Reverie
Active member
Some of you may know from my blog and a previous post that I've had an ongoing stressful situation with my main metamour, the co-primary of my primary. When I've written before, it's either been for blog venting/storytelling or to try to solve an acute, timely issue. This time, it is neither. I just kind of want some feedback from the community on the range of opinions on this topic and how you might have seen it play out over the long term. I want to think about it without the drama of any particular acute issue pressing down on me and muddying my emotions.
For those of you without any of the backstory, basically, I started dating a guy about a year ago who was already in a pretty casual DADT situation with another woman. He and I had been acquaintances-to-friends for about a nine-month period before we started dating, so I guess I met him right around the time they got back together (they'd previously dated monogamously some years ago). He was dating two other women for most of our friendship, one long distance, one local. The local situation blew up hard about three months before he and I started dating. The LD situation ended after we started dating, as she had hoped to "cowboy" him and realized when he was getting serious with me that it wasn't going to happen. So he went from three women to two, back to three and then two again, just this one metamour and me.
The DADT dynamic was very stressful for him and for me, so eventually, when he and I got serious, he renegotiated with her so that he could at least work out scheduling specifics without having to tiptoe around the reality of the situation. They have historically had poor communication, which has led to some spectacular expectation/reality mismatch explosions (for example, he didn't realize until August that she had been under the impression that she was to be primary and everyone else a secondary-style fling, as they'd never specifically discussed it). The relaxing of the DADT still seemed to be a step in the right direction, but she still preferred an extreme-separation policy where we never cross paths and she doesn't have to hear anything about me.
As time has passed, my boyfriend has realized that there are other ways to do poly than the one he fell into with her. He didn't know anything about poly at all before hearing about it through her, so he didn't know any better and assumed he was getting a pretty good deal. But over the past year, the number of scheduling headaches he's dealt with trying to keep everything "separate but fair" has been driving him (and me) crazy, and over the holidays it got to the point where both metamour and I were ready to break up with him over his tendency to grease the squeaky wheel in front of him at any given time rather than setting his own boundaries and advocating for his own needs.
Jolted by that experience, he's been doing a lot of soul-searching and deciding what HE wants and needs out of a relationship. He's decided that IDEALLY he wants something more inclusive and where he doesn't have to choose all the time, but he also doesn't want to just cut metamour loose if she is willing to try to change.
On my part, after first trying to reach out to her to let her know that I see myself as her teammate, not her rival, and that going poorly, I've just tried to put up some pretty sturdy walls for my own protection, where I advocate only for my own needs and wants and stay out of whatever is happening between them. One of my conditions of staying in the relationship, though, is that she and I can at least operate at the level of polite cordiality toward one another: "hello" and a wave, "please," "thank you," "excuse me," "happy birthday," "have a good night," etc.; I never want to have my night ruined by running into her and getting the stink eye, or having to deal with strained relations over our boyfriend's hospital bed, if it ever comes to that.
In keeping with that, we ran into each other in public a couple of weekends ago, and she said hello and shook my hand, though her eyes were flinty. But yesterday, I posted a "Happy Birthday" to her on her Facebook page—nothing overly personal, just the same generic well-wishing I put on literally each of my acquaintances' pages—and she deleted it. That seemed to me to be an act of overt hostility. So I begin to wonder if the situation is hopeless; does she just despise me, and there's nothing I can do about it? If so, is it even wise to stay in a situation where my metamour actively despises me?
I love my boyfriend so much, and I know he loves me just as much, but it seems like if his other partner is someone who actually HATES me, then it is unlikely to end well. I kind of feel like...I'll just list them bullet point, I guess.
- I feel sad that he could choose to remain involved with someone who can hold such vitriol in their heart toward me, especially when I have never behaved with malice toward either of them. For me, if I had another partner who was hateful toward him, I would have a very hard time holding that person in any kind of esteem.
- I feel worried that this situation will blow up into more nasty, stressful explosions down the line, given the lack of charity that she feels for me, and increasingly, the lack of charity that I am beginning to feel for her. It seems that flexibility and compromise are part of what has been keeping this thing afloat so far, and if both she and I ossify into beasts of war, it's bound to splinter.
- I feel hurt by her repeated rejections of my gestures of goodwill, and by her seeming determination to take everything that I've ever said to her in the most negative way possible (including so far as to literally believe the exact opposite of what I've said, and represent it to other people as truth). Therefore, I will make no more of these gestures (and that, I worry, will leave us in a perpetual Cold War).
- I feel mystified by WHY this has to be so difficult. "Can't we all just get along?" I'm not the type of person who makes enemies, or who has ever been called "a bitch" by anyone. It seems like adults should be able to work their problems out and be kind and civil, always. I literally just DO NOT GET what the problem is, try as I might. Someone please help me to understand!
- I feel confused about whether the dynamic of compromise we're putting into place here is a healthy one: he wants to keep trying to make things work with her, despite her wanting a different type of poly than what he says he wants that ends up making life more difficult on him (and me), and despite her apparently hating me. I want to keep trying to make things work with him, despite his staying with someone who makes my life more difficult and who hates me. At what point is it too much?
Lately, I've mostly just been living moment to moment, savoring the good things as they happen, and puzzling over the bad things from a place of relative peace when I have a period of quiet reflection. But it does still come up once in a while.
So, haunters of the boards, tell me:
What level of friendliness do you need to have with your metas in order to be comfortable and happy? Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like your metamour hates you? If so, how did you deal? Was it able to be resolved? Did it end poorly? Did you find yourself starting to hate them back, out of frustration? Did it strain your relationship with your partner? Have you ended a relationship over poor metamour relations? Did you regret it? Did you get back together with that person if/when their relationship with the problematic person ended?
For those of you without any of the backstory, basically, I started dating a guy about a year ago who was already in a pretty casual DADT situation with another woman. He and I had been acquaintances-to-friends for about a nine-month period before we started dating, so I guess I met him right around the time they got back together (they'd previously dated monogamously some years ago). He was dating two other women for most of our friendship, one long distance, one local. The local situation blew up hard about three months before he and I started dating. The LD situation ended after we started dating, as she had hoped to "cowboy" him and realized when he was getting serious with me that it wasn't going to happen. So he went from three women to two, back to three and then two again, just this one metamour and me.
The DADT dynamic was very stressful for him and for me, so eventually, when he and I got serious, he renegotiated with her so that he could at least work out scheduling specifics without having to tiptoe around the reality of the situation. They have historically had poor communication, which has led to some spectacular expectation/reality mismatch explosions (for example, he didn't realize until August that she had been under the impression that she was to be primary and everyone else a secondary-style fling, as they'd never specifically discussed it). The relaxing of the DADT still seemed to be a step in the right direction, but she still preferred an extreme-separation policy where we never cross paths and she doesn't have to hear anything about me.
As time has passed, my boyfriend has realized that there are other ways to do poly than the one he fell into with her. He didn't know anything about poly at all before hearing about it through her, so he didn't know any better and assumed he was getting a pretty good deal. But over the past year, the number of scheduling headaches he's dealt with trying to keep everything "separate but fair" has been driving him (and me) crazy, and over the holidays it got to the point where both metamour and I were ready to break up with him over his tendency to grease the squeaky wheel in front of him at any given time rather than setting his own boundaries and advocating for his own needs.
Jolted by that experience, he's been doing a lot of soul-searching and deciding what HE wants and needs out of a relationship. He's decided that IDEALLY he wants something more inclusive and where he doesn't have to choose all the time, but he also doesn't want to just cut metamour loose if she is willing to try to change.
On my part, after first trying to reach out to her to let her know that I see myself as her teammate, not her rival, and that going poorly, I've just tried to put up some pretty sturdy walls for my own protection, where I advocate only for my own needs and wants and stay out of whatever is happening between them. One of my conditions of staying in the relationship, though, is that she and I can at least operate at the level of polite cordiality toward one another: "hello" and a wave, "please," "thank you," "excuse me," "happy birthday," "have a good night," etc.; I never want to have my night ruined by running into her and getting the stink eye, or having to deal with strained relations over our boyfriend's hospital bed, if it ever comes to that.
In keeping with that, we ran into each other in public a couple of weekends ago, and she said hello and shook my hand, though her eyes were flinty. But yesterday, I posted a "Happy Birthday" to her on her Facebook page—nothing overly personal, just the same generic well-wishing I put on literally each of my acquaintances' pages—and she deleted it. That seemed to me to be an act of overt hostility. So I begin to wonder if the situation is hopeless; does she just despise me, and there's nothing I can do about it? If so, is it even wise to stay in a situation where my metamour actively despises me?
I love my boyfriend so much, and I know he loves me just as much, but it seems like if his other partner is someone who actually HATES me, then it is unlikely to end well. I kind of feel like...I'll just list them bullet point, I guess.
- I feel sad that he could choose to remain involved with someone who can hold such vitriol in their heart toward me, especially when I have never behaved with malice toward either of them. For me, if I had another partner who was hateful toward him, I would have a very hard time holding that person in any kind of esteem.
- I feel worried that this situation will blow up into more nasty, stressful explosions down the line, given the lack of charity that she feels for me, and increasingly, the lack of charity that I am beginning to feel for her. It seems that flexibility and compromise are part of what has been keeping this thing afloat so far, and if both she and I ossify into beasts of war, it's bound to splinter.
- I feel hurt by her repeated rejections of my gestures of goodwill, and by her seeming determination to take everything that I've ever said to her in the most negative way possible (including so far as to literally believe the exact opposite of what I've said, and represent it to other people as truth). Therefore, I will make no more of these gestures (and that, I worry, will leave us in a perpetual Cold War).
- I feel mystified by WHY this has to be so difficult. "Can't we all just get along?" I'm not the type of person who makes enemies, or who has ever been called "a bitch" by anyone. It seems like adults should be able to work their problems out and be kind and civil, always. I literally just DO NOT GET what the problem is, try as I might. Someone please help me to understand!
- I feel confused about whether the dynamic of compromise we're putting into place here is a healthy one: he wants to keep trying to make things work with her, despite her wanting a different type of poly than what he says he wants that ends up making life more difficult on him (and me), and despite her apparently hating me. I want to keep trying to make things work with him, despite his staying with someone who makes my life more difficult and who hates me. At what point is it too much?
Lately, I've mostly just been living moment to moment, savoring the good things as they happen, and puzzling over the bad things from a place of relative peace when I have a period of quiet reflection. But it does still come up once in a while.
So, haunters of the boards, tell me:
What level of friendliness do you need to have with your metas in order to be comfortable and happy? Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like your metamour hates you? If so, how did you deal? Was it able to be resolved? Did it end poorly? Did you find yourself starting to hate them back, out of frustration? Did it strain your relationship with your partner? Have you ended a relationship over poor metamour relations? Did you regret it? Did you get back together with that person if/when their relationship with the problematic person ended?
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