the first time you met a significant other's other significant other

Well, I don't know how interesting this will be to others, but it was a big deal for me :)

I had agreed that it was time to meet my "significant other's significant other" but the situation was quite stressful as I guess you could say she was a little more "significant" at the time than me? :p They had a 3.5 year long relationship while I had known him for barely three months, so I was feeling the unbalance and way, way more nervous than she was.

To my surprise, we ended up chatting for hours. I suppose it makes sense - that we would both share common characteristics since we had both appealed to the same guy... we're firm friends now and probably would have been even if we hadn't met under these circumstances. What I like most about her is that we interact on our own terms: it's not about who we are relative to the whole situation, and we have a friendship that has it's own absolute value...

No fireworks or awful awkward moments, but it was a big step for me :)

I think as far as "interesting stories" go, the ones where you meet one another's friends or, god forbid, parents :) are the more juicy ones!!
 
Hmm. I met Curly's exes--a couple--shortly after we began dating. She was active in the SCA, as were they, and I got involved when we got together. I didn't feel odd about it, though I suspect they did.

She got involved with another couple for a time, though I'd met them prior to her involvement. We've spent a couple of Thanksgivings at their place.

She's mentioned having a man at work flirt with her a bit. If something comes of that, then I'll be able to meet somebody she's involved with after the beginning of said involvement and before it ends.
 
All my friends know Violet, but Anne and Violet had a "coming out" moment for our relationship that was... Interesting, lol.

My best friend and business partner had a house warming party at his place, LOTS of our closest and not quite as close friends there. They showed up together, wearing contrasting (black with white letters and white with black letters) T-shirts that said "I LOVE my Boyfriend", and proceded to make out with each other and me in the pool all night. It "made an impression" shall we say? LOL
 
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Once upon a time there was this guy who was about the biggest mama's boy ever. For the sake of the story we'll call him "me" (sometimes referred to as "I"). By "mama's boy" I don't mean to suggest that I had all of the traits stereotypically associated with mama's boys, but rather, that I had about as close and healthy a relationship with my mother as one can imagine.

My mother and I had great communication and learned a lot from one another. My mother spent a tremendous amount of time with me during my formative years and taught me a great many things at a very early age and all of that was a wonderful foundation upon which I could develop great skills and pursue my interests, and I basically sailed through my early life making mostly good decisions and reaping the resultant rewards.

On occasion --directly attributable, I think, to my status as a human being-- I would make bad decisions. An example of such a decision would be the time when I, at age 14, decided never to cry again. My grandfather had just passed away and I had a bit of a cry, and my aggressively analytical mind worked it out that: crying was not enjoyable and not a necessary part of the human condition and I really didn't need to bother about spending any time engaged in such an activity.

I fell out of practice with crying such that I couldn't cry to save my life. For 16 years the only water my eyes produced was on occasion when I was extremely sleepy, no amount of sadness or desire to cry yielded anything.

At age 30 my mother passed away. This shattered my universe and turned me inside out but still did not produce any instant tears. Nearly a month later at her memorial service something that a dear friend of mine said breached the carefully constructed wall I had erected and one of my eyes surrendered one tear and reminded me what it was like to feel human for a minute. I tried to cry more. I seriously needed to cry so I tried to go with it. But one tear was the best I could do at the time. But it was in that moment that I realized that the decision I had made at 14 was doing me much more harm than good.

After my mom passed away circumstances were such that I was actually able to spend the next year secluded in my home without anyone really bothering me. This time away did me a world of good, but no crying was done during this time.

After nearly a year, being a virtual shut in hermit type began to feel a bit ridiculous and I decided to go in the complete opposite direction from there. This period of time coincided with one of my least favorite people being elected president of my country and starting, what I deemed to be, pointless wars in the middle east. So I got out of my house and became an "activist" and cavorted with other activists and attended protests where we all voiced our anger about the direction our country was being pushed.

At one such protest I met H. I guess an important story element that I should quickly insert is that at this point I had decided that women --as a gender-- were almost completely useless and, while curiously entertaining to look at, they could not be relied upon to act or communicate with any "real humanity". At least here in this country. I had, in all honesty, resolved to save up some money and go seeking my one and only overseas. And so that was the mindset I was in when I met H.

H was, and still is, an amazingly beautiful person. Talking to her I quickly and clearly came to understand that she knew a lot more about "real humanity" than I do. She knew a great deal more about a great many things and I was pretty much in awe of her. I was more attracted to her than I had ever been to anyone in my entire life and so I was very, very eager to be in a relationship with her and make our pact of exclusivity and raise a family and all of that. None of it could happen soon enough to satisfy me.

So, trying to take it step by step, I became very encouraged by the fact that she seemed to be interested in starting a relationship with me. I moved on to step two and began inquiring toward our pact of exclusivity but she did not think that her other boyfriend would approve of that idea. And she had no desire to start a family with anyone. And all of this left me rather devastated.

I had absolutely no interest in any romantic involvement with a polyamorous person. Yet, there were still all of these great things that she knew about the world and about humanity that I desperately needed to know. And so I was very eager to remain friends with her. We pursued a friendship. A loving friendship. That turned into a relationship despite the adamant objections being raised by my brain.

I quietly hoped that she might be going through some sort of a phase. And that she might soon just grow out of it and give monogamy a try. But she was very much in love with her other boyfriend and was in fact hoping to move to a far off city to be with him. Over even more strenuous objections from my brain I invited her to move in with me to save up money to move to the far away city. Sure, I half hoped that she might change her mind, but I also just loved her in such a way that I wanted for her to have whatever was going to help her on her journey. And if moving to a far away city and being polyamorous forever was what she needed for happiness I was cincerely willing to help her to get there.

The boyfriend in the far away city thought that was a fine idea, only he suggested that he would like to visit here so that he could meet me first.

WHAT? That made no sense at all. Why would a person want to come here and meet me, when I would just stab such a person in the eye with shiny shards of glass?? I became aware of the fact that I had jealousy issues. Jealousy issues that... were somewhat extreme in nature.

Against further objections from my brain I agreed to this visitation and meeting. As the day drew nearer I was overcome by dread and irrational loathing. I had hopes that he would somehow be an observably evil manipulator who had maliciously tricked her into this polyamory thing. Or that there would some collection of detestable traits that would help me to say "Fine, if she chooses to be with such a person, more power to them."

And so the time came when we were all to meet and hang out together. She was a nervous wreck. I was a powder keg of simmering emotions. He seemed pretty cool about the whole thing. I could not detect any evil within him. In fact he seemed like a really cool guy. As we chatted over dinner, finding out all kinds of things we had in common, I began to realize that it was very important that I not stab him in the eye with sharp objects. His personhood was very vexing for me. Then we came back to my house and chatted a bit more and then they left together and went back to her place.

And then I cried. And cried. And cried. I had no idea what I was crying about but I was completely out of control with the crying. Looking back on it I suppose I was probably crying because I was in love with such a wonderful person who was in love with another completely wonderful person and this filled me with confusion and fear and at the time I just wished the world would stop rather than forcing me to understand that this was reality and reality could be like this. On the one hand I felt like a very lonely motherless child who was going to be alone again but now pining away for other boyfriend's wonderful girlfriend. On the other hand I felt like --relative to my year of seclusion-- I had lots of wonderful people in my life, one of whom was about to move in with me and take me on an adventure to who knows where.

Yeah, fear.

Fear is a pretty strong one as emotions go.
 
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Hmm... I met my partner's significant other after just after I began to realize I was falling for him. She was a sweet freckled and bespectacled redhead, small compared to me (which made me feel like a giantess at first...). But she was definitely more assertive, which actually worked pretty well. I was terribly shy; I thought she was cute, and I had butterflies in my stomach because I didn't know how things would go, or if she liked me, or if "she and I" would get along... She was wearing a flowing gold top and this skirt that showed off her legs, and she had this habit of worrying her lower lip with her teeth that was adorable. I stammered my way through a few conversations, and then we warmed up to each other, and then things became awkward again. Finally, over hot chocolate, she said, "You're the shyest pervert I've ever met!" and it broke the ice.

She fell into my bed and my life and my heart, and although we never had the soul-sweeping passion for each other that I did for my partner, there was a lot of special in that relationship. The love was of a different flavor, but it was there. Later on, she went through a gender transition, and I did my best to be supportive, and there was angst and a tearful breakup... but then we ended up close friends. Really close. Right now, I think we're closer than we've ever been, and there's chemistry there, although he's at a different place in his romantic life and so am I... but it's one of those friendships that lasts, you know? I'm glad we met, oh-so-glad... I didn't expect to gain a family member, but that's what I got.
 
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Once upon a time there was this guy who was about the biggest mama's boy ever. For the sake of the story we'll call him "me" (sometimes referred to as "I"). By "mama's boy" I don't mean to suggest that I had all of the traits stereotypically associated with mama's boys, but rather, that I had about as close and healthy a relationship with my mother as one can imagine.

My mother and I had great communication and learned a lot from one another. My mother spent a tremendous amount of time with me during my formative years and taught me a great many things at a very early age and all of that was a wonderful foundation upon which I could develop great skills and pursue my interests, and I basically sailed through my early life making mostly good decisions and reaping the resultant rewards.

On occasion --directly attributable, I think, to my status as a human being-- I would make bad decisions. An example of such a decision would be the time when I, at age 14, decided never to cry again. My grandfather had just passed away and I had a bit of a cry, and my aggressively analytical mind worked it out that: crying was not enjoyable and not a necessary part of the human condition and I really didn't need to bother about spending any time engaged in such an activity.

I fell out of practice with crying such that I couldn't cry to save my life. For 16 years the only water my eyes produced was on occasion when I was extremely sleepy, no amount of sadness or desire to cry yielded anything.

At age 30 my mother passed away. This shattered my universe and turned me inside out but still did not produce any instant tears. Nearly a month later at her memorial service something that a dear friend of mine said breached the carefully constructed wall I had erected and one of my eyes surrendered one tear and reminded me what it was like to feel human for a minute. I tried to cry more. I seriously needed to cry so I tried to go with it. But one tear was the best I could do at the time. But it was in that moment that I realized that the decision I had made at 14 was doing me much more harm than good.

After my mom passed away circumstances were such that I was actually able to spend the next year secluded in my home without anyone really bothering me. This time away did me a world of good, but no crying was done during this time.

After nearly a year, being a virtual shut in hermit type began to feel a bit ridiculous and I decided to go in the complete opposite direction from there. This period of time coincided with one of my least favorite people being elected president of my country and starting, what I deemed to be, pointless wars in the middle east. So I got out of my house and became an "activist" and cavorted with other activists and attended protests where we all voiced our anger about the direction our country was being pushed.

At one such protest I met H. I guess an important story element that I should quickly insert is that at this point I had decided that women --as a gender-- were almost completely useless and, while curiously entertaining to look at, they could not be relied upon to act or communicate with any "real humanity". At least here in this country. I had, in all honesty, resolved to save up some money and go seeking my one and only overseas. And so that was the mindset I was in when I met H.

H was, and still is, an amazingly beautiful person. Talking to her I quickly and clearly came to understand that she knew a lot more about "real humanity" than I do. She knew a great deal more about a great many things and I was pretty much in awe of her. I was more attracted to her than I had ever been to anyone in my entire life and so I was very, very eager to be in a relationship with her and make our pact of exclusivity and raise a family and all of that. None of it could happen soon enough to satisfy me.

So, trying to take it step by step, I became very encouraged by the fact that she seemed to be interested in starting a relationship with me. I moved on to step two and began inquiring toward our pact of exclusivity but she did not think that her other boyfriend would approve of that idea. And she had no desire to start a family with anyone. And all of this left me rather devastated.

I had absolutely no interest in any romantic involvement with a polyamorous person. Yet, there were still all of these great things that she knew about the world and about humanity that I desperately needed to know. And so I was very eager to remain friends with her. We pursued a friendship. A loving friendship. That turned into a relationship despite the adamant objections being raised by my brain.

I quietly hoped that she might be going through some sort of a phase. And that she might soon just grow out of it and give monogamy a try. But she was very much in love with her other boyfriend and was in fact hoping to move to a far off city to be with him. Over even more strenuous objections from my brain I invited her to move in with me to save up money to move to the far away city. Sure, I half hoped that she might change her mind, but I also just loved her in such a way that I wanted for her to have whatever was going to help her on her journey. And if moving to a far away city and being polyamorous forever was what she needed for happiness I was cincerely willing to help her to get there.

The boyfriend in the far away city thought that was a fine idea, only he suggested that he would like to visit here so that he could meet me first.

WHAT? That made no sense at all. Why would a person want to come here and meet me, when I would just stab such a person in the eye with shiny shards of glass?? I became aware of the fact that I had jealousy issues. Jealousy issues that... were somewhat extreme in nature.

Against further objections from my brain I agreed to this visitation and meeting. As the day drew nearer I was overcome by dread and irrational loathing. I had hopes that he would somehow be an observably evil manipulator who had maliciously tricked her into this polyamory thing. Or that there would some collection of detestable traits that would help me to say "Fine, if she chooses to be with such a person, more power to them."

And so the time came when we were all to meet and hang out together. She was a nervous wreck. I was a powder keg of simmering emotions. He seemed pretty cool about the whole thing. I could not detect any evil within him. In fact he seemed like a really cool guy. As we chatted over dinner, finding out all kinds of things we had in common, I began to realize that it was very important that I not stab him in the eye with sharp objects. His personhood was very vexing for me. Then we came back to my house and chatted a bit more and then they left together and went back to her place.

And then I cried. And cried. And cried. I had no idea what I was crying about but I was completely out of control with the crying. Looking back on it I suppose I was probably crying because I was in love with such a wonderful person who was in love with another completely wonderful person and this filled me with confusion and fear and at the time I just wished the world would stop rather than forcing me to understand that this was reality and reality could be like this. On the one hand I felt like a very lonely motherless child who was going to be alone again but now pining away for other boyfriend's wonderful girlfriend. On the other hand I felt like --relative to my year of seclusion-- I had lots of wonderful people in my life, one of whom was about to move in with me and take me on an adventure to who knows where.

Yeah, fear.

Fear is a pretty strong one as emotions go.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
 
Wow, what a story greenearthal. That "me" or "I" person has come far.

My first poly experience there was only meeting women he wanted to score with, 'cause that's the kind of shallow creep he was.

My second poly experience, the woman he hooked up with was already a friend and I was overjoyed for them. When I met his boyfriend, I felt creeped out and needed time to trust him. I eventually became friends with him and realized my first impressions were wrong.

I recently met my lover 'D's girlfriend. Their relationship is difficult and it made for an interesting time. Long story short, they have trouble connecting, especially in bed. Both 'D' and I are very sexual, so it was weird for me to watch her primary not all that into sex with her.

I actually felt anger towards her girlfriend because 'D' seemed unhappy sometimes. But, they always end up in a good place, which makes me happy.

I would still like to figure out why I feel anger. I think it's a simple matter of the trouble I have in general with people who are closed off and unenthusiastic. I'm such an enthusiastic person for the most part and it drives me insane to be around "bah, whatever" people.

Bah, whatever works for them. ;)
 
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When my wife and I expanded into poly, we had a rule that was more or less don't-ask-don't-tell. This isn't a thing where I was uninterested but... well, I have a very "unique" network of friends and my dating pool is somewhat limited to that network. My wife is also part of that network and in the beginning, I was afraid that our relationships inside it would affect our relations to the network for the purpose it exists.

So for a while, I knew she was seeing someone else and having sex, and the curiosity grew and grew and I could feel that she was feeling stiffled by not being able to share a very big part of her life.

So, it was a bit difficult to talk about it at first, but we shared and agreed to rescind that rule. The next day, I met someone she was just getting into. He was an older professional man who reminded me a lot of the CEO of the company I work for. It felt so awkard because It was like "So... You're gonna be screwing my wife. Cool. And man, this snow, it sucks, huh?"

I didn't know how to relate to him. There's all kinds of dynamics, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of open-etiquette. :p

It wasn't all that exciting, to be honest. But it was interesting to see how my wife and I reacted, and later to compare notes and chuckle at the awkwardness of something new.

I'm sure it'll get more comfortable and natural as it happens more, and as my wife meets my signifigant people as signifigants.
 
Well, R took me home to have dinner with rosevette, her kids and M on our second date ;)

He said later that though it might have seemed a bit fast for most folks, he knew I could handle it. And to be honest, it was so refreshing to meet a potential partner's other partner so early in the process. Talk about setting my mind at ease about what their relationship really was!

It was also great to see how the family interacted and to realize that my ideal version of poly actually existed and this pretty cool new guy was living it.

The funny part was that from the moment I walked in the door, I kept thinking that rosevette looked familiar but I couldn't place her.
It was some time later that she mentioned she and I had chatted a bit on OkC several months before R popped up in my quiver there :) We both just got busy with kids and life and had simply lost touch.
 
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