a mess

[mikie]

ok so i was asked to join into a marriage back in the summer. The Mrs and Mr approached me together. i just left a long marriage.so im a single female.
i agreed and since then i have felt like its a fight constantly. thr Mrs wont let go and let us have a relationship. she wants to be able to call the shots on anything we do. therefore we do nothing.
thr Mr ans myself have stating the only way we are interested in this is to not have a hierarchy.
when they arent getting along( which is alot lately) she shuts down the whole thing and threatens his and my relationship , basically taking it away. which in turn makes me afraid to let my feelings grow.
i feel like i need to get out of yhe relationship to protect myself. But i have already started to really fall for thr Mr. and don't want to walk away from that.

 

[Ravenscroft]

Hi, & welcome. Sorry that it had to be on such a poor occasion.

You have got caught up in a sort of fake polyamory that seems to be fairly common.

It's NOT POLY because it doesn't have key elements that are necessary to polyamory -- for starters: clear communication, empathy, honesty -- & actually seems set up to prevent those from happening.

It's FAKE because foolish people pull all sorts of self-serving little scams, then say, "hey, that's just polyamory, kid!!" in the expectation that the person they're laying that on knows even less than they do about polyamory.

Your situation looks like a standard script:
-- Fred wants more sex; Ethel isn't interested
-- to stop Fred's whining, Ethel remembers a Facebook post about "open marriage" (alternately, Fred announces he's going to find other women to satisfy his cravings & Ethel needs to curtail that, but I see it less often)
-- rather than let Fred roam around loose (& maybe find someone he'd rather just dump Ethel for), Ethel decides to insert herself into the situation, offering to help Fred rope himself a girlfriend; Fred gleefully takes this at face value, ignoring the underlying assumption of control
-- they spot Joon, & start tag-team love-bombing her with all sorts of high-flown fantasies & Romantic quackings about "partnership" & the like, ferreting out Joon's insecurities & presenting themselves as the ideal solution
-- Ethel soon enough resents Fred for treating Joon as anything more than an infrequent wank-aid &/or resents Joon for expecting to be anything more than an on-call wank-aid
-- to be fair, Fred probably is acting like a giddy schoolboy, likely infatuated with someone for the first time since meeting Ethel AND not burdened with guilt or sneaking around; however, they both probably suck at communication, assuming those skills just magically appear when you click your heels together & say "I'm going to be poly now!!"
-- all three look for someone to blame because that's how they're used to solving problems, when the reality is that ALL THREE are responsible for jumping into a situation they didn't even attempt to examine much less understand, & therefore each has to step up & accept key responsibility in either restarting the relationship correctly, or admitting it was a mistake from the get-go & stepping away
-- Joon needs to accept that she's in the position of breaking up the marriage (albeit with Ethel's initial aid), & ask herself if she has any interest in being in a monogamous relationship with Fred, or maybe she should leave right now
-- Fred needs to ask himself if this foray into "polyamory" was actually just his way of transitioning himself from one monogamous marriage to the next without the inconvenience of being single at any point
-- if Fred & Ethel remain together, they probably ought to avoid doing "fake poly" again, especially if they talk themselves into believing that Joon was "the problem" & they just need "someone better" to fill the role

 

[kdt26417]

Hello mikie,

It sounds like the wife of the marriage is the key problem here, you want to continue your relationship with the husband, but in order to do so, you have to find a way to stay on the wife's good side. However, what if continuing your relationship with the husband is exactly the thing that is putting you on the wife's bad side in the first place? If that's the case, then what you want is two mutually exclusive things at the same time. Not possible.

In any case, to find out why the wife is acting the way she is, you will have to talk to her. And she will have to be willing to be honest with (herself and) you. Otherwise you are stuck playing an endless guessing game. Trying to guess about what you think will make her happy. It would be so much easier if she would just tell you, e.g., "I want you to stop having a relationship with my husband." Then at least you'd know where you stand.

Can you talk to her? Can you trust her to tell you the truth? The answers to those questions will help me to know what further advice I can give you.

Sincerely,
Kevin T.