Partner disagrees on "allowed" levels of romantic intensity

L

LovelyFuture

New member
Hello there. It's so awesome to ask this question here. I don't know that many poly people.

Here goes:

I (female) am in an open relationship with my boyfriend of a few years. We've always considered ourselves "open," but haven't dated outside too much, except for a few small flings here and there.

A little history: a few months ago, while Boyfriend was out of town for the weekend, I connected with someone, and began an intense relationship with them, which almost resulted in a breakup with Boyfriend. I ended up having to break up the intense relationship.

Recently, I've begun seeing a new man. Let's call him 'NewGuy.' Boyfriend went out of town again a few days ago, and I started hanging out with NewGuy almost every day.

Boyfriend gets upset that I'm seeing NewGuy so much, and says "It's not cool to see NewGuy every day. You're setting up expectations. I want you to have fun, and I want you to see other people. But you're my girl. You're not somebody else's girl. I am not going to be one of your two boyfriends. We can have friends that we have sex with, and have romantic feelings for, but it can't go beyond friends. Once I have grown and developed as a person, I can see us being closer with people, or living with them. But right now, I'm not capable of sharing you that way with somebody. You are my life, and I'm not ready to give a giant chunk of my life away to somebody like that. We don't own each other, but we can share each other a little bit, like, 'Here, borrow my girlfriend, but don't take her away for weeks and weeks.'" [Edit: I don't actually go away for weeks. In the last relationship, I wanted to see the other guy every 1-3 days.]

So in essence, he wants us to have fun and see other people, but he doesn't want it to be too intense.

On the other hand, I like my relationships to be intense. I like being in love, and I enjoy spending time with other people.

The last time this happened, I ended up breaking off the other relationship, b/c Boyfriend was going crazy and feeling very depressed, and I couldn't stand coming home and seeing him in tears all the time.

I don't want to upset him. I want to honor his feelings. But I also feel that his preferences limit me and my real desire for a deep connection with someone else.

Advice? What to do?
 
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Hello and welcome to the forum!

I am hearing two things in your post. "Intensity" and "the amount of time spent with a new partner" and I'm not sure if they are the same issue.

What does "intensity" mean to you? Does it mean getting swept away in an emotional tornado of feelings and getting so obsessed with the new partner that you don't even desire your SO at all anymore, or at least for a while? And if it is for a while, then how long would it take for you to return to your SO with feelings of desire?

It sounds like your SO is setting some clear boundaries, and you think they are restrictive.

I guess it would be good to become really clear about what you want. It sounds like you want to have the freedom to get involved with anyone at any time and to get caught up in the experience without having to worry about anything else.

If that is the case, do you think you would do better as a single poly person?

Or do you want to have a SO that is okay with you disappearing from time to time into intense relationships while they "hold down the fort," so to speak, until you decide to come back?

Just throwing out some things to hopefully help you get really clear about what it is you want!
 
You might have to accept your needs are incompatible. I mean, sure, you could try and identify his insecurities, and work on them, but he might not have any. This might just be what works for him. Asking you to limit your emotional and physical availability with others might be too hard for you in a dating context, and the only way to keep within his boundaries is a non-monogamous activity like swinging, that inherently restricts those things. Swinging might not work for you, though. So it comes back down to incompatibility. You want different things.
 
Thanks so much for your very thoughtful replies, Idealist and London. I am so appreciative!

I modified the original post; I don't actually disappear for weeks, that was just Boyfriend's words/feelings. In the last intense relationship, I simply wanted to see the new guy every 1-3 days, spend the night, etc., and that was a bit too much for Boyfriend, who prefers me to see someone once every 1-2 weeks.

Great point on "time vs intensity." I wouldn't say that I lost desire for my SO when seeing someone else, but perhaps I was paying him less attention than usual (esp. seeing as we are usually together almost 'all the time'). This time around, I want to try harder to please my SO and make him feel loved and wanted.

Honestly, sometimes I think I would do better being a single poly person. It's just hard to even think about that when my SO says he will never speak to me again if I move out of the house we share. He's not willing to see me if I become a single poly. Sigh. :(
 
What you could try, just to see, is seeing your new guy as often as you please, but working doubly hard to ensure new relationship energy (NRE) doesn't affect your existing relationship. You don't see your boyfriend less, or seem distracted. You value and honour your time with him, etc. If that isn't good enough, then accepting that you are incompatible is the only other viable option. If he chooses to be angry and resentful about that, there isn't much you can do.
 
He sounds more interested in something akin to swinging, maybe even closed swinging.

You sound more in line with polyamory.

It doesn't sound like your (collective) expectations of an open relationship are in line with each other.
 
London, good ideas, all of them. I asked him, and he says it's mainly the time I spend away, but also the intensity that bothers him. So I don't think he'd be happy unless I saw the outside person less often. Incompatibility may be the conclusion, but SO is my best friend, lover, and I'm his only family, so it's hard to think about that :-/


Ariakas, yes, it does sound like he's more into something like swinging (which is not my thing, really).

And yes, our open relationship expectations should have been aligned, but when we got together, all we said was, "We're in an open relationship. We don't own each other, and are into seeing other people." It's pretty wild that it took some years for us to run into situations that required defining that further! @__@
 
So if you saw them less but still felt as intensely about them, then what? Say you saw a guy three times a week for NSA sex, and another guy who you didnt have sex with, saw once month, but was head over heels in love with, who would bother him more?
 
LovelyFuture said:
I asked him, and he says it's mainly the time I spend away, but also the intensity that bothers him. So I don't think he'd be happy unless I saw the outside person less often.
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From your OP:
LovelyFuture said:
A few months ago, while Boyfriend was out of town for the weekend, I connected with someone...

Boyfriend went out of town again a few days ago, and I started hanging out with NewGuy...
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It appears that your BF is the one going away, so I don't buy the "It's mainly the time I spend away" argument. If BF isn't in town when you're out on a date, then it's not as if your dating is taking away from time you could be spending with him. It sounds more like a control or ownership issue.
 
I resent the reframing of a need for something closer to monogamy as a control or ownership issue. The only thing it definitely is in this case is an incompatibility. Poly people can be too quick too negatively label the symptoms of one being monogamous and turn them into character flaws.
 
london said:
So if you saw them less but still felt as intensely about them, then what? Say you saw a guy three times a week for NSA sex, and another guy who you didnt have sex with, saw once month, but were head over heels in love with-- who would bother him more?
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Ha, it almost sounds like a brain teaser. If two trains leave their stations...

You know, I will try and ask him this question.

----------------------------------------

Emm said:
It appears that it's your BF who's the one going away, so I don't buy the "it's mainly the time I spend away" argument. If BF isn't in town when you're out on a date, then it's not as if your dating is taking away from time you could be spending with him. It sounds more like a control or ownership issue.
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It does sound like ownership. He wants to know that I am his, and he is mine. He wants all outside parties to know this-- that he is #1.

I think the fact that I happened to pursue these two outside relationships on the rare two occasions that he left town... makes him feel out of control. He wants to meet the person that I'm seeing, so as to establish himself in their minds, so he's not a figment to them, but a real person. As for the fact that both relationships were furthered while he was away, it could be a coincidence, but perhaps it's more likely that I subconsciously feel more "free" when he's away.
 
london said:
I resent the reframing of a need for something closer to monogamy as a control or ownership issue. The only thing it definitely is in this case is an incompatibility. Poly people can be too quick too negatively label the symptoms of one being monogamous and turn them into character flaws.
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This sounds reasonable as well.
 
He has to understand that meeting your others is his need. Their need might be in opposition. Do you need your partners to meet?
 
london said:
I resent the reframing of a need for something closer to monogamy as a control or ownership issue. The only thing it definitely is in this case is an incompatibility. Poly people can be too quick too negatively label the symptoms of one being monogamous and turn them into character flaws.
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When it happens in the context of a monogamous relationship, it may be quite normal. When it comes up and is dealt with in an open relationship, then it may be a quirk and/or an incompatibility. When it's used to guilt-trip a partner in what has been established as an open relationship for years, it becomes a character flaw.

You, of course, are entitled to resent that or not, as you wish.
 
An open relationship does not automatically mean a fully polyamorous relationship. The OP has said more than once that polyamory wasn't their agreement; an open relationship with no specifics was what they agreed to. Now they've basically found that she wants polyamory and he wants something more like monogamy, if not monogamy itself. Neither party has lied or misled the other here. He hasn't backtracked. They just obviously thought they were on the same page about what the rules and boundaries were. I'm not of the opinion that any relationship that restricts outside emotional availability has control and ownership issues.
 
london said:
He has to understand that meeting your others is his need. Their need might be in opposition. Do you need your partners to meet?
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No, I don't need my partners to meet. It's not a necessity for me. It makes Boyfriend feel better to meet them, so I do it because I want him to feel comfortable.

Emm said:
When it happens in the context of a monogamous relationship, it may be quite normal. When it comes up and is dealt with in an open relationship, then it may be a quirk and/or an incompatibility. When it's used to guilt-trip a partner in what has been established as an open relationship for years, it becomes a character flaw.
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That sounds correct. To Boyfriend's credit, though, we've only had very short flings, mostly with out-of-towners. This year is the first time that one of us has tried to pursue something serious with someone in town, so it's the first time we're navigating this "portion" of what an open relationship means, when you have a longer-term outside partner in mind.

It's pretty wild that it took so long for one of us to pursue something like this, and bring this conversation to the forefront.
 
london said:
An open relationship does not automatically mean a fully polyamorous relationship. The OP has said more than once that polyamory wasn't their agreement. An open relationship with no specifics was what they agreed to. Now they've basically found that she wants polyamory and he wants something more like monogamy, if not monogamy itself. Neither party has lied or misled the other here. He hasn't backtracked. They just obviously thought they were on the same page about what the rules and boundaries were. I'm not of the opinion that any relationship that restricts outside emotional availability has control and ownership issues.
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Yes, all true. We started a general open relationship, thought we were on the same page, and have now realized that we're obviously not on the same page. We are trying to figure out the specifics.
 
Huh?

`

Respect the Boundaries and Abide by them.
This all really should have been agreed upon before he left, but things come up and both must adapt.
Frankly though, this seems like common sense, in any relationship.​

`
 
london said:
An open relationship does not automatically mean a fully polyamorous relationship.
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Indeed. To me "open" implies even fewer rules than would be found in a specifically poly or swinging relationship. That makes the sudden imposition of rules, several years in, appear to be more of an attempt to display ownership than in either of the other cases.

In this case, it seems that not checking that everyone is using the same definition of "open" has led to the quirk and/or incompatibility phase being delayed by several years.
 
LovelyFuture said:
Honestly, sometimes I think I would do better being a single poly person. It's just hard to even think about that when my SO says he will never speak to me again if I move out of the house we share. He's not willing to see me if I become a single poly. Sigh. :(
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Or you can have non-hierarchical poly relationships, which means, even if you live with one of your SOs, it doesn't give him the privilege to restrict your other relationships; all your SOs are on a level playing field without an arbitrary rule saying any one of them is above all others. It seems that you're more suited for solo poly or non-hierarchical poly, but your SO prefers swinging, or hierarchical poly, with a strict primary vs. secondary division. You need to talk about exactly what kind of relationship configuration each of you want, and see if it's possible to find a middle ground.
 
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