Coming Out...again?

[photosensitive]

I am a poly virgin, new to the forum and new to the lifestyle. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE forgive me if I do or say something that goes against any kind of mores you all have here.

So, last night after delving, once more, into several online resources about poly - I decided to have The Talk with my husband.

See, we have been together 3 years now and we have broached the topic of poly before. I have told him that I wanted to date a woman and allow him the same freedom. But when I broached the topic of me seeing another man - he told me flat out that the thought of it made him sick to his stomach.
And that reaction kind of made me sick to my stomach.

So I dropped the idea of having a boyfriend. I didn't have anyone in mind and I didn't feel it was important at that moment. If he let me have girlfriends, that'd be just fine.

After a little while he even started talking to a woman, hanging out with her after he would get off work. But after only a few weeks (w/ no sexual interaction), he decided that it wasn't for him. He wanted someone to date both of us. Not just him. Oh yes - he is still searching for that mythical creature... I'm doubtful he'll find her.

We continued on a mono path, occasionally bringing up the idea of me finding a girlfriend, kind of on separate pages as far as how the whole "significant other" thing would work.

But last night, last night I realized that I was about two steps away from being more than just friends with one of my friends... Which complicates things. This friend is male. And knows about my husband and my poly tendencies.

Well, not wanting to do anything that could possibly lead to any kind of infidelity on my part or put me in a situation where I'm going to have to lie - I decided to simply tell my husband that when I said I wanted to be poly, I was meaning that I wanted to try having a boyfriend. But I did not tell him about my friend as I didn't want to sound like "well I wanna go fuck this guy" because it's more than that - AND I'm not sure if the friend wants to go there with me. Or if I'm imagining his flirting...

And all of this is thrown into kind of another dimension because my husband is at this very second taking the ASVAB so that he can join the Air Force. And if all goes as planned - sometime soon, he will be gone for a few good months. So I definitely feel that I needed to talk to him - as I said because I don't want to deny my feelings and do something stupid that I would definitely regret while he's away.

So, we talked last night. He said almost nothing. He did reaffirm that the thought of me with another guy was something he wasn't ready to deal with - so I won't be going to into any kind of sexual with anyone else.

Which I'm okay with but at the same time I wish there was a way to make him see that it is NOT because he's not satisfying me sexually and it's NOT because I don't love him any more. I just find that - just like you can love more than one sibling and more than one child, you can love more than one person at a time... And I want to explore that.

I'm assuming he's processing the information I gave him last night and I'm kind of nervous about what he's thinking, as he has a way of taking what I say and understanding it how he wants to and t hen shoving his thoughts in my mouth...if that makes any sense.
As of right now, I'm incredibly nervous about how this is all going to work out yet excited about the possibility (even if it is slim and distant) of a new relationship with my friend. Because there's not much better than awesome friends that become awesome lovers

I've been reading thru the forum so I know there are some excellent advice givers out there I could totally use it! I hope this made sense, like most of the other posters in this group, I'm running thru the gamut of emotions and I might not always be coherent. Feel free to ask me any questions

 

[monaural]

Given the challenging circumstances your husband may be heading for in the military, I think it's going to take a minor miracle for him to turn around and be ok with this right now. He's already going to be dealing with being away from you, and I'd worry this might make him feel even further removed.

Could you be satisfied by taking on a girlfriend instead, while he's gone, if the male lover idea is what really gets him?

As a mono person recently plunged into polydom (by a new poly girlfriend) I can empathize with him, somewhat. Until this relationship, the idea of another guy being with my lover felt primally wrong. Lately, a switch has flipped, and I'm feeling much more secure about it. There's a lot of societal conditioning to chip away at, there.

 

[SayYes]

I don't have much advice other than to say that you're in pretty much exactly the same place that I was when I finally seriously broached the subject with my husband (after years of him knowing I was poly-inclined, but I had always let it drop when he expressed his discomfort instead of really pushing the issue). I ended up finally telling him I really needed him to read some websites and books and to at least seriously consider the possibility rather than just dismissing it. He was also the "sick to my stomach at the thought" type, and now he's probably even more of a poly-advocate than I am, and I have an amazing boyfriend. So, just a little reassurance that it *can* work out that way Good luck!

 

[Quath]

It took me awhile to be comfortablee with the idea of the person i was with going out with another guy. I was way caught up in all the potential bad things that I was blind to anything good. I had to stop myself and realize the good side.

For one, I may like the guy and we could hang out. It would also give my wife time to do some stuff that I don't like to do. Plus I really started to think about compersion and I realized I could be happy for her if she was happy dating another guy.

So my only advise is to see if he can try to think about any positive sides to this.

 

[DavidWebb]

Glad to hear you are willing to give full disclosure to him about what's going on. Rather than just doing it and going down the cheating path. That can't be good.
Is there a rush to move things along? (other than the personal 'I want to experience this' piece)
Seems like you might be able to work at his pace and still eventually get to where you want to be.
-DW

 

[Erato]

I second what monaural said about timing! (But, as a pansexual poly, I want to just mention that 'taking on a girlfriend instead' is not as easy as it sounds. I can't choose who I fall for by gender, honestly. It's not a matter of picking out a pair of jeans, for me. You probably didn't mean it that way but I just felt the need to point that out.)

I've recently brought up the matter of my poly nature to my partner of 1.5 years (his username is Bold, on the forums, if you're curious) and we're working through things slowly together. I, like you, pushed it under the rug since we started dating but it kept bobbing to the surface again so I finally just put it out there again.

He needs a whole lot of extra love, attention and reassurance right now. Mono people think very differently from me, I have come to learn, so there may be a lot of assumptions that he might make about your motivation for wanting poly. If he's going to be away from you physically and out of easy contact via phone/internet/etc then it's not a good time to start a secondary relationship, in my humble opinion.

The stomach turn reaction is also something that my partner experiences so I can relate to that.

Welcome to the forum. :3

 

[MonoVCPHG]

Having 20 years in the military with substantial deployment time, I can say pretty confidently that if he is going away, now is not the time to pursue this in my opinion. When I first got together with Redpepper, I barely focussed on work for months. He would just be commencing his training and this would be his first absence from home. Starting off a career that involves gong away quite often is always hard. Add in the emotions of opening up a relationship and I doubt he will be even focussed enough to succeed.

Even now, I don't think going away for any amount of time would be very healthy for my relationship. Luckily I'm retirement material and so I can stay home until I am done.

 

[SchrodingersCat]

Having 20 years in the military with substantial deployment time, I can say pretty confidently that if he is going away, now is not the time to pursue this in my opinion. When I first got together with Redpepper, I barely focussed on work for months. He would just be commencing his training and this would be his first absence from home. Starting off a career that involves gong away quite often is always hard. Add in the emotions of opening up a relationship and I doubt he will be even focussed enough to succeed.

And it's not like joining the military is any run-of-the-mill out-of-town gig. Hubby being distracted, thinking about you with another man, could potentially get himself or one of his team mates killed. Less drastically, it could get him kicked out of boot camp. Something tells me that would have consequences in your marriage, along the lines of blaming you for bringing this up when he has so much on his plate already.

At the same time, as the wife of a man who works away from home, I know how incredibly lonely that can be, and how nice it sounds to have someone else around during all that free time. But if you're like me, you value your marriage and your husband enough to respect his boundaries and move at a pace he's comfortable with.

Someone else mentioned they'd gotten their husband to at least read some things before outright dismissing the concept. Perhaps that would be an option? Encourage him to read some websites or a book, with no expectation that it will actually change his mind, but just that his decision will at least be informed?

 

[photosensitive]

Wow. Thanks so much for all the advice. i didn't mean to just post and run but the past few days have been crazy otherwise.
And I agree with what quite a few of you said, that it's not the most opportune time - for me to be trying this. And we have an agreement that I won't be acting on anything until he's ready. I know that won't be for a while and that's okay with me. I've been able to deal with my feelings for years now and it just feels good to get them off my chest and know that he knows. I think I can hold on as long as he needs me to. Hopefully I can find him some good literature (and possibly even direct him here if he'll come) so that he can see that, yes, jealousy is controllable and opening up just might be the exact opposite of the catastrophe he might be envisioning.
But thanks for all the support and words of encouragement (and warning). I am really going to take it all to heart and have another discussion with my husband.

 

[rpcrazy]

here's how I see it.

Look(again) inside yourself and if this is what you want. If it is, have (more) talks with your husband about the polyamory idea, why're your comfortable with, why he feels the way he feels about it. Tell your husband who you're hanging out with out. Assure him that you want to focus on you and him(and do it). Continue seeing this guy you are seeing but DON'T DO ANYTHING SEXUAL, and let the NRE face wear off(at least a little bit). Develop your interpersonal relationship in it's purest form. Sex...is distracting. Take this from a newly realized sex addict.

When all is said and done with your hubby out of boot camp, he'll be familiar with why you think the way you do, and you'll be familiar with why he thinks the way he does. Hopefully he'll be more accepting through your ad nauseum talks and then you can bring up that you want to starting dating.

my .2 cents at work. Good luck!

peace & love,
-gabe

 

[photosensitive]

here's how I see it.

Look(again) inside yourself and if this is what you want. If it is, have (more) talks with your husband about the polyamory idea, why're your comfortable with, why he feels the way he feels about it. Tell your husband who you're hanging out with out. Assure him that you want to focus on you and him(and do it). Continue seeing this guy you are seeing but DON'T DO ANYTHING SEXUAL, and let the NRE face wear off(at least a little bit). Develop your interpersonal relationship in it's purest form. Sex...is distracting. Take this from a newly realized sex addict.

This is kind of exactly what I'm doing. I really feel like the next few months are going to bring a lot of changes in the dynamic of our relationship anyway and when I brought up the idea of an open relationship - I did so with assurances that nothing would happen until he got back. I just don't think it's right to introduce someone else into our relationship when we're going off in separate directions and our relationship might not be as strong as it usually is (altho right now we're solid as a damn rock - which is why I thought I'd bring up the topic).
And I know myself well enough to know that in order for this to happen, me and my friend can't do anything sexual - at all - because it's a super slippery slope and I won't abuse my husband's trust.
But thank you for the advice - and good luck with the addiction thing. My brother is struggling with that right now and I know it's such a struggle. ::hugs:: for you