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(Goes back and checks whose post this is.)

May your weeks whiz by as fast as mine seem to!

To GG’s credit, she actually used publishing style and defined it on first usage within the text. But I had to go back and be sure I was right and hadn’t assumed.

It’s September. This time acceleration with aging is really getting out of hand. Anyone else still adjusting to the years starting with “20”? 😂😭

That is a question I ask myself too! One thing I have learned is that I mainly want my partners to be curious about me. I feel like I’m still curious about them, all these years later. And sometimes it feels like they just think they already know me, I’m in the box, and they don’t seem...

Well that all sounds hard. Starting with being cheated on. My first advice: stop worrying about what they’re spending their time doing. Not your circus. It sounds like you’re doing two jobs here. (1) Partner negotiating opening up, and (2) Therapist counseling her about a relationship you...

For me? I wouldn’t want to be waiting around or monitoring success when they didn’t even initiate the program without my kick in the pants. I’d rather be outside the problem, willing to have status shared with me proactively. Getting on with the life I have some control over. I’ve been trying...

Middle school

This seems like semantic differences. Which sometimes matter in the moment about how an ultimatum “feels” and whether it seems like responsibility is being shirked. You’d have to lie outright or by omission, or stonewall, to hide the fact that a partner’s ultimatum is what made you break off...

Misty also chose to continue with Franco when he (apparently) consistently expressed wanting to be primary. I know to walk away from people who “really” want a primary or monogamous relationship with me, but are “willing to try” what I am able to offer. To me, a potential has to see a livable...

As a question specifically about a ND kid, I am not qualified to answer. But for kids in general, and big changes in general, we support kids through family transitions that are hard for them. Give them time and space to process and express. Answer questions as appropriate to age and respect...

Actually I wanted to say something to OP about this, too. I agree with part of what Misty seems to have said (via paraphrase): that having a kid doesn’t mean you can’t be poly. But I disagree that it has “nothing to do” with the kid (for all the above reasons). That she has introduced them makes...

Ah, bittersweet. This sounds good and right, even though it’s hard and sad. Well done, and keep up the good healing work.

My experience with my kids and poly won’t be relevant here. My kids are very neurotypical, and they just grew up with poly being a thing people could do. My very parallel poly partners (other than their own dad) were abstractions to the kids until they met Mitch when I was roundly pregnant with...

I’m sorry your mom is a ____. (I won’t leave the word I typed, but I saved it special for her.) I don’t know what alchemy you employ to give so much light into the world, when you have that bilestorm in place of the haven of loving nurture that a mother should be. Anyway. All the hugs.

Why did your wife have an expectation of finding a consistent partner within a year? Does she not know that people don’t always work out for long term relationships? Where did this expectation come from? Did you not do things she requested and you agreed to? Or was it just never enough, and any...

We hear it a lot around here: moving from monogamy to [any kind of] non-monogamy is and ending of the old relationship and beginning of a new one. So why not NRE all over again? :)

Amaranth, Barley, Corn…

Welcome, Albert Ross. What a refreshingly wholesome introduction and approach you’ve described! I noted some kind and sensible advice you’re already dispensing in the forum. I hope your exploration and learning yield more and more potential and more and more satisfaction for you and Aspen (we...

I think a calm, curious, loving approach will see you through, and I think the possible outcomes include you and Aspen staying together in monogamy, you and Aspen staying together in mono/poly (assuming you would want that), you and Aspen staying together with poly for both, and you and Aspen...