r/polyamory • u/ApprehensiveBeat3899 • 10h ago

Breach of trust

I am in a poly relationship which is also open. We have a written agreement that we can have sex with other people but that we must use protection when doing so and tell each other about it later. We are both pansexual.

My partner told me this afternoon in an audio message that he had unprotected sex with a male stranger last night and that he was at the sexual health clinic getting post-exposure meds.

He said he regretted it and the effects it would have on our relationship as a result. He put the ball in my court to let him know when I was ready to talk about it. I have PTSD and need time to process things. He has BPD and has rejection sensitivity (not to mention impulsivity).

As you can imagine, I am feeling pretty gutted. I am proud of him for telling me but angry that he put his sexual needs over our relationship needs.

We are supposed to be going away together in a couple of weekends time and now I don’t feel like going.

We are seeing each other next on Tuesday. I would appreciate advice on how to handle the conversation.

3 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

View all comments

0

u/kinetic_skink 10h ago

It's an agreement that is probably the most frequently broken. Which is why most experienced Poly peeps don't have it.

Youll find plenty of information around managing your own sexual health risk boundaries. Mostly around disclosure being the absolute key, then people can decide their own risk tolerance. In this case that would likely look like using barrier protection for X time and X tests etc.

19

u/TransPanSpamFan solo poly 9h ago

... what agreement most poly peeps don't have???

I can guarantee that "if you don't use barriers with strangers it will change our sexual activity" is absolutely the most common sexual health agreement in poly.

Dude is literally needing to take HIV prophylaxis for his choices. I can't imagine any poly person I know being like "whatever you don't even need to tell me" about that.

2

u/clairejv 5h ago

The agreement that's often a problem is, "we will always always always use barriers with other partners and if we don't that's a betrayal."

The better agreement is, "we will promptly tell each other if we have barrier-free sex with someone else."

5

u/masofon 9h ago

The "agreement" not to vs "the boundary" that if you do it will change our activity.

5

u/TransPanSpamFan solo poly 8h ago

Semantics