Achocolatemouse
New member
Hello everyone. You can call me Mouse. I am 23yrs old, bisexual, youngest of seven female who is poly and in a relationship with a man who is mono.
I grew up geeky, non-mainstream, raised in an emotionally suppressive house with very few friends. I was isolated pretty significantly, and didn't even go to school as a child. (I was homeschooled.) Communication is one of my weakest suits, I never learned to express myself clearly and I frequently fall back on my own bad habits. Shock and surprise to see that on top of this I have confidence issues with self expression, as well as some pretty bad depression.
I'm also a very classic poly and have been from a young age. While most girls grew up thinking of wedding gowns and a prince... I had a palace full of girls I was friends with, and men who all loved me (but would sometimes go be with the other girls who were my friends because that was only fair). Unfortunately I had no word for this or way to express that. People just told me that I was loose or liked to have fun.
As I grew older I became friends with some folks much older than me (most of my friends were adults) who were in a poly relationship. There was a husband, a wife and a "boyfriend", living happy and under the same roof all of whom I'm still friends with. They started inviting me and a few others over to their house for regular game nights. It was amazing to see their relationship, the two men clearly and deeply loving the girl and still being close buddies with each other. It was thrilling and beautiful and I knew I really wanted that in my life VERY badly. But I also saw that many people looked down on them and eventually their relationship fell apart because of poor communication. The one example I had to point to was useless.
Fast forward and I am now in a relationship of 5.5 years with someone who I love a lot but is monogamous. He entered this relationship knowing I was poly, having a decent idea of what that meant, and under the expectation that I may someday feel the need to express that part of me. However, communication has still not been my strong suit... And moreover, he is MASSIVELY insecure and even worse at communicating than I am. Frankly, he doesn't listen well either. It's led to some rifts in our relationship, and is constantly a source of stress.
As a result, I spent the past five+ years feeding his insecurities and my own. Every time I became interested in someone I simply suffered my lack of ability to act on it quietly because I felt if I even spoke to him about it, he would become very fearful and may even try to isolate himself from me. It ended up becoming pretty routine for me to try to distance myself from someone I loved and wanted to be involved with to meet what I perceived as his mono needs. I would bring it up occasionally (a few times a year) but always in a vague, non-direct I-sure-would-like-this-someday kind of way.
Recently we've been having a hard time as we're still recovering a bit from a big argument we had (that basically came down to, why the hell can't you talk to me), as he is reaching the 1 year anniversary of the business he owns, as my mother is dying in the hospital of a preventable condition, and as my family has been exploding with my six siblings who have the emotional expression skills of a paper bag all being in great turmoil. It's already a rough time for us.
On top of that he asked me to marry him, which means a lot to him emotionally but also means I would get to be on his health insurance and inheritance... And we're facing the impending time period where we are going to be required to file as domestic partners for having lived together for 5 years anyhow. I'm not thrilled (a story for another time) but I don't find the concept to be a negative one either. Sort of an "I'd like to have a big party, but I could take it or leave it" situation.
On top of THAT he told me that he was now comfortable with us opening our relationship to poly. That was very exciting for me and expressed in the same conversation as our discussion of marriage. I had gotten into such a habit of just pushing back whenever I felt something that deep that I didn't realize how repressed I felt until the day after when I felt like crying and running around hugging and kissing half the people I knew, spreading the good news. I remembered some of the times some of our friends (both newer and older) had made my heart race. I was SO excited, and I'm not sure I could go back to feeling repressed again knowing I'd had my fingertips brushing that palace of beautiful relationships from my dreams.
Then all of that fell crumbling apart when I started trying to sit and talk with him about it. My lack of communication skills had caught up to bite me in the butt. He had a very different idea of what I wanted out of poly than I did. He literally thought, since I wanted him as my primary and someone else as a secondary, that I just wanted a casual relationship on the side that he had nothing to do with.
What I really want is someone with whom I could have a relationship. While I'd prefer that relationship be secondary due to non-love emotional constraints and time constraints... And even transient because I do enjoy NRE and seeing people leave to an even happier place... I am fully open to a second primary down the road if that could work, and want a naturally developing relationship.
The moment I brought up the concept of having someone be, for example, at a gathering in the house with us (or worse yet, how nice it would be if he could even be FREINDS with someone who was my partner) he became vigorously uncomfortable with the whole thing, proclaiming (in his own words) that even if that person was his close friend RIGHT NOW that he knew I had feelings towards, that if I was in a relationship with that person that he would isolate himself from them. He proclaimed it would make him too jealous. He expected me to have a friend with benefits on the side that he never had to consider in his life or interact with much that I could drop if I needed to. When I suggested we find ways to deal with his jealousy, he said I wasn't allowing him to feel the emotions he felt naturally and that I had lied to him about what I wanted.
I've been trying hard to learn to communicate more cleanly. I have a friend of ours (someone who we both became close to rapidly, who I am extremely fond of) who is excellent at this sort of thing. He's been reading (out loud to a few folks) the non violent communication book. My partner refuses to participate, saying that it makes him uncomfortable and he wouldn't listen anyhow.
I tried to sit down and communicate to him clearly why what he thought I wanted was not poly, why I could not just hold an intimate relationship at arms length. I tried to explain how every choice my partner makes and every time there's a problem, that it will reflect on any other partners and vice versa. I tried to explain that there were ways to surpass jealousy and fear and that uncomfortable feeling, to raise his self esteem and security in our relationship. He decided what I meant was "you have a choice of bottling up your jealousy or exploding at me emotionally" and started projecting hardcore. I even tried to have him do something as simple as name one trait I like about him, anything at all. After a few minutes of deflecting and naming thing that had nothing to do with who/what he is and prompting he came up with "my eyes", then promptly told me he hated that and never wanted to do it again.
Perhaps more significantly that all of this, is the fact that he's a psychologist, and holds his BA from one of the most prominent schools in the nation. He's set forth into this, telling himself that nothing will work, this will never be resolved, he won't be changing at all from anything I do... And that if I love someone and desire to make that person a primary and that didn't work well, that he would leave. Not because he wants to, but because he would want me to be with someone who, in his mind, is a superior person.
I'm afraid that him going into this with such a hardcore negative mindset is setting himself up for failure. He's never once failed at anything he's WANTED to do. I don't know how to snap him out of it, help him overcome this hurdle, make him understand that what he's doing and saying makes no sense without belittling it. What he wants from me doesn't feel like my support (pushing him to be stronger and forgiving irrational emotional behavior as he works through it, prompting him to look deeper and find out why he feels bad and how to resolve it), it feels like he wants my agreement to his constraints and isolation and is willing to sabotage his own self growth to get it, almost in an "I told you so" kind of way.
I just don't know where my next step is or could be. It's been such an emotional roller coaster of "We can be open" "But not the way you want" "I need you to support my irrational emotions" "but the irrational emotions you had in the past make you a liar" "I'm willing to try to move forward" "But I am going to be angry about it" "I'm wiling to try your exercises to be more confident" "But I'm going to fight changing from them".
I just don't know right now. I have NO idea where to go from here. I can't even. Can someone help me to even?
I grew up geeky, non-mainstream, raised in an emotionally suppressive house with very few friends. I was isolated pretty significantly, and didn't even go to school as a child. (I was homeschooled.) Communication is one of my weakest suits, I never learned to express myself clearly and I frequently fall back on my own bad habits. Shock and surprise to see that on top of this I have confidence issues with self expression, as well as some pretty bad depression.
I'm also a very classic poly and have been from a young age. While most girls grew up thinking of wedding gowns and a prince... I had a palace full of girls I was friends with, and men who all loved me (but would sometimes go be with the other girls who were my friends because that was only fair). Unfortunately I had no word for this or way to express that. People just told me that I was loose or liked to have fun.
As I grew older I became friends with some folks much older than me (most of my friends were adults) who were in a poly relationship. There was a husband, a wife and a "boyfriend", living happy and under the same roof all of whom I'm still friends with. They started inviting me and a few others over to their house for regular game nights. It was amazing to see their relationship, the two men clearly and deeply loving the girl and still being close buddies with each other. It was thrilling and beautiful and I knew I really wanted that in my life VERY badly. But I also saw that many people looked down on them and eventually their relationship fell apart because of poor communication. The one example I had to point to was useless.
Fast forward and I am now in a relationship of 5.5 years with someone who I love a lot but is monogamous. He entered this relationship knowing I was poly, having a decent idea of what that meant, and under the expectation that I may someday feel the need to express that part of me. However, communication has still not been my strong suit... And moreover, he is MASSIVELY insecure and even worse at communicating than I am. Frankly, he doesn't listen well either. It's led to some rifts in our relationship, and is constantly a source of stress.
As a result, I spent the past five+ years feeding his insecurities and my own. Every time I became interested in someone I simply suffered my lack of ability to act on it quietly because I felt if I even spoke to him about it, he would become very fearful and may even try to isolate himself from me. It ended up becoming pretty routine for me to try to distance myself from someone I loved and wanted to be involved with to meet what I perceived as his mono needs. I would bring it up occasionally (a few times a year) but always in a vague, non-direct I-sure-would-like-this-someday kind of way.
Recently we've been having a hard time as we're still recovering a bit from a big argument we had (that basically came down to, why the hell can't you talk to me), as he is reaching the 1 year anniversary of the business he owns, as my mother is dying in the hospital of a preventable condition, and as my family has been exploding with my six siblings who have the emotional expression skills of a paper bag all being in great turmoil. It's already a rough time for us.
On top of that he asked me to marry him, which means a lot to him emotionally but also means I would get to be on his health insurance and inheritance... And we're facing the impending time period where we are going to be required to file as domestic partners for having lived together for 5 years anyhow. I'm not thrilled (a story for another time) but I don't find the concept to be a negative one either. Sort of an "I'd like to have a big party, but I could take it or leave it" situation.
On top of THAT he told me that he was now comfortable with us opening our relationship to poly. That was very exciting for me and expressed in the same conversation as our discussion of marriage. I had gotten into such a habit of just pushing back whenever I felt something that deep that I didn't realize how repressed I felt until the day after when I felt like crying and running around hugging and kissing half the people I knew, spreading the good news. I remembered some of the times some of our friends (both newer and older) had made my heart race. I was SO excited, and I'm not sure I could go back to feeling repressed again knowing I'd had my fingertips brushing that palace of beautiful relationships from my dreams.
Then all of that fell crumbling apart when I started trying to sit and talk with him about it. My lack of communication skills had caught up to bite me in the butt. He had a very different idea of what I wanted out of poly than I did. He literally thought, since I wanted him as my primary and someone else as a secondary, that I just wanted a casual relationship on the side that he had nothing to do with.
What I really want is someone with whom I could have a relationship. While I'd prefer that relationship be secondary due to non-love emotional constraints and time constraints... And even transient because I do enjoy NRE and seeing people leave to an even happier place... I am fully open to a second primary down the road if that could work, and want a naturally developing relationship.
The moment I brought up the concept of having someone be, for example, at a gathering in the house with us (or worse yet, how nice it would be if he could even be FREINDS with someone who was my partner) he became vigorously uncomfortable with the whole thing, proclaiming (in his own words) that even if that person was his close friend RIGHT NOW that he knew I had feelings towards, that if I was in a relationship with that person that he would isolate himself from them. He proclaimed it would make him too jealous. He expected me to have a friend with benefits on the side that he never had to consider in his life or interact with much that I could drop if I needed to. When I suggested we find ways to deal with his jealousy, he said I wasn't allowing him to feel the emotions he felt naturally and that I had lied to him about what I wanted.
I've been trying hard to learn to communicate more cleanly. I have a friend of ours (someone who we both became close to rapidly, who I am extremely fond of) who is excellent at this sort of thing. He's been reading (out loud to a few folks) the non violent communication book. My partner refuses to participate, saying that it makes him uncomfortable and he wouldn't listen anyhow.
I tried to sit down and communicate to him clearly why what he thought I wanted was not poly, why I could not just hold an intimate relationship at arms length. I tried to explain how every choice my partner makes and every time there's a problem, that it will reflect on any other partners and vice versa. I tried to explain that there were ways to surpass jealousy and fear and that uncomfortable feeling, to raise his self esteem and security in our relationship. He decided what I meant was "you have a choice of bottling up your jealousy or exploding at me emotionally" and started projecting hardcore. I even tried to have him do something as simple as name one trait I like about him, anything at all. After a few minutes of deflecting and naming thing that had nothing to do with who/what he is and prompting he came up with "my eyes", then promptly told me he hated that and never wanted to do it again.
Perhaps more significantly that all of this, is the fact that he's a psychologist, and holds his BA from one of the most prominent schools in the nation. He's set forth into this, telling himself that nothing will work, this will never be resolved, he won't be changing at all from anything I do... And that if I love someone and desire to make that person a primary and that didn't work well, that he would leave. Not because he wants to, but because he would want me to be with someone who, in his mind, is a superior person.
I'm afraid that him going into this with such a hardcore negative mindset is setting himself up for failure. He's never once failed at anything he's WANTED to do. I don't know how to snap him out of it, help him overcome this hurdle, make him understand that what he's doing and saying makes no sense without belittling it. What he wants from me doesn't feel like my support (pushing him to be stronger and forgiving irrational emotional behavior as he works through it, prompting him to look deeper and find out why he feels bad and how to resolve it), it feels like he wants my agreement to his constraints and isolation and is willing to sabotage his own self growth to get it, almost in an "I told you so" kind of way.
I just don't know where my next step is or could be. It's been such an emotional roller coaster of "We can be open" "But not the way you want" "I need you to support my irrational emotions" "but the irrational emotions you had in the past make you a liar" "I'm willing to try to move forward" "But I am going to be angry about it" "I'm wiling to try your exercises to be more confident" "But I'm going to fight changing from them".
I just don't know right now. I have NO idea where to go from here. I can't even. Can someone help me to even?
