in agony please help

Firstly welcome to the forums and I hope you find some advice or suggestions that will help you out.

Unfortunately there’s not much I can suggest that would solve anything today. It’s a very short timeline you’re talking about...2 hours isn’t a lot of time to sort anything out, especially since it sounds like there’s a lot of things you need to sort out. All I can suggest is that the 6 weeks away might be an opportunity to figure out what you really want...for you, from him, and what elements of your relationship you may want to salvage...and what elements you might be willing to change.

Just a thought.
 
Welcome

Hello Vundabra,

Thank you for sharing with us. You certainly have a lot going on here at once! I'm so sorry for the death of your friend.

I think first you have to slow down and choose small priorities. You are, no doubt, also in a grieving process, and you need to complete that before anything. Our brains are only capable of dealing intelligently with a certain amount of stressful activity at one time. Too much, and it all tends to run together and get jumbled.

Much could be said about various pieces of your relationship, etc., but I think that needs to come at a time when you have recovered some and can focus properly on it. For now, I would just try to minimize any stressors in your life, allow yourself some time to heal, and trust that any relationship issues will work out in time. People have said, time heals all wounds.

Try to remove any relationship pressures from BOTH your lives. Let the dust settle for a while. If there is any real connection between you and your lover, time will not harm that. Removing the pressure allows everyone the space necessary to think clearly.

Good luck. Please keep us all posted.

GS
 
dakid said:
... i think he is terrified. i know he is. it feels like we are at a crossroads in our relationship. do we go deeper? do we pull back?

... i am scared, too, about whether he is capable of supporting me if we were to try this, and i am scared of where it might take me, but i want to try.

... i suspect (rightly or wrongly) that he will pull back from emotional pain, cut me off just when we are about to make breakthrough, and stop us getting beyond that pain to the learning. i need him to be really committed.

... he obviously isn't today. but i wonder, if i give him time and space, if he will he arrive at a place where he feels brave enough to try.
Click to expand...

Hi vundabra/dakid,

The thing that strikes me most from the paragraphs quoted above is that you want him to commit to the ups and downs of a deep relationship, and he is not there yet. It is a bit like, "Do I marry this drinker and hope he stops?" Any relationship with this guy is a gamble. You might invest a whole lot of love and time, only to find years later that he is still a social butterfly, moving off to other flowers if things ever get rough with you.

My advice is that if you want to continue the relationship, try to get him to commit at least this far:

1) An agreement that he is not dead-set against the relationship evolving into something deeper in the future. If he later changes his mind, he lets you know at once, rather than stringing you along.

2) He spends at least a half an hour per week exploring these ideas. In this time, he could read books on polyamory, just sit down and talk with you, etc.

Rather than 2) above, you might just commit to spend three months, or some short amount of time, seeing how things go, and then promising to reassess things at the end of that time.

Basically, you said that you NEED him to be something he is not now, and he is afraid of becoming that new thing. It sounds like a recipe for heartbreak for you, as far as I see things.

If you think he is honestly trying now, you might not want to push any harder or faster, just see how things go for a little while. But my main concern is that months or years may just drift by with you waiting, waiting, waiting for him to change.

Warm regards,
Rick
 
thanks to all who have posted. i still feel guilty and somewhat embarrassed about my use of a different id in the first post and would like to apologise properly. i am really sorry i did that. i can't even really explain why i did that. it was weird and not typical behaviour for me at all. but really, it doesn't matter in some ways why i did it. i am just sorry that i did.
 
Thanks for fessing up, dakid, instead of what would have been easiest-- deleting posts and hoping no one noticed. I appreciate your honesty and your apology.

I don't have any concrete thoughts on your situation, but keep working through it. I hope your time away from him will allow you perspective and a sense of living without him in your life, to try it on. If he is not reaching back, back off. If the relationship fizzles because you are not initiating all the contact, then you will know that that is what you can expect and make your decisions accordingly. The most important thing is identifying what you need and taking a brave look at whether that can be possible with this lovely man. Good luck
 
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