likes things smooth. So we have this open-ended semi-moratorium on speaking about the wedding in front of Lucy.

I asked him how long this would continue and he said that she is feeling sensitive about it right now and we should avoid mentioning it around her. The thing is, I don't remember her ever not being sensitive about it, and I don't see any sort of defined trajectory for her becoming less sensitive.

This sort of drives me nuts. My inclination is to talk to her about it, explain that we've been not talking to her about it, and that it is not working for me, and we need to address her fears in a different way. Heath wants me to check with him before I talk to her about it.

We have assured her that our marriage means nothing with respect to how we feel about her, or the place she holds in our lives. She has trouble with the fact that it means that Heath and I are a couple. She doesn't want to see this evidence, I think, that he and I are so very bound up in one another. But this is wearing blinders. We simply are bound up, the two of us. We are just getting up in front of everyone and saying so.

She is afraid we will leave her, and so, to some degree, we all pretend that each of us has equal status in the relationship.

How do all the secondaries out there do it? How are they okay with not being primary? Again, we treat her well and she is dear to us. We try to attend to all her needs and include her as much as we can. But Heath and I have know each other for half our lives. We fell in love and decided that we wanted to always be together prior to even meeting her.

I hate pussyfooting. Pussyfooting got me three months of a virtual stranger sleeping in Heath's bed five days a week.

While he is steady and uber-sensitive to everyone's needs, Lucy and I are a bit of a handful. We were both abused as kids by our mothers. We both have trouble trusting people (working on it!) and tend to withdraw when things feel emotionally dangerous. When Lucy has needs that aren't being met, she tends to freak out, and conclude that her needs are not possibly going to be met (maybe because her mom didn't meet them), and that she has to withdraw and squish down the feeling of needing something to try to feel normal (and perhaps loveable?) again.

I assume she must also have fears of abandonment, because she's so very afraid of investing in our collective relationship because we might leave her.

So we are hiding this thing that signifies to her that she is on the outside and might get left.

We have had not very good times sometimes because of her issues, and my issues, and Heath wanting to "smooth things."
 
I agree that Lucy not wanting to see or hear anything about the wedding business is a red flag. I can definitely empathize, so I feel confident speaking on this subject. I became friends with O, who was engaged to A. O and I began dating a week before their wedding. We'd been interested in each other for a while, but I'd never done anything polyamorous before.

I helped a lot with their wedding prep and then attended the festivities. It was challenging to begin our relationship while they were getting married. But I'm glad I was at their wedding. It was hard in some ways, but it told me a lot about them, and it was an important day for them.

I wasn't always sure where I fit in, but I did my best to be helpful and figure out a way.

I think it is unrealistic to come into an existing relationship and demand primary status. It doesn't mean the existing relationship is superior; it's just been around longer. I can sympathize with Lucy's feelings about your upcoming wedding, but that's what happens when you're with a couple, especially an engaged one!
 
In regards to how secondaries deal, I suggest doing a search here and finding out. Eventually, the term secondary goes by the wayside, as hierarchies don't seem to have a good shelf life in polyamorous relationships, at least from what I have known, anyway.
 
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