My husband and have begun opening up our relationship. We will likely have a variety of partners. Ones we both share, and ones we both have for ourselves.
I am more open than my husband who leans more monogamous. He doesn’t have the desire to have much outside our marriage and us sharing together but is open to me having other partners.
I have been chatting with some people online and I understand that it is important to discuss these sorts of communications with any partner I might have before sharing with my spouse. I am open about any information I might share.
So, for those of you in similar positions, how much do you share with your spouse/SO? Do they want to know more than you share? Do you keep things more private?
I ask because I get the feeling that he would want to know more details but as someone with chronic anxiety, I think he would spend too much time overthinking things and it would eat at him. I keep him informed that I am talking to people and often share some of the messages with him, but I don’t know if I should tell him any more than we had sex or we didn’t.
Like many others, I immersed myself in the art of baking over the pandemic as a coping mechanism. Majority of my first-time bakes were flops. But after many burnt gob cakes, I came to a realization that much of baking happens to be different variations of the same set of ingredients: sugar, flour, and water. You can add new ingredients, like butter or lemon zest, to make new end result. Or you can even add different proportions of the same ingredients to get a different result.
In the same way, the answers you seek vary wildly from person to person, from connection to connection. Part of this reason is – like baking – we are all made of different types of ingredients, with our histories and lived experiences. But a big part of this is also because the comfort level you might have with your partner might be completely different from a comfort level he might have with you. And the best way you might be able to gauge where your and his headspace might be around disclosure is by communicating how you feel and see how he reacts, and for him to communicate how he feels and see how you feel. It is only at that point you can learn to adapt and adjust how much you share with your husband.
It’s also really important to keep in mind that disclosure cuts both ways. As you noted, it is important to also gather information from the new people you have been getting to know. Everyone has a different comfort level, especially as it pertains to more intimate or personal details. Not everyone wants to have their personal information be disclosed to the polycule they’ve not yet gotten to know yet. So as you gather what your husband’s comfort level is, you might also want to sift through and find out what other’s comfort levels are as well.
A common point of struggle for non-mono newbies like yourself is the shame from the internalized monogamy programming.
I get the sense that you have a pretty generalized idea about how you should conduct your newly open marriage. As you said, your husband leans more towards monogamy while you lean more towards non-monogamy. And built into that gap is an understanding that his responsibility is to maintain a status quo, while you have to do extra work to make sure everything is okay for him. Truth is, non-monogamy takes work from everyone. If what you say is true – that your husband is really okay with you having other relationships – then learn to trust him at his word.
It is also very easy to get caught up in the trappings of morality projection. By this, I mean what you said about how your husband might internalize what he does or doesn’t know about your other relationships. It is very unlikely that your husband knows exactly what he needs to hear about your other relationships, especially if this is his first open relationship experience. At best, he might have a theoretical idea about how much he wants to hear. But in reality, it might be very different in practice. It will take a collective effort to figure out what you feel comfortable opening up about, what he feels comfortable hearing, and what your new connections feel comfortable sharing.
In her first podcast episode of Unlocking Us, Brene Brown talks about FFTs (Effing First Times). She says, “The more we’re willing to embrace the suck and try new things, the more new things we’re willing to try.” And I think this is something you can carry forward in your shared experience with your open relationship. Many parts of what you are effing first time is going to suck. And instead of swimming against the current of suck and figuring out how you avoid the suck, learn to dance with and sit in the ocean of suck for a while. Your sea legs will become stronger the more you swim, and it’ll progressively get easier. I promise.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
My wife [31F] and I [38M] have been together for 9 years, married for 2. We are best friends, communicate openly and honestly, make each other laugh, and are always physically affectionate. Our poly style is to date separately, and it’s worked brilliantly for us since we opened our relationship in 2017. We are both bisexual. My wife prefers to date women and has had tons of success. I am a man who prefers to date women and I’ve also experienced a lot of great things and success. Everything to everyone else looks, well, almost perfect!
Only one problem. I can’t for the life of me get her to have sex with me anymore! She always says she’s tired, or not feeling well. But when she visits her other partners (she dates two women separately) she’s a love-making machine! I would chalk it up to NRE versus ORE, but she’s been with these women for a while! I’ve even asked her honestly if she prefers women or if there is anything I can do to make her feel more comfortable being intimate with me – but she just apologizes and says “it’ll get better. we’re just going through a dry spell.” Well, this “dry spell” has lasted over a year now! We’ve made love maybe 8-10 times in the past 16 months. I do everything in my power to give my wife a comfortable life. I do most of the cooking, house cleaning, and rub her feet almost every night. I tell her how beautiful she is every day. Still nothing! I’d say maybe it’s all due to the crap couple of years we’ve had in the United States, but again, she’s getting down and dirty with her girlfriends regularly! I am starting to feel a little resentful because I am dating one other woman and I don’t get to see her as often. Maybe once every 6 weeks. And I have to “get in all of my sex” in the little one night only overnights we have. Help!
Learning to manage the surge of New Relationship Energy is one of the most critical skills to develop for any person exploring and engaging with ethical non-monogamy. Many of us learn to manage our NRE by channeling that initial burst of lust and desire back into our old relationships. That can look like harnessing the newfound sexual energy back into old relationships. Others prefer to manage their NRE by establishing proper boundaries around how much engagement they have with their new objects of sexual desire, as to not exhaust all relational energy in new relationships.
But one of the most common misconception is that there is a static timer on how long NRE lasts. The complicated truth of NRE is that it varies a lot from person to person. For some people, NRE is measured in months. Whereas for many others, NRE can last several years. Another complicating aspect of NRE is that its length and influence can vary from connection to connection as well. In many cases, the experience with NRE depends heavily on the context of that relationship. So for example, a comet-type relationship that might meet only once or twice a year might have a more drawn out expression of NRE, simply due to reduced exposure to the object of affection. Age can also play a significant role in how someone experiences NRE. So I think it is very important to keep these different factors in mind as it relates to your wife’s relationships with her other partners.
All of this is to say, it is very difficult to get to the root of your current sexual disconnect with your wife because there are multiple contributing factors to your disconnect.
And I think we need to elaborate on the degree of sexual disconnect and deconstruct the various “why’s”.
You say that you’ve picked up on the household chores as a way to lessen the emotional labor burden upon your wife, so that she may be enticed to be more intimate with you. While it is a wonderful thing you are doing, it might work better in a marriage where the imbalance in household chores manifests as a sexual brake in a relationship. In addition, if you dig deeper into your intentions you might find that you are doing those things with an implicit, unspoken intention for sex – that which your wife might be sensing through your actions as if your enthusiasm for household chores is contingent upon her enthusiasm for sex with you. In short, you might be trying to hard to address the problem by yourself when it should really take a collective effort.
I also want to touch on the dangers of keeping score. It is very easy to get in your own head if you keep tabs on the type of sex your partner is having with her other partners. This becomes a more fundamental problem if you end up comparing the dysfunctions within your sex life with your wife to the (assumed) vitality in her sex life with her two other partners. In reality, it might be more beneficial to ground yourself on the dysfunctions of your own sex life.
I also think that your wife bears some responsibility in the current sexual disconnect you are both experiencing with each other. While it is true that many couples do occasionally go through “dry spells”, it could be possible that your wife is less enthusiastic about sexually reconnecting with you because she has two other partners with whom she already has good sexual chemistry with. Dismissing the current sexual disconnect in your marriage as a temporary lapse unfortunately perpetuates the disconnect because that unintentional dismissal also dismisses your lived experience of erotic disconnection. In specific, I am really curious as to how your wife foresees her sexual relationship with you “getting better.”
So what does this all mean for bridging your erotic disconnect?
Esther Perel was once asked if it is difficult to be a partner to a relationship therapist as world-renowned as she is. She responded by saying that she has evolved over the thirty five years that she has been with Jack. She further elaborated that relationships constantly develop and change, and it takes an intentional effort on individuals to mind the inevitable disconnects, plan the reconnect, and celebrate the connection when you do reconnect.
It is clear that even though your wife acknowledges that there is a sexual disconnect, she doesn’t feel motivated to reconnect in the same way you want to. This leaves you with two viable options.
The first option is to address and reemphasize the importance of the reconnect. This might be the easiest to bring up if you can sit down with your wife in a monthly check-in like a RADAR where you can proactively establish action plans for the acknowledged problems. But it is important that you elaborate on the degree of disconnect you’ve experienced and ground yourself in the present pain. This will help your wife understand the gravity of the situation and be more conscientious about reconnecting with you in a more intentional, mindful way. This will also help each of you hold each other accountable in reconnecting with each other. This will allow you and your wife to get on the same page about not only what “getting better” really means, but also what each of you need to do to get better at being intimate with each other. Stated intentions are powerful!
The second option is to acknowledge that this disconnect will have to stand until your wife can independently acknowledge her own pain from this erotic disconnect without any further push. It takes two to tango. And if she really isn’t into bridging this gap, you need to work out a contingency plan to stay sane in your two relationships. You mentioned that you feel like your other partner that you meet once every month or so has to meet all of your sexual demands. And that is a lot of undue pressure filtering through one connection. If your needs are not being met by your current set of partners, it might be time for you to start looking outward to add new partners who can fill in that gap without adding any pressure on your existing partnerships.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
M (28 M) & F (28 F) are two of my very best friends. I love them both and they’ve both been incredibly consistent and supportive figures in my life as a couple and individually for years. I do not know what to do here.
A few days ago, I found out they had separated (they’ve been together for 10 years and married for 4). I have spoken to both of them separately, and the particulars of the stories are consistent although their perceptions/feelings are quite different. Recently, F came to M and announced that she was poly. She wanted to have sex with other people and this was non-negotiable. She arrived at this conclusion after a couple of months of serious reading on the subject and listening to podcasts. They had casually discussed opening their relationship/having a threesome, but due to the pandemic, nothing had progressed. But now, she was insistent that she needed to open the relationship immediately. She brought up a mutual male friend (T) that she had been discussing polyamory with and wanted to try sleeping with him. M was hesitant but she said she was absolutely certain she needed to do this or she would have no choice but to leave.
She ended up convincing (it is now clear that this meant coercing through threats of divorce) M to have a threesome with this other man. It went poorly, in that M did not enjoy it and did not want to do it again. F was insistent that she now not only wanted to have sex with T, but was also in love with him and needed it to be okay that she nurture a romantic relationship as well. M said no. So, she moved out.
She wants to continue to see T and live separately for a couple of months while she decides whether or not she wants to work on their marriage. She told me with great apparent clarity that M is “incapable” of meeting her sexual and emotional needs and that she does not see herself growing old with him. But she isn’t sure she’s ready to leave him entirely and wants to “take it slow.” She also said a lot of things about M “holding her back,” and said she’d always wanted to live all over the world and he was preventing her from doing that–even though the entire time I’ve known her all she has talked about is buying a house and settling down in our city. Not to mention M supported her while she was in school and until she got her first serious job.
I’ve spoken with her best friend (BF), who thinks she is having some sort of manic episode. Unfortunately, F is not receptive to discussing mental illness as a factor in this. She does have a psychiatrist, but we are under the impression she is sugar coating the situation to them and they are just validating her. She has also apparently gotten seriously into horoscopes and other forms of spirituality, whereas before she was a staunch atheist. T is known to be unreliable/flaky by mutual friends and is unemployed and nomadic, so we are not expecting him to stick around long-term.
F’s friends are pretty unanimously of the opinion that she is suffering from some sort of mental illness and that she’s also being a total a-hole. I am utterly speechless–this is just not the person I thought I knew. I know she suffered with depression and anxiety during the COVID lockdown, but it seems to me that she used polyamory as something to latch onto and used that as an excuse to nurture an emotional and eventually physical affair. She has not expressed real interest in making it work with M–she is spending all her time with T, and getting into all the same hobbies and spiritual stuff he is into. BF thinks from their conversations that she was having an emotional affair with him well before she “came out” as poly to her husband.
I don’t want to dismiss the possibility that she is actually polyamorous and that is something that will be a lasting priority for her–but the way this developed is disturbing to me and our friends. She is treating M terribly. We are all focused on supporting M and trying to help him set boundaries with her (she is still calling him for reassurance that what she’s doing is okay and he is struggling to tell her that no, it’s not). At the same time, I want to sit her down and lay out for her how unfair/awful she’s being, but I’m concerned that if she is genuinely in some sort of mental distress that this will just alienate her when she crashes and needs support. Up until now she was literally just the sweetest, most reliable person from my perspective, and I do feel obligated to try to help or at least tell why before I ice her out.
Tl;dr: My friend has made a lot of drastic decisions in the last month including leaving her husband. I am struggling with how to talk to her and hold her accountable while also not alienating her in case she needs help.
Any suggestions or advice on whether or not to try talking to her and what tone to take would be appreciated.
My heart breaks for you and your friend’s husband.
Let’s first start with this. Coercion is not consent. If the context of their opening up was measured against an ultimatum, then the consent derived from that context is not meaningful. Her behavior is neither kind nor respectful of the ten-year relationship they’ve fostered together. And even if he had to say yes, that was more of a partner loss prevention strategy rather than an informed and fair consent. It should be disqualifying of a partner to unilaterally change agreed-upon rules of the relationship without any negotiation.
In addition, it also sounds like the context of her ultimatum didn’t come from an ethical place either. Going from casually discussing threesomes to deeply discussing polyamory with a mutual friend shows how massive that disconnect has been between his and her perceptions of their marriage. That divide is further elaborated in the ensuing threesome experience with the very mutual friend who she has been flirting with online. He clearly wasn’t into bringing in another person, much less involving a mutual friend he feels no sexual attraction toward. And that too is coercive, and therefore non-consensual.
I also want to touch on how wild it sounds that even though M did not consent to a polyamorous relationship, F is sort of forcing herself into being in a polyamorous relationship with both T and M by not immediately pursuing a divorce with M. In doing so, she gets validation of self-worth when she is calling M for reassurances, without doing any of the actual emotional labor required to do polyamory with M. It shows how incredibly disconnected from reality F is, and how she is taking advantage of M at his weakest. It just sounds like F is keeping M as a safety net in case this polyamory experience doesn’t (and likely won’t) work out. And since they are still married, what else could M do but take F back when she says that “this was all just a mistake”?
It is important to remember that polyamory is a subset of ethical non-monogamy.
And if their behavior is unethical (like strong-arming a partner into an uncomfortable sexual scenario), then it doesn’t matter how much they stomp their feet into the mud and claim that they are polyamorous; they are not. Reading all the books, listening to all the podcasts, and flirting with all the polyamorous people doesn’t make you polyamorous. And F would be no more polyamorous than she would be a good partner. And she is unfortunately neither of those things.
The truth is that you are never an island in relationships. You never just date people on a blank slate; you also date their circumstances. We all have people we already care about, long before our partners arrive into our lives. And in polyamory, that can look like your overall polycule, the pre-existing agreements you’ve established with your existing partner(s), and everyone’s relative transmission risk profiles (COVID and STI). Not only that, polyamory takes a different set of skills than monogamy. Proactively abridging communicative gaps between all relationships, keeping everyone informed on any changes to COVID or STI transmission risk profiles, and managing multiple relationships so that each relationship is still meaningful in its own way are all skills that a 401 course in monogamy will never cover. And there is no better example of how to fail at polyamory than what we have here.
Even if we operate under the assumption that whatever transpired between F and T could never be classified as an emotional affair, it should be clear to T that whatever is happening prior to F’s unilateral decision to open up has been not only unethical but harmful to his lover’s marriage. And his inability or negligence to take accountability for the harm he has caused in F’s relationship should be unbecoming of T as a friend.
You have gathered a mountain of data here, both through your personal reflections and through cross-referencing your data with her childhood best friend as well. And in the data you have gathered, it is very clear that F is no longer the best friend you once knew her as. And in the face of these changes, consider reassessing what it means to be a friend to a person who is in denial of their potential mental illness, who is possibly manipulating her psychiatrist to gain validation, who in her mighty “clitful thinking” shattered the very relationship she has been in since she was just eighteen, who continuously talks bad about your mutual friend M in such humiliating and dehumanizing way, who constantly disrespects M’s boundaries around the relationship he wants to have.
If you met this person tomorrow, would you have fostered a friendship with this person?
Your friend is a grown adult, unfortunately very capable of making her own decisions, however destructive or dispassionate they may be. But it isn’t like seeing all these things unfold in front of you gets rid of the connection you’ve already fostered with her over the years. However, there is a significant display of codependent patterns here – both from you and from M. I strongly, strongly urge you (and M) to take a look at this list of common patterns and characteristics of codependence because, even if you aren’t out there validating her perspective like her psychiatrists might be, not addressing it perpetuates through enabling.
Your friend is responsible for her mental headspace. Even if you are right that this is a reflection of her mental disorder, F is responsible for acknowledging it and addressing it. So I don’t really know it would be fair to retroactively justify her bad behavior through the filter of her undiagnosed mental disorder. That feels like trying to read a book before the book is printed.
And I think it is a good time to establish some healthy boundaries here.
Near the end of the post, you say that you “feel obligated to try to help or at least tell why before [you] ice her out.” Let’s assume that F’s behavior is a result of an undiagnosed mental disorder. Even so, it isn’t your responsibility – as her friend – to diagnose how her depression and anxiety has manifested in the form of polyamory. That would be the responsibility of the trained medical professional like a psychotherapist or a couple’s counselor who have had extensive clinical experiences. It also isn’t your responsibility to help M or F patch up and fix their broken marriage; that would be their own responsibility should they choose to reconvene their marriage. Lastly, it isn’t your responsibility to hold F accountable in how she is failing in her relationship with M; that one falls solely on M.
It is however, your responsibility as a friend to let her know that you cannot support her current destructive behavior. At this juncture, you can continue to be friends with her, but establish boundaries around talking about relationships such that you don’t perpetuate and continue to enable the relationship trauma upon M. As in, “Hey F. I really miss the reliable and compassionate version of you. But please stop telling me about your relationship with T or M. It costs me too much sanity to keep hearing your hurtful comments regarding my friend M.” Or you can just put a contingency pin on this friendship with F until she comes to you for support. As in, “Hey F. The way you hurt M made me reconsider our friendship. I can’t be a part of your life while you keep hurting M. So we can’t be friends for X amount of time. I really want to be able to celebrate your polyamorous connections, but it’s too painful right now. Let’s reconnect when the pain isn’t so raw anymore and catch up with each other then.”
I understand your inclination and desire to be there for your friend F. Like I said, it isn’t like your appreciation for F disappeared the moment she stopped being a compassionate partner to M; that is still there. But a fond recollection of your good times is not enough to sustain a failing friendship, in the same way that ten-year relationship history between F and M is not enough to sustain a failing relationship.
Lastly, we should also touch on your friendship with M.
In the same way that F is entitled to make destructive decisions, so is M. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that you should establish the same boundaries you’ve had to establish around F. As someone who has supported a partner through a devastating end to a decades-long relationship, I can tell you that, based on experience, M could be experiencing major relationship withdrawal, desire to “relapse” back to F, and severe depression from this traumatic experience. M has to work through the pain from grief and loss of not just his past-tense marriage, but the loss of the future he intended to have with his wife. That is way above your pay-grade. If he isn’t already speaking to a therapist, I would strongly urge M to seek therapy and counseling.
If you have the (emotional) resources to do so, grieve with him because you too have lost a best friend in F, someone you’ve known to be dependent and reliable. And perhaps that dependent and reliable F will re-emerge when she recognizes that her heart is writing checks that her brain cannot cash.
I personally hate to see polyamory get such a bad rep, like it does here. Because when it works, it is great. But F is not polyamorous. She’s just an asshole justifying her shit behavior through words of polyamory.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
My husband and I have been together as a couple for about twelve years and open for two of those years. in the last two years, I have been with two other men solo and ongoing (about once per month), and we’ve played with couples together.
It first started strictly as a hotwife dynamic, that quickly turned into more of a polyamory/FWB dynamic. Admittedly, in the beginning I was open to the hotwife idea for him. But when things happened in reality I realized I actually do like connecting with people on a more friendship/personal level. In the beginning, it was all about me, him seeing me in my element, him seeing me as an individual, him seeing me feeling so alive and excited. When we discussed his desire to sleep with other women solo, he insisted that wasn’t the priority; that wasn’t where the “hot” factor came in. So while a part of me feels a little misled now that he wants to also have solo experiences, I do understand that things change and it’s ok to want something new that you didn’t want before (or, didn’t want enough to go seek it).
At this point, I have a FWB, we continue to play with other couples when we want to, and he has been on two solo dates. During the two solo dates, I basically died inside. Sex didn’t happen on those dates, and yet the difficult feelings still shook me. I am trying very hard to sit with my feelings and think rationally before I react. I know that he has also dealt with some sadness/jealousy on some of my early solo dates, but there is a sexual turn on for him even if he isn’t participating. Whereas, there is no sexual turn on element for me when I picture him being sexual on his own with another woman. So his feelings are more like, a mixture of jealously and turn on, while mine are only jealousy and sadness.
He has made clear that if the icky feelings are too much to handle, then he doesn’t need to continue the solo stuff (and in turn, I would also need to stop my solo stuff). He hates seeing me hurt, he truly does. I am pushing myself HARD to become okay with this but I don’t feel okay yet. I don’t know if my solo stuff is worth having to deal with the sadness I feel when he does solo stuff. I don’t even know if I have a question, but I think I’m just looking for advice or experience that someone else has had and can relate. I do understand how hypocritical this sounds. Should I suck it up and deal with the jealousy when he goes on dates because I get to have solo experiences? Or is it understandable that I am way more uncomfortable with him doing solo stuff since there isn’t a sexual turn on element in it for me?
Because rapid personal growth and emotional development is very common (especially in the early stages of non-monogamous exploration), two major parts of that growth and development are in staying connected with your partner through those changes and extending empathy & compassion whenever they have a difficult time with emotional management. And the thing is, your exploration with non-monogamy brought a separate set of challenges than the one your husband’s exploration did. This is a very, very important distinction to make.
So let us separate the your motivations behind non-monogamy from the his motivations behind non-monogamy. Each of you, while compatible, are two very different people. In the same way that two jigsaw puzzle pieces fit well together, it might be more productive to see each of your relationship styles as separate and distinct from each other. While the ideal is to be fair and equitable in our relationships, approaching our relationships as if everything should be equal is often an incorrect way to approach fairness and equitability.
You say that your non-monogamous journey initiated around the desire to explore and expand on his hotwife fetish. It is unclear who initiated the conversation to open up. But I don’t get the sense that the initial conversations were met with significant resistance, even as the initial casual hotwifing over time became a more polyamorous arrangement.
For you, exploring and connecting with others represented a self-empowerment and self-validating exercise. It is true that were aspects of his enjoyment in your erotic awakening that reverberated back into you in the form of self-assurance. But based on your subsequent push for the hotwife dynamic to evolve into a more polyamorous dynamic tells me that you were adequately content with your growth and desire superseding his. Which is a bit puzzling considering how discontent you are with his growth and desire to also date others on his own.
For your husband, it sounds like your husband might have worked through the initial phase of jealousy and subsequent changes to the relationship agreement by productively channeling them through a hotwifing sexual outlet with you. The truth is that this is not the case for most non-monogamous people who are not explicitly sexually attracted to the idea of our partners sleeping with others. Most non-mono folks I know just learn to manage our emotional labor because the overall joy of being with our partners greatly outweighs the negatives of being without them.
Since your husband made it clear that solo play agreement needs to be reciprocal, you have three main options in front of you.
First option is to concede that emotional management is not a worthwhile price of admission to keep engaging in solo play without your partner. It is a testament to the strength of any relationship to survive changes and endure challenges. And if you deem that committing to growing and changing to meet the needs of a polyamorous relationship is not something you can handle at this moment, it is ethically imperative for you to let your partner know as such. This will mean that you and your husband will have to scale down on your existing connections and renegotiate on your now-outdated relationship agreements. Swinging together only might be the next best option for your relationship. That way, you don’t get any of those intense negative feelings of him on solo dates while still exploring the type of non-monogamy that appeals to you both. Downside of this option is that it does restrict the amount of available matches since the scope is only for swingers who want to play with a couple as a package deal.
The second option is to accept the emotional labor associated with solo play and strive to improve your emotional hygiene. This option opens both and each of you up to the widest range of connections possible. The overlaps between swinging and polyamory as well as the overlap between solo play and couple play allows each of you to be able to flexibly form the type of connections each of you are comfortable with. The obvious downside is that this requires some labor of love from your part. Much like your husband, you will also have to put some effort into managing the intense feelings of jealousy and sadness. Whether that is through channeling your negative feelings through a creative medium, processing those feelings with your husband or close friends, or distracting yourself through other partners, you will need to complete the stress cycle of the negative feedback loop.
The last option is to acknowledge that each of you have different but compatible styles of non-monogamy. The goal here isn’t to commit to casual swinging or to full-blown polyamory as a pair; rather, it is to compromise that even if you two don’t share the same exact non-mono motivations. It is very possible that your husband’s desire to maintain reciprocity in your non-monogamous arrangement is because that self-channel to hotwife fetish isn’t as clean as it appears; he could still feel jealous and sad in emotional context even if he is erotically charged in sexual context with you. And the reciprocity suggestion could then come from anticipation of retribution from you (because he too sees the hypocrisy of it all). In reality, your side of the non-monogamy isn’t “broken”. What’s broken is just your method for emotional hygiene. This last option obviously comes with an immense cost: imbalance. But life has a strange way of evening itself out, and the balance will always come due. You just need to find a fair balance that isn’t equal but equitable.
I also want to touch on the difference between your internalized perception of your husband’s sexuality and the way he experiences his own sexuality.
We are not our partners. While we should aim to holistically understand our partners’ sexualities and sexual expression, our perceptions are limited by the filters of our own personal views. It might be true that for your husband, there was indeed jealousy and turn on when he saw you go on your solo dates. But we don’t truly know what that balance looked like or if there were any other complex feelings present that he did not want to share with you.
We also don’t know that what his exact thought process was when he “insisted” that it wasn’t a priority for him to go on solo dates with other women. Depending on the context, he could have said those under pressure from you to provide a definitive answer. Or it could also be a reflection of the internalized self-guilt about ethical sluttery. It is evident in his appeal to step back if you also step back on solo dating. So while your feelings of deception are valid, you have to try your best to extend your compassion and understanding for the partner who has been there for you from not just the two years of your open marriage experience, but for the twelve years you’ve been together.
In short, yes. Your feelings are valid. But your feelings are not facts. You might not have the tools to deal with the bad feelings that come up today. But you might tomorrow.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
My husband and I have been married about 10 years. We’ve been completely open to the idea of polyamory the entire time. Each of us has seen others before, but never for long periods of time. We’ve done a few things as sex only with others as well. Some separate, some together.
A little over a year ago my husband met someone (before COVID19) and they hit it off really well. I liked her, and she seemed to get along well with the kids and such. I loved the fact that my husband was smiling more, and just seemed happier. I know that he doesn’t get AS much attention from me sometimes as we have kids, I have a job, etc… So it was great to see, and I loved him being in a great mood.
Over the summer she moved in (probably sooner than she should but COVID19 kind of screwed up all sorts of things…). I did everything I could to make her feel welcome, even made sure she got enough sleeping time next to him so she didn’t feel left out. This is what we’d really been talking about for years, so putting it all together seemed like a “finally!”
Well not too long after I started feeling very out of place in my own home. I felt almost like a third wheel, like I was just getting in the way. I chatted with them and we all started making changes.
Then I started to get to know her more and realized some of her beliefs are FAR off from mine, or what I would consider a decent human being to believe. I was really thrown off and got pretty mad. I talked to my husband about it because I couldn’t believe he would want to date someone like that. He said that we all see the world differently and as long as she isn’t pushing her opinions on others it was fine.
I also told him her anger issues were going to drive me bonkers. She goes from 0-60 in seconds and sometimes over things I can’t even understand. I feel like I am walking on thin sheets of glass trying to not get them to break while I am around her. Making my decisions based on what won’t piss her off.
Fast forward a few more months. She gets more comfortable, starts reprimanding the kids (more harshly than I), even before I can start a sentence to stop them doing what they are doing.
I finally realized how she REALLY makes me feel. It’s like I am in an emotionally abusive relationship with someone I’m not even in a relationship with! And as someone that has been in a horrid relationship even worse than this, it’s really hard.
Part of me wants this to work. I want my husband happy. I like the extra effort of help around the house. And she and I DO get along often, go shopping (ish… COVID19), watch TV shows, etc… and she CAN be great with the kids. But the other part of me is SO SAD. I am emotionally exhausted. I want my husband back, but I am terrified he will stop being happy. I want my house back. I don’t want to make all my decisions based on others.
I’ve talked to my husband about it so many times. I hate continuing to bring it up. I think he’s blinded by a new relationship as well as the fact that he doesn’t think exactly like I do.
Am I just being selfish? Am I overreacting? I mean I DO have mental health issues (anxiety, PTSD) that maybe are blinding my view. Is there a way for someone like me to fix this? I’m so stuck at this roadblock feeling like there is no good option to make. Kicking her out would be a huge mess. She’s so integrated into our lives. And what if he goes back to not being as happy as he is now? (Keep in mind we have realized the things we as a couple need to work on since this started and are doing that. So HOPEFULLY we wouldn’t go back to exactly the way we were, even though where we were wasn’t BAD.) What if he resents me? I don’t want him to have to go through such a loss.
It sounds like you have been doing an immense amount of behind-the-scenes emotional labor associated with not just the changes in your relationship with your husband but his new partner who moved in rather quickly due to the pandemic circumstances. Imbedded in that transition is a multitude of loss – a loss of the pre-pandemic family life, a loss of ability to authentically occupy your space, a loss of control over your emotional landscape. It is important to acknowledge the underlying grief in those losses and transitions.
The pandemic in and of itself contributes heavily to the emotional exhaustion we all feel. We are currently in the middle of a global traumatic event that will determine much of our adulthood, well past the end of 2020. Constant risk assessment, everyday effusion of mortality, and the uncertainty of the post-pandemic future is both an active and a passive drain on our emotional reserves.
One of the other reasons you feel that way is because you unfortunately have very little agency in your husband’s relationship with his girlfriend. Even if your husband’s girlfriend is emotionally abusive, you can only limit your own and your children’s engagement with his girlfriend, which is obviously further limited in scope by the current shared living space.
Another reason you feel that way is because of how his relationship reflects on your husband. You said that neither of you had serious long-term partners even though you’ve been doing non-monogamy for some time. And deeply embedded in your exhaustion is the dissociation around why he chose someone who is so different from who you are. Internally reconciling that moral and philosophical difference takes time and energy, even if unaccounted for.
I sincerely hope that you can find some restorative space to heal and recover when you aren’t busy being a great mother to your children, a great partner to your husband, and a great pup-parent to your dog.
We must also discuss how you envision your parenthood directly conflicts with the role your metamour has taken on in such a short amount of time.
As you have experienced, intermixing polyamory with childrearing intensely complicates both polyamory and childrearing. It is why many polyfolks decide to hold off on introducing any new partners to their children until the relationship has solidified. It helps to create a buffer between their love lives and their family lives. You did not specify what type of previous discussions you and your husband have had about the possibility of a polycule household. But it is evident that maintaining a poly household has been very different in practice than in theory. And it is clear that you’ve gathered quite a bit of present evidence on how your landscape might look in the future.
In the process of gathering evidence, you have outlined several points of data that seem to indicate that your husband’s partner might not be a great fit for how you want to raise your children. In specific, stepping in to reprimand your children even before you – their mother – have had an opportunity to intervene reflects a major disconnect between how different you, your husband, and your metamour each envision her role as it pertains to your children. It is also very, very important to note that she has only had a couple months of seeing how you and your husband parent together. That is nowhere near enough time to study how she fits into a possible co-parenting role. Unless you’ve had an extensive discussion about the role your metamour was to take on in regards to childrearing, it might have felt so disempowering and upsetting to see someone new significant disrupt your parenting style.
Another thing to consider is that children quickly absorb the personal values and worldviews of those around them, especially if they are trusted adults. You did not clarify how vast the moral differences were between you and your metamour. But we as parents absolutely need to be mindful of the values we surround our children with, especially if those values could be harmful to their maturation and growth.
Another important point of note is how she behaves around your dog.
You mentioned that she hit your dog. Similar to the disconnect in your respective childrearing philosophies, that disconnect clearly extends to your respective pet-rearing philosophies.
Many researches show that “using harsh punishment based techniques to change behaviour is frequently counterproductive.” One of the reasons why pain- and stress-based training regiment fails is because high levels of chronic stress greatly inhibits a pet’s ability to learn and retrieve memories. This is one of the reasons why many current obedience training revolves around positive reinforcement and positive habit forming. You mentioned that she treats her own dog this way, and that too is not a good sign for things to come. It just merely reinforces that what happened with your dog was not an aberration but a continuing pattern of behavior that is incompatible with how you want to raise your pets.
Most importantly, it is not your metamour’s responsibility to train or reprimand your own dog, much like it is not your metamour’s responsibility to educate or parent your own children. She didn’t have a say in adopting your dog. That responsibility falls on you and your husband’s alone. And it is clear that your metamour has overstepped both pet-rearing and childrearing boundaries.
One of the concepts that come up often in this column – and with polyamory in general – is the role and responsibilities of a hinge partner.
Inter-relational conflicts commonly appear as metamour problems, rather than as hinge partner problems because an improper or inexperienced hinge partner can perpetuate those issues. It is a hinge partner’s role and responsibility to facilitate and manage their multiple relationships.
No two people will see eye-to-eye on every single issue. What is more important is to consider if your respective perspectives are close enough that you can arrive to a compromise with your metamour. It is especially challenging in this case because not only do you and your husband need to compromise on each of your respective parenting styles, but also need to compromise with your metamour’s parenting style as well.
I am very, very curious what your husband’s reaction was to discovering that his girlfriend hit his dog and reprimanded his kids in such a way.
Based on what you have shared, I gather that your husband – as a hinge partner – has failed to properly step up to do what was expected of him. There is a world of difference between recognizing the difference in each person’s view and quite another perpetuating the difference in each person’s worldview. The first acknowledges and celebrates the differences and the second breeds unnecessary contempt and conflict. It can be difficult to stay grounded in the midst of NRE, but he absolutely needs to step more into the role of a father, a pet owner, and a hinge partner to enforce proper boundaries, to renegotiate conflicting agreements, and to set the tempo for how his household is run. Doing anything less than that is naive at best, neglectful at worst.
That was all a really long way of saying that You Are Not Overreacting.
Underneath that initial layer of guilt and self-shame lies the ever-present ambivalence. Clearly, there are some positive aspects to your husband’s relationship (“I loved him being in a great mood.”) as well as her presence bringing obvious benefits (“I like the extra effort of help around the house.”). But it is brought down by a deep-rooted resentment for her general disrespect for your previously established boundaries in a home that you have already nested in. That resentment is anchored around your emotional exhaustion, which then feeds into your difficulty around actively addressing problems in your poly household through your hinge partner.
This is just one part of your emotional burnout.
In his groundbreaking 1974 study, Herbert J. Freudenberger identified three major components of emotional burnout: emotional exhaustion, decreased sense of accomplishment, and depersonalization. We have already talked extensively about your emotional exhaustion, but there are also signs of other two components as well.
Specifically, “decreased sense of accomplishment” is manifesting in the disempowerment in your own relationship with your husband. It could be that your reticence to bring this up again with your husband is because you see so little improvement or changes. It is also manifesting in the perceived lack of control over your own decisions (“I’m so stuck at this roadblock feeling like there is no good option to make.“). The “depersonalization” on the other hand is manifesting through the depletion of empathy and detachment you feel towards your own place in your home (“Well not too long after I started feeling very out of place in my own home.“).
Now that we have fully fleshed out what you are experiencing, let’s finally talk about what you can do.
In a recent episode of Unlocking Us, Brene Brown interviewed Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski about emotional burnout and the process of completing the stress cycle. I strongly recommend that you give that episode a listen. In that episode, they discussed that removing the stressor doesn’t mean the stress cycle is complete. So even if your stressor – your metamour in this case – moves out, that doesn’t mean your stress cycle is complete. You are still in the middle of your stress cycle.
The only way a stress cycle is completed is through fully experiencing the breadth of the emotions that accompany the stress itself. It can be as simple as a twenty second hug from a loved one, or as intense as going on a run. Sometimes, competing your stress cycle can look like scream-cry during a solo drive, a routine yin yoga with plenty of breathing exercises, or a creative expression such as writing a 2700-word advice column for a complete stranger. Whatever it is, it is very important to allow yourself to complete the cycle of your internalized stress.
In addition to completing your stress cycle, I also advise you to outline what you have experienced and engage in a meaningful conversation about how this past year has gone. 2021 is finally upon us. So take time to revisit how 2020 has gone, outline what did & didn’t work in 2020, and lay out what your goals & expectations are for the brand new 2021. That doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone has to move out, de-escalate, or end their relationships.
But it does mean that things can no longer simply continue as is.
Lastly, I want to touch on this comment (“Kicking her out would be a huge mess. She’s so integrated into our lives.“). This is a simple manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy. It is a false narrative we tell ourselves. Just because we have already invested so much time and energy into something doesn’t mean that it needs to continue even as it is no longer a fulfilling or rewarding endeavor. In the same way, just because you spent a lot of time and energy trying to be okay doesn’t mean that you are or will be okay. It isn’t like she is going to get any less integrated into your lives as long as she continues to be a very dysfunctional part of your lives.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
Hi. Two year ago I (F38) finally convinced my husband (M41) to try opening up our marriage. He was very much against it when I first told him but I finally convinced him.
I really wanted to have one of my coworkers and we immediately started dating after I got my husband to agree. It was hard for him to hear about us but he never complained. We’re both working partners and he would often stay home taking care of the kids while I was out with my boyfriend. I was and I am very grateful for all his support.
A year ago my husband found himself a girl and they also started dating. Now I’m gonna be honest here. SHE IS SEXY!!! and I’m actually very jealous of her. She’s also 10 years younger than me and apparently great in bed. They spend a lot of time together and two months ago he even introduced her to our sons (as his friend) which is fair enough because I’ve told them about “mommy’s friend” too. They even went out together with the kids.
Anyway. Last month my boyfriend and I broke up and I’m not really into the open marriage idea anymore. Most of all I don’t want my husband to date his girlfriend. I wanna wait for them to break up but it seems like it never going to happen.
On the other hand I feel like a jerk to tell him to not do the thing that I tried really hard to convince him to do. Plus I don’t think it would be right to tell him to end a relationship that he has invested so much time and effort into just like that.
Two of the most common misconceptions among previously monogamous couples who open their relationship up is that a direct request to close the relationship will always be honored and that if they do return to exclusivity that things will return back to what it was like prior to opening up. Each of those misconceptions are dangerous because they each operate under the assumption that it is of utmost importance to maintain the existing relationship, no matter the cost. But as with any other absolutes, such a perspective disregards any established or expected personal and relational boundaries.
Based on what you have shared, I gather that the discussion around opening up was not framed as a negotiation but rather as an ultimatum. As common with other “take it or leave it” approaches, there is often very little room for proactive discussions around expectations, mutual agreements, or planning. They are the foundational cornerstones which are built upon trust and communication, both of which are clearly absent in your personal connection with your husband.
Your husband is clearly poly under duress. When you initially requested to open up your marriage, that request was pitted against the life he already had: a husband of ten years and a father of two. You were not successful in “convincing” your husband. Opening up was a mere mate retention and abandonment prevention strategy he had to make in order to maintain his self-image as a husband and father. This is further elaborated in not only the coworker you selected to pursue but the household and parenting responsibilities your husband had to pick up on.
We also need to consider your respective relational landscapes.
I gather that a part of your motivation to open up originated around the specific person you wanted to be with. Polyamory is a subset of ethical non-monogamy, and your approach to not only open up with someone specific in mind, but have that person also be your coworker tells me that there is a fundamental lack of respect for essential boundaries. Enmeshing your erotic life with your career is challenging enough without having to consider that your relationship orientation is not a protected status in all states. There is always an inherent risk of relationships going sideways. And just because your relationship with your boyfriend happened to end without any lasting negative impact around your workplace, that doesn’t mean that your decision to pursue your coworker was not a risky one.
In the same way, just because your husband didn’t decide to leave you when you started seeing your coworker doesn’t mean that your decision was not a risky one. Everyone has a risk threshold, a level that each person deems is too risky before they opt out. And in your case, the opt out has such severe consequences – the same consequences you appear to threaten your husband with in this very comment.
This is all compounded by the intense jealousy you appear to harbor for your husband’s new partner. While jealousy can be a very intense feeling, there are ways to manage the bad with the good. Perhaps your jealousy is a manifestation of the homework you did not do with your husband when you opened up. It could also be possible that you need to establish better boundaries around your metamour. What is clear is that the pain from the end of your relationship with your boyfriend/coworker is manifesting in intense jealousy for your metamour.
You must own the emotional labor associated with non-monogamy.
Just like your husband learned to manage his own jealousy regarding your new sexual adventures, it is time for you to figure out how you can manage your own jealousy regarding his new sexual adventures. Emotional labor, as the name implies, is work. Figuring out mitigation strategy for jealousy can feel really hot and intense. But it is absolutely a worthwhile labor.
What might help is to acknowledge that each of you are responsible for each of your relationships.
In the same way that your husband did not or was not able to dictate the type of relationships you were a part in, you cannot step in and veto his partner – or “convince” him otherwise. They have been dating for over a year. And, as you pointed it out, their relationship required a lot of work. As such, it is ultimately and wholly within your husband’s agency to decide who he is in a relationship with. You are welcome to express your own feelings about how difficult it has been to manage your jealousy. But you’ve also had two years to develop those skills on your own.
No matter what you decide to do, you will have to reflect on the state of your marriage as it applies into the future. You absolutely do not have to stay in a marriage that does not feel rewarding to you.
At least then you will finally be doing your husband a favor by removing one manipulative partner from his life.
Merry Christmas and good luck.
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
My wife has been seeing someone for a couple of months and she really seems to like him. In getting to know each other, he has let it slip that he and his partner are currently working with marriage counselors and therapists to get through a few of their past mistakes. Until recently, he told my wife that they are currently separated but he still wants to talk and go out with her. Everything I’m reading is telling me how difficult it is for everyone in the situation. She is leaving it up to him on deciding to continue. Is it normal to continue dating even with something as bad as a separation? We have always said we stop dating if we aren’t in a good place. I think my fears are her bringing that toxicity into our house. Either through increased anxiety or stress etc. She says if she sees anything like that starting she will end it immediately.
Your feelings of fear and of the unknown are very apparent. It sounds like you sense the potential turbulence in your metamour’s marriage deeply affecting your wife, and subsequently affecting your marriage as well. Those are valid feelings and concerns, and we will spend some time in this post unpacking the true source of those concerns and what you and your wife can do to alleviate those feelings, individually and collectively.
Let’s first distinguish the different relationships. There are three different relationships in your current polycule as you described: the relationship between you and your wife, the relationship between your wife and your metamour, and the relationship between your metamour and his wife. And in those three different relationships, there are two hinges: your wife and your metamour. The distinction between the different relationships and how each of them function in relation with and isolation from each other is a really important concept in polyamory.
In this column, I have repeatedly upheld that the hinge partners are responsible for facilitating theirm multiple relationships. That means that the hinges are responsible for managing any inter-relational conflicts, smoothing transitional inflection points, and upholding the relevant boundaries & agreements. Even the most experienced hinge partners will find it impossible to completely compartmentalize struggles in one relationship from bleeding over in their other relationships. While complete isolation from drama is impossible, a mindful filtration is not only possible, it is also functionally necessary for long-term success in polyamory.
We have to use our own experiences to measure the world at large.
Consider how your own personal worldview colors your assessment of external relationships. It could be that you have had some very dysfunctional relationship with relationship therapy or counseling that has shaped how you are envisioning your metamour’s separation process. But it is not always the case that therapy is a premonition of failure. In a way, going to therapy is a lot like going to a gym. You get to work out any kinks in your form, strengthen your core, and become more durable in the process. Going to therapy or counseling is a good thing for them because they are taking an active measure and interest in improving their relationship together, even if their marriage does not survive.
It is true that most separation / divorce process is going to be difficult. As someone with a partner going through a divorce, I can personally attest to how challenging it will be for both your metamour and your wife. But she is the one who is in that relationship with your metamour, and is the one that will be doing the emotional labor associated with supporting her partner through the separation and divorce. Not you.
On a first date with one of my former partners, my former partner and I talked at length about how the main challenge of polyamory lies in that you are also dating circumstances. You don’t just get to date the person you are interested in. You also have to welcome their existing agreements, their polycule status, and their extended relational worldview. So take that into consideration that when you are actively choosing to date your wife, you also have to take her poly happenstance into consideration… in the same way that she is doing her partner’s.
Instead of allowing your fears to hold you hostage, take this as an opportunity to connect deeper with your partner.
Instead of saying “I don’t think he should be dating while going through a separation process”, say “I am afraid that your relationship with your other partner might bring emotional baggage into our relationship.” And dig deeper and flesh out what that “toxicity” might look like. Have a dialogue about how you and your wife can each develop your own respective coping mechanisms to ensure that your own marriage isn’t too disturbed by the transition that is taking place in her partner’s life.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
We started dating 6 years ago. 8 months into the relationship I finished my internship, moved to the state where he was living and working, left my family and friends and started a new life for the first time. It was difficult for me – I hated the new state, felt people were unfriendly, aggressive, and short in conversation. I’m introverted and that made it more difficult to gain whatever sense of belonging could be achieved in a state full of bedroom communities and highways. His job paid twice as much as mine, he came from a wealthy family and I came from a poor one. His role as breadwinner was obvious from the start. I didn’t hold much resentment, because I was just starting off in both my career and our relationship, and I did end up finding a fantastic job in my field where we lived.
I lived there for 4 years. Last spring (just over a year ago) we bought our first house, and we were set to be married in April 2020. 4 months after the home purchase, my fiance was laid off from his job, and was unemployed for 8 months while looking for work. Financially, we were able to maintain the house, but I never got to “move in” or make it mine in any way. I kept most of our things in the boxes we moved in with because we didn’t know if/when we’d need to sell the house and leave. I worked at my job for 3.5 years, which I had to quit when he was finally offered a job in a new state.
The job is a great move for his career, the relocation package was good, the cost of living in the new area is lower. This was the first offer he’d received since being laid off and in the middle of pandemic we felt lucky that he found *anything*, and it didn’t feel like there was much of another option for us. We put our house on the market, and I felt like I was the only person saddened by letting it go. I left my job, after months of not seeing any of my coworkers or patients because of the pandemic, and I didn’t get to see anyone before I left. My goodbyes were all done over phone calls.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to find work in my field in the new state, as my field really only exists in/near larger cities, and our new location (and an hour drive in any direction) is all rural. Fortunately, we live in a college town with a small state school, but that’s all there is. I’ve been here for 3 months, have been trying to make the most of my “time off” by getting outside/hiking often. Before the move I’d been considering changing careers (wanted more opportunity for career growth and higher salary), but it was far too late for me to apply for a program by the time we moved, and now I have to wait to apply for Fall 2021. As I said, I have zero chance of finding a job in/related to my current field as it is extremely specialized and there’s no market for it here.
I have the “luxury” of staying home, and not needing to find an income immediately, and keeping myself safe from the virus. I have been struggling with mental health (for many years, but currently more than ever), have some other issues that need medical attention, and I have no health insurance after leaving my job. I’m currently waiting on a Medicaid decision. My fiance will have to pay for any care that I need. My fiance will need to pay for everything else once my savings have run out. I expect that to happen during the next few months. Right now I feel like I have to make a choice between getting a low-paying job for some small semblance of independence or staying sheltered while avoiding unnecessary risks. I’m upset because while I can focus on getting into school for Fall 2021, it’s an entire year away and it’s difficult to imagine an entire year feeling this useless and dependent. My fiance hasn’t been very understanding of my feelings – about the loss of our house, my career, our friends, the wedding. He is ecstatic about his new job, receiving tons of recognition and praise, and has already made some friends at work that he hangs out with on the weekends. It just feels like he’s winning at life and simply can’t see how much I’ve sacrificed/lost this year because of his situation, can’t understand the depression I can’t seem to climb out of because “we have it so good” and “I have nothing to worry about”. I’m happy that he’s happy, but I’m going to end up feeling like a “kept wife” very soon, and I’d rather have reasons to feel happy for myself. This isn’t it.
I want to make this work, and care about my relationship deeply, but I’ve been feeling so worthless that I’ve considered applying for my old position (it was recently posted) or applying for schools in my hometown where my family lives just to give myself a better shot at success. I know neither of these things are good solutions, but I’m just desperate to stop feeling so stifled.
There are several underlying issues at hand here. Each issues are both independent and interweaving, as the sources of the issues arise from the same spot but manifest in many radically different ways. We will first talk about processing loss as part of leaving your old state behind. Then we’ll get more into why there seems to be such a communicative disconnect between you and your partner. After that, we’ll discuss how you can amend that disconnect and lay out your potential next steps.
Let’s first talk about your headspace in this new transitional phase of your life, especially as it pertains to your professional career.
I gathered two of your core needs: a need to belong and a need to be self-sufficient. You first moved to a new state to be with your partner only after 8 months of dating, leaving behind all the support network you’ve built around your family and friends in your home state. And because of your introversion, it took you almost four years to foster and establish your own connections again in this new state. And just as you have found your own footing in this new state in a career that you feel deeply passionate about, you had to relocate yet again to start anew from scratch. That is a lot! It is no wonder you are going through a heavy mental load.
There is a real sense of loss and grief in the connections that you’ve left behind in the state you purchased your first house in. And because of your partner’s happenstance, you never really got an opportunity to nest in your new home to make it your home. Almost as if you were stuck in a state of transition. And the worst part is, you’re still stuck in this exhaustive, perpetual state of transition in yet another new state.
And that “stuckness” extends to the process of loss and grief, which leads to my next point.
The only way we can become “unstuck” is to express and process our feelings.
In the previous state, you likely had friends and coworkers who you depended on for emotional and social needs beyond what your fiance could meet for you. And when you and your fiance moved to this new state, the numerous channels all funneled into one singular person: your fiance. That is a Big Ask for one person, when in the past you’ve had a whole support network to rely on. In short, you’ve become isolated in your romantic entanglement.
In this short video above, Logan Ury explains in detail about Gottman Institute’s ideas about turning towards or away from relationship bids. In short, relationship bids are micro moments in your relationships where you make a verbal or a nonverbal request to connect to your partner. Your relationship satisfaction is hinged on how many of those bids your partner responds to, and how many of your partner’s bids you respond to.
So when you approached your fiance to process your current state of depression, he instead failed to acknowledge your headspace, discredited why you were feeling down, and got lost in his current career development. In this particular incident, he either could not or chose not to hear your bid. In rejection of your bid, your partner also rejected the substance of your reality and dismissed your feelings. That is a very troubling sign from your sole connection in your new state, as it continues to perpetuate your “stuckness”.
I also want to touch on the privilege of the neurotypical.
Chronic depression is near impossible to explain to someone who has never been chronically depressed or hasn’t had a clinical background to understand depression. That could be why your partner cannot understand why you feel so depressed. It is not within his agency to dictate whether or not your depression is legitimate, especially if he hasn’t had a personal experience with depression himself. Really, the only role he has in that particular type of exchange is to be supportive and understanding. To accept that you are having a difficult time with this transition. You cannot move forward with your next steps if there is no acknowledgement and a self-driven desire to understand.
Part of the resentment you are feeling toward your partner stems from that initial disconnect. A big part of it also arise from viewing the transition as an action that was implicitly out of your control.
There are two different decisions at play here. First is in his decision to accept his offer and relocate. Even if we assume that he would not have gotten an offer in the state you were residing in at the time, the inherent risk in this job going well in addition to you both being able to find your respective and mutual footing in this new state were immense. Fortunately, he was able to find his new footing and re-establish his self-worth through his blossoming career. So that risk might have paid off from his end.
The more impactful decision was in your choice to give up on your career and follow your fiance to this new state. You said that “it didn’t feel like there was much of another option for us” other than for your fiance to take this career opportunity in a different state. And I’m curious to dig deeper and consider if that really is true. Why did you feel so compelled to surrender your definite security at a chance at his? Based on your writing, I get the sense that you have a deep knowledge of the your own internal headspace as well as your partner’s.
It is true that you had a Big Ask when you asked your partner to be your sole source of support in this new state. But that was nothing compared to the Biggest Ask in assumed relocation to a brand new state where he would have to be your sole source of support.
And so, it might be beneficial for you to envision this transition not as a decision he made on your behalf but as series of implicit decisions that you two made together about each other. This is very important.
Being able to take mutual responsibility for your respective decisions means that you two can make mutual plans that you two can proactively agree on.
If your career prospects are indeed dire and your next year is devoid of plans, why not go back to work at your old workplace? Almost everyone I know is currently working from home. And as you said, you haven’t seen your coworkers or patients since the pandemic started. Maybe you can reach out to your former employer to see if you can return to work from your new state. It is worth a shot, and the worst you’re going to get is a No at a place you already don’t work at anymore. Upsides seem immense as you get to keep working at a field you feel passionate about with income and health insurance you can use to support yourself.
Another option is to consider a temporary long distance relationship. I’ve been in a handful of deep and rewarding long distance relationships myself, and heard from many others who have survived long distance transition phases of their relationships. If you strongly believe that your professional development and career pursuits are integral to your own survival, temporarily relocating to a larger city where there is a demand for your field of profession might not be a bad option for you to consider. At the very worst, it’ll only be for a year. And depending on where you find your job, you and your partner can even make weekend trips to see each other. Otherwise, thanks to apps like Marco Polo, Netflix Party, and Between, facilitating relationships over long distance has never been as easy. Back in the day, I had to settle for grainy Skype calls with my girlfriend from London!
Developing and creating new connections also seem necessary. Everyone is sequestered in their own bubble at this moment, so most people can use a new friend in you. Your eloquence and thoughtfulness will bring something new and fresh to the table for most friend-seekers. Penpalling might not be a bad way for you to develop and forge platonic long distance connections, especially in times like these. Even if you don’t fully commit to a personalized stationery and colorful envelopes for snail mail penpals, email penpalling will help you get started.
In terms of the relationship with your fiance, perhaps have him explain to you what he thinks your current circumstance is like. Even if he isn’t you, being able to step into your situation and empathize with how you feel trapped in your current circumstance will help shine a light into what you two can work together on going forward not just in this transition, but for many more transitions to come in the future.
Good luck.
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
I have been married to my wife Hannah for around a dozen years. She was my second ever girlfriend. We have been poly for the last five years. We both have had partners come and go, but nothing seems to stick. We date separately. We do not have rules for each other, we are fairly autonomous, and we are working on becoming non-hierarchical.
I have been talking/dating someone new – Belinda – for a couple of months. She is very similar to me. Similar love languages. She and I connect romantically in a way I’ve never connected before.
I am very teen-like in my love: making out, high sex drive, clingy, etc. My wife is not that way at all. Sexually, we are different. And while we were monogamous, I just thought the way I loved was silly. Being polyamorous, I’ve seen that others can love this way and it be accepted. Belinda and I connected amazingly, and while Hannah never wanted kids I always did. I accepted it may not be in the cards. And that the romantic relationship with each other was more worth it than sacrificing the relationship by having kids. She was open to the idea of me having kids with a partner, something Belinda was excited about.
Hannah’s mother passed away a couple of months ago. She and I have been at each other and fighting a lot. I met Belinda just after this happened. Due to srcumstances, Belinda is staying with us for a few months. The plan was to build a polycule and have a home all together (myself, Hannah, Belinda, and a possible partner of Hannah’s). This has been the goal for years now.
Hannah was not sold on Belinda as it is still newer, but does not know the depth of feelings between her and I. Hannah and I got into an argument last night where I was asked “Do I feel more for Belinda?” and I was honest and said I do romantically. For me, romance is one aspect of love and relationship. Hannah and I have long known we are on different levels of love. I am a hopeless romantic. I am clingy. She is fine being in the same room and not touching.
Belinda fits me more than Hannah does, so to me it is more natural to feel that romantic connection. I do not love Hannah any less, but it is a different love. She feels I should feel the same and equal to everyone. To which I said that things are not always going to be equal. She may enjoy a sexual aspect with someone more compatible to her, and as long as she enjoys it and loves it with me, we are good. She feels as though poly should be equal.
I am truly asking… am I wrong here? Am I wrong for loving Belinda more romantically or deeper on a romantic level?
Since you and your wife have been polyamorous for the past five years, I will assume that both you and your wife have already considered the impact of New Relationship Energy when you connect with someone new and exciting, and that you two already know how to manage NRE in a mindful and respectful way. Instead, we will lightly touch on the transition process to a more non-hierarchical polyamorous arrangement, the role of honesty in polyamory, and revisit the recent fight you had with Hannah. Then at the end, we’ll come back to answer the main question: can partner preference be unethical?
Transitioning from an assumed hierarchical polyamorous relationship with your married partner to an explicitly non-hierarchical arrangement is a very challenging and potentially treacherous journey. There are many inherent couple’s privileges and protection that are legally baked into your marriage with Hannah that your or her other partners will never be able to exercise. While the goal of any non-hierarchical polyamorous relationship isn’t to level the playing field for everyone in the polycule, there needs to be a concerted effort for everyone to try their best to smooth out those inherent privileges wherever you can.
You mentioned that you and Hannah never intend to have a child together, while Belinda is open to the opportunity. I don’t have a legal background to give you any legal advice on how you can ensure that the child you might have with Belinda (or with any future partner) is properly and legally accounted for, or how you can protect your paternal rights. So I would strongly advise you to consult with a family law attorney to make sure that all your i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed long before you and Belinda start trying for kids.
Conscientiousness of honesty in polyamorous relationships
Like food you can order at a dine-in restaurant, there are three main parts of any message you deliver.
The first part is the content of the message itself. It is the exact transcription of the words that you type or speak to whoever is receiving your message. It is the words you choose in your head as it leaves your lips or fingertips. In our restaurant metaphor, content would be akin to the very basic ingredients being used to make the food. If you have any singular poor quality ingredient, it’d likely ruin the taste and soul of the food. In the same way, poor diction will mean annihilate a message no matter how it gets delivered.
Delivery is the second part of the message. Delivery is how the words you chose – content – leaves your mouth or fingertips. So the tone of the language, speed & volume in which those words are spoken, and body language are all crucial part of the delivery. In an online conversation, how quickly you deliver those messages in a conversation as well as timeliness of response would constitute delivery. In our restaurant metaphor, delivery would be the service staff as well as the plate or the bowl the food arrives on. Delivery is the presentation of those cooked ingredients and how it is displayed. It won’t matter if you are being served food cooked by a top Michelin Star chef if the food arrives on a used paper plate from last night’s takeout. In the same way, even if the content of the message is perfect, delivery determines how that message is received.
The last part is the context. Context is all the surrounding environment as well as the tone of the previous conversations leading up to this particular message. Context is also represented in the overall mood of the message recipient as well as the room this message might be delivered. On an online conversation, the messaging platform might be considered the context of the message. Context would be the quality of the service staff as well as the table presentation in a restaurant. Even if the food itself is great and arrives on an enchanted plate, your restaurant experience would certainly be soured by a rude waitstaff or a dog poop you stepped on on your way into the restaurant.
It doesn’t matter if the content of your message comes from a good place if they are shouted at each other (i.e. poor delivery). And it doesn’t matter if you thought all about how the message was going to be delivered if you were inconsiderate in your choice of words. Sometimes, even if you choose the perfect set of words and say those words perfectly, it might not be received because the message was delivered in exactly the wrong circumstance. It is important to take into consideration all three parts of a message when you do say those words.
Laying down true honesty in the heat of the moment without any emotional filter is not a healthy way to communicate. Doing so leaves out both the delivery and the context part of the content you aim to get across. Exercising mindfulness and approaching each of your connections with a sense of compassion and sympathy is crucial to your relationship’s success.
Now let’s go back and talk about what actually transpired.
First consider the context of your message. Hannah had just lost her mother couple months ago. I’m sure that has put a significant emotional stressor on your relationship with Hannah as you were asked to step into a more of a caretaker role for your partner. As she is processing the loss and the grief of losing a parent, she also had to witness her partner fall deeply in love with someone brand new. Even if she is a master class professor of jealousy and insecurity management, her current lack of emotional capital in processing those feelings of jealousy and insecurity could have easily overwhelmed her. Based on what you’ve shared, it isn’t just anyone that you fell in love with; it is someone her partner is considering having children with. That is an immense potential commitment that she’ll have to do emotional labor for, even if the initial plan was to maintain a very polyamorous household. Another factor to consider is that you never specified if this is the first time either of your partners have lived in the same house as you and Hannah. If so, learning to live with your metamour is not a level of emotional labor you might truly understand. Then there is the pandemic going around as well as the nonstop news cycle that adds a continuous trauma processing task to all of our plates. Lastly, this question that she asked was delivered in the heat of the moment. You two were in the middle of an argument where the collective emotions were running high.
Then let’s look at the delivery. Now, I wasn’t in the room with you and your partner to know exactly how that message was delivered. But I am guessing based on how she received your message that you were straightforward in your honesty about your romantic and sexual preference for Belinda over Hanna herself. That explains why she gravitated toward objective fairness in all relationships (as opposed to a relative fairness) since your message was delivered in such a way that indicated that her relationship with you was under threat of a direct supersession. And because she felt threatened in her standing, she appealed to equality as a way to remind you that she too is a person who deserves your affection – even if you might not feel that exact same way as her.
You later revealed that the intent of your message was that, while your relationship with Belinda functions at a different level, it does not diminish or otherwise adversely affect your appreciation for your relationship with Hannah. The relationship you have with Belinda is by essence and element different than the relationship you have with Hannah. And Hannah has had dozen plus years to establish herself as a trustworthy life partner for you, through opening up and more.
If that was your true intent in the content of your response, it definitely got lost between the contextual clues and the delivery method, leading to the miscommunication.
This is all to say that there is nothing inherently wrong with preferring one partner over another in specific circumstances. We all come from wildly different personal backgrounds with completely different personal values and ethics. Our goal in seeking particular partnerships is to find partners who can align close enough with our own values but also different enough that you two don’t immediately cannibalize each other’s beliefs. So it could very well be possible that you do have a romantic preference for Belinda at this specific time at this specific place in your current relational landscape.
However, communicating so when Hannah is already experiencing and handling so much on her own was discompassionately removed from her own personal headspace. Being that upfront and honest to the point of unintentionally hurting others is not a healthy way to communicate with someone you have been dating for the past dozen plus years. For a moment, step away from defending your own perspective out of necessity and step into her perspective to relate with her headspace even if she can’t do so herself at this moment. Think for a moment how much emotional labor she is currently contending with. So even if that partner preference was true, both the context and the delivery were both incorrect from your part.
Polyamorous connections are rarely ever equal. Even if for some reason, you started dating both Hannah and Belinda at the same exact time and did not have preexisting marital commitments to honor, they are very different people. So your relationships with either of them are going to be very, very different, depending on circumstance, personality, and the relationship history that you’d be carving out with each of your partners. But Hannah wasn’t looking for an honest answer from you. She was looking for a supportive answer from you. The kind of answer that would ground her back in reality with you as her partner while she is shouldering so much burden so that she may rest on your kindness for just one more evening.
Even if it wasn’t complete honesty.
So to go all the way back to answer your question…
No. It is not ethically wrong to have preferences. But it is wrong to communicate in such a way at this time.
Especially not to a partner who has been there for you for the past dozen plus years. And especially in comparison to a new partner who has only been around for a couple months.
As a new father, I also have a couple to add here about the complexities of raising a newborn in a polyamorous household. Like polyamorous dating space, there isn’t really a popular model for you to follow as for how you can raise a child with multiple partners. Almost all the models out there are designed for monogamous households with varying degrees of community support. While some of the new parenting stressors – such as lack of sleep – seems as aligned in a poly household as would a monogamous one, polyamory does bring unique challenges that cannot be experienced in a monogamous parenting scenario.
As such, I strongly advise you to read this article from New York Times from yesterday. It is very rare that such a large publication would cover non-monogamy as something other than a modern fad. This particular article goes into a pretty deep detail into the types of agreements you can implement with your partners to ensure all your grounds are covered.
I am four years into my own personal polyamory journey. And there are days when I feel completely on top of my relationships, cruising between my different relationships like a fish through a stream. Then there are days where I am completely humbled by my lack of expertise and sense. I too am often knocked a loose by an illogical strand of jealousy or insecurity that I once thought I had a better handle of. So even if you feel that you’ve been able to manage NRE better in previous relationships, that wasn’t with Belinda. And that wasn’t while Hannah was shouldering so much external and internal stressors. Stay grounded and rooted in your own experience while fearlessly stepping into other perspectives occasionally. Even if you aren’t as romantically aligned with Hannah as you would with Belinda, love is not a competition nor is it a zero sum game. More you love Hannah, more you can love Belinda. And more you love Belinda, more you can love Hannah.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
We started opening our relationship in June as an “exploratory” thing we were doing. At that time it seemed like she was just “looking for fun” and she got to have her fun with a handful of people. I started to talk with a close friend and found out this friend is also polyamorous and wanted to explore with me.
My wife has been intensely jealous of this new development between me and my friend. She does not feel comfortable with it but also totes around “fair is fair. I’ve done way worse”. I hate to admit it and I never say it out loud but I feel like she is right in that sense. She has slept with 5 guys in the span of a month and then suddenly me having my first experience is too much for her. To give you some context, my wife has been my only sexual partner my whole life.
At this same time my wife started a friendship with my friend’s roommate. She came out to me a couple days ago that she is actually polyamorous and isn’t looking for casual flings, something I’ve been asking since the start. Basically telling me she has feelings for this roommate.
I’ve been feeling a lot worse knowing it’s not just a casual fling for her while she simultaneously does not want me to pursue anyone. It feels very hypocritical.
This situation is deceptively complex. So let’s first start by discussing everything that happened with your wife since opening up in June.
In a very short amount of time, she has found five different casual connections. We often find change and progress through our intimate connections. Sometimes, the shortest flings often bring about the biggest changes in us. It could be possible that your wife has found significant growth and development over the past month that allowed her to better fully flesh out the type of relationships she wants to have. That means a personal growth for herself as well as a deviation from the original vision of non-monogamous arrangement with you.
The timing of her declaration appears coincidental and circumstantial. But let’s assume for a moment that her acknowledgement of her polyamorous identity comes completely independent from the recent developments in your own non-monogamous journey. If we give her the benefit of the doubt that her growth is the result of the past month’s experience, then there are some really big questions she needs to ask herself before she can actually claim the polyamorous identity.
What type of interactions is she willing to facilitate between her multiple partners?
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Parallel Polyamory
Kitchen Table Polyamory
What does this mean for your rules and agreements from a month ago?
What does her ideal version of polyamorous arrangement look like?
What does this mean for our future?
I’ve written in the past about polyamory as an identity. And in that column from two weeks ago I wrote, “[P]olyamory as an identity is too often used as a blanket excuse for unethical and selfish relationship habits.” In short, it could be possible that your wife is utilizing her declaration of polyamorous identity as a way to neglect or disregard the emotional labor associated with polyamory. We’ll go into more detail what that means in the next section.
Now let’s talk about what is happening with you. Just like the discussion about your wife’s development, we’ll talk about your current predicament as completely independent from your wife.
It sounds like you found someone you connected with in your close friend. I’m not sure if your close friend has had much experience with non-monogamy prior to connecting with you, nor your friend’s current balance of relationships. But considering that your wife has been your only sexual partner, there is going to be a lot that you’ll need to unlearn, re-learn, and newly learn in regards to developing a romantic/sexual connection with your close friend.
Hear your friend when they say that they are polyamorous. If they have already had a lot of experience with non-monogamy/polyamory, then this is a great time for you to ask them what their experience has been like, what they expect from their relationships, and what preexisting agreements they have with their current partners. If they are coming into polyamory just as fresh as you and your wife are, then they too should be asking the same questions that your wife should be asking herself. I strongly urge you to take a look at the newbie tag on my column. This post in particular has a lot of resources that can benefit everyone.
In polyamory, you don’t just date your partner; you also date the situation. Your friend has to be introspective about the relationship situation their partner – you – are in, just like you have to be cognizant about their situation as well.
This is a good time for you to reassess what you personally expect from both your current and future relationships. One of the ways I have a dialogue with myself is by writing down my feelings in a journal. It helps me distance myself from my own perspective in order to have a dialogue with myself about myself. Another way is through therapy. Through our therapists, we can better hear and engage with our own voices in a more productive, clinical way.
I am going to assume that your wife connected with the roommate of the same close friend that you are interested in pursuing a connection with. I’m not sure if her decision to connect with this particular individual was one of choice to limit COVID exposure, of sheer luck that she happened to connect well with your interest’s roommate, or perhaps something more questionable. Either way, intermixing their current living situation with your exploration with open relationship appears ripe for disaster, with almost no safety nets.
I have a feeling that her reticence and reservation regarding your decision to pursue others is heavily and deeply rooted in a sense of insecurity and jealousy, which is common for a lot of polyfolks. It is something that I – an experienced poly person – struggle with on occasion as well. It is also common for a lot of poly newbies that jealousy and insecurity often gets weaponized to influence their partners’ actions, which might be happening with your wife. It could be that in better circumstances that she has enough resources to manage her feelings of insecurity and jealousy. But because she’s trying to juggle her multiple connections, at the same time trying to figure out what polyamory means to her, her emotional capital is tapped out.
Similar could apply to you as well. You spent so much time accepting and being okay with your wife’s other connections over the past month that you are losing sight of the type of connections you want to make. And now that you found a potential connection through your close friend, your wife’s proclamation of poly identity is rocking the boat so heavily that you can’t tell what’s up from down.
In a way, it is like trying to tango on roller skates while the dance floor is also an escalator and also your eyebrows are on fire.
You and your wife should seriously consider slowing things down and only adding one variable at a time. I understand that both you and your wife are tempted to match each other pace-for-pace, and I think this is a mistake. If your wife wants to explore polyamorous relationships instead of more ephemeral casual connections, then this is a great time for her to stop dating for a month and read/listen to materials for polyfolks. If she is really intent on and serious about pursuing a polyamorous connection with this specific individual, this person will still be there when your wife is actually ready to date polyamorously. And in this time, they too can take some time to think about the type of polyamory they want to be a part of. Reading and listening material should give your wife some good ideas on how to manage her insecurity and jealousy in a more productive and meaningful way.
While your wife and her potential connection is researching into polyamory, it is time for you to explore the type of connection you want to make by being in it. Like your wife has discovered, you’ll learn a lot when you start dating others. Only through experience, you’ll get a better idea of how you can connect with yourself, your wife, and others at a deeper level. It’ll also give you a different perspective on what you think that your wife gets out of non-monogamy as well. You might find that your preference could be very different from your wife. But you won’t really know until you’re out dating on your own. This is all going to fold into your wife’s research material as she’ll have real life examples to apply her learning to. And just like you’ll have to explore your own relationships in order for you to discover what you want, she’ll have to explore her own jealousy management skills in order for her to discover what works for her.
Last thing I’ll comment on is in the necessity of consent regarding ethical non-monogamy.
You don’t need to make yourself vulnerable to degrees of emotional, relational, or sexual risk that you yourself don’t find acceptable through your partner. What I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to be okay with your wife’s behavior. She has been displaying some very selfish behaviors with reckless disregard for COVID happenstance, your relational landscape, or the type of connections she wants to pursue. And you don’t have to accept this type of behavior from your partner. If your personal boundary is such that you will not be in a romantic relationship with a person who seeks romantic relationships with others, that is a perfectly valid boundary for you to have and a perfectly valid boundary for your wife to adhere to for the sake of your marriage and your kids.
Dating you should be a privilege she gets to enjoy, not a guarantee she gets to settle on.
Jase from Multiamory once said dating multiple people doesn’t make you polyamorous. What makes you polyamorous is in learning to accept and celebrate your partners’ other relationships. The much more difficult part of polyamory is in committing to and doing the emotional labor that comes with jealousy and insecurity. I hate to act the part of a gatekeeper to polyamory. But if your wife cannot (or refuse to) mindfully manage her jealousy and insecurity that comes with polyamory, she does not get to claim to be polyamorous in the same way that enjoying cocktails doesn’t make that person a bartender.
Good luck!
Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.
I want to hear your thoughts and feedback! Please feel free to send me your questions and comments at teatimetomato@gmail.com. If you liked my advice for this post, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe below to get alerted when my next advice column is published!
Tea Time with Tomato 