A very brief introduction.
My wife and I are six years into exploring polyamory and really only starting to find our feet.
This all started when I came home and told my wife I would like to date another woman. In retrospect, she took it a lot better than any reasonable person would and, after a whole lot of talking, agreed that we would give it a try and see how it went. Nevertheless, 10 weeks or so later, things started to fall apart. I had fallen in love with my new GF and intended to have sex with her. My wife decided she could not tolerate that, she felt rejected, and that she would leave me and take my son with her.
That started a spiral that saw us tear each other apart, and destroy most of what we loved about our relationship. I couldn't bear that she didn't love who I really was - that I had to be someone fake in order for her to like me - but I also couldn't bear losing her. If we hadn't had children together, we probably would have separated. During this period, the relationship with my GF continued to a degree, but I was a pretty emotionally hollow person and she eventually drifted out of my life.
Yet over a long period of time, my wife and I started to decide that actually we really did want to be together. We both came to the realisation that actually how we feel about each other and treat each other is what makes our marriage special, rather than the exclusion of others.
So in the past year, we've started to open up our relationship again.
My wife started dating a man that had been there for her through the dark times in our marriage, but decided to leave him in part because she felt she could never give him the depth of commitment that he wanted (he was recently divorced).
For my own part, I met a beautiful woman while travelling on a business trip recently, but she baulked at it becoming more than a fling. As a 30 something divorcee with no kids, the clock was ticking. She told me she wanted primacy, someone that would drop everything for her, and it seemed to her at least that I was not able to give her that.
Two reflections strike me after these experiences. The first is how very far my views have shifted in the past few years. I guess I was always, on some level, poly-curious, but now I find the reactions of monogamously minded people hard to understand. I honestly no longer can see the world easily from that view point - the idea that one person must forsake all others in order to be able to contribute to another person's life, to justify them letting down their walls and making themselves vulnerable.
The second is how bloody hard it seems to be find someone who is open to this, who doesn't have the pre-conceived ideas from childhood, the white picket fence measure of success in life AND that I find attractive, and vice versa. I guess I'm starting to wonder how anyone makes this work in practice.
Philosophically, I know precisely where I stand. But in practice, this all seems so darn hard.
Maybe these are normal feelings at this point in life. I don't know.
My wife and I are six years into exploring polyamory and really only starting to find our feet.
This all started when I came home and told my wife I would like to date another woman. In retrospect, she took it a lot better than any reasonable person would and, after a whole lot of talking, agreed that we would give it a try and see how it went. Nevertheless, 10 weeks or so later, things started to fall apart. I had fallen in love with my new GF and intended to have sex with her. My wife decided she could not tolerate that, she felt rejected, and that she would leave me and take my son with her.
That started a spiral that saw us tear each other apart, and destroy most of what we loved about our relationship. I couldn't bear that she didn't love who I really was - that I had to be someone fake in order for her to like me - but I also couldn't bear losing her. If we hadn't had children together, we probably would have separated. During this period, the relationship with my GF continued to a degree, but I was a pretty emotionally hollow person and she eventually drifted out of my life.
Yet over a long period of time, my wife and I started to decide that actually we really did want to be together. We both came to the realisation that actually how we feel about each other and treat each other is what makes our marriage special, rather than the exclusion of others.
So in the past year, we've started to open up our relationship again.
My wife started dating a man that had been there for her through the dark times in our marriage, but decided to leave him in part because she felt she could never give him the depth of commitment that he wanted (he was recently divorced).
For my own part, I met a beautiful woman while travelling on a business trip recently, but she baulked at it becoming more than a fling. As a 30 something divorcee with no kids, the clock was ticking. She told me she wanted primacy, someone that would drop everything for her, and it seemed to her at least that I was not able to give her that.
Two reflections strike me after these experiences. The first is how very far my views have shifted in the past few years. I guess I was always, on some level, poly-curious, but now I find the reactions of monogamously minded people hard to understand. I honestly no longer can see the world easily from that view point - the idea that one person must forsake all others in order to be able to contribute to another person's life, to justify them letting down their walls and making themselves vulnerable.
The second is how bloody hard it seems to be find someone who is open to this, who doesn't have the pre-conceived ideas from childhood, the white picket fence measure of success in life AND that I find attractive, and vice versa. I guess I'm starting to wonder how anyone makes this work in practice.
Philosophically, I know precisely where I stand. But in practice, this all seems so darn hard.
Maybe these are normal feelings at this point in life. I don't know.
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