Changing from Primary to Secondary?

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lovinhimloviner

New member
Now that my husband and I are on a good track, and things are looking up, one of the things we are discussing is making our OSOs our primaries.

Have any of you had experience with going from primary to secondary?
 
More information please! It's hard to offer thoughts without a bit more background. No need to go into gory detail, just enough to get a sense of the situation.
 
I agree, I need more info. It sounds more to me like you want to move a secondary to a primary position from your description. Thanks! :)
 
I agree that what you're asking is a bit vague. Has anything changed (and if so, how?) since you wrote this in another thread:

lovinhimloviner said:
At my house we have two couples. My h and I are both in relationships with other people. My biggest issue is time spent with my husband. He, on the other hand, does not like the fact that I love someone else, too. He understands, and tries not to have a double standard, but it is still hard on him. When we had an "open relationship," just sex, he was kind of okay with it, mainly, I think, because I rarely did anything with someone else. But on the other hand, love is harder on him.
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Do you all live together?
 
My husband and I have been married for 9 years and both have OSOs. My OSO John lives with us and is my husband Harlan's best friend. Harlan's OSO Meg doesn't live with us, but it would be nice if she did. She still comes over all the time, just isn't officially living with us. Harlan and I have had some troubles (you can read more on my other posts) and have just recently really started to look at what the problems are.

This is in large part due to Meg, who packed up what she had at the house and left, saying we needed to work out our problems before she went crazy. Since neither one of us wants to lose her from our lives, we started working.

One of the options we are talking about is having our OSOs be our primaries instead. It's not that we don't both love each other very very much, but our OSOs are better suited for us.

I am very scared, because one of my problems the last few months has been not really knowing what my role is in Harlan's life. Now that we are talking about this, I really don't know what to do or how to handle it.

I was just wondering if anyone else had gone from primary to secondary in their relationships
 
nycindie said:
I agree that what you're asking is a bit vague. Has anything changed, and if so, how?
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Harlan has come to terms with the fact that I love them both. It just took him some time to really see that I wasn't trying to betray him or love John more than him. He has worked hard to figure all of his feelings out and is much happier since he has accepted it.
 
It sounds, to me, like this is a case where the labels of primary and secondary don't really work for you all. Why not love/support each other on equal terms, and stop worrying about the positions you have in each other's lives, knowing that there is a place for each other, but all on the same level ground?

Have you broached this topic to your OSOs? If so, what do they want?

The real tricky part to handle, if having all be equal, is any ownership of property and how that will be managed.

lovinhimloviner said:
This is in large part due to Meg, who packed up what she had at the house and left, saying we needed to work out our problems before she went crazy. Since neither one of us wants to lose her from our lives we started working.

One of the options we are talking about is having our OSOs be our primaries instead.
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Ah, so things are still being resolved and this is your thought process while trying to make it all work. Actually, I would think it will take some deeper work on the underlying issues before you get to this point. The other relationships, and how they are managed, will not heal your relationship with your husband. The foundation has to be strengthened, then the OSOs will be seen in a more positive light.

I also think some work done together as a group would be very healing. Perhaps all four of you should see a therapist together so things can be brought up about what is/is not working and the air cleared.
 
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The title or role is really just for my benefit. I need to know where I belong and how to handle everything. I know it seems silly. I am working on that. Harlan and I will never be done trying to make our marriage work for the best. It will always be a work in progress, that's for sure.

I have just today brought up the idea of everyone going to counseling, so we will have to wait and see how it goes. My counselor is knowledgeable of this lifestyle and is a great person.
 
I did, more or less, but for different reasons. I wrote a thread asking essentially the same thing. I think I said: rejecting the primary position. No one at the time had similar experiences. I think you're breaking new ground.
 
If you want your OSOs to "step up" in your life, why does that mean that you and your current primary have to "step down" from one another? Is there a reason you couldn't each do a co-primary thing?
 
lovinhimloviner said:
The title or role is really just for my benefit. I need to know where I belong and how to handle everything. I know it seems silly and I am working on that. My husband and I will never be done trying to make our marriage work for the best. It will always be a work in progress, that's for sure.
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It's not silly at all. Some people, and I'm certainly one of them, have to have a framework, with labels, titles, in order to make sense of what's going in our world. I find labels helpful. I keep in mind that while labels represent reality, they aren't real themselves, but rather a useful shorthand to think about things. They also won't tell you 'how to handle everything.'

It's possible that you and Harlan may be better suited to be less or differently involved with each other, however defined. Your respective OSOs may be better primary relationships for each of you.

However, I caution you about going down this path in one respect. Make sure it's done out of love, for yourself, for your husband, and your OSOs, rather than out of fear or exhaustion. Being with your husband is probably harder than with your OSO. He may also find this to be true with his OSO and you. Working through problems is tiring and frustrating. It might seem easier and solve many problems if you and he changed the nature of your relationship, and this might well be the case. But be cautious and conscious about the intent behind making that change-- out of love and joy, or out of fear and exhaustion. I'm sure you have both, but the question is, which predominates.
 
Harlan and I are going to counseling together for the first time tonight. I will bring up the question of whether or not it is out of love or frustration that we are going down this path. Thank you for your comments. They are helping me to figure things out.
 
dingedheart said:
I did, more or less, but for different reasons. No one at the time had similar experiences. I think you're breaking new ground.
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It really is kind of hard to know how to handle everything. I am the type of person who feels the need to talk about everything, while Harlan and Meg are the opposite. It makes it harder for me to come to terms with everything, because he just wants to hang out and learn to be best friends again. If I bring up the things that are important to me then he says it is too dramatic and will drive him crazy.

I have been a wife for 9 years. I will never be 20-something again and I cannot make my body go back to what it was before I had kids. My hormones and mindset are just different now. I worry that he needs me to be the person I was before to be happy with me.

My OSO John has been with my family for the last 9 years, as well, but just recently in the romantic sense. We are experiencing NRE, but not like Harlan and Meg. I already know everything about John, good and bad, and love him for all of it. He loves me for who I am now too, and that is so very refreshing.

It is hard not to expect my husband to still act like my husband. At the same time, I cannot expect him to have Meg as his primary and still act like my husband. I am hoping tonight's counseling trip will help a little. I know it is a long road, but I love everyone in my family and will do what I can on my part to make things better.
 
lovinhimloviner said:
Harlan and I are going to counseling together for the first time tonight. I will bring up the question of weather or not it is just out of love or frustration that we are going down this path. Thank you for your comments it helps me to figure things out.
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It really doesn't matter what got you to the counselor. When my husband and I started going, it wasn't out of love. At least for me, it was desperation. Truth was, at that point in our marriage, I didn't have a lot of love left. I didn't hate him, but I didn't love him either. Things have changed dramatically since then, and I can honestly say that I do LOVE my husband. Good Luck!
 
SNeacail said:
It really doesn't matter what got you to the counselor. When my husband and I started going, it wasn't out of love, at least for me, it was desperation. Truth was, at that point in our marriage... I didn't hate him, but I didn't love him either. Things have changed dramatically since then and I can honestly say that I do LOVE my husband.
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I know that I love him, but I don't know if we really like each other any more. I know I have changed over the years. That is what happens to people. He claims he is still the same person, but he isn't, of course. I know he doesn't like me for who I am today, but still loves me and claims to still be in love with me. I am not sure if I can truly believe that or not, but I try to.

As a person, the way he lives, and how he sets his priorities, I am not sure if he is someone that I like, either. I know for a fact that I love this man. I think I am still in love with him, but I don't like the person he has become. Or maybe I couldn't see the real person behind the love-blinders before. I am not sure, but I pray that everything works out for the best, whatever that might be.
 
lovinhimloviner said:
I know that I love him, but I don't know if we really like each other any more. I know I have changed over the years. That is what happens to people. He claims he is still the same person, but he isn't, of course. I know he doesn't like me for who I am today, but still loves me, and claims to still be in love with me. I am not sure if I can truly believe that or not, but I try to. As a person, the way he lives and how he sets his priorities, I am not sure if he is someone that I like either. I know for a fact that I love this man. I think I am still in love with him. But I don't really think I like the person he has become. Or maybe I couldn't see the real person behind the love-blinders before. I am not sure...
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You know, that there is a period of time in the beginning of relationships where the hormones and brain chemicals are basically blinding us to who each other "really" are. Not that we don't see a lot of the real person, but it's all shiny and smooth, and even the not-so-nice stuff gets shoved under the couch and ignored because of the good feelings involved. That period can last up to a couple of years, depending on circumstances. It's only after that time when our brains go back to "normal" that we can truly start to see each other and BEGIN to get to know one another.

A lot of people get tricked into thinking that those visions we have of each other in the beginning are the "real" us, and then after that somehow we have changed... and spend a lot of wasted useless time trying to get that first person back, the one that never really existed at all. :eek:

Maybe while you're at the counselor's, instead of trying to see "who you were" and "how you've changed," you both can spend some time figuring out who you are now, and dealing with that. If you don't necessarily like how your husband prioritizes-- this is the perfect time to bring that up (with specifics, of course, and calmly!). A third person is great in helping to sort through the BS and help you two get to the heart of the matter.

And I'm always suspicious of people who say they are they same people they were 10 years ago... as if that's a good thing! :rolleyes:
 
Everything is just always so hard. We have never all sat down together to talk about any of this. We do it in pairs, and then one person says two different things to two different people, or at least they take it a different way. Trying to treat this as 3 separate relationships, when we are all in the same house, is very hard.

I made the mistake of asking Harlan if he really wanted to put the hard work into it that our relationship has to have in order to survive, or if he would prefer to get a divorce. Well, that set him off. He was ready to leave. He swore that was what *I* wanted. It isn't, of course. I wanted to make sure it wasn't what *he* wanted.

Every time we try to talk about stuff, even if it feels like things are getting better to me, it's like he throws his hands in the air, says we never get anywhere besides going backwards, and that talking about it makes him crazy. I don't want him to go crazy.

He loves Meg, and is happier with her than he has been with me all year. I just want to make sure he really wants to work on us, or take the easy way out, make her his primary (already in the works), and just leave me.
 
Last night was, amazing! I thought about a lot of what the counselor was telling me, what the people on the forum I read was saying and changed the way I listened to my husband. I put away the bad feelings and tried to remember I am not always right.

When I opened my self up to what he was saying in stead of how he was saying it, I could really hear what he was saying. We talked for a couple of hours while we sat next to the river. Once I started listening and understanding what he was saying he started doing the same thing.

I really feel like we understand where the other is coming from and we both see where we need to work to make things better. I love my husband and I truly want him to be happy. Not just with his OSO but with me too. I want to be happy with him and now we are actually getting somewhere.
The talked ended in a glorious kiss that took our breath away. I can't wait to see what the future holds for us. All of us.
 
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