Hi All! I'm back, a few years later to return to this thread. Posting here was during a time i felt the most alone, scared, and afraid. I was posting to find support from like-minded people. I'm still with my partner, we are married and own a house, and the partner in question is out of the picture. We are trying to get pregnant.
I still speak to my therapist about the trauma I had from this time, and both myself and my partner are in couples therapy and we are both in a healing place from being in this situation (to all the people who policed me about using the word "triad" wrongly, i was searching for words that fit and that was the one that stuck). We are still poly, and we engage with healthy people...everything is going great, and we are enjoying our polyamory experience. This experience was terrifying for me because I came out as poly, and my poly experience was so painful, and at each turn I tried to speak to people about my metamour, many people told me the problem was me....and in my heart I knew that i was actually dealing with a toxic narcissist, but to say so would be considered "not correct" in poly. well...fuck that! i told my partner i couldn't be with him if he kept a dangerous person in our lives, and my meta is out of the picture, and now my partner and i have other partners who we are super excited that they are in our lives. I'm happy he is happy with healthy people who do not control him, and subsequently me. My meta left the picture, and got back together with her ex husband, and they are monogamous.
My metamour was a toxic person, period. She was physically and emotionally abusive to my partner, and used suicidal ideation to control my partner and myself. I spent four years trying to speak with her, getting on a kitchen table level, but each time I tried, she didn't listen or absorb any of the information given since she smoked several bowls of pot while speaking to me as I stayed sober. She disregarded me, my presence in my partner's life, the fact we lived together, the fact we were going to get married and buy a home. I felt erased, not listened to, worn down, and diminished. My partner spent every day for five years worried if he said the wrong thing to her, she would kill herself, since she said if he left her she would do so.
I'm happy to say we've now been together for 6.5 years and we have been poly this whole time. In total I've been poly 8 years....and i continue to not relate to the polyamory scene. The poly I relate to is not maintaining a bevy of partners, but rather, I spend a lot of time alone and with friends, when I'm not with my partner. My partner has a landscape of other partners, all of whom I appreciate. What has helped immensely is we have hierarchy around our home, and having children only together. As a person who did not grow up with a stable home or family, I needed those things to stay in place and be locked down. my partner has agreed he doesn't want to do those things with other people, we both realized how hectic and chaotic it is, and we decided to focus our energy on other things, like our careers and taking care of our parents. poly is a lot of work and it's worth it to many people....but for me i found non-hierarchy to be an energy suck from the things in my life i needed to do.
I decided to return to the thread as a healing moment, to share that I appreciate the people who actually said helpful things, but to the people that didn't, you made assumptions about my supposed ignorance and were unhelpful. I felt ashamed, afraid, and like leaving poly all together...I felt ganged up on and belittled by a traumatic situation I was looking for support for. This website actually made me feel like being monogamous, which is saying a lot. I hope that when you speak to other people and comment, they don't walk away with as much hurt feelings as I did...and sit with it for years. I'm over it now, but i'm here to say, in a better and stronger and healthier place, my piece. Thanks to the people that said something helpful and were kind. I hope you help others!