Her first gf, and The long wait.
I think my wife found her first gf sometime while I was still processing the issue of her dating other men. There had been a few meetings with girls that might have been interested in her, but the connection just wasn’t there. She eventually met someone through a local parenting board. She was another married woman looking to explore her bi-curiosity...although not at all poly, nor interested in the concept. I’m not sure I need to go into much depth about her relationship (since that’d be more her story than mine), but there were signs right from the get go that it wasn’t going to be a lasting arrangement. Regardless, I wasn’t going to stand in the way of it, since every relationship, no matter how brief, is a learning experience. And we both learned quite a bit from the experience. My wife discovered she wasn’t curious...just bi...which didn’t make me sad at all.

(For someone who had spent the previous years unicorn hunting, it was good to know the door to threesomes was still open, and not just conjecture) More importantly though, she, and I learned a lot about what kind of people/communication/sex & attitudes towards all of the above that we weren’t compatible with, and gave us a much better idea of what we should be looking for in the future.
I didn’t get to meet her before they got involved...I just found out one day after one of their dates that the no-naked-fun (Unless we were together) rule which had been in place during the swinger exploration was no longer. I was away at the time...so I thought cool, that should open the door for me to have fun too. I was travelling a lot, so I wasn’t looking to get too involved, but rather an opportunity to explore things a little more casually, since that was something I’d never tried, and I didn’t have time at that juncture to work on anything that would have delusions of being serious or long term.
Apparently that wasn’t the case. I was still under lock and key so to speak...or at least it seemed that way. It didn’t affect much on that particular trip because there was a two pronged problem...one was that while I had given my wife the trust and autonomy to find a partner and carry on with them (as long as it was safe), I was not granted the same latitude. It seemed I was expected to let my wife know what or who I’d be up to ahead of time, and she’d probably want to talk to them first...etc....which organizing from 8000 miles and 6 time-zones was liable to be a little challenging.
For the most part, the second problem made the first kind of moot...it was very difficult to find interested parties. I tended to be looking a lot online...mostly POF at the time. It had the advantage of being able to make contact with people in far away places before I got there. The problem was that it wasn’t overly poly friendly. Online dating for guys seems to be inherently one sided as it is...where there’s so many guys on these sites relative to the women that it’s hard to stand out. And a lot of brainless one line messages get sent to women with a depressing frequency. All of it combines to create a lot of static which is hard enough for guys to make themselves seen as it is.
87 Visitors and 32 New Messages in the last 25 minutes:
New message “hI”,
click, next.
New message: “Hi Wanna F***”
click, next.
2Tall Visited Your Profile: Hmm, too tall
click, next.
2Short Visited Your Profile: too short,
click, next.
Classclown Visited Your Profile: Not serious enough
click, next.
MrSerious Visited Your Profile: Doesn’t make me laugh
click, next.
SomeFitGuy Visited Your Profile: No car
click, next.
CarLover Visited Your Profile: Couch potato
click, next.
Then once it’s mentioned that a guy is non-monogamous...or worse, married...
click, next.
Even if the women is one of the rare gems that wouldn’t mind a poly or non-monogamous relationship...the above weeding out process still seems to apply, so many messages go out...with very few returns.
Yes, this is a somewhat tongue firmly planted in cheek example of the process, but it’s for illustration purposes...and the reason that patience is absolutely mandatory. When I attended a meet recently, there was a fellow who asked how long online dating was supposed to take. He had been on OKC for a whole month...and seemed frustrated at the lack of results. He asked the group how long it should take...2 months, 2 years, 10 years? I had to tell him straight up no guff, “yes”.
I have no delusions about it. I more or less wasted my youth, and just trying not to waste my semi-youth anymore. I was never accused of having much in the way of looks, and I don’t get to the gym as much as I should. I also have no reason to think I’d classify as complete dogmeat either...after all, my wife has better taste than that. There were still periods of severe drought in online correspondence where for months not a single thing I sent out would be responded to... not even with a short PFO message. And I don’t send out crappy one liners either. My wife still laughs at how much time I’ll spend writing to women who will never write back. Thanks dear. Love you too.
So how long does it take? Settle in for months...and be ready for longer. Even when I got responses...many didn’t pan out. There’d occasionally be a reply, and then they’d have to be willing to meet. And then it would turn out that we just didn’t have that much in common, or that the idea of poly didn’t sit well with them. They might have a strange set of morals (strange now anyways...they probably would have made more sense if I was still from the mono world) where they didn’t want to ever be cheated on, but they could somehow reconcile being the ‘other’ women in someone else’s relationship. Or we just didn’t really have the spark. Mostly typical first to second date type things.