Leander
Member
Hi there! 
I'm joining this place because I've come to a kind of crossroads in my relationship(s) and I need to reflect and adjust. Also I think it could be beneficial to me to see how people here think, because polyamory in lifestyle and perspective is not all that common and consequently I feel isolated sometimes.
I consider myself polyamorous in personality (more on that in a sec) and have been in two poly relationships before that came about naturally. They worked so well for me. I met a wonderful women many years ago and am now married to her. She is very much monogamous in experience and mindset. Although she loves the idea of polyamory in theory, she understandably has fears and difficult feelings about it. More significantly, in all the time I've known her we've not met another couple or individual where there was potential. Always its been that someone is interested in one of us exclusively or wants to get playful in ways that are potentially damaging to their existing relationships. Admittedly we haven't tried things like making contact with people who identify as polyamorous. I just thought that something would come about spontaneously, because that's how it did for me in the past.
Recently we ended up in bed with some of my wife's friends after getting drunk. Despite not being our thing (very rough BDSM) it was fun and I adore two of the women involved so was high for days afterwards. However, it (albeit briefly) made my wife feel threatened and dealing with that sparked me to reassess a lot of things.
Something odd about me, which is something I share with my mother and to an extent my father, is that its highly unusual for me to feel jealous or insecure when it comes to love. If love is unrequited or goes badly I'll experience a lot of pain and sadness but that has a certain beauty to it, too. More than that though, I actively love seeing partners finding happiness with others too. While I've always been that way it became more pronounced after I became seriously ill in my twenties. I went through torturous hell for two years and often wished my body would just give up and die. After recovering I found I was capable of far greater love and intimacy than before. What followed was a blitz of intense relationships. While amazing I tended to focus my attention on the most difficult partners because they were the most needy. Ultimately I had to stop doing that because it was so chaotic and exhausting. So, I stopped seeing anyone, moved to a quiet rural area and became a bit of a Buddhist hermit. That was when I met my wife. We were so well suited it was freakish to discover she existed!
Fast forward to today and I have this problem: Despite learning to hide, ignore or condition it well I still develop amorous long lasting feelings very easily (extends to a fondness of people in general). Its actually been getting stronger over the years. If people could glimpse the world from my eyes and saw the extent of it I think they'd be shocked. It means I make good friends easily but I crave more. All this time I've been hoping that the romantic exclusivity I have with my wife could be expanded out to include one or two others somehow. Not going to happen. Part of the trouble is that most men find her threatening. She's ardently feminist, highly intelligent, can come across as belligerent and needs a tender approach since she's had a rough time with men in general, starting with her father. If she wasn't heterosexual it would be simple, because bi and lesbian women go for her all the time.
I feel like I should find ways to use or express my romantic tendencies in some useful way. I spoke to my mother about this, who has had strikingly similar conflicts in her life. She talked about channeling the energy and emotion from (what feels to me like) the unrequited love I live with into shamanism/mysticism, charity work or similar. I've been doing that all along anyway. Can't think of anything else. At least I do have my lovely wife.
Can anyone relate to this at all? Am I just a hopeless crazy person? Did anyone even read this far? Didn't mean to write so much!
I'm joining this place because I've come to a kind of crossroads in my relationship(s) and I need to reflect and adjust. Also I think it could be beneficial to me to see how people here think, because polyamory in lifestyle and perspective is not all that common and consequently I feel isolated sometimes.I consider myself polyamorous in personality (more on that in a sec) and have been in two poly relationships before that came about naturally. They worked so well for me.
I met a wonderful women many years ago and am now married to her. She is very much monogamous in experience and mindset. Although she loves the idea of polyamory in theory, she understandably has fears and difficult feelings about it. More significantly, in all the time I've known her we've not met another couple or individual where there was potential. Always its been that someone is interested in one of us exclusively or wants to get playful in ways that are potentially damaging to their existing relationships. Admittedly we haven't tried things like making contact with people who identify as polyamorous. I just thought that something would come about spontaneously, because that's how it did for me in the past.Recently we ended up in bed with some of my wife's friends after getting drunk. Despite not being our thing (very rough BDSM) it was fun and I adore two of the women involved so was high for days afterwards. However, it (albeit briefly) made my wife feel threatened and dealing with that sparked me to reassess a lot of things.
Something odd about me, which is something I share with my mother and to an extent my father, is that its highly unusual for me to feel jealous or insecure when it comes to love. If love is unrequited or goes badly I'll experience a lot of pain and sadness but that has a certain beauty to it, too. More than that though, I actively love seeing partners finding happiness with others too. While I've always been that way it became more pronounced after I became seriously ill in my twenties. I went through torturous hell for two years and often wished my body would just give up and die. After recovering I found I was capable of far greater love and intimacy than before. What followed was a blitz of intense relationships. While amazing I tended to focus my attention on the most difficult partners because they were the most needy. Ultimately I had to stop doing that because it was so chaotic and exhausting. So, I stopped seeing anyone, moved to a quiet rural area and became a bit of a Buddhist hermit. That was when I met my wife. We were so well suited it was freakish to discover she existed!
Fast forward to today and I have this problem: Despite learning to hide, ignore or condition it well I still develop amorous long lasting feelings very easily (extends to a fondness of people in general). Its actually been getting stronger over the years. If people could glimpse the world from my eyes and saw the extent of it I think they'd be shocked. It means I make good friends easily
but I crave more. All this time I've been hoping that the romantic exclusivity I have with my wife could be expanded out to include one or two others somehow. Not going to happen. Part of the trouble is that most men find her threatening. She's ardently feminist, highly intelligent, can come across as belligerent and needs a tender approach since she's had a rough time with men in general, starting with her father. If she wasn't heterosexual it would be simple, because bi and lesbian women go for her all the time.I feel like I should find ways to use or express my romantic tendencies in some useful way. I spoke to my mother about this, who has had strikingly similar conflicts in her life. She talked about channeling the energy and emotion from (what feels to me like) the unrequited love I live with into shamanism/mysticism, charity work or similar. I've been doing that all along anyway. Can't think of anything else. At least I do have my lovely wife.
Can anyone relate to this at all? Am I just a hopeless crazy person? Did anyone even read this far? Didn't mean to write so much!
