Hela
New member
(TW: verbal abuse, manipulation, rape, suicide)
TL: DR
My poly journey began 5 years ago. My now ex-husband and I were in a cross relationship w/ another couple for most of the 3 years. I ended up spending those years getting stuck in the middle of dishonesty and emotional blackmail, constantly shifting rules and double standards, unfair judgement and gaslighting, and financial abuse. I couldn’t tell you why I put up with it for so long other than the fact that I wanted to believe the best and that they were the family that they constantly insisted that they were. I’ve always been one that is overly critical of myself; I would rather carry a greater load than get in anyone’s way. By the end, I found myself an entirely different person.
My husband and I were married just over a year when we decided to open our relationship. This was a bad idea from the start. My husband was extremely emotionally and verbally abusive. He had serious anger problems towards anything that slightly inconvenienced him. He projected his anger onto me and our home, screaming in my face, breaking things, and punching holes in walls several times a week. I come from a history of extreme child abuse and had a lot of issue dealing with confrontation. I've always been a peacekeeper and the one to make sure things stay afloat.
The conversation of poly came up after he confessed that he had been raped that particular weekend while I was out of town. I would later find out that was a lie*. I should have listened to my gut, but I was desperate for a greater support system.
A BREACH OF TRUST:
4 months after we started dating the couple (K and R), I discovered another lie being held by my husband and K. They had broken a rule of intimacy that we had all agreed upon when we started dating. It wasn’t the broken rule that upset me the most: I was fully open to reevaluating and changing things as we evolved. What upset me was finding out that K was sexually and emotionally blackmailing him into keeping the secret from me. He broke down to me shamefully late one night. When I confronted her about this issue, she claimed to know nothing of the rule.
It was inconsistencies like this that piled up over time. Once one of us was getting something that K wanted, new rules would arise to block us from this. Rules which would end up not applying to her in the long run. On trying to hold her accountable for this, arguments would unfold. I would be given a lecture informing me that I was the issue. "That's a you problem."
R would side with me on several occasions stating that he knew what she was doing, but it wouldnt take her long to sway him back to her side, or she would berate him until he shut down and refused to give any input.
THE EMPATH KNOWS ALL:
Because she was an “empath” she knew what I, as well as everyone else around her, was feeling better than they did. By the end of my communication attempt, I found myself confused and apologizing for causing trouble. At this point, the conversation would shift into her expressing interest in me. That she wanted more than friendship.
A GREAT TRAGEDY IN MY LIFE (TW: suicide):
On July 6, 2017, I received one of the worst phone calls of my life: one of my closest cousins had commit suicide during the night, hanging himself in his fathers front yard. He was barely 25. As soon as I received the news, I immediately went on autopilot, made phone calls, packed a bag, and drove 3 hours to my hometown to help my family.
The wake of my cousins suicide obviously brought on a whole mess of emotional response. I started falling into a deeper depression than what I was familiar with.
A couple of weeks later, on returning home after his memorial service, I walked into chaos and fighting. Apparently while I was gone for said service (about 12 hours), in my absence, K had attempted to set up a threesome with my husband and R. K had a habit of this: more than once she had attempted to pressure her partners into group sex even though they made it clear it was either something they weren’t interested in, or they just weren’t in the mood.
But, there was something different about this particular time: she paints herself as a “goddess” of love, compassion, and empathy. A womans woman, known as a queen of poly in my town, with her 3 husbands. And apparently, my sister and best friend...The toxicity of my situation was starting to become blatantly clear. She had held my struggle of trust against me for so long...
I did not react well. I felt insignificant and sorely unimportant. When I expressed this, her reaction was far from sympathetic. First claiming it was a joke, and then stating that she "WAS going to apologize. But that I “reacted too strongly”. So I could “just get over it."
ISOLATING AND FINDING TRUTH:
Over the next few weeks, I found myself falling deeply into a massive existential depression. My cousins suicide and the events that followed within both my family and the world left me in a state of perpetual despair. I held onto the last bit of hope and trust I had in K and went to her. I knew she would understand, because she had done so well with understanding my husband. However, her response was not one that I was expecting in the least. She claimed that I was existentially depressed because I had been mean to her. And I feel alone because my partners (also her partners) did not want to connect with someone who was mean to her. They love her, so if I want to not feel alone, I can't be mean to her.
I was baffled. I tried to explain, again, that it had nothing to do with them: it was existential…how on earth can you possibly make this about you?
“Well, we don’t HAVE to be friends. Deal with it on your own, then. I’m done.”
At this point, I isolated myself and started reading daily for hours. My subject of interest was mostly communication and how to handle difficult people. I wanted to learn how to communicate more effectively. I would end up educating myself in a much different way than I was expecting. I learned the tactics, bait and switch, blame shifting, gaslighting, etc. Everything started to become so clear. I noticed things I never noticed before. I knew Ks end goal, and now, watching her journey to get there made me sick. I stuck to observing for a few weeks…
A SECRET ENEMY:
After some time, my husband broke down again. I had noticed our family group chat had been pretty sparse. I had my suspicions of a separate group account, but didn't say anything. However, as I said, my husband broke. Late one night he had told me (and showed me) she had made a separate group chat: one with her entire polycule, plus a couple of others from her "harem"...not just to leave me out, though: the primary topic of the group was about my mental health. They made jokes about it. Made new rules I wasnt aware of. And she had diagnosed me as borderline as well as convincing the father of her children to restrict my contact with her children (I was unaware of this) as well as trying to convince my own husband to divorce me.
SHIT HITS THE FAN:
I was done. I confronted them about the group and everything hit the fan. I was with R this night, but ended up getting kicked out of her house. Within 10 minutes, she showed up at my house, storming in to scream in my face. I had no response. I sat on my couch in silence and let her scream. Eventually I told her to leave, but when she refused, my husband kicked her out. We took a few days to calm down before my husband and I called them over and broke things off. Neither of us were willing to deal with that level of drama anymore.
A NEW LIFE AND MORE REVELATIONS:
We spent the next couple of months moving and reconnecting. My husband opened up more about what happened during the relationship: K couldn’t stand being second to me and had a lot to say behind my back. She confessed that she “built her life so she wouldn’t have to do anything” and had been grooming my husband to leave me. There were a lot of crazy claims about me, as a person. She told him on several occasions that I wasn’t a good person and that he needed to leave. Amongst other ridiculous claims, like my compassion for animals (I am in vet school) being primarily because they can’t argue with me like humans can.
...
TL: DR
My poly journey began 5 years ago. My now ex-husband and I were in a cross relationship w/ another couple for most of the 3 years. I ended up spending those years getting stuck in the middle of dishonesty and emotional blackmail, constantly shifting rules and double standards, unfair judgement and gaslighting, and financial abuse. I couldn’t tell you why I put up with it for so long other than the fact that I wanted to believe the best and that they were the family that they constantly insisted that they were. I’ve always been one that is overly critical of myself; I would rather carry a greater load than get in anyone’s way. By the end, I found myself an entirely different person.
My husband and I were married just over a year when we decided to open our relationship. This was a bad idea from the start. My husband was extremely emotionally and verbally abusive. He had serious anger problems towards anything that slightly inconvenienced him. He projected his anger onto me and our home, screaming in my face, breaking things, and punching holes in walls several times a week. I come from a history of extreme child abuse and had a lot of issue dealing with confrontation. I've always been a peacekeeper and the one to make sure things stay afloat.
The conversation of poly came up after he confessed that he had been raped that particular weekend while I was out of town. I would later find out that was a lie*. I should have listened to my gut, but I was desperate for a greater support system.
A BREACH OF TRUST:
4 months after we started dating the couple (K and R), I discovered another lie being held by my husband and K. They had broken a rule of intimacy that we had all agreed upon when we started dating. It wasn’t the broken rule that upset me the most: I was fully open to reevaluating and changing things as we evolved. What upset me was finding out that K was sexually and emotionally blackmailing him into keeping the secret from me. He broke down to me shamefully late one night. When I confronted her about this issue, she claimed to know nothing of the rule.
It was inconsistencies like this that piled up over time. Once one of us was getting something that K wanted, new rules would arise to block us from this. Rules which would end up not applying to her in the long run. On trying to hold her accountable for this, arguments would unfold. I would be given a lecture informing me that I was the issue. "That's a you problem."
R would side with me on several occasions stating that he knew what she was doing, but it wouldnt take her long to sway him back to her side, or she would berate him until he shut down and refused to give any input.
THE EMPATH KNOWS ALL:
Because she was an “empath” she knew what I, as well as everyone else around her, was feeling better than they did. By the end of my communication attempt, I found myself confused and apologizing for causing trouble. At this point, the conversation would shift into her expressing interest in me. That she wanted more than friendship.
A GREAT TRAGEDY IN MY LIFE (TW: suicide):
On July 6, 2017, I received one of the worst phone calls of my life: one of my closest cousins had commit suicide during the night, hanging himself in his fathers front yard. He was barely 25. As soon as I received the news, I immediately went on autopilot, made phone calls, packed a bag, and drove 3 hours to my hometown to help my family.
The wake of my cousins suicide obviously brought on a whole mess of emotional response. I started falling into a deeper depression than what I was familiar with.
A couple of weeks later, on returning home after his memorial service, I walked into chaos and fighting. Apparently while I was gone for said service (about 12 hours), in my absence, K had attempted to set up a threesome with my husband and R. K had a habit of this: more than once she had attempted to pressure her partners into group sex even though they made it clear it was either something they weren’t interested in, or they just weren’t in the mood.
But, there was something different about this particular time: she paints herself as a “goddess” of love, compassion, and empathy. A womans woman, known as a queen of poly in my town, with her 3 husbands. And apparently, my sister and best friend...The toxicity of my situation was starting to become blatantly clear. She had held my struggle of trust against me for so long...
I did not react well. I felt insignificant and sorely unimportant. When I expressed this, her reaction was far from sympathetic. First claiming it was a joke, and then stating that she "WAS going to apologize. But that I “reacted too strongly”. So I could “just get over it."
ISOLATING AND FINDING TRUTH:
Over the next few weeks, I found myself falling deeply into a massive existential depression. My cousins suicide and the events that followed within both my family and the world left me in a state of perpetual despair. I held onto the last bit of hope and trust I had in K and went to her. I knew she would understand, because she had done so well with understanding my husband. However, her response was not one that I was expecting in the least. She claimed that I was existentially depressed because I had been mean to her. And I feel alone because my partners (also her partners) did not want to connect with someone who was mean to her. They love her, so if I want to not feel alone, I can't be mean to her.
I was baffled. I tried to explain, again, that it had nothing to do with them: it was existential…how on earth can you possibly make this about you?
“Well, we don’t HAVE to be friends. Deal with it on your own, then. I’m done.”
At this point, I isolated myself and started reading daily for hours. My subject of interest was mostly communication and how to handle difficult people. I wanted to learn how to communicate more effectively. I would end up educating myself in a much different way than I was expecting. I learned the tactics, bait and switch, blame shifting, gaslighting, etc. Everything started to become so clear. I noticed things I never noticed before. I knew Ks end goal, and now, watching her journey to get there made me sick. I stuck to observing for a few weeks…
A SECRET ENEMY:
After some time, my husband broke down again. I had noticed our family group chat had been pretty sparse. I had my suspicions of a separate group account, but didn't say anything. However, as I said, my husband broke. Late one night he had told me (and showed me) she had made a separate group chat: one with her entire polycule, plus a couple of others from her "harem"...not just to leave me out, though: the primary topic of the group was about my mental health. They made jokes about it. Made new rules I wasnt aware of. And she had diagnosed me as borderline as well as convincing the father of her children to restrict my contact with her children (I was unaware of this) as well as trying to convince my own husband to divorce me.
SHIT HITS THE FAN:
I was done. I confronted them about the group and everything hit the fan. I was with R this night, but ended up getting kicked out of her house. Within 10 minutes, she showed up at my house, storming in to scream in my face. I had no response. I sat on my couch in silence and let her scream. Eventually I told her to leave, but when she refused, my husband kicked her out. We took a few days to calm down before my husband and I called them over and broke things off. Neither of us were willing to deal with that level of drama anymore.
A NEW LIFE AND MORE REVELATIONS:
We spent the next couple of months moving and reconnecting. My husband opened up more about what happened during the relationship: K couldn’t stand being second to me and had a lot to say behind my back. She confessed that she “built her life so she wouldn’t have to do anything” and had been grooming my husband to leave me. There were a lot of crazy claims about me, as a person. She told him on several occasions that I wasn’t a good person and that he needed to leave. Amongst other ridiculous claims, like my compassion for animals (I am in vet school) being primarily because they can’t argue with me like humans can.
...
