Sageflutterby
Member
I could have done this as a private message but I thought about how often when I'm scared or uncertain that I've searched and searched the polyamory forum here and at reddit that I looked for information relevant to my situation.
So I'm typing this out in case anyone else ends up in the same scenario as me.
Galagirl called me out for not trusting Awpti as much, I was trying to be a good poly person and keep from burdening my partner because I felt he was under a lot of stress and I didn't want to add to that burden.
Awpti is a hinge between two emotional women, in a relationship complicated by the fact that one metamour dislikes the other. It's hit the point honestly, where both the arms of the vee do not have any desire to spend a future together. That was a hard thing to come to because I started my poly journey aiming for kitchen table and shared lives. My role model for polyamory, as silly as it sounds as based on literature by Wendy and Richard Pini, Mercedes Lackey, and Heinlen (sp). Solo polyamory and parallel polyamory were not my dreams. I was looking for community. That is not what I got.
In my last post, I had managed to pin down the two largest fears I was dealing with in my anxiety.
1) Suicidal behaviors are an emotional trigger for me. Prior to polyamory, in the instances that people have attempted to use that to control me, I have known what to do. My mother committed suicide when I left the sphere of her control. My first marriage, my now ex-husband threatened suicide when I asked for a divorce. My second foster son threatened suicide and attempted it when I refused to let his girlfriends come and spend the night on day 3 at my home. In all cases, I felt I had the freedom to leave. I notified the proper authorities for the ex-husband, and checked the foster son into the local mental hospital at St. Luke's and got ahold of CPS.
In this case, someone I was not in a relationship with directly has also used suicide as a cry for attention and control but I had no control. And leaving my partner was certainly not going to fix that situation, either. It would have made the person threatening suicide realize they had an ace in the hole for controlling mine or the hinge's behavior. However, it didn't negate the fact that the suicide could turn out to be real. I had not ability to commit her to the proper authorities for help. I can't force her to get therapy, and neither can the hinge.
So I've been struggling since finding out that she was lying for the last six months about how she felt and that she was in fact struggling. Every time we go on this roller coaster I live in fear that when I send the hinge away from me and when I step back and cancel time with the hinge to provide the other person emotional and mental support that this will be the end of the relationship. It's hard to continue giving of myself when I'm trying to protect myself against that emotional hurt and manipulation.
So after Galagirl called out that I should be trusting Awpti more, I had a talk today. I was scared. My knees were knocking, figuratively speaking. I was asking for very specific questions and a very specific condition to be met and I was afraid I was going to ask too much of someone who's emotional bandwidth was already stretched by someone else who seemed to need him far more than I for emotional regulation. What if he said no? The fact that he might say yes, never crossed my mind because his answers in the past have always been, "I don't know." or "I need your metamour's answer before I can give you mine."
A week ago when this storm happened and I heard my metamour was crying in the shower and didn't want to share her partner, I asked our hinge, "Is there the possibility that you are going to shut our relationship down?"
His reply at the time was, "Frankly, it's always been a possibility but I'm trying to dodge that."
To me, that was a scary answer because for the last few months, he's been telling me he won't walk away from either of us and now he's trying to dodge something? To dodge something indicates that he might not dodge. Later, Awpti indicated I logged off too quickly to see the second part of the statement, which he said was, "It's a possibility like a coyote gnawing my arm off." I was skeptical to say the least.
So in addition to the suicidal emotional hostage situation I've been trying to adjust to the fact that it sounded like he was open to shutting us down to appease my metamour. I was not a happy camper and wasn't sure at all if I wanted to continue the relationship on the basis of, "I might have to shut us down if she plays the emotional manipulation cards."
---
Tonight I opened conversation after a day of managing whiplash emotions. I could not get a handle on myself one moment I thought I was ok and was joking and bantering with Awpti on chat in between setting up a minecraft server and the next moment I was angry and sad and resentful. I dragged myself off with my guests for food, thinking hangry was a problem.
But when I got back on chat and Awpti came back, I just could not let the conversation drop. He couldn't give me a concrete answer. So I broke out the what if/twenty questions game with specific examples.
Last year, Awpti had indicated to me that if I wanted to take a trip, even if I scheduled it on our own calendar days, that if the trip was to somewhere exotic like Hawaii, he couldn't go because his other partner hadn't gone yet and it would hurt her if he did a trip like that with me. Then in Christmas we couldn't do zoolights because the metamour hadn't gone, despite him saying zoolights were old hat and boring. I kept asking for zoolights because I wanted to go. And finally he said metamour had to go first, which caused a butt ton of hurt and we negotiated that he meant anything that involved children meant the mother had to have first rights to do things with the children, which I could accept. But I was having a hard time accepting that anything I wanted to do my metamour had to do first.
Tonight, I asked the same question again and Awpti said if I wanted to schedule things on our calendar time, regardless of whether or not my metamour had done those things with him, that he would do things like Hawaii visitation with me (not that I wanted to do a speed run of 48 hours to Hawaii and back). I was challenging things from last year to see if I was always going to be second or if he was going to continue hurting me to avoid angering my metamour, because appeasing my metamour was more important than avoiding hurting me.
Tuesday, I had the conversation with Awpti, when I found out about my metamour's emotional state. I told him that as serious as a dominant collaring a submissive to me was, that it was symbolic to the point of wedding ring symbolic for vanilla society. I told him not to collar me if he was going to shut us down at all for my metamour. I didn't want someone to collar me if he was going to walk away. I was having a hard time processing his earlier dodge statement with the mental image that I trusted him implicitly to protect me because of the necessary mental and emotional trust in order for us to practice dominance and submission. I felt someone who would abandon me to appease someone else was not safe enough to trust in submission either. I was having a real hard time with losing the possibility of two relationships in one person.
I did not feel safe. I did not feel safe or considered or secure. And this despite Awpti reassuring me that he loved me. Love was not the issue. Love was never the issue, in my mind.
So, it was a shock to me that Awpti still had plans to collar me before our second anniversary next year despite our conversation at lunch. I thought, since he said he was trying to dodge shutting us down for my metamour that that meant there was a possibility we would be ending our relationship. I thought that meant he wouldn't collar me after my warning.
And the most important part of today's conversation, spurred by Galagirl's truth was this:
I said to Awpti the following:
So glad you saw fit to tell me about these changes.
What if I still want a shared residence in five years when it's financially feasible for us both?
What if I still want to carve out a place for us to have space just for us sometimes?
What if I want a hand fastening ceremony or some stupid !@#$ like that to commemerate a long relationship that has no civil repurccussions.
Like in five years.
or something
And he said he wanted to do all of that. No ambiguity.
And the question driving me hardest all week in relation to the suicide fear was this:
What if, what I need to hear is, "Snuffy, I'm never leaving our relationship unless you and I agree to end it for our own reasons. If Metamour threatened suicide tomorrow to end us, I'd not leave you. I'd call the police and check her into the hospital. If she commits suicide that's her own choice and I won't be held hostage by those emotions. I will do my damndest to get her help but I'm not going to let Metamour hold me OR YOU hostage with emotional manipulation. I'm always going to stand by her and help her as much as I can, but I'm not going to do that to you. Metamour's responsible for her own choices and if she actually threatened suicide, I'm never going to hold that against you because you're not responsible for someone else's actions even if it means they chose death over life." Or something like that.
And he agreed to my condition. He actually had thought about that in his head but never spoken to me about it. That was an entirely different conversation, which I quickly pursued because, damn it that's stuff I need to know.
I've been living in fear of a potentially suicidal metamour and feeling powerless to do anything but abandon someone I loved and I didn't want that. For both altruistic and selfish reasons.
(continued.)
So I'm typing this out in case anyone else ends up in the same scenario as me.
Galagirl called me out for not trusting Awpti as much, I was trying to be a good poly person and keep from burdening my partner because I felt he was under a lot of stress and I didn't want to add to that burden.
Awpti is a hinge between two emotional women, in a relationship complicated by the fact that one metamour dislikes the other. It's hit the point honestly, where both the arms of the vee do not have any desire to spend a future together. That was a hard thing to come to because I started my poly journey aiming for kitchen table and shared lives. My role model for polyamory, as silly as it sounds as based on literature by Wendy and Richard Pini, Mercedes Lackey, and Heinlen (sp). Solo polyamory and parallel polyamory were not my dreams. I was looking for community. That is not what I got.
In my last post, I had managed to pin down the two largest fears I was dealing with in my anxiety.
1) Suicidal behaviors are an emotional trigger for me. Prior to polyamory, in the instances that people have attempted to use that to control me, I have known what to do. My mother committed suicide when I left the sphere of her control. My first marriage, my now ex-husband threatened suicide when I asked for a divorce. My second foster son threatened suicide and attempted it when I refused to let his girlfriends come and spend the night on day 3 at my home. In all cases, I felt I had the freedom to leave. I notified the proper authorities for the ex-husband, and checked the foster son into the local mental hospital at St. Luke's and got ahold of CPS.
In this case, someone I was not in a relationship with directly has also used suicide as a cry for attention and control but I had no control. And leaving my partner was certainly not going to fix that situation, either. It would have made the person threatening suicide realize they had an ace in the hole for controlling mine or the hinge's behavior. However, it didn't negate the fact that the suicide could turn out to be real. I had not ability to commit her to the proper authorities for help. I can't force her to get therapy, and neither can the hinge.
So I've been struggling since finding out that she was lying for the last six months about how she felt and that she was in fact struggling. Every time we go on this roller coaster I live in fear that when I send the hinge away from me and when I step back and cancel time with the hinge to provide the other person emotional and mental support that this will be the end of the relationship. It's hard to continue giving of myself when I'm trying to protect myself against that emotional hurt and manipulation.
So after Galagirl called out that I should be trusting Awpti more, I had a talk today. I was scared. My knees were knocking, figuratively speaking. I was asking for very specific questions and a very specific condition to be met and I was afraid I was going to ask too much of someone who's emotional bandwidth was already stretched by someone else who seemed to need him far more than I for emotional regulation. What if he said no? The fact that he might say yes, never crossed my mind because his answers in the past have always been, "I don't know." or "I need your metamour's answer before I can give you mine."
A week ago when this storm happened and I heard my metamour was crying in the shower and didn't want to share her partner, I asked our hinge, "Is there the possibility that you are going to shut our relationship down?"
His reply at the time was, "Frankly, it's always been a possibility but I'm trying to dodge that."
To me, that was a scary answer because for the last few months, he's been telling me he won't walk away from either of us and now he's trying to dodge something? To dodge something indicates that he might not dodge. Later, Awpti indicated I logged off too quickly to see the second part of the statement, which he said was, "It's a possibility like a coyote gnawing my arm off." I was skeptical to say the least.
So in addition to the suicidal emotional hostage situation I've been trying to adjust to the fact that it sounded like he was open to shutting us down to appease my metamour. I was not a happy camper and wasn't sure at all if I wanted to continue the relationship on the basis of, "I might have to shut us down if she plays the emotional manipulation cards."
---
Tonight I opened conversation after a day of managing whiplash emotions. I could not get a handle on myself one moment I thought I was ok and was joking and bantering with Awpti on chat in between setting up a minecraft server and the next moment I was angry and sad and resentful. I dragged myself off with my guests for food, thinking hangry was a problem.
But when I got back on chat and Awpti came back, I just could not let the conversation drop. He couldn't give me a concrete answer. So I broke out the what if/twenty questions game with specific examples.
Last year, Awpti had indicated to me that if I wanted to take a trip, even if I scheduled it on our own calendar days, that if the trip was to somewhere exotic like Hawaii, he couldn't go because his other partner hadn't gone yet and it would hurt her if he did a trip like that with me. Then in Christmas we couldn't do zoolights because the metamour hadn't gone, despite him saying zoolights were old hat and boring. I kept asking for zoolights because I wanted to go. And finally he said metamour had to go first, which caused a butt ton of hurt and we negotiated that he meant anything that involved children meant the mother had to have first rights to do things with the children, which I could accept. But I was having a hard time accepting that anything I wanted to do my metamour had to do first.
Tonight, I asked the same question again and Awpti said if I wanted to schedule things on our calendar time, regardless of whether or not my metamour had done those things with him, that he would do things like Hawaii visitation with me (not that I wanted to do a speed run of 48 hours to Hawaii and back). I was challenging things from last year to see if I was always going to be second or if he was going to continue hurting me to avoid angering my metamour, because appeasing my metamour was more important than avoiding hurting me.
Tuesday, I had the conversation with Awpti, when I found out about my metamour's emotional state. I told him that as serious as a dominant collaring a submissive to me was, that it was symbolic to the point of wedding ring symbolic for vanilla society. I told him not to collar me if he was going to shut us down at all for my metamour. I didn't want someone to collar me if he was going to walk away. I was having a hard time processing his earlier dodge statement with the mental image that I trusted him implicitly to protect me because of the necessary mental and emotional trust in order for us to practice dominance and submission. I felt someone who would abandon me to appease someone else was not safe enough to trust in submission either. I was having a real hard time with losing the possibility of two relationships in one person.
I did not feel safe. I did not feel safe or considered or secure. And this despite Awpti reassuring me that he loved me. Love was not the issue. Love was never the issue, in my mind.
So, it was a shock to me that Awpti still had plans to collar me before our second anniversary next year despite our conversation at lunch. I thought, since he said he was trying to dodge shutting us down for my metamour that that meant there was a possibility we would be ending our relationship. I thought that meant he wouldn't collar me after my warning.
And the most important part of today's conversation, spurred by Galagirl's truth was this:
I said to Awpti the following:
So glad you saw fit to tell me about these changes.
What if I still want a shared residence in five years when it's financially feasible for us both?
What if I still want to carve out a place for us to have space just for us sometimes?
What if I want a hand fastening ceremony or some stupid !@#$ like that to commemerate a long relationship that has no civil repurccussions.
Like in five years.
or something
And he said he wanted to do all of that. No ambiguity.
And the question driving me hardest all week in relation to the suicide fear was this:
What if, what I need to hear is, "Snuffy, I'm never leaving our relationship unless you and I agree to end it for our own reasons. If Metamour threatened suicide tomorrow to end us, I'd not leave you. I'd call the police and check her into the hospital. If she commits suicide that's her own choice and I won't be held hostage by those emotions. I will do my damndest to get her help but I'm not going to let Metamour hold me OR YOU hostage with emotional manipulation. I'm always going to stand by her and help her as much as I can, but I'm not going to do that to you. Metamour's responsible for her own choices and if she actually threatened suicide, I'm never going to hold that against you because you're not responsible for someone else's actions even if it means they chose death over life." Or something like that.
And he agreed to my condition. He actually had thought about that in his head but never spoken to me about it. That was an entirely different conversation, which I quickly pursued because, damn it that's stuff I need to know.
I've been living in fear of a potentially suicidal metamour and feeling powerless to do anything but abandon someone I loved and I didn't want that. For both altruistic and selfish reasons.
(continued.)
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