In psychology, obsessions are repeated and unwanted thoughts that cause anxiety. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors people perform to temporarily relieve this anxiety. For example, a person may have intrusive thoughts about germs or contamination.
In your case, it sounds like your intrusive thoughts are about polyamory. And I take it that you currently want to avoid divorce so you can be free to go build a polyamorous life with new people, and your current wife is free to build a monogamous life with a new person. However, this is quite a common outcome.
I suspect that your frustration with the situation will likely lead you to concluding that all advice is useless, but here is some from a web article and I will continue my commentary below.
How to control an obsession
The challenge then is to make our obsessions function positively, controlling them so they don't control us, extracting the benefit of obsession without succumbing to its detriments. To do this, the following strategies may be helpful:
- Distract yourself at varying intervals. Using force of will to tame an obsession is like fighting to overcome anxiety by denying it exists: rarely does it do anything but make it worse. Instead, find something attractive and pleasurable to distract you from your obsession, to provide you a break from thinking about it. This will help remind you on an emotional level that other things in life are still important. Read a gripping novel, watch an entertaining movie, help a friend in distress. Do something that takes you out of your own head.
- Accomplish a task that helps put your obsession behind you. Sometimes an obsession holds us in its power and refuses to let us go because we simply haven't finished with it. Perhaps we haven't revised a book chapter, haven't planned the last details of a trip, haven't asked out someone on whom we have a crush. Tell yourself that once you've reached the next milestone, you're going to take a break. Often taking a solid step forward in some way frees you to walk away from an obsession temporarily to recharge your batteries. And when you do, turn back to something else in your life you've been neglecting.
- Focus on your greater mission. As I wrote in an earlier post, "The Importance of Having a Mission," finding and embracing a mission in life will defend you against the sense your life is meaningless. And if you're able to care about a mission that in some way brings joy to or removes suffering from others, you'll find yourself more firmly anchored, upright, and balanced when a wave of obsessive thoughts threatens to carry you away.
- Adopt a practice that grounds you. Chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Meditate. Take up karate. Or dancing. Do something physical in different surroundings to engage a different part of your mind that's interested in other things besides your obsession.5. Allow time to pass. With time, many obsessions gradually lose their flavor.
- Listen to what others tell you. If your close friends and family express concern over your being obsessed, they're probably right. Be open to these messages.
I'm not arguing here that we should seek to
extinguish obsession; I'm arguing we should seek to
control it. Our ability to bend our emotions to our will is poor, but not our ability to
manage them. We can make our obsessions work
for us rather than work us over. And we can learn to let them go when the time comes.
You have come to a board about polyamory to get advice on how to stop fantasizing about polyamory. What research have you done into the actual practicalities of polyamory? Do you want us to put you off with the logistics, because I can assure you, it's hard. There are so many issues with time management, effective communication in the polycule, or by the hinge(s) if parallel for whatever reasons, legalities almost regardless of where you live, tax and health insurance disparities if in the USA, financial management to be able to meet the needs of and with multiple partners (including simply dating), being "out" or not to friends and family and what this means for extramarital partners' dignity/status when things like holidays or celebrations occur. The nitty gritty of actually living polyamorously in a (Western) world set up to cater for monogamy is brutal. This may help you deconstruct the fantasy.
Also, you have said that you married young and have grown into this desire to the point that it has become an intrusive fantasy. Can you recall the
origin of your awareness about polyamory? What caused the
initial curiosity? Was it on your radar even before whatever other "dirty laundry" your marriage has (that you certainly don't need to share, please know I'm not asking)? Perhaps looking back in time to the source of your awareness in a meditative way will help you identify what the
core personal issue was at that time that your
mind chose polyamory as the ideal solution, and has since gone on to put polyamory
on a pedestal that has resulted in the obsession (over something which you're very likely only seeing the positive things in your fantasy world of it).
You have obviously been feeding your fantasies, because that's the wolf that's currently winning. Only you will really know what it takes for you to stop doing that; all the "how" advice will seem useless until you really dig deep, deeper than you are likely aware of right now, into why you want to feed this wolf.