I (30f) have been with my husband/primary/nesting partner Jean (26m) for 5-6 years, married for 2. We've had a great relationship thus far with lots of communication, check-ins, and consideration. Early on, we established that we both were open to non-monogamous relationships, but due to the pandemic, incompatibilities, and lack of connection with potential partners, we've remained monogamous up till recently.
It's important to note here that I am bisexual and demiromantic (I need a solid emotional connection to develop romantic feelings). I'm a serial people pleaser (working on that bit), and I've had some bad experiences with relationships in the past where partners used polyamory as an excuse to try to initiate threesomes with those they liked from within our shared friend group, or even outright cheating.
I met Sherry (21f) through an online D&D game. She lives close enough (an hour or so away) that we were able to meet in person, and Jean really clicked with her right away (we both did), but after a couple more in person meetings, he asked if I'd consider her joining our relationship as a third. I was uncomfortable with the age difference between Sherry and I, but tentatively agreed on the condition that she was the one to come to us and bring it up.
Well, it did end up coming up. I'm not sure who initiated the conversation, but it was solely between Jean and Sherry and I was just kind of informed that she was open to seeing us. This hit the first sour note with me, but repression for the sake of others happiness and preferences is one of my best skills.
Some things to know about Sherry: she's only had one serious relationship and it ended in a not so great way. Other romantic encounters have been about her body and sex (she's very pretty and voluptuous) and left her feeling used. She has trouble making/enforcing boundaries because she was never allowed to have any as a kid. She has no experience with polyam relationships.
We had only known her in person for a month or so at this point, and for me the feelings weren't there. They were both insistent about seeing everyone together as a group/trio, even when I proposed them having their own relationship with each other. So I proposed a situation where we'd continue to treat Sherry as a friend until after the new year, so we could get to know each other better and I could see if feelings developed for me. I specifically asked Jean to treat her the same as he would his other friends. My goal with this holding period was to hopefully bond with her as a friend instead of viewing it as a pretense to having a relationship.
This went alright for a while. They texted a lot over an app which I don't/prefer not to use, which was fine with me as Jean and I had never had issues with phone insecurity (we both have access to each others phones, but it's never really been needed unless we needed the phone but our hands/eyes were busy, such as while driving or cooking). Sherry would travel to us when she had consecutive days off from work and stay in our guest room over night, and we'd play games and watch shows together. She'd always sit between us on the couch, which is a bit of a squeeze for three people but not uncomfortable.
I began to feel fairly left out as time went on, as they mostly interacted with each other. I did address that with Jean though and he tried to promote/encourage bonding and communication between Sherry and I (talking over discord, which never went far beyond small talk, talking about D&D, and infrequently trying to make plans playing online games). We also have a discord server for the three of us, to promote group talking, but it doesn't get used much.
Mostly they continued using the separate app to talk all throughout the day. They started having long (often 3+ hours) phone calls, just chatting, but I never felt like an active participant in these calls, especially when he took them in another room. A sore point with me (that I did bring up with Jean) was that he sent her more pictures of himself in the space of 1-2 months than he had sent to me/taken with me over the course of our entire relationship. He made attempts to amend this by sending me at least some of the pictures he sent her, though that didn't really make me feel better about it. But those only lasted a few days before things went right back to how they were. Jean would also regularly ask me for updates on whether or not I was having romantic feelings for Sherry yet, which made me feel pressured and rushed.
We were also intimate in those 1-2 months than we had been in the last 6 months before that, and I began to feel like I was a surrogate/outlet for his sexual frustrations/feelings for Sherry. I tried very hard to be optimistic during this time, but that slight feeling of being used always stuck in the back of my mind. He started making a lot of unilateral decisions, most notably he bought me a "personal massager" for the recent holiday without informing me first or getting my opinion on the style. He got the same one for Sherry to give to her at a later date, which was a bit upsetting for me.
Things came to a head for me emotionally when I saw some of their messages on the app they used (Jean never hid them from me or anything) from Sherry about how Jean was so much more forward than I was, and I realized that they had never treated each other as just friends like I'd asked them, and everything they'd been messaging to each other had been viewed as pretext to a relationship. Looking back, it's pretty clear from many of things that happened that Jean was deeply into the NRE stage (though I'm certain nothing physical was involved). Sherry was due to be over the next day to spend the weekend and I tried to suppress how I was feeling until we could have a long talk about things without ruining the weekend. I ended up having to go for a long walk anyway after the feelings of being pushed out/overshadowed got worse when she was over. My bursting point was when they watched a new video from a youtube series together without me , which hurt a lot since it was something Jean and I had always done together and it meant a great deal to me, so I had to excuse myself from the whole situation.
I want to be clear that I don't think there's any malicious intent on either Jean's or Sherry's ends. She's young and inexperienced, and this is a very new situation for all of us to navigate as Jean and I have never progressed this far with non-monogamy in our relationship. Jean himself does tend to rush into things when he's made his mind up, and he's fairly dense when it comes to noticing small details and feelings (he's on the spectrum, if that helps people understand).
After she'd gone home, we had a long talk, during which we both cried, and I aired out as much as I could from what I wrote above to Jean. He was extremely apologetic and confirmed that none of it was purposeful and mostly went unnoticed by him (which hurt a bit in it's own way, but I did expect it). We promised to communicate better and try to make some compromises (like him sitting in the middle of the couch and such). I told him that I hadn't been able to bond with Sherry like I hoped, and I now understood that it fell so flat because she very much went into every interaction with the expectation of a guaranteed relationship based on her interactions with Jean. But it was deeply hurtful to me that he hadn't been able to respect the boundary I had set in the beginning, and I would probably never be able to develop romantic feelings for Sherry because of so much built up subconscious resentment, and I told Jean that. I also told him that if he wanted to have his own relationship with Sherry from that point on, but that I would like to be kept in the communication loop.
We left that conversation feeling better, but the very next time Sherry came over (this last weekend) the same feelings crept up again. I knew he had told her over the phone about our talk, but I wasn't a participant (she had been having a bad day and so he decided to call, we had company over and I had to stay out and entertain) so I have no idea what he told her/what her reaction was/what kind of note they ended that conversation on. I felt as though the communication issues that Jean and I had talked about improving hadn't actually changed at all. But I got through the weekend, until the night before Sherry was due to go home they kissed each other before we all went to bed. I hadn't known at all that they were already at that point, and though it was just a light peck, it caught me completely off guard. It felt like a betrayal of sorts, cause Jean didn't tell me they had started interacting physically while she was at our house, and because it seemed like they were trying to be sneaky about it cause I never had an inkling about it.
Jean and I had another talk the next day (yesterday), but we ended up repeating a lot of the same points from last time. I feel very insecure, and I keep trying to keep Jean appraised of how I'm feeling, but I'm not sure how to proceed at this point. The hurt I felt hasn't dulled at all, and even though I know I need time to heal, I can't help but feel like an outsider now (I did read the Are You In Poly Hell? article and recognized the feelings of demotion and displacement, but there wasn't really any good advice on how to proceed in the article, it kind of just said to work things out or your relationship may die).
Any advice on how to proceed (both for me or Jean, or even Sherry, I hope to be able to share any good advice I receive with them), or even just opinions on the situation are gladly welcome. Don't be afraid to tell me to toughen up my shit, I probably need to anyway. And thanks for reading if you got all the way through, I realize it's very long (it would be longer if not for the character limit).
It's important to note here that I am bisexual and demiromantic (I need a solid emotional connection to develop romantic feelings). I'm a serial people pleaser (working on that bit), and I've had some bad experiences with relationships in the past where partners used polyamory as an excuse to try to initiate threesomes with those they liked from within our shared friend group, or even outright cheating.
I met Sherry (21f) through an online D&D game. She lives close enough (an hour or so away) that we were able to meet in person, and Jean really clicked with her right away (we both did), but after a couple more in person meetings, he asked if I'd consider her joining our relationship as a third. I was uncomfortable with the age difference between Sherry and I, but tentatively agreed on the condition that she was the one to come to us and bring it up.
Well, it did end up coming up. I'm not sure who initiated the conversation, but it was solely between Jean and Sherry and I was just kind of informed that she was open to seeing us. This hit the first sour note with me, but repression for the sake of others happiness and preferences is one of my best skills.
Some things to know about Sherry: she's only had one serious relationship and it ended in a not so great way. Other romantic encounters have been about her body and sex (she's very pretty and voluptuous) and left her feeling used. She has trouble making/enforcing boundaries because she was never allowed to have any as a kid. She has no experience with polyam relationships.
We had only known her in person for a month or so at this point, and for me the feelings weren't there. They were both insistent about seeing everyone together as a group/trio, even when I proposed them having their own relationship with each other. So I proposed a situation where we'd continue to treat Sherry as a friend until after the new year, so we could get to know each other better and I could see if feelings developed for me. I specifically asked Jean to treat her the same as he would his other friends. My goal with this holding period was to hopefully bond with her as a friend instead of viewing it as a pretense to having a relationship.
This went alright for a while. They texted a lot over an app which I don't/prefer not to use, which was fine with me as Jean and I had never had issues with phone insecurity (we both have access to each others phones, but it's never really been needed unless we needed the phone but our hands/eyes were busy, such as while driving or cooking). Sherry would travel to us when she had consecutive days off from work and stay in our guest room over night, and we'd play games and watch shows together. She'd always sit between us on the couch, which is a bit of a squeeze for three people but not uncomfortable.
I began to feel fairly left out as time went on, as they mostly interacted with each other. I did address that with Jean though and he tried to promote/encourage bonding and communication between Sherry and I (talking over discord, which never went far beyond small talk, talking about D&D, and infrequently trying to make plans playing online games). We also have a discord server for the three of us, to promote group talking, but it doesn't get used much.
Mostly they continued using the separate app to talk all throughout the day. They started having long (often 3+ hours) phone calls, just chatting, but I never felt like an active participant in these calls, especially when he took them in another room. A sore point with me (that I did bring up with Jean) was that he sent her more pictures of himself in the space of 1-2 months than he had sent to me/taken with me over the course of our entire relationship. He made attempts to amend this by sending me at least some of the pictures he sent her, though that didn't really make me feel better about it. But those only lasted a few days before things went right back to how they were. Jean would also regularly ask me for updates on whether or not I was having romantic feelings for Sherry yet, which made me feel pressured and rushed.
We were also intimate in those 1-2 months than we had been in the last 6 months before that, and I began to feel like I was a surrogate/outlet for his sexual frustrations/feelings for Sherry. I tried very hard to be optimistic during this time, but that slight feeling of being used always stuck in the back of my mind. He started making a lot of unilateral decisions, most notably he bought me a "personal massager" for the recent holiday without informing me first or getting my opinion on the style. He got the same one for Sherry to give to her at a later date, which was a bit upsetting for me.
Things came to a head for me emotionally when I saw some of their messages on the app they used (Jean never hid them from me or anything) from Sherry about how Jean was so much more forward than I was, and I realized that they had never treated each other as just friends like I'd asked them, and everything they'd been messaging to each other had been viewed as pretext to a relationship. Looking back, it's pretty clear from many of things that happened that Jean was deeply into the NRE stage (though I'm certain nothing physical was involved). Sherry was due to be over the next day to spend the weekend and I tried to suppress how I was feeling until we could have a long talk about things without ruining the weekend. I ended up having to go for a long walk anyway after the feelings of being pushed out/overshadowed got worse when she was over. My bursting point was when they watched a new video from a youtube series together without me , which hurt a lot since it was something Jean and I had always done together and it meant a great deal to me, so I had to excuse myself from the whole situation.
I want to be clear that I don't think there's any malicious intent on either Jean's or Sherry's ends. She's young and inexperienced, and this is a very new situation for all of us to navigate as Jean and I have never progressed this far with non-monogamy in our relationship. Jean himself does tend to rush into things when he's made his mind up, and he's fairly dense when it comes to noticing small details and feelings (he's on the spectrum, if that helps people understand).
After she'd gone home, we had a long talk, during which we both cried, and I aired out as much as I could from what I wrote above to Jean. He was extremely apologetic and confirmed that none of it was purposeful and mostly went unnoticed by him (which hurt a bit in it's own way, but I did expect it). We promised to communicate better and try to make some compromises (like him sitting in the middle of the couch and such). I told him that I hadn't been able to bond with Sherry like I hoped, and I now understood that it fell so flat because she very much went into every interaction with the expectation of a guaranteed relationship based on her interactions with Jean. But it was deeply hurtful to me that he hadn't been able to respect the boundary I had set in the beginning, and I would probably never be able to develop romantic feelings for Sherry because of so much built up subconscious resentment, and I told Jean that. I also told him that if he wanted to have his own relationship with Sherry from that point on, but that I would like to be kept in the communication loop.
We left that conversation feeling better, but the very next time Sherry came over (this last weekend) the same feelings crept up again. I knew he had told her over the phone about our talk, but I wasn't a participant (she had been having a bad day and so he decided to call, we had company over and I had to stay out and entertain) so I have no idea what he told her/what her reaction was/what kind of note they ended that conversation on. I felt as though the communication issues that Jean and I had talked about improving hadn't actually changed at all. But I got through the weekend, until the night before Sherry was due to go home they kissed each other before we all went to bed. I hadn't known at all that they were already at that point, and though it was just a light peck, it caught me completely off guard. It felt like a betrayal of sorts, cause Jean didn't tell me they had started interacting physically while she was at our house, and because it seemed like they were trying to be sneaky about it cause I never had an inkling about it.
Jean and I had another talk the next day (yesterday), but we ended up repeating a lot of the same points from last time. I feel very insecure, and I keep trying to keep Jean appraised of how I'm feeling, but I'm not sure how to proceed at this point. The hurt I felt hasn't dulled at all, and even though I know I need time to heal, I can't help but feel like an outsider now (I did read the Are You In Poly Hell? article and recognized the feelings of demotion and displacement, but there wasn't really any good advice on how to proceed in the article, it kind of just said to work things out or your relationship may die).
Any advice on how to proceed (both for me or Jean, or even Sherry, I hope to be able to share any good advice I receive with them), or even just opinions on the situation are gladly welcome. Don't be afraid to tell me to toughen up my shit, I probably need to anyway. And thanks for reading if you got all the way through, I realize it's very long (it would be longer if not for the character limit).
It sounds like by doing that, you just ended up dinging your own self, and created more problems than if you had stood firm from the start and said, "Nah, I don't want a triad. You date her separately."