feeling secure about remote primary cohabitating with other partner

[zigzag55]

building security around remote primary cohabitating with other partner

Hello I was living as "the other partner" in a DADT relationship that was in the process of winding down, in the same city as my partner. When my partner's DADT primary relationship ended, we decided to become primary partners in a communicative poly relationship. This coincided with my move to a foreign country, so we are now long-distance while building the foundations for this next phase of our relationship.

This is the first serious attempt at building a communicative poly relationship for both of us, and we are both reading "The Ethical Slut" together as we continue to forge our foundation, and we're learning a lot right now. The current plan is for my partner to move here in about 3 months from now, so we can live together and build a life of traveling and exploration. We have strong future goals of having kids together, and all sorts of nice hopes. I'm head-over-heels in love, and have never felt so strongly toward another person. I'm really excited about this prospective future.

Recently, my partner moved in with a mutual friend of ours (who is also poly, and more experienced than both of us with this) where they sleep in the same bed and snuggle frequently. My partner is generally not super sexual, but has strong snuggling needs, and I feel really good that my partner is having those needs fulfilled.

My partner recently told me that they have been talking about the possibility of escalating their relationship. I felt concerned, despite previously feeling OK with the theoretical possibility of them being sexual on a whim. My first thought was "I would feel so much less stressed out about this if they were not sleeping in the same bed every night."

This has brought up a number of issues around trust and intention for us, and we have been working through these in our limited time. My partner has a very busy schedule with work and an overloaded in-person social life. It has been a challenge to communicate as much as I would like. My partner is also dealing with a lot of stress due to family issues, and I want to be extremely considerate of the crazy life juggling that they have to deal with right now. I don't want to add unnecessary stress. I want my partner to have deep in-person experiences with a variety of people to keep feeling as positive as possible. This is important for my partner to thrive.

They both have been explicit to me that they want to move at a pace that I am comfortable with. This makes me feel so much better about this situation. I deeply appreciate this. My current goal is to feel safer, so that I can give them some green lights to escalate.

I am currently a bit jealous when I think about them having sex frequently, while spending every night together for the next 3 months. I have a much higher sex drive than my partner, and this is something that I am hoping to resolve by having sex with other people soon, but having just moved to a foreign country, I have not met anyone that particularly interests me yet. Okcupid has a lot of nice matches in my area, and I've met up with a couple people through this, but I still haven't found a connection that satisfies this urge of mine.

I also want to maintain some sort of intimate connection with my partner while being long-distance, but they don't feel the same urge to have skype sex or trade sexy selfies as I do. I worry that I will feel left out of my partner's life during this time. I am having a lot of emotional needs met with the way that we communicate, but there is currently a lack of sexual intimacy in my life, which is causing this stress. Three months is not the longest time, but it's certainly not insignificant. It has been one month since we last saw each other in-person, and will meet up about once per month until we live together, so I don't have to wait 3 months to be sexually intimate in-person again with my partner, but I am currently terrified of feeling left-out.

What are some ways I can feel safer about this? I would greatly appreciate any insights!

Thank you for reading

 

[Ravenscroft]

Exercise, distraction, stress-reduction techniques. These will help you avoid self-talking yourself into panic or jealousy. (Maybe multiple readings of the relevant TES chapters will help.)

Mistakes are inevitable. Many people new to the practice of polyamory are deathly afraid of making mistakes (which I suspect is a holdover from monogamist "once & done, then forever" thinking). It helps greatly to learn to trust that everyone in your extended relationship will accept honest error, & work together to straighten things out.

 

[kdt26417]

Hi zigzag55,

Try the following ...

Jealousy, Envy, Insecurity, etc.
How do you achieve compersion?

Jealousy and Insecurity
The Theory of Jealousy Management
The Practice of Jealousy Management

Jealousy and the Poly Family
Kathy Labriola: Unmasking the Green-Eyed Monster
Kathy Labriola: "First Aid" for Jealousy
Brené Brown: the Power of Vulnerability

... especially the last one (Brené Brown's)

Hang in there.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.

 

[Magdlyn]

It sounds like you miss your partner a lot! I hope you can keep your eyes on the prize (them moving to live with you). Be confident in your own worth. Acting needy and clingy isn't attractive. You may feel you have a "need" for sexy Skype and texts, but it's your partner's choice to meet your needs, not their duty.

What is your fear about them having "frequent sex" with their roommate? You already said your partner has a "lower" sex drive. Do you think the NRE (new relationship energy) with their roommate will cause them to have daily sex? Why is this threatening to you? Are you afraid they will become too bonded to this person through the sex, cuddles, daily contact, and change their mind about moving to be with you?

I'm sure you are lonely, and also envious of your partner having a cuddle buddy/possible sex partner, while you have not yet met someone you want to share intimacy with.

Do you see that your partner is a autonomous individual? They don't need your permission, or "green light" to do what they want. They are both being polite though (unless they are lying and already fucking...) I'd recommend consenting to them doing any or all sexual activities they desire. That's polyamory! See my sig.

Deal with your fears, envy, jealousy and loneliness the best you can for the next few months. That is your job, it was your choice. Go out, be active, find ways to meet friends. Limiting what your partner is "allowed" to do won't really help. If you trust them to carry through with your shared plans, all will be well.

 

[zigzag55]

Thank you for the replies!!! In the few days since I posted this question, I've been able to build up a lot more comfort around their interactions, and feel like the end is in sight when I can feel comfortable about them moving forward.

I appreciate your directness, Magdlyn, and your response is helping me refine my intended personal growth path.

Acting needy and clingy isn't attractive. You may feel you have a "need" for sexy Skype and texts, but it's your partner's choice to meet your needs, not their duty.

Yeah, the shift to long-distance has definitely changed the kind of energy that we give each other. This has left me feeling cut off, because I feel this energy quite strongly when we are together in-person. I am really looking forward to meeting people in my area who I can satisfy this desire with. I feel terrible even talking about this feeling of mine with my partner because I know that it it will only make them feel uncomfortable. We both feel that this distance is really difficult, especially at this stage of our relationship when we are building a new foundation and want to communicate much more about navigating various situations for the first time.

Are you afraid they will become too bonded to this person through the sex, cuddles, daily contact, and change their mind about moving to be with you?

This was the first big fear that I confronted. We talked about this and it was obvious that fear around this could result in nothing but a degradation in the relationship itself. I have decided that it's clearly worth it to trust-fall on this one, and I've had a lot of success since that decision with not letting this bother me.

I'm sure you are lonely, and also envious of your partner having a cuddle buddy/possible sex partner, while you have not yet met someone you want to share intimacy with.

Yes, this is certainly a factor. I've been meeting a number of interesting people, and I expect this to go away as soon as I've established my presence a bit more in my new home, but I need to work harder to prevent myself from letting this envy turn into negativity and restrictiveness.

Do you see that your partner is a autonomous individual? They don't need your permission, or "green light" to do what they want. They are both being polite though (unless they are lying and already fucking...) I'd recommend consenting to them doing any or all sexual activities they desire. That's polyamory! See my sig.

Minimizing restrictive agreements is absolutely a top priority for us. During the last month, I've been on an extremely energy and time-intensive personal growth journey that has led me to confronting a lot of negativity in myself, and I've been able to feel much less jealous about situations like hanging out with new people, being intimate with other people, and now I'm getting a lot closer to feeling comfortable with full-on cohabiting with another person.

I'm not sure what an average growth curve looks like for unlearning jealousy, but I feel like I'm making decent progress. When my partner told me that they were comfortable moving at a pace that I was comfortable with, I felt like I was given a huge gift of safety. This situation is quite intense for someone in the early phases of unlearning jealousy, and I've grown tremendously by being confronted with this. This agreement makes me feel like I'm not being forced to deal with everything simultaneously and in an overwhelmingly energy and time-intensive way that completely dominates my life. I'm putting in a lot of time and energy, but I need to have time for building my own life outside of this relationship, and I feel like that's what this agreement has given me the freedom to do.

This intense situation is great on one hand because it's making so much growth potential visible, but it's also a lot of growing that needs to happen, and I would snap my fingers and discard my jealousy if I could in an instant, but it takes some time and energy to grow through it. Basically, I feel a little underwater, and am pushing hard, and feel like I would maybe drown if I was not given a little bit of time to catch up. Maybe this is an illusion that I need to discard?

Limiting what your partner is "allowed" to do won't really help. If you trust them to carry through with your shared plans, all will be well.

I trust my partner to make decisions that will help us get to our shared goals. I view this as a way for me to feel respected as I go through this intense initial jealousy unlearning experience. I feel like this experience is teaching me so much about myself, and giving me a lot of security for future events. The current situation is totally unsustainable in terms of restrictions and energy put into super intense communication sessions, but I think it's time-boxed to this highly-accelerated burning period of unlearning jealousy.

I feel like I'm close to being able to consent to them moving forward with being completely intimate. One mistake that is clear now is that I should have split "complete sexual intimacy" into smaller sub-goals to work through. Failing to do this has clouded their understanding of the progress I know I'm making, and they are feeling deprived and uncertain about when they can move forward. This situation has also taught them that their sexual needs are stronger than they anticipated. Snuggling is not enough, as they initially thought. This agreement initially felt good to them, but a few days ago they told me that it feels restrictive. I told them that they can consider it dissolved as soon as we have time for a conversation about what we both need to feel respected. This situation has also made it very clear that we need to develop a stronger understanding of why agreements are important for maintaining trust, and that agreements need to be changed ASAP when they no longer feel good to both people.