Hi, I've been with my partner for a year. He's 14yrs younger than me. He's the love of my life. He's poly. If I didn't love him so much almost immediately, I would have run a mile. I very specifically didn't want a relationship, just fun, so all of these difficult details didn't matter. Then we accidentally fell in love and now we live together and we're raising my son and building a business and all of the things. Life is pretty blissfully idilic.
But I've always struggled with the poly. I've always been monogamous previously. Throughout our relationship to date I've found it hard, but I've never been able to settle on why, casual sex hasn't really been a problem, mild controllable jealousy. There has been one full time metamour, we played as a three quite early, it was originally to be a triad, however it became quickly apparent she had little interest in me and so that stopped, quickly after she became a negative force in the relationship due to her being oddly manipulative and untruthful probably due to jealousy. All of this made it hard to know if my problems were with his relationship or simply her. I think now it was both.
My partner is now seeing someone new and the situation is very similar. I didn't get to meet her early on as I was struggling with us moving in together and didn't wasn't able to play for health reasons so decided to wait. Before I got the chance to meet her, sh*t went down, my partner asked when he could have her over to the new house on a night he was babysitting my son while I was away with work, on the *first* day we moved in. This hurt me a lot, I felt like while we were just starting to build our memories all he could think of was her. I acted kindly and explained I'd like to wait, get the house sorted and feel at home first and have met her before my son. He agreed. Then the day before I went away he asked me again, but this time with a guilt trip about not feeling able to nurture his new relationship the way he wants. This timing was awful as I was already nervous about leaving my son, sad about being away from him and our new home and I broke down that he had ignored my request and made me feel like a burden. We talked it through before I left and things were kind of ok. Then the following morning before leaving I opened hi phone to turn the alarm off to be confronted with a message to a third woman who he had asked if she was free to come to the house while I was away. Heart broken I chose to look at the messages between him and the new partner and he had asked her too. I was devastated that he had all these conversations whilst knowing how I felt and before reapproaching me to confront the decision we'd made.
We worked through it, it was hard, but it threw me in to a downward spiral, it broke my trust and made me doubt the strength of our relationship feeling like he was prioritising his desire to see her over my emotional comfort and needs.
Since then I have just spiralled lower. My head doesn't ever stop thinking about him with others. It torments me constantly. I am now uncomfortable with his constant flirting with others (smiling at other women in the street whilst hand in hand with me and my son ~ am I unreasonable to find this disrespectful?)
Further to this, I have since found out that the very new achievement of him voice command training my orgasms, he had also done to the new partner. This broke it for me, every time he started to count me in all I would see was her, I would become uncontrobaly sad and sob, and now I can't orgasm at all. Which makes almost every time we sleep together a sad occurrence (at least daily).
All of this has seen my mental health wash down the pan. I have a history of depression, I'm not quite in the depths but I'm constantly hurting and sad and thus means I'm snappy and angry a lot. I'm scared that I'm not going to find a way back, to cope, to be ok with everything. I don't know how to switch my head off. My partner tells me 'time, practice, love and trust' and I believe him, but that time is painfully and so is the practice and having no light at the end of the tunnel is hard.
Add to this that he dates models. Actual models, as that's who he works with. And I am no model. So far from it. I'm finding my self esteem taking a huge knock. Constantly comparing myself to these perfect miniature girls.
I'm sorry for the long spiel, I don't have anywhere in real life to turn, I'm very private and couldn't share this, so this is the first time I've got it all out. Any advice would be appreciated, I love him, more than I've ever loved anyone, I want to give him what he needs and I want to make this work.
But I've always struggled with the poly. I've always been monogamous previously. Throughout our relationship to date I've found it hard, but I've never been able to settle on why, casual sex hasn't really been a problem, mild controllable jealousy. There has been one full time metamour, we played as a three quite early, it was originally to be a triad, however it became quickly apparent she had little interest in me and so that stopped, quickly after she became a negative force in the relationship due to her being oddly manipulative and untruthful probably due to jealousy. All of this made it hard to know if my problems were with his relationship or simply her. I think now it was both.
My partner is now seeing someone new and the situation is very similar. I didn't get to meet her early on as I was struggling with us moving in together and didn't wasn't able to play for health reasons so decided to wait. Before I got the chance to meet her, sh*t went down, my partner asked when he could have her over to the new house on a night he was babysitting my son while I was away with work, on the *first* day we moved in. This hurt me a lot, I felt like while we were just starting to build our memories all he could think of was her. I acted kindly and explained I'd like to wait, get the house sorted and feel at home first and have met her before my son. He agreed. Then the day before I went away he asked me again, but this time with a guilt trip about not feeling able to nurture his new relationship the way he wants. This timing was awful as I was already nervous about leaving my son, sad about being away from him and our new home and I broke down that he had ignored my request and made me feel like a burden. We talked it through before I left and things were kind of ok. Then the following morning before leaving I opened hi phone to turn the alarm off to be confronted with a message to a third woman who he had asked if she was free to come to the house while I was away. Heart broken I chose to look at the messages between him and the new partner and he had asked her too. I was devastated that he had all these conversations whilst knowing how I felt and before reapproaching me to confront the decision we'd made.
We worked through it, it was hard, but it threw me in to a downward spiral, it broke my trust and made me doubt the strength of our relationship feeling like he was prioritising his desire to see her over my emotional comfort and needs.
Since then I have just spiralled lower. My head doesn't ever stop thinking about him with others. It torments me constantly. I am now uncomfortable with his constant flirting with others (smiling at other women in the street whilst hand in hand with me and my son ~ am I unreasonable to find this disrespectful?)
Further to this, I have since found out that the very new achievement of him voice command training my orgasms, he had also done to the new partner. This broke it for me, every time he started to count me in all I would see was her, I would become uncontrobaly sad and sob, and now I can't orgasm at all. Which makes almost every time we sleep together a sad occurrence (at least daily).
All of this has seen my mental health wash down the pan. I have a history of depression, I'm not quite in the depths but I'm constantly hurting and sad and thus means I'm snappy and angry a lot. I'm scared that I'm not going to find a way back, to cope, to be ok with everything. I don't know how to switch my head off. My partner tells me 'time, practice, love and trust' and I believe him, but that time is painfully and so is the practice and having no light at the end of the tunnel is hard.
Add to this that he dates models. Actual models, as that's who he works with. And I am no model. So far from it. I'm finding my self esteem taking a huge knock. Constantly comparing myself to these perfect miniature girls.
I'm sorry for the long spiel, I don't have anywhere in real life to turn, I'm very private and couldn't share this, so this is the first time I've got it all out. Any advice would be appreciated, I love him, more than I've ever loved anyone, I want to give him what he needs and I want to make this work.
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