Thank you, extremely helpful!
And not to worry... I *never* apply emotion to anything written. People have a habit of projecting things depending on their moods, what they would mean, etc. There's a difference between harsh and to the point
New to polyamory and issues
- Thread starter sc1975
- Start date
Thank you, extremely helpful!
And not to worry... I *never* apply emotion to anything written. People have a habit of projecting things depending on their moods, what they would mean, etc. There's a difference between harsh and to the point
Thank you.. Yes, 4 kids, 2 from our marriage, and 2 that we finished adopting the night after the big argument.
I'm at the, "figuring out where you are," stage right now.. Honestly I'm pretty much certain that any form of non-monogamy isn't for me, but we're trying to work through that. There would need to be a lot of changes in the way we communicate before I'd ever be open to that, if at all.
I am very sorry this is happening.
I am stunned.
This is a poor way to behave.
You were screened for the adoption process under one set of circumstances and then it became another. I wish one or both of you had spoken up about the family situation changing before finalizing adoption because it feels "bait and switch." The kids are not entering the type of family unit they were supposed to enter.
I am glad you made counseling appointment. That's the best you can do at this time. Communicate THERE with a third party to help guide the conversation and mediate.
Remember that you having personal preferences for your romantic relationship and personal boundaries for your behavior is not you limiting her. You are allowed to have your preferences and boundaries. Just like she can have hers.
If my husband wants to ski? I don't have to go do it too. I can say "Take the ski trip without me." I'm not limiting him. I just don't want to go.
If my husband wants to swing and I don't like swinging? I don't have to do it too. I can say "I don't want to do that. I also don't want to be in a network where your swinging can affect my sexual health. So I want to disband the marriage and bow out of your network." I'm not limiting him from swinging. I just don't want any for me.
If your wife wants to practice nonmongamy? That's up to her and whatever partners she finds. But you remaining in her network? Well, that choice is NOT up to her. YOUR willingness to do things belongs to you. If you don't want anything non monogamous on your plate? You don't have to have any.
You can accept her for who she is. You do not have to accept Open marriage with her if you don't want that. That's not you being a shit husband. That's you being an individual person with your own preferences for what you want in your romantic relationships/marriage.
Couples are not a "unit" where they are joined at the hip for everything.
If you want a wife who practices monogamy with you? Accept she's not that wife any more. If what she wants now is opposite to what you want? Rather than beating yourself up over it? Accept you guys grew in different directions and want different things than when you first got married. The situation has changed over time.
You can want her to be happy.
You can even like the guy.
But you do not have to feel bad about wanting YOU to be happy too. You don't have to feel bad about wanting your marriage to be monogamous and no "sharing." You are allowed to want what you want.
It's all going to feel hard. You have to PICK your hard. In your shoes? I would pick disbanding.
Could tell her in counseling you do not agree to practice polyamory with her. You did not sign up to "share" in this marriage. Those were not the original agreements.
If she wishes to be free to move on to practice polyamory with this awesome guy? You wish them both well. But that's a road you yourself cannot go down. You want to get off the bus. You want to disband the marriage and draw up co-parenting agreements. After that she can drive the bus wherever she wants to drive it.
The marriage could disband in order for the individual people to move on in healthy ways. Rather than twist the individual people into unhealthy pretzels just to keep the marriage going.
Be it a separation or straight to divorce -- sort that out with the counselor.
If you both become willing to disband?
- Then she is free TO pursue poly things she wants. (+)
- You are free FROM any poly things that you do not want. (+)
- You both mourn the ending of the marriage. (-)
- You continue to coparent the children and try to be good exes/friends. You keep enjoying the parts of the relatonship that DO work and bring you joy. (+)
I can imagine the idea of divorcing over this is painful. I do not envy you that.
But I do not think that this is one of those "win-lose" choices. It's "this hurts and that hurts, so which hurts the least in the long run?" I think disbanding hurts the least.
Because you have 4 adopted children to care for? They need to be the priority. You need to restore stability soon for their sake.
They need you to be healthy again. You cannot be lingering in this unhappy state. So I encourage you to sort the stuff that needs sorting so you can move on to the healing place.
Galagirl
Thank you for the advice and perspective. I'm in a much more stable frame of mind, so a lot of those things are there as well. Sorry for the delay in responding.. I didn't get notifications and thought the boards were just not very active!
Thank you, and I realize we may be at an impasse. The communication areas is the biggest challenge... when one won't talk, and the other wants to do nothing but talk, it's a great challenge.
To answer another poster, she said that she wishes she had told me she felt poly years ago, when we were married.. but that she was afraid I wouldn't be ok with it. She's right there, but we have a LOT of poly friends, and had always discussed how we didn't understand how it worked for them, because monogamy was how we were wired. So there's a lot of stuff going on..
And working with the therapist is helping with communication some, but as a few have pointed out, this is an extremely difficult and painful thing for everyone involved. Not fun, to say the least when you only communicate once a week.
Let me clarify a little bit.. She's torn about it as well. She wants her family to be happy.. she just says she has found this need that she never admitted to herself.
Part of me thinks it's her way of justifying an affair, since when I ask to put the brakes on things until we figure things out, she melts down and says she may never find another person that she clicks with, that she doesn't want anyone else but him, etc etc.
To further clarify, we're both going to a therapist. Together, and he's a damn good one so far, as far as open minded. Usually helps with healing people from damage caused by religion etc.
Thank you, all, for your replies and sorry for my asshat move of not actually *checking* the forum to see if there were any replies. I apparently turned off notifications :/
As things stand right now, we don't really talk about it.. I get frustrated because she goes about life acting like everything is normal and fine, while I feel my marriage crashing down on us. When I try to talk about things, she says she is too stressed out by everything to do so.
I don't think I can be happy (feel safe/secure,) in a non-monogamous marriage.. That's really not what I signed up for. I told her that, and she says she can't be happy in a monogamous marriage. The therapy sessions will continue, but thus far it's not all that promising.
I do feel manipulated/lied to/betrayed.. Can't really help that, because I was kind of gaslighted into the whole thing, and I wouldn't have finalized the adoption if I had known this previously. It's not bloody fair to those two kids, (both out of the foster system,) for their parents to divorce a couple months after adopting them.. And I really don't know how the divorce itself, (if it came to that,) would be amicable, because both would be wanting the equivalent of, "full custody," of the kids.
I'm still really hoping it never goes there..
The, "type," of poly she says she is, is that she wants to love anyone she accidentally falls in love with.. ie: if she is talking to them on the internet or something, and falls in love, she wants to be able to explore that. Very narrow definition... She says she would never seek out another relationship, because that's like saying that our marriage wasn't happy... That she would feel wronged if I did seek out a secondary relationship, (see the irony here?)
I don't think I could, though... I throw everything into my family and partner, I always have.. The only way I could date someone at this point, is if I wasn't dating someone else.. but that's just me.
As things stand right now, we don't really talk about it.. I get frustrated because she goes about life acting like everything is normal and fine, while I feel my marriage crashing down on us. When I try to talk about things, she says she is too stressed out by everything to do so.
I don't think I can be happy (feel safe/secure,) in a non-monogamous marriage.. That's really not what I signed up for. I told her that, and she says she can't be happy in a monogamous marriage. The therapy sessions will continue, but thus far it's not all that promising.
I do feel manipulated/lied to/betrayed.. Can't really help that, because I was kind of gaslighted into the whole thing, and I wouldn't have finalized the adoption if I had known this previously. It's not bloody fair to those two kids, (both out of the foster system,) for their parents to divorce a couple months after adopting them.. And I really don't know how the divorce itself, (if it came to that,) would be amicable, because both would be wanting the equivalent of, "full custody," of the kids.
I'm still really hoping it never goes there..
The, "type," of poly she says she is, is that she wants to love anyone she accidentally falls in love with.. ie: if she is talking to them on the internet or something, and falls in love, she wants to be able to explore that. Very narrow definition... She says she would never seek out another relationship, because that's like saying that our marriage wasn't happy... That she would feel wronged if I did seek out a secondary relationship, (see the irony here?)
I don't think I could, though... I throw everything into my family and partner, I always have.. The only way I could date someone at this point, is if I wasn't dating someone else.. but that's just me.
Hi Shawn, glad you're back with us. Sorry to say there seems to be a divorce in your future, I don't see how it can be avoided. It can be delayed, not avoided. Unless you find a way to live with poly, or she finds a way to live with mono, and I don't see either of those things happening. I hope I'm wrong.
Therapy is probably your best hope right now, but this forum can still help you as well. Keep us posted on your evolving situation.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
Therapy is probably your best hope right now, but this forum can still help you as well. Keep us posted on your evolving situation.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
Hi Shawn, glad you're back with us. Sorry to say there seems to be a divorce in your future, I don't see how it can be avoided. It can be delayed, not avoided. Unless you find a way to live with poly, or she finds a way to live with mono, and I don't see either of those things happening. I hope I'm wrong.
Therapy is probably your best hope right now, but this forum can still help you as well. Keep us posted on your evolving situation.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
Thanks a ton, Kevin.
I will.. And like I said, I maintain hope. A lot of it. Maybe that's me in denial, but who knows.
I love my wife.. Like I really feel like nobody has loved another in the history of loves (I know, I know..) I want like hell for us to succeed.. I don't see anything, "wrong," with non-monogamy, in principle.. I just don't think it's for me... Maybe I can help someone else, who knows.
I've read the jealousy workbook, and a bunch of stuff that's linked both here and on effyblue, which I do recommend as a great resource.. but most of it has just confirmed what I already knew... That I'm not good at sharing, nor with being shared.
Funny thing? I have everything I would need to BE non-monogamous... I'm a great communicator... I'm more an audio-book than an open book and if anything i overshare... My wife cannot talk about anything, either with myself or the other guy. I've actually found out things about him, sexual health wise, that she never even thought to ask... But I've been asking her questions about all of this for a week, with no response.
She won't communicate with me.. she won't communicate with him.. Maybe its doomed to failure, but I do maintain hope... I'd like to see at the end of the day, everyone healthy and happy and just living their lives.
Our therapist is awesome.. we go back to him Monday.. but 7 days between communication is getting rough on me. Its bad enough having 4 kids and being able to talk every 18 hours once they're all asleep... Every 7 days feels like its ripping me apart.
While I can't guarantee we could work things out, I do guarantee I would feel a lot better about it if we would talk things through.
Generally the discussion goes something like me asking, and her saying she's too stressed to talk about it, ignoring it entirely, or simply saying there's no point in talking about things... If she doesn't, "shut down," and just stop talking to me entirely.
At the therapist it's a lot harder to do the above, as there's an objective 3rd party there.
I really don't know.. I do know that from everything I've read and from everyone I've spoken to, honesty and openness are pretty much must-haves.. we have neither.
In knowing how I feel about it? Probably not... I don't think I'm wired for it.. I've never been one to feel like I need more, nor do I like the idea of sharing at all.. Maybe overly possessive, or jealous... but I really don't like the idea in general. More-so, it kind of goes opposite of everything we've stood for for the last 7 years, and against the very foundation of our marriage and everything we've built.
But I do think that if we could talk about things, at least we could work toward a resolution of some sort.
Maybe she's putting off the inevitable.. She's told me all about how I deserve better and should divorce her, etc.. but to me that's a cop-out.. I believe in people working together toward a common goal or resolution, and that only works if both parties actually communicate.
breathemusic
Active member
Frankly your wife doesnvt sound poly to me. She just wants to have the ok for her affair so she can have her cake and eat it too. Poly is about consensual non-monogamy. As you pointed out she just wants the ability to get what she want without meeting your needs. Communication is key and if you can't do that you can't be poly. You clearly have more patience than me because I've be calling bullshit on that both at home and in therapy.
Not to keep bugging you with questions, but can I ask, has she always been a poor communicator? or is this something that has emerged largely recently, starting with her fling with the other guy? Is it just polyamory she doesn't want to talk about, or does she stonewall you on all kinds of topics?
Marcus
Well-known member
That's not a poly thing, that's a relationship thing. For me, any association in which there is poor (or no) communication will be an acquaintance at best.
It's kind of always been a thing, we've never learned how to fight properly. That is, she tries to shelf it and forget it, rather than talk it out after a fight.
But anything, "serious," is generally something she shies away from, especially emotionally. Not always, but recently.
anamikanon
New member
Two issues here.
1. Lack of consideration for your feelings. This is a problem whether you are mono or poly.
2. Your ability to handle poly. You aren't comfortable right now. To even experiment with and possibly learn to get comfortable, I'd think you need a safe space - which does not appear to be offered by your wife.
These are mostly nailed.
I'd caution you against a divorce at this point. Your wife is in NRE. This can be a difficult time juggling energies with existing partner for even poly couples who handle relationships well. The old relationship is known, taken for granted, the new energy is shiny with both presenting the best of themselves, energized with the potential.
In your place, I would probably address point 1. Without it, there is no hope for progress and it is better than letting your relationship stagnate into a divorce while she figures her way out of NRE.
Perhaps you can help her see the importance of poly requiring communication. After all, poly is relationships with multiple people, not serial monogamy. So part of her successfully being poly actually depends on the relationship between two of you too. If she loves you more, and you aren't feeling it, perhaps it is a possibility to ask her to help you see it. Stress that you feel insecure about her being interested in another and leaving you to deal with it solo is not going to result in you feeling secure. It is hard to feel secure if your partner doesn't even care if you're feeling abandoned.
See where the conversations go. Use your counselling productively. If after a few months, there is no improvement in your relationship, you always have the possibility of separating.
1. Lack of consideration for your feelings. This is a problem whether you are mono or poly.
2. Your ability to handle poly. You aren't comfortable right now. To even experiment with and possibly learn to get comfortable, I'd think you need a safe space - which does not appear to be offered by your wife.
These are mostly nailed.
I'd caution you against a divorce at this point. Your wife is in NRE. This can be a difficult time juggling energies with existing partner for even poly couples who handle relationships well. The old relationship is known, taken for granted, the new energy is shiny with both presenting the best of themselves, energized with the potential.
In your place, I would probably address point 1. Without it, there is no hope for progress and it is better than letting your relationship stagnate into a divorce while she figures her way out of NRE.
Perhaps you can help her see the importance of poly requiring communication. After all, poly is relationships with multiple people, not serial monogamy. So part of her successfully being poly actually depends on the relationship between two of you too. If she loves you more, and you aren't feeling it, perhaps it is a possibility to ask her to help you see it. Stress that you feel insecure about her being interested in another and leaving you to deal with it solo is not going to result in you feeling secure. It is hard to feel secure if your partner doesn't even care if you're feeling abandoned.
See where the conversations go. Use your counselling productively. If after a few months, there is no improvement in your relationship, you always have the possibility of separating.
I really appreciate the advice, Anamikanon!
And I'll be clear.. I"m not planning on divorce. It's the last resort, IMO, and both of us have clearly stated we really want to remain together.
Our relationship is seen from the outside (ie: everyone we know,) as the be-all, end-all of how a couple should be. We've always gotten along great, we complement each other extremely well, (because we are different, but work well together,) and have always had an extremely strong and loving relationship... Hell, I guarantee neither of us would be together still if not for the foundation we have built together already.
I also know it's a lot to do with NRE.. Just having a really hard time getting communication back. I probably over-communicate in general, where she is pretty closed off in general. She's actually more open with me than anyone she's ever met before, but that's still not saying much... There's a lot of trauma from her past that also doesn't help with that, and she's working through that with another therapist now, though we may switch that one up. We HAVE opened up to each other a lot more than we had previously, this was one of the silver linings to all this... Just I know that she is as much of an emotional trainwreck as I am right now, for related though differing reasons, so that doesn't help with communicating about the actual issues.
I do still go through a ton of emotional turmoil.. Mainly over the lying/betrayal side of things. There's a lot of miscommunication, too.. I have been trying to get her to look into the ways to be successful at polyamory, simply because communication and openness are pretty much the foundations there in everything you can find about it... Just as they should be in a successful monogamous relationship. Our relationship therapist is top-notch, honestly... and she really likes him, which is a big plus.
I really, really appreciate everyone's advice and empathy/sympathy... I know a lot of you have gone through similar situations, and probably witnessed many more. I'll update periodically as to how we're doing, and what's going on in general, because I'm still lurking through the forums picking up tidbits of advice here and there.
Whether non-monogamy will ever be for me? No idea, honestly... It doesn't feel like it at this point... but I'm reading everything I can with an extremely open mind... Like I said, the absolutely strongest relationship I know of is between two guys who are poly, and have been together for 15 years... I'd point out their relationship to *anyone* of what a successful relationship looks like, mono or non-mono, and we even named one of our children after one of those guys We've both talked to one of them somewhat about all this, but he's going through some personal things right now, and its not right to use him as a marriage counselor when he's not trained for it anyhow.
And I'll be clear.. I"m not planning on divorce. It's the last resort, IMO, and both of us have clearly stated we really want to remain together.
Our relationship is seen from the outside (ie: everyone we know,) as the be-all, end-all of how a couple should be. We've always gotten along great, we complement each other extremely well, (because we are different, but work well together,) and have always had an extremely strong and loving relationship... Hell, I guarantee neither of us would be together still if not for the foundation we have built together already.
I also know it's a lot to do with NRE.. Just having a really hard time getting communication back. I probably over-communicate in general, where she is pretty closed off in general. She's actually more open with me than anyone she's ever met before, but that's still not saying much... There's a lot of trauma from her past that also doesn't help with that, and she's working through that with another therapist now, though we may switch that one up. We HAVE opened up to each other a lot more than we had previously, this was one of the silver linings to all this... Just I know that she is as much of an emotional trainwreck as I am right now, for related though differing reasons, so that doesn't help with communicating about the actual issues.
I do still go through a ton of emotional turmoil.. Mainly over the lying/betrayal side of things. There's a lot of miscommunication, too.. I have been trying to get her to look into the ways to be successful at polyamory, simply because communication and openness are pretty much the foundations there in everything you can find about it... Just as they should be in a successful monogamous relationship. Our relationship therapist is top-notch, honestly... and she really likes him, which is a big plus.
I really, really appreciate everyone's advice and empathy/sympathy... I know a lot of you have gone through similar situations, and probably witnessed many more. I'll update periodically as to how we're doing, and what's going on in general, because I'm still lurking through the forums picking up tidbits of advice here and there.
Whether non-monogamy will ever be for me? No idea, honestly... It doesn't feel like it at this point... but I'm reading everything I can with an extremely open mind... Like I said, the absolutely strongest relationship I know of is between two guys who are poly, and have been together for 15 years... I'd point out their relationship to *anyone* of what a successful relationship looks like, mono or non-mono, and we even named one of our children after one of those guys
We've both talked to one of them somewhat about all this, but he's going through some personal things right now, and its not right to use him as a marriage counselor when he's not trained for it anyhow.
Shaya
New member
I don't know if I mentioned this before and apologise if I did. But you mentioned you're seeing a marriage counsellor, and there was betrayal and lies. From that perspective, I'm in an identical situation with fairly fresh wounds. I have found, by far, the best resources for me to be from affair recovery sites. There may not be complete overlap with what you and I are going through, but they deal with hurt and betrayal.
Hope this helps,
Shaya.
Hope this helps,
Shaya.
Can you recommend any? Most of the ones I have found have steps for me, steps for her, etc. I've done the steps for me, but she is unwilling to do the steps for her.
It is an emotional affair (affair of the heart,) but she is very much against labelling it such, saying that makes light of what it is.
Thank you
Shawn