Polywog.

lipsnlace

lipsnlace

New member
I've never been totally satisfied being mono. I guess I'm just wired to be poly. To my immense satisfaction, my fiance agrees with the philosophy behind being poly, and is happy with our decision, and has yet to be jealous. We're polywogs, though not poly virgins.

I have a friend (“S”) whose relationship with me has always been more flirty and affectionate than most would consider normal. I love him like I love my other closest friends. When my fiance and I made the decision to be poly, I shared this with him and he was happy for us and supportive.

The situation with S is complicated. My friendship with him is long distance, and also constrained by a pretty drastic age difference, and by a lack of time to give to each other because of school and work. We talk about anything and everything, he challenges me intellectually, and I'm happy being his friend. I adore him, and he has expressed the desire to be more intimate with me (quite explicitly). This could be a really great thing, provided that my fiance approves of our relationship, which will just require them meeting and getting along, and I'm not concerned about that hardly at all.

I've never met S in person. We met online and talk pretty much all day, every day via email and text messages. I feel like I know him better than I know some people who I consider close friends, and I've grown to love him.

The major problem, though, is that S is married. He is wired poly, but his wife doesn't like the idea and has told him a couple times that it isn't something that she will ever try with him. He isn't generally unhappy in his marriage, but he feels like he's missing something there; something that he's found with me.

He wants to come visit me to finally meet me and spend some time with both me and my fiance, and has also offered to fly me down to visit him, later on. I'm concerned that he'd have to lie to his wife, and that makes me nervous. I want to find a way to make it work, but I don't see any way around him lying.

We both will probably have to make concessions, and I just wish there was an easy solution, but then it wouldn't be worth the effort, right?

I guess I'll just have to be patient (something I'm not particularly good at) and wait and see what happens. Sigh.
 
I'm concerned that he'd have to lie to his wife, and that makes me nervous. I want to find a way to make it work, but I don't see any way around him lying.
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If you're seeing him and lying to his wife, then you're having an affair and he's cheating.

If there are lies to spouses involved, then what you're/he's doing is not poly.

IMO.
 
I completely agree. Which is why we haven't done anything, and why I think he's going to have to talk to his wife before anything would even be possible. I don't want to be a part of cheating. :(

Edit: I could have been more clear. I don't see a way around his lying to his wife, which means that I won't be able to make it work and be more involved with him than just being his friend. So unless, by some miracle, she changes her mind, I'll just have to be happy being his friend.
 
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We're finally coming out to our friends this weekend, and I'm really excited... and nervous. A few of our closest friends already know, and have been really accepting and at least understand why being poly is right for us, even if they wouldn't want it for themselves.

But we have some friends whose families are pretty conservative and who I know just won't get it. My love and I are getting married in just over 5 weeks, and I'm concerned that they will object strongly or that they will think that we're... weird. Or something.

Well, we are weird-- and that's okay. I'm probably worried for nothing, since my friends love us. I just hope they surprise us and are accepting even if they don't understand. I feel like if I don't tell them, they won't understand the relationships we're building, and everything won't quite be real for us. We won't quite be able to be who we want to be, who we really are with the people that we love.

This is a big part of who we are, as it is for everyone on here I'm sure, and is so right for us. We want to be able to share our lovestyle with them, so we're going to just buck up and do it.

Wish us luck! :)
 
lipsnlace said:
I completely agree. Which is why we haven't done anything, and why I think he's going to have to talk to his wife before anything would even be possible. I don't want to be a part of cheating. :(
.
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Well -
Do you know how his wife and him define cheating? To some and emotional affair is even worse than physical contact/ intimacy. Make sure you are CLEAR that even your deep friendship is supported by his wife and his agreements.
 
Good job Lipsnlace! Why not start off open as opposed to going through the hassle of hiding and not being yourself.

Enjoy your wedding. True friends don't care how you love, they just want you to be loved :)
 
redsirenn said:
Well -
Do you know how his wife and him define cheating? To some an emotional affair is even worse than physical contact/ intimacy. Make sure you are CLEAR that even your deep friendship is supported by his wife and his agreements.
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He and I have talked about it, and he says she knows that he and I are close friends (I was worried about that too). I trust him; he's talked on the phone with me several times while she was in the room, so presumably she'd have to be very imperceptive to not notice anyway. I understand your concern (and appreciate it, too); we've talked about it pretty extensively today, and I think we'll just have to settle for being friends. Which is too bad, but at least we'll have each other's loving friendship.
 
Happy news!

I shared our change of lovestyle with my brother (who is my best friend) and several close friends yesterday, and they surprised the hell out of me with how understanding they all were. I truly have amazing friends. <3

Even though most of them said that they wouldn't make the same choice for themselves, they were open to talking about it, asked a lot of good questions, and were ultimately not put-off by our decision. Instead, most of them made comments like, "It sounds like you've done your research and thought a lot about it. I'm glad you've found a philosophy and a practice that makes you both happy." And this coming from a particular friend who's pretty dang conservative in her view of the world! :D

We haven't told all of our friends yet, though. One newlywed couple who are friends of mine are going to be particularly difficult to tell. I'm afraid they're going to think, despite any kind of explanation, that it's just just condoned cheating. They have baggage about their parents cheating, so I'm nervous that they will automatically equate poly with that and not listen. I guess it's better to tell them now than when my fiance or I have a boyfriend or a girlfriend move in with us, right? :)

Now we're discussing whether (and when) to tell our parents. My dad isn't the most open-minded or understanding person, and will probably ridicule us while my mom gets pissed. Maybe we'll wait until after the wedding in case they overreact in a drastic way (mom and dad are paying for most of the wedding). My love thinks we should wait until we have a more serious other love, and just introduce them as "so-and-so's boy/girlfriend" and deal with the questions then. I don't think that's the best idea, but it's entertaining at the very least. Just picturing the looks on their faces just makes me laugh, though in a nervous laughter sort of way. :rolleyes:
 
Glad your friends handled it with such aplomb. Good luck with the others and your parents.

I've always been a "this is me" person with no big issue concerning myself about what people will think. But my husband is very conservative in that way and it was hard for him to tell people. His co-workers still don't know.

But the people he has told have all reacted very well and to his suprise it was really just no big deal.
 
It shouldn't surprise us that our friends have handled this pretty drastic change with such grace since they are people we love, and would have to be at least loving, well-meaning people for us to spend time with them. But it's questioning a very deeply ingrained social norm, and we have several friends who are very wait-until-marriage, sing-in-the-church-choir Christian. I'm probably just not giving them enough credit. :rolleyes:
 
I'm feeling... conflicted.

I got a phone call from my S at 8am a few days ago (which is unusual), and he told me that he's leaving his wife, and would like my support. We hadn't ever discussed him leaving his wife, or anything of the sort; he just dropped it in my lap. He laid out all of the rational reasons for him to tell his wife that they should split up, he told me that he had talked to a few close friends who agreed that it was time, and he has made arrangements with a friend to stay in her spare bedroom until he figures things out.

Thankfully, I was not one of the reasons on his list for splitting up with his wife. They've split up twice before (13 years ago and 3 years ago), and he said that he always went back to her because it was the "safe choice" and the easy thing to do. It was easier to go back to her and be unhappy than to see her be upset because he wanted to split up. He doesn't like to make people unhappy, so he'd just go back to her.

I've seen that he's unhappy with her, and I know that his reasons for leaving her are legitimate, but I'm concerned that it may be partially my fault. I realize that this is the reaction that most children have when their parents split up, and is probably a natural reaction. But when we were talking, he thanked me for showing him that there are open, warm, and loving relationships out there, and that other people actually love him. He thanked me for demonstrating what a healthy, loving relationship (mine with my fiance) should be like.

I told him that every relationship looks different, but that if he's certain that that's what he wants, then I support him totally. I'm not familiar with any of this, really. My parents are still together, and I don't really know how to support him, or what to say.

I'm happy for him that he's found the courage to be happy in life, but I'm desperately hoping that it wasn't my fault. My fiance is happy for him, too, and thinks I'm silly for worrying. I'm a worrier, it's what I do.

Any suggestions for what to tell him, or how to support him?
 
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My husband and I split while I was involved in another relationship. It took a bit of reassuring my b/f that he was not the *reason* my husband and I split. I won't say that he wasn't a contributing factor towards my feelings - it sounds much like what your S described as the realization that relationships can/should be different than what I had - but it wasn't because of him or for him that I left.

From my perspective, the best thing you can do at this point is continue to be supportive of him. Listen if he wants to talk, if he doesn't want to talk don't pressure him, and for the love of gods, don't badmouth his stb-ex even if he does. You're not being silly, but if you worry about it too much, you turn it into something about YOU and not about him - and I would say the biggest thing you can do to support him is don't make it about you.
 
Thank you, crisare. Your insight is very much appreciated. :)

I haven't and won't bad-mouth his wife. I don't know her, and I don't have a problem with her except that he's been unhappy with and bored by her. But that's his thing, and I try to not mirror other people's feelings-- as in, I don't choose to dislike someone just because someone I care about feels that way. Of course if I did dislike her for my own reasons, that would be different.
 
I haven't and won't bad-mouth his wife. I don't know her, and I don't have a problem with her except that he's been unhappy with and bored by her. But that's his thing, and I try to not mirror other people's feelings-- as in, I don't choose to dislike someone just because someone I care about feels that way. Of course if I did dislike her for my own reasons, that would be different.
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Oh totally. It's just very easy to let sympathy slip into ... something a litlte more. I did it a couple of times with my last b/f and it made it harder to relate easily to his wife when they weren't having problems. And during a divorce, he'll swing back and forth between missing her and hating her and everything in between most likely. Just remember that what he says right now might not reflect what he feels in 10 mins. :) I know I could go from being pissed off beyond belief at my husband to being weepy and sad in the space of seconds. I'm sure my b/f thought I was a basket case. *wry smile*
 
Okay, I'll keep that in mind and try to be sympathetic. He's already feeling bad about himself, and he hasn't even left her yet (he's going to wait until after the holidays); he feels bad about making her unhappy. They have a lot of history and two grown children, so I can understand his love for her after all that time. So it's hard... But such is life, right?

I guess I should be thrilled; he wants to be my boyfriend, and now he'll be able to without cheating on his wife. It's just hard to be cheery about it when he's having a hard time.
 
So my friend M texted me today all excited because he found a poly meeting group in our area. I'm stoked! We live in a fairly small place, so I didn't think that there would be any meet-ups nearby, and didn't even check. How silly of me, I know.

Turns out that Franklin from Xeromag happens to attend that meeting, too! So not only do we have a poly support group that meets up very close to where we attend our University, it happens to also be a well-stocked group with intelligent, semi-famous poly people. Sweet deal.

Meetings are the first Monday of every month, so I'll have to wait until Feb 1 to attend, but it's on my calendar for sure! He wanted to check it out and see that it was worth going to before telling me about it, so I didn't get know about it to go tonight. Oh well. Too bad my fiance (husband in 11 days!) works Monday nights so he can't come too. Boo.

I'm excited! :) I think that meeting up with other like-minded people will be nice. Most of my nearest and dearest do know about our decision, but it's still a bit fresh to be able to talk freely about, and there are a few who still don't know. So we still have to bite our tongues about it sometimes. :/

I was talking to S a few days ago, and he casually mentioned meeting my parents one day way in the future. I know that this shouldn't have surprised me, but it sortof did. Not like completely shocked, just like an epiphany, like an "oh yeah, that'll probably happen, huh?" I think I've mentioned before that there is a substantial age difference between my S and I; he's 34 years older than me. It's a bit shocking to see that number, haha. He doesn't act like it, think like it, talk like it, or feel like it, but that's how much older he is. I don't care and neither does he, to us it's just a number. But I know that my parents would be more than a little bit shocked, and I think it would also probably hinder their willingness to accept us as poly if they can't get over that hump either.

It's not that I don't want him to meet them, if that time comes... I'm just a little scared about how they'll react. My dad's not the most open-minded guy, and having his daughter be in another relationship outside of her marriage, with a man 8 years older than himself... sheesh.

Anyway, I got on here to write a quick note, and got carried away. So good night everyone! :)
 
When I was 23, I dated a 46 year old woman. My parents didn't approve, but assumed I was just doing crazy college experiments in my love life.

It will probably be very different in your situation since you will be married and in the "serious" part of your life. I am not sure how your family is, but I am guessing that there will be "concern." I think all you can do is to stress that you just want people to give this guy a chance. If they let down their guard, they may see that he is ok after all.

As for S's divorce, I think that if he was being all rational about it, then you must have fit somewhere in the equation. It could have been a small factor or it could have more like a catalyst which caused him to rethink his marriage.

As for support, I think that he just wants to know that you do not think badly of him for doing this. And you can be there if he needs to get some stuff off his chest. But I don't know him well enough to say this for sure. Maybe he is the type of person who likes to be challenged in his feelings? Or the type who likes to be explained how another person may be feeling?

Anyway, good luck and I hope it all goes well. :)
 
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