Closing a traumatic open relationship

T

thephoenix25

New member
Hi All,
This is my first post here so please be gentle. I come here looking for help to understand my emotions better and hopefully get some guidance as to help deal with my circumstances.

A little about my circumstances :
I am 41, my husband is 65, we are gay and have lived together for nearly 20 years. The first 15 years were monogamous (apart from some experimentation in the first year of being together). We moved from England to Asia about 5 years ago which we both enjoyed immensely but during this time my husband's taste in men grew towards men of Asian origin. There were lots of opportunities for him to see men whom he now found attractive and he wanted to act upon these opportunities. He came to me and essentially gave me an ultimatum that if I didn't agree to an open relationship we would have to end our relationship. At the time this hurt a lot, but in the end I reluctantly agreed. He then proceeded to go wild and met with a LOT of other men, he was reckless and brought infections into my home and lied constantly about what he was doing. After about 6 months I couldn't handle it anymore and told him I can't do it anymore. During this time I met with 1 or 2 guys which I found very unsatisfying which added to my thought that this isn't for me. I'm not attracted to Asians so my options were very limited. He promised to stop for the time being and we sat down and constructed a framework of rules by which we could define boundaries. This reduced some of the trust issues but didn't help with the jealousy I was experiencing.

We have since returned to England where all the options are now stacked in my favour. He does not find the men here that attractive and has very limited opportunities to meet men. I on the other hand am lucky to be popular here (as he was in Asia) and the men are to my taste. I have met with about 7 men in the 2 years we've lived in England and I can see it is tearing him up every time I do it, in just the same way it hurt me. Our relationship was on the verge of collapsing when he came to me and proposed the idea of closing the relationship which I immediately agreed to.

It sounds like a cut and dried case, tried it, didn't like it, changed it, case closed.

But...

I am now stunned at how hard I'm finding it to emotionally let go of the men with whom I've built a relationship (of sorts) with. For the record, none of the men I'm close to consider me as a partner or in a relationship with me. It turns out I think in and "open" setting I'm more polyamorous than the one night stand or meaningless sex motivation that my husband has adopted. I truly feel a great sense of loss at the moment for the emotional connections I've developed with these men (2 men other than my husband), even with the knowledge that ultimately a monogamous relationship with my husband is what I want. My husband and I have great communication skills and very well established lines of communication between us. I know I will need to bring this up with my husband, but I don't want to jeopardize the progress we've made in working to build and strengthen our connection again and I definitely don't want to plant seeds of doubt in his mind over my commitment to him or our new status. In the meantime I'm suffering in silence and feel unable to express my feelings on this matter.

I don't get it. I didn't want an open relationship in the beginning, but now it feels as though closing it has taken something dear to me away. I suspect that with time this feeling will fade, but at the moment it's eating me up inside.

Any observations or advice would be gratefully welcomed.
 
In the meantime I'm suffering in silence and feel unable to express my feelings on this matter.

I don't get it. I didn't want an open relationship in the beginning, but now it feels as though closing it has taken something dear to me away. I suspect that with time this feeling will fade, but at the moment it's eating me up inside.
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I'm sorry you struggle. To me it sounds like you do get it. You seem to articulate just fine.

  • At first you didn't want Open, and now Closing (while agreed to and ultimately wanted) means you have to process some letting go/grief things on the way over to that Closed space.
    • You feel a great sense of loss because even though the men you were involved with were not boyfriends, it's still breaking up something. And break ups come with some grief to process.
    • You also learned something new about yourself. Through the Open thing you learned you were capable of polyamory, and while you didn't get to explore that during the Open phase... it means something to you to come upon this realization. So it's like discovering this area about yourself that will now not be explored because you are choosing something else now. So maybe there's this layer of grief for that "what could have been?" thing.
  • You want some support with all that, but hubby isn't the right guy for that right at this minute. So... who is?

It sounds like you know eventually you be where you want to be (Closed, and at peace in heart and mind) but just need some support weathering out the storm on your way over to that place. There's been a lot of life changes recently -- moving countries, changing relationship model, learning new things about yourself, etc.

So you have all this stuff inside to process.

Sounds like you just moved back to England, and maybe not the same place so maybe you still don't have a friend network to rely on to talk about all this stuff?

FWIW... if you are suffering in silence because you cannot talk about your grief process because husband is not the person to share that with right now... would you consider talking to a counselor?

Then you could processs/unload the grieving with them, and limit what you tell husband right now.

I'm not saying to NEVER tell him your full story... just saying postpone the WHEN a bit so you make some space for your self care FIRST.

If he's doing his own load processing right now he might not be be the best listener right now any way.

I love my spouse. We've been together for decades. In our life together there have been times where circumstances made it so we were NOT the right people to process with in the moment. For instance, he had a parent death and I had a close relative death mere weeks from each other. On both sides family of origin was pulling each of us over to that side to help with arrangements and things. It was a very high stress time at our house.

Though normally we are each other's "go to" person? I could not express all my upset, frustrations and things to him because he had his own load to deal with. Same for him in the other direction. He could not unload with me because it would be adding to my stress pile rather than taking away.

Neither of us wanted it to turn into some weird pissing contest like "You think you have it bad with your dead people? MY dead people have...." or "You think you are overloaded? I have ...." Because we were both so frazzled, we had to do our OWN self care first. There was nothing there to be able to give to the spouse if we were bone dry in inside. There was a risk of getting snippy with each other and dinging our own relationship in the middle of the crazy. (There were other compounding issues, but for brevity I'll leave it there. Just a lot of crazy going on all at the same time and both of us pulled in all directions and just had no more to give right then... not even to a spouse.)

People need to express and be heard... but the best listeners are those who aren't going to take things personally or get triggered or whatnot.

I had considered grief counseling for myself to be able to process and unload if friends were not enough, but it turned out that friends were enough. He relied on his brother.

We made an agreement that we could check in, but only like "Cliff Notes." Anything "heavy duty" had to be processed with other people. Conversations became more like "You holding up ok? For myself I'm at ____. For my dead people I'm at ____. For me, I'm gonna do ____. For my dead people, I have to next do _____. That does/does not affect you/our household in this way...."

Later on when things were not so fresh and not so crazy, we were eventually able to process more deeply together.

There are other times in life where we had to do that... love each other, but not super lean on each other just right then because other stuff was flying around. Kinda like "Ok, love you, see you on the other side" in vibe. I think that is ok to do... sometimes even necessary.

I think maybe you have one of those times right now. Eventually you can talk to husband about it -- when all these things are not so fresh and the loads on each of you isn't so weighty.

But you do need to find a safe person/safe in which to express so you can unload and unburden now so the load gets lighter rather than you ending up bottling stuff up.

That's why I suggest thinking about a counselor if in your recent move you do not have new friends/support networks in place yet.

You could also talk here if it helps you to tell you story -- like start a thread in life stories and blogs. Or do a paper journal or other creative outlet.

I hope you feel at least a little better for airing out some.

Hang in there!
Galagirl
 
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What was your agreement? That you'd close and sever all ties with these men? Or just that you'd close? If your husband didn't specifically request that you sever ties with the men, it may be possible that you can maintain a friendship of sorts with one or some of them. It's worth discussing with your husband, imo.
 
Hello thephoenix25,

It sounds like you are really hurting right now. I am hoping that as you interact with people in this thread, we'll give you the emotional support that you need and you'll be able to vent. A counselor would also be something for you to consider.

Life is strange. Sometimes it can throw us a curveball, such as thinking poly is not for you, but then finding out that it is. You and your husband have a dilemma, he wants open when in Asia, you want open when in England. I suppose closing is the only way to solve that dilemma. But that doesn't make it any easier.

I hope you'll be able to get feeling better soon.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
thephoenix25 said:
I don't get it. I didn't want an open relationship in the beginning, but now it feels as though closing it has taken something dear to me away.
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I don't see that as contradictory. It sounds like you didn't/don't want to have an open relationship, but you do want to have a close connection with the friends you made while in one. It's no different than joining a football club and befriending your teammates, realising you don't like football, then wanting to remain friends with some of the other players outside of the game. The friends aren't "football", so rejecting the game doesn't necessarily mean rejecting them.
 
I may be missing something here, but you are not required to agree to your partner choosing to open or close on whim. While you would prefer to settle in a closed relationship, if you aren't in a position to emotionally drop your established relationships, you could negotiate something like "no more new people" while continuing with your existing relationships till you feel able to let them go. Or, if your partner needs to have some form of reassurance, you could set a date - say one month or six months or whatever to give yourself time to disengage.

Of course it will be hard to let go of people you care about because someone else you care about has changed their mind. In that sense, opening is relatively simpler to get agreement on, because it is just the two of you till you open and more people get added.

What is the urgency to cut them off at once?

One thing no one seems to be addressing is that your partner seems to be setting the rules for your relationship which you agree to, even at the cost of your well being. The nature of the problems with your partner is unknown here, but this would worry me beyond open/closed. You clearly need some time to come to terms with this. Why is it that the relationship you are keeping is not able to wait for you to make the transition? You aren't refusing, but you aren't feeling ready immediately either. Fair enough. You are a real person who adapted to opening your relationship on his ultimatum. Now you're a real person faced with some sort of compulsion to immediately drop relationships you have developed because he has changed his mind again. This is not sounding respectful of you. More like yanking you around. You have described other inconsiderate behavior from him after you opened your relationship, including health risks. Now open. Now closed. You aren't refusing, but this is clearly too abrupt for you. Do your feelings not matter?

From your description, I am not able to see what you like about this man. Or why.
 
Hi All,
Apologies for not replying sooner, things have been very volatile here lately.

Firstly, thank you so much for the kind and thoughtful replies, I'm very grateful for you opinions.

GalaGirl Thank you so much for your reply you really helped me put it into perspective, I've made arrangements so I have got a friendly neutral ear I can bend about this and it has given me some breathing space to gather my thoughts, thank you for the advice.

The topic of what to do about those that we'd met while in the open relationship was brought up when we first met to discuss closing it. I brought the topic up and we agreed that we'd like to remain in contact with some, but specifics such as in person or over text only, etc were not fully explored.

Later in the week the specifics came up and we found ourselves in dispute over what "in contact" meant. I had intended for in person, occasional social only coffee or lunch type interaction on a purely friends basis. My husband had thought it would be a text or social media only type interaction.

This has been our sticking point for some days now and any compromise we come up with is always flawed or bias in some way.

I would like to use trust that the other wont step outside the rules. I will have to use trust a lot if we returned to Asia as there a lot of men there he could and probably will bump into, I don't know who they are so I will have to trust him a lot.

He on the other hand feels that if I spend some time with one of the men I used to see, he will feel incredibly jealous and uncomfortable about whether I'm cheating on him. He cannot come along as he now has developed a lot of animosity towards them.

In reply to anamikanon - "From your description, I am not able to see what you like about this man. Or why."

It is true that I paint a bleak picture of my husband in this instance, but I can assure you that in so many other areas of our life we complement each other so perfectly. We do clash on some of the more mundane things such as Movies and Music, but we are an incredibly strong unit and care for each other deeply. I feel that he has snapped in much the way I did in Asia, which is why the urgency for him to get the threat dealt with as quickly as possible. I do understand his stance and to some extent albeit slightly bitterly sympathise with him.

I guess I'm left with the choice :

1) Accept his terms and only ever have contact with my friends over text

2) Stand my ground and risk losing my husband and all the associated fall out that comes from divorce.
 
thephoenix25 said:
He on the other hand feels that if I spend some time with one of the men I used to see, he will feel incredibly jealous and uncomfortable about whether I'm cheating on him.
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Major alarm bells ringing here.

He doesn't trust you to not cheat on him? Why not? Does he have reason to believe you'd cheat on him?

If not, I have to say that this is sounding like a really bad situation you have got yourself into - whether poly or mono. If he doesn't trust you to meet casually and not cheat with ex-lovers, no reason for him to trust you with half the population of the world. Not like you couldn't cheat with a new person if he thinks you are a cheat. Also, if he thinks you are a cheat, why does he want you?

Grounding you to monogamy and controlling your social interactions because he doesn't trust your character is sounding like you are signing on for hell.

I'd disagree with something like this on principle for all sorts of reasons ranging from own self-respect to this being an unhealthy way to relate with someone - unless his concern about you cheating is actually based on some precedent. Still, there will be a point where he has to trust you or let you go but at least he isn't crazy and trying to be abusive/controlling but addressing concerns that have basis.
 
anamikanon said:
Major alarm bells ringing here.

He doesn't trust you to not cheat on him? Why not? Does he have reason to believe you'd cheat on him?
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He has no reason to think I might cheat. In all the time we've been together the only times I've met with other men was always with prior discussion and subsequent consent.
 
Re (from thephoenix25):
"I had intended for in person, occasional social only coffee or lunch type interaction on a purely friends basis."
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That sounds reasonable to me ...
 
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