3 years of a turbulent polyam situation, feeling desperate and at a loss

Perhaps this helps you assess.


GG
 
I do not think you are "the bad guy" in this situation, you have tried your best to keep everyone happy. From reading your first post, I gather that most of the problems here have originated between Hub and Bun. From there, perhaps those problems have spread to all four of you. Meanwhile, you are shouldering the blame for everything.

I do not think you are "the failure" in all of this, if anything all four of you share equally in the failures/mishaps as a group. Although if I may say so, from what little I know so far it seems like the greatest failure lies with Bun. She has been particularly difficult to deal with. Hub has perhaps been the second-greatest failure, although at least he is getting therapy and doing something about his issues.

You are styling yourself as "the hinge" in this situation, and while I agree you are *a* hinge, I would point out that Hub is also a hinge. Not to mention every problem that exists in a polycule is not automatically the hinge's fault. It is not your job to fix everything. Three other people here should also be doing their parts.
Honestly, reading this makes me really emotional because it's also pretty much what my therapist has been telling me as well. Thank you for saying this, I appreciate it a lot.

I'm glad that you have joined us in posting. I hope that you feel better for having the opportunity to let that all out. It sounds like you have been trying to hold onto all of the ropes and soothe ruffled feathers for some time now, and are exhausted.
Glad that being seen/validated was cathartic for you. I hope you feel better for additional venting.
Thank you to the both of you as well, and this whole forum for the help you guys have given me. It's very true that I feel as though I had been trying to hold all of the ropes and soothe ruffled feathers, and now I'm at the point I feel I can't anymore

But in general I am not sure you are taking the right approach by telling Bun to work out her issues with Hub by talking to him directly and not involving you. If your husband does something that bothers or hurts your girlfriend, that actually sounds like something YOU need to work out with your husband.

Or, if Bun doesn't have a legitimate complaint about Hub, then YOU need to work that out with Bun.
It's not necessarily good hinge behavior to tell your two partners to work it out between the two of them, when surely the conflict has something to do with you and the dynamics of your relationships with each of them.
I will say though that this is typically the sort of argument that Bun keeps giving to me (and that her support network keeps telling her), and it confuses me looking at what everyone else here has said. I certainly have tried my hardest to discourage and be brave against bad behavior these whole 3 years, and I never shyed away from having to be confrontational with Hub or even Bun if I needed to be (though, minor edit, I was more afraid to do so with Bun for fear of upsetting her, and was often not as rigid as I was with Hub). However, I was the only one doing so. I was the only one initiating discussions to happen because otherwise they wouldn't, despite the fact it was clear to all we had major problems in need of working out. And then all of the below that I said in reply to Evie.
I do agree with that to a degree too, but sometimes some examples of issues often came down to even one of them just... having a problem with how the other worded something they said. Which is something that is not anything I can do or help with-- the only person that can give insight into what they mean is the one that said it, and I often tried to express this but it wasn't really heard, if that makes sense. I can't justify or explain someone's reasons for them, but many times I was made to feel that I had to, and this happened a lot. This is typically what led to misunderstandings a lot, or sometimes Hub or Bun jumping to conclusions about something the other said without actually checking with the other what they truly meant and seeking that answer elsewhere.

I think now, the reason I keep getting frustrated and suffering deeply is because of that lack of responsibility, when it's been expected from me and Hub from the start. It's just not clicking that her actions have also played a part in this all, and I'm drained and exhausted
So it sort of leaves me a bit confused in the end
 
Perhaps this helps you assess.


GG
I'll definitely give this a look through! Thank you so much for your help and thoughts
 
So many younger people get onto these Discords these days and create these friend groups that feel so tight and so important. They can even ignore actual people in their own area that they love in favor of someone who lives in Morocco or Japan or something. The well-being of someone thousands of miles away becomes so important. And with the immediately available phone screens, people can come to feel everything is a kind of emergency and needs to be dealt with right now!

But like Bobbi said, these servers are really a terrible way to communicate. People behind a screen can, even when trying to be "good," dash off inappropriate messages, or get in cliques, or gang up on someone, and then there might be someone who gets bullied, and they'll go and start their own Discord, people take sides, and others will beg them to come back, trolls will be snide and hateful and hurtful and need to be dealt with, on and on, ad infinitum, ad absurdum. Lots of times people who are very young, with next to no social skills, pretty much live on their Discords.

Your long-distance partner Bun seems so real to you. She is a real person. But you aren't dating her in any real sense. Chatting with her from behind a screen is completely different from actually dating in real human space. She might seem completely different in person. Maybe not right away, but if you started living together, or nearby, she might be even harder to get along with than she is now!

I have a younger family member who has started all three of her serious relationships online. Then she's impulsively moved to live with them (individually, over the course of 15 years or so). Each and every time, after a year or a bit longer, the relationships have gone downhill. The partners have turned abusive.

I've begged her to just date locally. She's in her late 30s now. She is still on these Discords with friend groups from all over the globe, and there is still the gossip, the "emergencies," the shifting loyalties, people who self-harm and cause a fuss, the ignoring of real human spaces in her own home or town or state. She has lived far from home in the eastern US, flying off to the American Southwest, the deep South, and a European country. She also fell in love more recently with a person who claimed to be in college, but was really in high school!

Ugh. I am just so jaded about this whole kind of thing.

Back to you. Bun never needs to move or live with you or Hub. Fox doesn't need to move or live with Hub or you or Bun. Anyone who wants to can move NEAR you or Hub, and get a place of their own, and start by dating normally, each person having their own space, their own bed, etc., just dating a couple days a week for a year or two, to see how people really are in real life (not online, and not as a romantic out of town guest on their best behavior). Co-primary status needs to be earned. You can't just be online partners for X amount of months or years and get to be a co-primary. That may seem harsh to a person like Bun, but it's just the way it is.
 
Hi Poltergeist,

You have noticed that there is some disagreement amongst the various members here about how you should handle things. You are getting conflicting advice. Some members are saying you should insert yourself between Hub and Bun, while others are saying you should tell Hub and Bun to work things out between each other. At this time I am not going to try to argue for either point of view. Instead, I issue you a challenge to study the various points of view, and decide which point of view is appropriate for your situation. You are the one that is in that situation, so the final word on which advice you will follow should be yours.

Regards,
Kevin T.
 
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