jurgenk
New member
Me 49, female partner 32, having both been in monogamous marriages that ended (hers due to infidelity, mine due to unresolved issues around being unlovable) and we are both new to poly/open relationships. We have been together a little over a year and live together and this is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
When we were first seeing each other, the topic of involving someone else in the relationship came up and I was aroused but thought it fantastical. Fast forward to six weeks ago and we have an email discussion about the idea where she writes:
I just seem to always have relationships fail because of a desire that I inevitably feel and have to hide. I'd rather be open about the fact that the need is completely human and not wrong just because it doesn't follow the socially accepted ideal.
Her honesty, and many other things about her, resonated with me and even though this was completely out of my wheelhouse, we further decided that she would start a physical relationship with a male coworker of ours. During this six week period that it has been going on, I have had extreme difficulty dealing with what sound like (from reading some other posts and Opening Up) some of the common gender-neutral problems of jealousy vs. compersion, abandonment, and male issues around humiliation and the like.
We have talked about me getting involved with someone, but I am the more "female" of the two of us, in that she does not attach love to sex and is more the strong, silent type, whereas I search endlessly for validation and the meeting of my needs. This worries the both of us, as I am not sure that I can get involved with someone else without falling in love (backtracking, in our agreement, I specified that any relationship be more of a physical one than emotional and that I would always be the primary) with someone that I am more emotionally compatible with.
My questions are these:
1. I have went back to counseling (suffer from depression and mother was chronically so) and am seeking to find a way to meet my own needs and not expect a partner who happily functions at a lower emotional level (her words, not mine) to fill the void, but am questioning how do I learn to do that when I am still coming to terms with sharing the person I love with someone else?
2. While fully cognizant that mono/poly (not seeking to offend as poly is probably the wrong label for her) relationships are inherently tricky, how do mono's learn to embrace what seems like a completely foreign approach to relationships?
I welcome challenge, and I thought that I was emotionally and mentally strong enough to allow her to better fulfill herself without completely losing my shit, but it has happened too many times already and is really hurting our relationship. I have thought about asking her to close the relationship for a time, but I am bound and determined, regardless of how much pain it causes me, to try to be a better man about this, but I struggle with the how. Thank you for any thoughts....
When we were first seeing each other, the topic of involving someone else in the relationship came up and I was aroused but thought it fantastical. Fast forward to six weeks ago and we have an email discussion about the idea where she writes:
I just seem to always have relationships fail because of a desire that I inevitably feel and have to hide. I'd rather be open about the fact that the need is completely human and not wrong just because it doesn't follow the socially accepted ideal.
Her honesty, and many other things about her, resonated with me and even though this was completely out of my wheelhouse, we further decided that she would start a physical relationship with a male coworker of ours. During this six week period that it has been going on, I have had extreme difficulty dealing with what sound like (from reading some other posts and Opening Up) some of the common gender-neutral problems of jealousy vs. compersion, abandonment, and male issues around humiliation and the like.
We have talked about me getting involved with someone, but I am the more "female" of the two of us, in that she does not attach love to sex and is more the strong, silent type, whereas I search endlessly for validation and the meeting of my needs. This worries the both of us, as I am not sure that I can get involved with someone else without falling in love (backtracking, in our agreement, I specified that any relationship be more of a physical one than emotional and that I would always be the primary) with someone that I am more emotionally compatible with.
My questions are these:
1. I have went back to counseling (suffer from depression and mother was chronically so) and am seeking to find a way to meet my own needs and not expect a partner who happily functions at a lower emotional level (her words, not mine) to fill the void, but am questioning how do I learn to do that when I am still coming to terms with sharing the person I love with someone else?
2. While fully cognizant that mono/poly (not seeking to offend as poly is probably the wrong label for her) relationships are inherently tricky, how do mono's learn to embrace what seems like a completely foreign approach to relationships?
I welcome challenge, and I thought that I was emotionally and mentally strong enough to allow her to better fulfill herself without completely losing my shit, but it has happened too many times already and is really hurting our relationship. I have thought about asking her to close the relationship for a time, but I am bound and determined, regardless of how much pain it causes me, to try to be a better man about this, but I struggle with the how. Thank you for any thoughts....