I’ll be honest, this is going to read like a life story, but I am in need of advice, and I need to give the full story. I’m worried that for some people there might be something that will cause upset, so I’m going to put a trigger warning in regards to sexual abuse.
Also, this is going to be a long post. Sorry in advance.
I don’t really know where to start, but I get the feeling it stems from before my current relationship.
So in 2010 I moved to a new school and within a month I had a girlfriend. It lasted a few weeks, she broke up with me, and within a few days I was in another relationship. Then it happened again, and again. I actually got through 5 girlfriends in about two months (I’m not proud of it). Only two of these relationships actually felt…fulfilling, and I ended up being a bit one-and-off with them, extending beyond this “rebound month”.
One of my girlfriends was amazing and supportive and really understood me, and I really understood her and loved her, and we were happy…mostly. Unfortunately, she fell in love with her best friend and left me for her. We remained close, though, and ended up like brother and sister (sadly this fell apart a couple of years ago, though we’re slowly working on rebuilding our friendship).
The other relationship wasn’t so nice in the end, but started off great. Again, we really understood each other and got on. She had a few psychological problems, but we made it work. She was quite sexually minded, despite our age (this was still in 2010, so I was 13) and was often trying to pressure me into sex or other sexual activity. It culminated during the summer holidays, after we broke up for the last time, and she…
Not being dramatic, but it’s hard to write this. I find it hard to talk about, and failed to bring it up when I was seeing a therapist a year ago, but she raped me. We were both 13, and she raped me. There, I’ve said it. Sorry if that brings up anything for anyone else.
Okay, so that happened, and I ended up with the other girl I mentioned but that didn’t end well for me because she left me.
From August 2010 until October 2011 I didn’t have a relationship. Plenty of crushes, sometimes multiple crushes at the same time, but never a relationship. In October of 2011 there were two such crushes. A boy and a girl (I’d known I was bisexual since March 2010, though I recently worked out I’m actually pansexual). The boy was soon to be moving to Australia, so I wanted to confess how I felt about him, but at the same time my feelings for this girl were increasing and I was confident she had feelings for me, too.
It was pretty much confirmed at his going-away party, during spin the bottle when she seemed very willing to kiss me, yet not so willing to kiss anyone else (including her boyfriend at the time). She stuck close to me the whole evening. I ended up staying round the boy’s house overnight, and when morning came and I had to leave I really wanted to kiss him on the cheek and tell him, but I was still thinking about the girl.
The next evening I started to text her, and we ended up getting together over the phone. She broke up with her boyfriend the next day, but he didn’t get the message so thought they were still together. My ex and her girlfriend called my new girlfriend a cheat quite quickly, though this was all sorted out within the week.
The first two years went brilliantly; they were pretty much perfect. I felt at ease and comfortable, felt like I would never have to worry about anything again. She even helped me overcome what happened when I was 13, and we had sex and were (and are) very sexually active and open to trying new things.
Things changed a bit when we moved to Sixth Form. There was a girl in my “Philosophy & Ethics” class who I became really close friends with. Too close, really, and in the end we nearly started a relationship, despite me having a girlfriend. Fortunately, with the help of my girlfriend, I stopped anything from happening, though it did cost me her friendship and she ultimately moved away. But it wasn’t a matter of me preferring this girl over my current girlfriend. I liked her as well, and actually had a crush on her. I didn’t want to leave the girl I was with, yet I also wanted to be with this other girl. I was sixteen when all this was happening, and was admittedly very naïve when it came to relationships.
This situation was defused, and we worked through it, saw it as a little stumble. Things were going really well until March of the same year when I developed feelings for another girl: one of my girlfriend’s friends. This time was different in the way it affected me. The feelings seemed stronger (probably weren’t) and I had a dream of being with his girl and telling her I “couldn’t bring myself to” break up with my current girlfriend.
It really screwed me up, and I convinced myself I couldn’t possibly have feelings for two people. If I had feelings for a new person, surely my feelings for my girlfriend had gone away. So I broke up with her, and I still feel bad that I did.
At the same time, I discovered I had feelings for another girl, and somehow I didn’t find this strange. I’m still confused why I went along with this, but didn’t accept that I could have feelings for multiple people in terms of my girlfriend. I was confused at the time.
Neither of these girls wanted me, and my guilt made me think about my now-ex-girlfriend. We had started a friends-with-benefits agreement, she had a rebound boyfriend…and I was jealous of him. I soon realised I still loved her, and we got back together. She broke up with him about a week later.
We were apart for about a month, in the end, and now we look back on it as a “break”. What complicates this is that I ended up joining a dating site in this time. I had no luck here either, but when we got back together I continued to use it to try and find new friends, and I met one person. Not long after, I closed the account, but kept talking to this new person.
I was, admittedly, an idiot, and didn’t tell my girlfriend about this until November last year, and by this time I was practically cheating on her with this new person. Over two years I got closer and closer to this person, and we flirted a lot and pretty much started a relationship. This other person was also polyamorous, and explained it to me. After some more talking we worked out that I was polyamorous, too, and actually had a predisposition to multiple relationships, which I felt explained what had happened in my relationship.
I told my girlfriend about this in November, and understandably she didn’t take it well. I cut off contact with this new person, but talked to my girlfriend about polyamory, explained what it was. It took her a while to come to terms with it, and there have been trust issues since (though we are getting better). She recently told me she was finding it hard to separate the polyamory from the cheating and that’s what her problem had been, and in the future she might be able to fully accept that I’m polyamorous.
But she has also told me that she doesn’t like the idea of sharing me and is worried what effect this will have on our future plans (we want kids, and to travel the world, get married, etc.). She said that if we did, she’d want to be friends with them, would prefer it if they lived with us, would prefer if it was a guy.
In a recent development I told her that I sometimes fantasised about if she was a boy and what it would be like, and she told me that she is gender neutral, but likes to shift from male to female sometimes; we started a new thing so sometimes she’s male sometimes she’s female (depending on how she feels) and she wanted to treat these two personas as different people. In a way I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend, but they’re the same person. It seems to satisfy my polyamory a little, but it’s not the same.
She’s still really uncertain about it, and I understand that, but I don’t know if she’ll actually ever feel comfortable enough. I definitely don’t want to force her, but I don’t really know what to do about it. I know that I’ve made a mess of some aspects of the relationship, but I am working to repair that.
The advice I’m seeking, I suppose, is how do I avoid screwing things up again? How do I control my needs whilst I wait for her to make a decision regarding her standpoint? And if she decides “no”, how do I put myself into a monogamous mindset?
I don’t ever want to hurt her, and live my life on a “consent” basis: I won’t do anything in my life unless she’s okay with it. It’s a rule I set myself. What I know for certain is that I love her with all my heart and can’t see myself ever being without her, but there’s the need, I suppose, for something more.
After all of what I’ve just written, I’m willing to hear whatever you want to say about any part of it. I just need a fresh set of eyes on the situation to help me understand this.
And please feel free to ask questions (in fact, I encourage it, as I’m worried I haven’t quite written everything I need to).
Thanks in advance to everyone who replies to this, and sorry for the length of the post.
Also, this is going to be a long post. Sorry in advance.
I don’t really know where to start, but I get the feeling it stems from before my current relationship.
So in 2010 I moved to a new school and within a month I had a girlfriend. It lasted a few weeks, she broke up with me, and within a few days I was in another relationship. Then it happened again, and again. I actually got through 5 girlfriends in about two months (I’m not proud of it). Only two of these relationships actually felt…fulfilling, and I ended up being a bit one-and-off with them, extending beyond this “rebound month”.
One of my girlfriends was amazing and supportive and really understood me, and I really understood her and loved her, and we were happy…mostly. Unfortunately, she fell in love with her best friend and left me for her. We remained close, though, and ended up like brother and sister (sadly this fell apart a couple of years ago, though we’re slowly working on rebuilding our friendship).
The other relationship wasn’t so nice in the end, but started off great. Again, we really understood each other and got on. She had a few psychological problems, but we made it work. She was quite sexually minded, despite our age (this was still in 2010, so I was 13) and was often trying to pressure me into sex or other sexual activity. It culminated during the summer holidays, after we broke up for the last time, and she…
Not being dramatic, but it’s hard to write this. I find it hard to talk about, and failed to bring it up when I was seeing a therapist a year ago, but she raped me. We were both 13, and she raped me. There, I’ve said it. Sorry if that brings up anything for anyone else.
Okay, so that happened, and I ended up with the other girl I mentioned but that didn’t end well for me because she left me.
From August 2010 until October 2011 I didn’t have a relationship. Plenty of crushes, sometimes multiple crushes at the same time, but never a relationship. In October of 2011 there were two such crushes. A boy and a girl (I’d known I was bisexual since March 2010, though I recently worked out I’m actually pansexual). The boy was soon to be moving to Australia, so I wanted to confess how I felt about him, but at the same time my feelings for this girl were increasing and I was confident she had feelings for me, too.
It was pretty much confirmed at his going-away party, during spin the bottle when she seemed very willing to kiss me, yet not so willing to kiss anyone else (including her boyfriend at the time). She stuck close to me the whole evening. I ended up staying round the boy’s house overnight, and when morning came and I had to leave I really wanted to kiss him on the cheek and tell him, but I was still thinking about the girl.
The next evening I started to text her, and we ended up getting together over the phone. She broke up with her boyfriend the next day, but he didn’t get the message so thought they were still together. My ex and her girlfriend called my new girlfriend a cheat quite quickly, though this was all sorted out within the week.
The first two years went brilliantly; they were pretty much perfect. I felt at ease and comfortable, felt like I would never have to worry about anything again. She even helped me overcome what happened when I was 13, and we had sex and were (and are) very sexually active and open to trying new things.
Things changed a bit when we moved to Sixth Form. There was a girl in my “Philosophy & Ethics” class who I became really close friends with. Too close, really, and in the end we nearly started a relationship, despite me having a girlfriend. Fortunately, with the help of my girlfriend, I stopped anything from happening, though it did cost me her friendship and she ultimately moved away. But it wasn’t a matter of me preferring this girl over my current girlfriend. I liked her as well, and actually had a crush on her. I didn’t want to leave the girl I was with, yet I also wanted to be with this other girl. I was sixteen when all this was happening, and was admittedly very naïve when it came to relationships.
This situation was defused, and we worked through it, saw it as a little stumble. Things were going really well until March of the same year when I developed feelings for another girl: one of my girlfriend’s friends. This time was different in the way it affected me. The feelings seemed stronger (probably weren’t) and I had a dream of being with his girl and telling her I “couldn’t bring myself to” break up with my current girlfriend.
It really screwed me up, and I convinced myself I couldn’t possibly have feelings for two people. If I had feelings for a new person, surely my feelings for my girlfriend had gone away. So I broke up with her, and I still feel bad that I did.
At the same time, I discovered I had feelings for another girl, and somehow I didn’t find this strange. I’m still confused why I went along with this, but didn’t accept that I could have feelings for multiple people in terms of my girlfriend. I was confused at the time.
Neither of these girls wanted me, and my guilt made me think about my now-ex-girlfriend. We had started a friends-with-benefits agreement, she had a rebound boyfriend…and I was jealous of him. I soon realised I still loved her, and we got back together. She broke up with him about a week later.
We were apart for about a month, in the end, and now we look back on it as a “break”. What complicates this is that I ended up joining a dating site in this time. I had no luck here either, but when we got back together I continued to use it to try and find new friends, and I met one person. Not long after, I closed the account, but kept talking to this new person.
I was, admittedly, an idiot, and didn’t tell my girlfriend about this until November last year, and by this time I was practically cheating on her with this new person. Over two years I got closer and closer to this person, and we flirted a lot and pretty much started a relationship. This other person was also polyamorous, and explained it to me. After some more talking we worked out that I was polyamorous, too, and actually had a predisposition to multiple relationships, which I felt explained what had happened in my relationship.
I told my girlfriend about this in November, and understandably she didn’t take it well. I cut off contact with this new person, but talked to my girlfriend about polyamory, explained what it was. It took her a while to come to terms with it, and there have been trust issues since (though we are getting better). She recently told me she was finding it hard to separate the polyamory from the cheating and that’s what her problem had been, and in the future she might be able to fully accept that I’m polyamorous.
But she has also told me that she doesn’t like the idea of sharing me and is worried what effect this will have on our future plans (we want kids, and to travel the world, get married, etc.). She said that if we did, she’d want to be friends with them, would prefer it if they lived with us, would prefer if it was a guy.
In a recent development I told her that I sometimes fantasised about if she was a boy and what it would be like, and she told me that she is gender neutral, but likes to shift from male to female sometimes; we started a new thing so sometimes she’s male sometimes she’s female (depending on how she feels) and she wanted to treat these two personas as different people. In a way I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend, but they’re the same person. It seems to satisfy my polyamory a little, but it’s not the same.
She’s still really uncertain about it, and I understand that, but I don’t know if she’ll actually ever feel comfortable enough. I definitely don’t want to force her, but I don’t really know what to do about it. I know that I’ve made a mess of some aspects of the relationship, but I am working to repair that.
The advice I’m seeking, I suppose, is how do I avoid screwing things up again? How do I control my needs whilst I wait for her to make a decision regarding her standpoint? And if she decides “no”, how do I put myself into a monogamous mindset?
I don’t ever want to hurt her, and live my life on a “consent” basis: I won’t do anything in my life unless she’s okay with it. It’s a rule I set myself. What I know for certain is that I love her with all my heart and can’t see myself ever being without her, but there’s the need, I suppose, for something more.
After all of what I’ve just written, I’m willing to hear whatever you want to say about any part of it. I just need a fresh set of eyes on the situation to help me understand this.
And please feel free to ask questions (in fact, I encourage it, as I’m worried I haven’t quite written everything I need to).
Thanks in advance to everyone who replies to this, and sorry for the length of the post.
