LaughingDog
New member
Hello Everyone,
I am coming to this board to get some insight, I suppose. I am in what is much like a marriage (being that I am technically female, as is my partner, Flora, we cannot legally be married). Flora is 29 and I am 27. We have been together for just over 4 years. We met in college through a Gay-Straight Alliance sort of club there. I have been living with her and co-parenting her now 9-year-old daughter for the majority of this time.
I know the story of my relationship is going to sound really harsh, so before I get into it, may I just say that I love Flora, heart and soul. I love her from her toenails to the tiny hairs that stick up on the top of her head when she pulls her hair up. She is the kindest, sexiest, smartest, most gorgeous woman I've ever had the pleasure to meet. Our chemistry, both in day-to-day interactions and the bedroom, is awe-inspiring to me when we are in a good spot. I know she loves me deeply.
But I sometimes heavily question whether love to me and to her means the same thing.
We had probably about 6 months of a semi-stable relationship. I don't want to get into a gory play-by-play recount (and it would take all night to do it, if I did) but let's say our relationship has never been that stable. Flora has been just awful with cheating (which I do understand is totally different than a polyamorous agreement) since the get-go, and though I am not really the jealous type, everyone has their limits. Still, I thought we could work out our problems.
We had a major blow-out about a year after we started dating, then living together, and we broke up. Hard. I didn't, however, move out, out of obligation to help her with bills and her child, whom I had come to love like my own blood. Over the course of a month, and the tale gets a bit sorted at this point (again with gory details), she met someone else. I was also dating someone else at the time, but when we had decided to get back together, I broke all ties with that person. Flora did with hers, too.... for a while.
After about another 6 months we found ourselves in the same spot. And this time the new girl moved in. I had planned to move out once our bills got cleared out and I found a place, but we reconnected. After about 3 months, the other girl left after they broke up.
Flora swore off ever doing anything like that to me again. She vowed that she wouldn't contact this other person ever again. We were ok again... for a while, about a year. Then Flora started getting really sullen, depressed. At the time I had lost my good job. I was working for very low pay and we were struggling.
One night, when I came home, Flora was in tears. She told me she had been speaking to this other girl, whom I will call Claire. It didn't take long until they were going out "as friends." That arrangement lasted a few weeks, until she went out one night and didn't come back until dawn. I didn't know what to do. I started to make arrangements to leave her when I got hit with a bombshell. She wanted to have a polyamorous relationship with both of us. We would both be her partners. I was very hurt, but hopeful that it would help, that she would be happy.
We all moved into a house together. We all fought a LOT in the beginning, I mean a WHOLE lot. But we have mostly settled down to a routine. She sleeps 1/2 the nights of a week with me, the other 1/2 with Claire. We both have separate rooms and she goes between them on a regular schedule.
I have made very good friends with Claire (who is curiously feminine, a trait Flora has always proclaimed to dislike), but we still posture and snarl at one another from time to time.
I am VERY threatened by her. She is very beautiful, ridiculously so. I am not unattractive myself, but physically, I have no hope to compete with her, and that makes me very nervous. I know looks aren't everything, but it hurts when your mate looks with real, palpable want at someone and seems to never see you that way.
They are also very similar in mind. While I am intelligent in a technical/mechanical way, they both can really understand poetry, literature, philosophy, and what have you, which leaves me feeling like a confused slack-jawed idiot.
But for all their chemistry, I feel bad for Claire. They fight often, and I seem to be dragged into it a lot, against my will. I think Claire and I both feel very claustrophobic about our relationship with our mutual partner. (Being poly in the South kind of cuts you off from sharing your life with others, as well as the demands of our lives getting in the way.)
Now that we have all been living together for a year, I find am re-evaluating my life. I have always considered myself monogamous, but I'm not sure how I feel about that anymore. I don't like where my life and relationship has brought me. I feel unfulfilled in my career and relationship. I don't feel that I am getting the love, time, or sexual attention I need to be happy. And while I love my quirky little family and it makes me physically ill to think of hurting any of them, I feel a drastic change is necessary for me to continue, or I do not know how I can carry on as it stands now.
On top of that is the fact that I have had feelings for Claire for the last few months. We have gotten close recently and I have helped her through some heavy stuff. I don't know if I am simply transferring my dissatisfaction with my relationship with Flora onto her, or if it is really real. But I do know that she would not be interested in pursuing that with me, and Flora would be wholly unhappy with the idea.
So I am stuck with all these intense emotions I cannot talk to about with anyone, especially the people I most want to understand it. I just don't know what to do anymore.
I am coming to this board to get some insight, I suppose. I am in what is much like a marriage (being that I am technically female, as is my partner, Flora, we cannot legally be married). Flora is 29 and I am 27. We have been together for just over 4 years. We met in college through a Gay-Straight Alliance sort of club there. I have been living with her and co-parenting her now 9-year-old daughter for the majority of this time.
I know the story of my relationship is going to sound really harsh, so before I get into it, may I just say that I love Flora, heart and soul. I love her from her toenails to the tiny hairs that stick up on the top of her head when she pulls her hair up. She is the kindest, sexiest, smartest, most gorgeous woman I've ever had the pleasure to meet. Our chemistry, both in day-to-day interactions and the bedroom, is awe-inspiring to me when we are in a good spot. I know she loves me deeply.
But I sometimes heavily question whether love to me and to her means the same thing.
We had probably about 6 months of a semi-stable relationship. I don't want to get into a gory play-by-play recount (and it would take all night to do it, if I did) but let's say our relationship has never been that stable. Flora has been just awful with cheating (which I do understand is totally different than a polyamorous agreement) since the get-go, and though I am not really the jealous type, everyone has their limits. Still, I thought we could work out our problems.
We had a major blow-out about a year after we started dating, then living together, and we broke up. Hard. I didn't, however, move out, out of obligation to help her with bills and her child, whom I had come to love like my own blood. Over the course of a month, and the tale gets a bit sorted at this point (again with gory details), she met someone else. I was also dating someone else at the time, but when we had decided to get back together, I broke all ties with that person. Flora did with hers, too.... for a while.
After about another 6 months we found ourselves in the same spot. And this time the new girl moved in. I had planned to move out once our bills got cleared out and I found a place, but we reconnected. After about 3 months, the other girl left after they broke up.
Flora swore off ever doing anything like that to me again. She vowed that she wouldn't contact this other person ever again. We were ok again... for a while, about a year. Then Flora started getting really sullen, depressed. At the time I had lost my good job. I was working for very low pay and we were struggling.
One night, when I came home, Flora was in tears. She told me she had been speaking to this other girl, whom I will call Claire. It didn't take long until they were going out "as friends." That arrangement lasted a few weeks, until she went out one night and didn't come back until dawn. I didn't know what to do. I started to make arrangements to leave her when I got hit with a bombshell. She wanted to have a polyamorous relationship with both of us. We would both be her partners. I was very hurt, but hopeful that it would help, that she would be happy.
We all moved into a house together. We all fought a LOT in the beginning, I mean a WHOLE lot. But we have mostly settled down to a routine. She sleeps 1/2 the nights of a week with me, the other 1/2 with Claire. We both have separate rooms and she goes between them on a regular schedule.
I have made very good friends with Claire (who is curiously feminine, a trait Flora has always proclaimed to dislike), but we still posture and snarl at one another from time to time.
I am VERY threatened by her. She is very beautiful, ridiculously so. I am not unattractive myself, but physically, I have no hope to compete with her, and that makes me very nervous. I know looks aren't everything, but it hurts when your mate looks with real, palpable want at someone and seems to never see you that way.
They are also very similar in mind. While I am intelligent in a technical/mechanical way, they both can really understand poetry, literature, philosophy, and what have you, which leaves me feeling like a confused slack-jawed idiot.
But for all their chemistry, I feel bad for Claire. They fight often, and I seem to be dragged into it a lot, against my will. I think Claire and I both feel very claustrophobic about our relationship with our mutual partner. (Being poly in the South kind of cuts you off from sharing your life with others, as well as the demands of our lives getting in the way.)
Now that we have all been living together for a year, I find am re-evaluating my life. I have always considered myself monogamous, but I'm not sure how I feel about that anymore. I don't like where my life and relationship has brought me. I feel unfulfilled in my career and relationship. I don't feel that I am getting the love, time, or sexual attention I need to be happy. And while I love my quirky little family and it makes me physically ill to think of hurting any of them, I feel a drastic change is necessary for me to continue, or I do not know how I can carry on as it stands now.
On top of that is the fact that I have had feelings for Claire for the last few months. We have gotten close recently and I have helped her through some heavy stuff. I don't know if I am simply transferring my dissatisfaction with my relationship with Flora onto her, or if it is really real. But I do know that she would not be interested in pursuing that with me, and Flora would be wholly unhappy with the idea.
So I am stuck with all these intense emotions I cannot talk to about with anyone, especially the people I most want to understand it. I just don't know what to do anymore.
