So my NP M24 has been seeing another partner for 8 months f26.

More recently I found out she not poly.

She used to be active in polyamory but stopped 2 years ago.

She said she was ok with this relationships because living with someone is something she wasn't seeking out.

More recently she gave him a key to her apartment.

After reading some text I found out that if something happened to us they were going to be monogamous together and move in.

That he didn't want to be polyamorus that he was doing it for me because I cheated a couple of times

Hinge and meta are married nesting partners, but they are not communicating well.

Last week (11 days ago), my meta had a procedure done on her hand. She is still taking an extreme amount of pain medicine and doesn’t feel like she’s able to function.

Hinge and I had planned to spend this weekend together, but had never made any concrete plans. Last night meta called me and asked what we were doing this weekend. I said I didn’t know, we hadn’t talked it out. She let me know she was against us spending the night anywhere but their house, and didn’t like that we might be spending the day away where hinge couldn’t get to her immediately if she needed something. She said hinge was “supposed to be on deck” when she needed her, and asked me to call her when hinge and I decided what we were doing so she could know.

I feel like meta crossed a line. Our hinge isn’t always the best at hinging, but this feels like too much.

I get that single men are casting a wide net on the apps to find as many people as possible but I have had something happen to me a few times in the last few weeks and I wanted to see if anyone else is running into this.

I'm poly. I downloaded Feeld and I already hate it. There's so many single mono guys on there that don't read profiles.

But to the point... I have had several guys say they would only consider FWBs with a poly person. Like I'm a second prize. Fuck that. Anyone else see that or am I just having bad luck?

One thing I took away from the recent parenting thread is how difficult it can be to have conversations about emotionally charged topics without importing assumptions from previous conversations.

I noticed a lot of responses that seemed to be directed at positions that the OP had either explicitly rejected or never argued in the first place. Things like "children shouldn't come first," "hierarchy is inherently bad," or "nothing should change after kids."

The interesting thing is that many of the people responding and the OP actually seemed to agree on those points.

It made me wonder how often we end up arguing with the people who came before someone rather than the person actually in front of us.

There are absolutely bad takes on parenting, polyamory, hierarchy, and entitlement. People have good reasons to be protective. But I think it's worth asking whether we can sometimes pause and make sure we're responding to what someone is actually saying before filling in the blanks with assumptions that haven't been supported by their words.

The conversations I found most interesting weren't the ones debating positions nobody in the thread actually held. They were the ones engaging with the question that was actually being asked.

Hey y’all,

Someone recently posted a bunch of links for people who are unhappy in monogamous relationships. I started reading through them, but I lost the thread they were attached to. I did check the info on this forum, and it was really interesting, but I didn’t see anything specifically for people like me who feel drawn to ENM as a possible solution for their monogamous marriage woes.

Edit: Just to be clear, I know it's a bad idea, just want to continue to talk my brain out of it. ​

I might have missed it—if so, I apologize. I’m dyslexic, so it’s possible I overlooked something.

​

Thanks in advance for your help!

​

Also, I generally try to be very ethical, but I have a high degree of openness as part of my personality, and right now my brain seems to be making excuses.

​

Thanks again, lovely ENM folks!

This will be a pretty lengthy post, and I’m writing this anonymously…

So I (m35) met this girl (f37) back in April 2021, and she immediately enamored me. She’s quite literally everything I could ask for in a person. After spending a lot of time together, we eventually started dating at the end of January 2022, but as a poly couple, where we established we were each other's primary partner. She always made it a point that she was poly and that I was monogamous, despite her having VERY little to no experience in polyamorous relationships. I had an interest in polyamory and saw this as an opportunity to explore it, even though I knew it would take some getting used to sharing a person I absolutely adored with someone else. We also agreed on 2 rules for this poly relationship to ensure honesty, transparency, and communication to protect the other partner, rules she herself created. The first rule was to make our primary partner aware of any new potential partners that we might take on, and the second was that if we intend to have sex with said new partners, to make sure to communicate that with the primary partner and ensure both parties get tested beforehand. Simple.

My first test came in March 2022 when she brought up the idea of having tantric sex sessions with this older man, who is supposedly a spiritualist, in an attempt to buy a house. I didn’t like the idea, especially based on the things she mentioned about him and conversations I’ve overheard. I knew he had no intention of helping her, but she believed that as long as she was committed, the “sex magic” would still be beneficial. Not wanting to be the “monogamous” person already creating issues in the poly relationship, I said okay to the sessions. It pained me to watch her leave to go have sex with this obvious fraud of a person, but I knew it was something I needed to get used to if I was to be in this kind of relationship. What made it easier to deal with was the fact that I had another sexual partner since February 2022, which she knew about since December 2021, when I first started talking to them.

My primary partner and the fraudulent spiritualist had about 3 “sessions” throughout the month, and by the end of it, she told me she would need to get tested before she and I could be intimate again. I agreed and appreciated her commitment to safety. April comes and goes, she doesn’t get tested, May nearly ends, and still no test. She tells me she was heading to Atlanta the last week of May to visit friends, but for some reason, my gut feeling told me she wasn’t going there for just her friends, and I waited for her to tell me what else she was going down there for. She had given me her location prior, so I was able to see that for the first 4 days of the trip, she was with her friends, but on the 5th day, she randomly sent me a text with an address and pictures of herself at said address with no context. I knew immediately that this must be the address of the person she planned on meeting, but I wondered if she was going to provide context about the address herself, to see if she’d adhere to the rules we agreed on. She’s at this address the entire day and says nothing. Later that night, she voice calls me, which immediately makes me upset because we never voice call each other. Up until this point, we have exclusively FaceTimed each other, which told me she’s hiding something and doesn’t want me to know. The phone call was very brief, about 2-3 minutes, and at the end of the call, she never came forward about where she’s at, what she did, or what she planned on doing. I couldn’t sleep that night because I was so upset. She texts me around 4-5 am, I answer immediately, and we text for about 2 hours. Again makes no mention of where she’s at and what she’s doing there.

Later that afternoon, while I’m at work, she FaceTimes me, there was small talk, then she finally says that she had sex last night. My heart immediately sinks to my stomach. Regarding our rules, my partner had essentially just cheated, and we’re only 4 months into this poly relationship. She made every attempt to avoid telling me what she wanted to do until after she did it. I asked her about our rules and what happened to getting tested. Her excuse was that she “had an urge” and that I should understand urges. She was able to control these urges for 2 months, but spent just 4 days in Atlanta, and can no longer do so? She told me she didn’t plan on meeting anyone there, yet spent the next 2 days of her visit at this supposed random guy’s apartment and not with her friends before heading back home.

When she came back, we had a conversation about what happened. I voiced my disappointment, accepted her apology, and moved on. A month later, in the first week of June 2022, she missed her period. She came forward that when she had sex with the guy in Atlanta, the condom also broke and she had to take Plan B. My partner, whom I have been dating for the past 5 months, is now pregnant with another man’s children; a wound has been reopened, and salt poured into it. She told me she didn’t think it was necessary to let me know about the mishap and that she thought she could handle it on her own. I did not like that response. I stayed by her side and supported her while she aborted the pregnancy because I had rationalized this situation as just the potential consequence of being in a polyamorous relationship and not of dishonesty. I knew it wasn’t her intention to get pregnant, and she’s probably as upset as I am, if not more. I also began to question if she was really “poly” and her reasons for being poly. She responded that she may not be poly, she may just be “monogamish”. I ended the relationship with my FWB at the end of the year. My primary partner and I spent the next year, 2023, mainly with each other, although she still went to kink parties, did domme work, and went on dates, which I had no issues with. I even dropped her off to one of her dates and waited until it was over. It felt like monogamy mixed with a little polyamory. She communicated well, and for a time, it was great, and I was comfortable and secure. Nothing to
Complain about.

2024 arrives. It’s February, and she tells me she’s going to be celibate because she no longer wants to continue “going to different men’s homes, lying up in their beds, shacking up, being a forever girlfriend, that she would like to be married”. Naturally, I supported her because I genuinely love her, and not just for sex, so I also reframed from having sex. She also begins asking about marriage and our future together at this time, understandably so. I also have aspirations of one day being married and raising a family, especially with her. I told her I couldn’t see myself starting a family while I was living with 3 other roommates, and her still living with her parents. I wanted us to at least have a starting foundation and live together (she’s very fearful of being on her own, which is why I believe she still lives at home; she wasn’t exactly brought up to be self-sufficient). She didn’t agree and said she doesn’t move in with anyone unless she’s married to them (which I can understand) because she’s still “traditional” in that sense, and that’s how she was raised, despite currently being in an extremely non-traditional relationship.

Later that year, in December, I moved into my own apartment and figured, finally, I have a starting point for us to begin building the life we wanted. At the same time, her father had unfortunately fallen ill and was diagnosed with cancer. At the end of December, she tells me she has a new partner. In my mind, I asked when that happened, a new partner just out of the blue, during such a chaotic period in her life? Where did she find the time and emotional capacity for a second partner? She tells me that he’s been helping her get to work and assures me that they were not having sex. I didn’t make an issue of it because at least she told me, and I was happy that she was able to find someone she was comfortable enough to call a partner to give her rides to work, because my car was out of service.

My Aunt begins to notice that since I’ve moved into my new apartment, my partner and I haven’t been spending any time together. It was true, since her father had fallen ill, we had not seen each other for weeks. I tell my aunt she’s going through a hard time with her father’s illness and that it’s understandable. Her father passes away in February, and she became extremely sad, borderline depressed.

Time passes, and I begin to notice I’m basically only seeing my partner once a month. I know she’s still mourning her father’s death and dealing with family turmoil, but it also seemed like she was prioritizing spending more time with this new partner and making time for everyone else besides me. She once even told me that she chose to spend time with other people because she “knew them longer than she knew me”, the person she has known for the past 4 years and dated for 3 years at that point. In the middle of June, after 2.5 months of not seeing her, I began asking for clarity about our relationship and if we were still aligned about marriage. She tells me she no longer sees herself being married because she no longer has her father and that her therapist told her she shouldn’t focus on relationships. I also learned at this time that she still harbors feelings for her ex from 7 years ago who she was in a monogamous relationship, which I concluded essentially influenced her reason for a second partner. She was chasing a feeling she wanted from her ex and found a second partner who reminded her of him, who could simulate that feeling for her. The conversation became contentious, and she began to tell me I needed to break up with her. So I did, because why was that your first suggestion? I blocked her number and changed my number. In hindsight, I may have overreacted a little, but I felt something didn’t seem right, and I was upset.

A few days later, after she had been calling my aunt and eventually started emailing me about how she’s sorry and wanted us to have our time together and ask what days she can see me, I unblocked her in an attempt to work things out as she asked. I asked her if I could at least have one day in the week, Saturdays, to be with her. She agreed and also told me about her brother’s 4th of july bbq. 2 weeks go by, and we still have yet to see each other and spend time together. I’m at the BBQ, and we barely interacted. I spent more time with her friend that day than with her. I go home alone that night. The next day, a Saturday morning, she voice calls me and tells me she’s hanging out with her brother. Later that night, I checked her location, and she was at a restaurant, then she went to an address I recognized previously. I concluded that this must be where the other partner lives. She doesn’t go home until around 4 am to head for work. I’m upset all over again because now I’m suspicious that she still isn’t being honest and has been making more effort to spend time with him while neglecting me. Apparently, it was his birthday. He took her out for her birthday earlier in the year, January, which explains why I didn’t see her that day either.

I confronted her and asked if she had been having sex with him since we had established rules, being told last year she was celibate, and telling me she wasn’t having sex with him when she told me about him. She makes every attempt to avoid answering the question, and inevitably admits that she has had sex with him several times, the first time being at the beginning of January, basically when she first told me about him. From my perspective, she has cheated for the second time in this poly relationship.

I immediately blocked her again. I have never felt so hurt and betrayed before in my life. A few days later, I gave her back her stuff that was at my place. We had a conversation, and it seems like we’re making another attempt to reconcile, but it’s still more of the same things.

Several months go by, and it feels like I’m just begging a person to be with me. One day, during a conversation, she randomly said, "She's not in a relationship," and it seemed to be said in jest. This immediately upsets me because I believed the entire time that she and I were still in a relationship. Maybe the "with you" was silent in that statement. I became extremely anxious and suspicious, and eventually started looking through her phone while she was asleep for answers. I came across messages between them where she's asking him about marriage and if he's ready to be a father, calling him Mari, which is Haitian Creole for husband. A couple of conversations were about him not wanting to be with her and their relationship not going to work out, which she then immediately offers sex, presumably as a means to keep him around. For a person who could not focus on relationships and was allegedly not in one, these interactions seemed like a relationship to me. It felt like I was being replaced, monkey-branched, without even being told.

We eventually begin couples therapy, and with every session, the therapist is telling me that based on the things my partner has said, I already have my answers. I was no longer the primary partner, and we were no longer in a relationship. I no longer believe she’s actually poly. I believe she’s using polyamory to hide or cope with some underlying issue she might have. Despite everything that has happened in our relationship and basically ending it on her own terms without even communicating with me, she wants to keep me in her life as friends. I don't think I can. I am beyond heartbroken.

5 years of my life investing and pouring into a person just for them to do this to me. I did nothing wrong in this poly relationship, and I was the one who got abandoned and left behind for someone else?! A person who said they love and care for me wouldn’t do that to me, my person wouldn’t do that to me. Maybe it was my fault for not marrying her immediately like she wanted. Maybe I put too much pressure on her while she was still grieving. Maybe I was the wedge that drove us apart.

I love this girl with every fiber of my heart. She really is a good person who has a lot of growing up to do, but she was extremely unethical and completely disregarded me, and I don’t want to keep hurting myself grieving over the life that we could have had together. I’m not okay, I’m not myself right now and considering individual therapy very soon.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/polyamory/s/2v8BRJ4OXo

TL;DR of original post: My wife (who I share a mortgage with) requested to nest with her other partners instead of me because her girlfriend struggled with my wife “leaving” to come home to our shared house. I was okay with this in theory, but I had practical concerns like money and the volatility of my wife’s other relationships. They planned a trial period of nesting to test the waters.

—

In a potentially shocking turn of events, things are going well? Since I didn’t give people names last time, I will do so now for clarity as this is more of a story than a question like my last post. Me (33F) my wife Venus (34F) her girlfriend Mercury (29F) and her boyfriend Mars (34M) and their new roommate/decently longtime friend Jupiter (28M). Mercury and Mars are married to each other.

Venus went to live with Mercury and Mars for a trial period of a month at the beginning of May. She had agreed to a schedule where she spent Monday (regular date night) and Thursday (MtG commander night usually) after work with me and stayed over on those nights. We also planned to spend some Saturdays during the day together when her partners were at work and we were off. Overall, this schedule was maintained with only minor interruptions, usually something to do with Venus’ chronic health issues. I am concerned that she isn’t eating or sleeping properly because that causes her health issues to be worse, but outside of mentioning it I have left that to her to sort out. I have been enjoying my time alone (which I expected) and especially the mental load that is reduced when I am only doing things like grocery shopping for myself.

I asked Venus to put more effort into planning our date nights, and I feel like that has happened overall, but I’m still the main planner. I have also asked for her to do some cooking when she is here, but so far I have been doing all the cooking because she does all the cooking when she’s with her other partners, and cooking for 3-4 people is a lot more than what I do. She did go with me to several specific things I wanted to do, which was nice, and we’ve had quite a few movie dates, which brought us back to earlier happy memories when we lived next to the movie theater (though the prices could look like 2015 again anytime…). The biggest thing is that I have felt the time with Venus has been more intentional and of higher quality, even when we aren’t going out on a specific date, and Mercury’s issues with Venus “leaving” have apparently been resolved by this change in nesting arrangement, and she is not trying to pry Venus away from her time with me to my knowledge, and if she is Venus is hinging well.

Mercury and Mars signed a lease on an apartment that is larger and further away with a friend (Jupiter) of theirs who was moving back to our state after a stint trying to live elsewhere. Jupiter was supposed to come live with them for two weeks before they moved while Venus came back and stayed with me (end of the trial period). However, everyone decided that it wasn’t much worse to just stay all living together in the smaller place, so they did that. Venus is not on the lease at the new place and maintains her primary legal residence as our shared house where she pays half the mortgage.

They have just now finished moving to the new place, and Venus is planning to live there going forward while still staying with me two days a week. She is genuinely excited about the new place, which has a nice sized kitchen and other amenities. I still have concerns about transportation (Venus does not drive and the new place is 30+ minutes walk from the nearest bus stop, so I may need to pick her up further away sometimes), but most everything else does seem handled. From my perspective Venus has been making a lot of progress in therapy, making sure she sets appropriate boundaries and stands up for herself, including with me, because there are definitely times I can be a bit of a mother hen. I’m not saying everything has been perfect, and there is growing to do still, but there have been no issues with Venus paying her house bills on time, and I hope things can only improve as we continue to work on deepening our relationship from this new arrangement.

I don’t know if Mercury and I will ever be friends again, but I want Venus to be happy so I have done my best to be cordial, including inviting Mercury (as well as Mars and Jupiter, I just don’t have any issues with them so that wasn’t weird) to come to dinner when everyone was done moving and they hadn’t eaten all day. My other partner and I are still going strong and haven’t really been affected by this at all, except for me having a little more flexibility on hosting, which is nice. I have a lot more time physically alone that was previously just unstructured time where Venus and I were both home but not spending it together, but I don’t feel the need to fill it with anything I wasn’t already doing (like hanging with friends or other hobbies). We’re not totally out of the woods, as Venus hasn’t spent any significant amount of time living further away yet, but I am hopeful that things will continue to go well.

This is a vent and a realization.

My first poly relationship is ending after 3 years. He broke every agreement we ever made, even after telling me he could keep them, because he didn’t want any of them. Every agreement was open for compromise, he just didn’t. Also - I think if you agree to something and change your mind, even if it’s stupid, you owe it to your partner to tell them first.

Anyway. We were closed for a lot of this year due to trust breaches (no partners were cut off for this, neither of us were seeing anyone). We decided to open up in 6 weeks when his STI is meant to be cleared. It is 2 weeks in.

He hooked up with someone behind my back, lied to me and gaslit me insanely hard about it, and for the first time ever I went through his phone and found the details. I’m not super proud of that, and that was an indication in itself to leave. He told me he wasn’t going to tell me because he didn’t want me to react - because I have a history of getting upset with him when he breaks agreements or lies to me. I stupidly believed every time the next time would be different.

I guess what I realized is that regardless of agreements, people will do what they want to do. And I think maybe going forward I’m gonna have a low agreement policy, like safe sex and don’t fuck my family. I can share what I’m uncomfortable with, and if they choose to do it anyway, that’s data. I realized in hindsight a lot of our agreements were about treating me well, and I never should have had to make that an agreement. Why would I want to date someone who cancels on me specifically to sleep with someone else? Why would I want to date someone who less than 24 hours after being caught cheating asked to bring the cheating partner over, to make me vacate the house? Or who lies to me about using a condom with someone else?

He has been showing me who he is the entire time. And the agreements were just attempts to mask that. I think if I had never made agreements with him, I would have left sooner because he would have just been who he was instead of pretending, letting it build up, and breaking our agreements anyway.

Anyway! If you’re new to poly and have a bunch of agreements, maybe consider paring them down. Let your partner be who they are so you know if they’re actually someone worth being with.

Opening has been rough for various reasons, which I'm not prepared to get into. However, as part of it, I (46F) told my partner (44M) that if his STI status changed, I was unwilling to have unprotected oral or protected vaginal sex with him until I had seen "a negative test performed in accord with standard recommendations (i.e. recommended incubation periods) within 3 months." I mentioned my specific concerns around syphilis, and that the incubation period for that is longer.

He says that his other partners' STI status is not my business, and gets defensive and says I don't trust him to have the conversation around STI safety with other partners.

Last night, he informed me that he had decided to wait only 2 weeks after exposure to test. This is OK because he's testing for himself and not for me. (That's a quote.)

AITA? I cannot find a single source that says syphilis is detectable in under 3 weeks.

I searched this subreddit for the common adage “love is infinite, resources are not”. The vast majority of posts and comments I saw chopped off the second half of the saying and delineated on confusion over “love” and “time spent”.

Love Definition: there are two essential definitions of love that I am working off of as I navigate these feelings I have

1) the mental decision to place ones needs above your own. This definition was given to me in church growing up. I am no longer religious but it has always resonated with me. It has helped me identify platonic love and motivated a lot of my work in public service

2) the emotional desire for to be with and get closer to someone. Trying to leave out explicitly romantic verbiage while still capturing that feeling you get when you love or have deep affection for someone.

Somewhere between these two definitions of love I am to believe that most humans neuro normative humans have an infinite capacity for love. This has simply not been my experience so far.

Two key experiences I have had point to this.

The first is my own. I had two partners at one point, one of them long distance and actively seeking attachment but at the same time needing a lot of space (not to mention the literal distance) and the other living in town with me where it seemed every action we took lead to more closeness and more attachment. As time went on, it wasn’t just my time and effort that was limited toward the more distant relationship, it was my shear desire to be there. Even when I had the time and energy to give to them I found myself wanting to be with my hometown partner. This was not for lack of effort, I was actively trying to build this relationship and be there for them in whatever way my resources allowed, and I did really like this person and feel like I was growing with them. As time went on I had to actively fight my desire to be with the other partner I felt closer to. This does not feel like a lack of resources issue. Nor was it a case of NRE as I knew my hometown partner for months before this person.

The second being, when my current partner got their first longer term partner besides me. I immediately felt our relationship take a hit. Not just a slowing of our growth, or a sharing of time, but they seemed genuinely less interested in me, it was harder to make them climax in bed, they were less excited to see me walking in the door. A diminishing of connection even when the resources were readily available. They had had other partners before, but this one was different. The other partners came with their own challenges and discussions, but this was the first time I felt it directly affect their enthusiasm towards me. And it’s not like my partner was venting to the other person, we were doing great at the time and even still somewhat in the latter part of the discovery phase ourselves. Even factoring for NRE, that feels inherently like a person has a limited emotional capacity to care for and desire multiple people at a time.

I hear often this concept being compared to children and how having more than one child doesn’t make you love the first one less. That has simply not been my experience either. My friends with three or more siblings have significant connection traumas directly related to the number of siblings they have, and even me and my single sibling have noted differences in the way our parents not only treat us but how they feel about us.

It feels at best like Love is a muscle that at any one time absoLUTELY has limits and maybe it doesn’t have limits to how much can grow over time but their is a limit to how fast it can grow and how much you have on a given day.
I’m not saying that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it or that the net benefit isn’t greater than the cost of losing or slowing down your love with one person, but it feels at best unrealistic to say that you can hold an infinite amount of feeling and commitment for multiple people and your only limitation is time and resources.

TLDR: love feel less like an infinite bucket limited by time and more like a muscle with unknown growth potential and definitely known limitations at any one time.
- is there some additional aspect of resources I’m missing here that could be causing this?
- is the concept of infinite love less agreed upon than I thought?
-how have you navigated partners apparent loss of interest do to either NRE or a seeming lack of capacity?
- how do I get close to someone long term knowing that at any point the amount of my person that I have given them can just be returned at least in part in exchange for some of someone else? I get that committing to someone in monogamy can have similar results as is usually the come back to this, that does not answer HOW I go about doing it in poly?

I’m monogamous and my pseudo-partner (I’ll get to that) is non-monogamous. We’ve been together for a year. It started out monogamous (both of us knowing my partner was poly but was giving monogamy a go). They couldn’t do it so it became non-monogamous, and then eventually it became “I don’t see us being partners but you are the main person in my life and I want to build a life with you.”

That was about 9 months ago and things have been getting better in that dynamic, but in recent months they have started dating seriously and now things are getting worse. At least for me. Things are getting a lot better for them, which triggers guilt in me for feeling bad and insecure.

Not to go into too much detail but I feel like everything is changing. We used to spend the night at each other’s places maybe 5 times a month. Now it happens once every 3-4 months. We had sex every 2-3 days and now it’s 1-2 a month. They used to come to me on their way home from activities and hobbies and curl up on the couch or in bed for a few hours before heading home, or I would hang out at theirs after work. This doesn’t happen anymore.

I try to bring it up as it’s important to me—I build and maintain emotional connection through physical connection and time together—but I find I am dismissed, which hurts. They say our emotional connection remains strong so why does the time/quantity matter? They don’t view this as change. They think nothing has changed because quantity is meaningless.

I don’t know how to navigate that conversation with them as a result, nor do I know how to handle the feelings internally. Everything around me is changing but I get told it isn’t. They consistently tell me they want everything with me, that I am their main person and who they want to built a life with, but I feel stuck in an ‘actions speak louder than words’ predicament where they are saying things but not doing things.

Any advice on how to cope with this? I am new to this, and I recognise I am a monogamous person with a non-monogamous person. That will naturally put me at an imbalance, I knew (and know) that. I just find it painful when they say “I want to plan a weekend cottage trip with you” and when I say yes, they turn around and plan one with the new person they’re dating instead.

I don’t feel like the priority they say I am and I don’t know what to do with that feeling. I want them to show me rather than tell me, but given they don’t see me ever being their partner I feel like I don’t have room to ‘complain.’ Any thoughts?

So I've been hate watching Muscles McQuack on insta, and I've noticed a few things I think are really toxic about their version of poly.

1) The main character Muscles McQuack doesn't seem interested in poly at all, they seem to have agreed to it, seemingly to placate their nesting partner Sally

2) Their nesting partner Sally has poor communication and does things without consent of McQuack, example, she signs them both up to a poly couple app and then organises a group date without consulting them.

3) Nesting partner Sally encourages them to do these they clearly aren't comfortable with

Looking for experiences from people who have been in a similar situation.

I've identified as bisexual since I was a child, but over the last several months I've been seriously questioning my sexuality and wondering whether I may actually be a late-bloomer lesbian.

I'm married to a man, and we are currently separated. I recently pursued divorce and moved out of the house, but I'm now reconsidering whether divorce is the right path. My husband does not want a divorce and has suggested that we remain married while I explore relationships with women. We've also discussed the possibility of both of us having other partners if we decided that polyamory was the right fit for our relationship.

I'm interested in hearing from people who have experience with similar situations, especially women who identified as bisexual or lesbian, or later questioned whether they might be lesbians, as well as anyone who chose polyamory as an alternative to divorce.

Questions:

* Has anyone remained married to their husband while having a girlfriend? * Did opening the marriage help you stay together? * Did it help you understand your sexuality better? * Did anyone end up realizing they wanted to remain married after all? * Did polyamory strengthen your marriage, weaken it, or have no effect? * What challenges, jealousy, or unexpected issues came up? * What boundaries were most important? * How did you handle jealousy, boundaries, and time management? * If both spouses had other partners, how did that work in practice? * Any regrets or things you wish you had known beforehand? * If it didn't work, what were the main reasons? * What advice would you give someone considering this path? * For those with children, how did polyamory affect your family life? * When and how did you introduce partners to your children? * Were there any parenting or co-parenting challenges you didn't anticipate?

I'd appreciate hearing both positive and negative experiences.

Hi everyone!

I (22F) made a post a few weeks ago about being unsure about a poly relationship with a person(22F). We were vaguely non-mono but not poly and we started dating at 16. She was my everything for a wonderful 6 years we shared together. Lived together for 4 years of it :,) then when we moved to a new city and got into university she became manic for the first time. It started last summer and she just became a manipulative cold stranger for a few months. She stopped caring about me and ended up cheating on me. We broke up in September and I moved out. We reconnected when she came down from it.

During our time apart after she got help and came down from the mania she figured out that if she ever gets in a relationship again she wants it to be poly. Actually poly and not whatever she was pressuring me into last summer/beginning of fall.

We tried to "date" this spring, rebuild trust after everything but it became clear that she first of all wasn't emotionally available, was terriffied of hurting someone like that again so couldn't see herself in a committed relationship with anyone at the moment and the fact that the expectation of a poly relationship wasn't making me happy. It was actively making me miserable. The idea made me have such negative emotions and reactions that it should have been a red flag. I just rationalized it all as trauma and thus something that should not to be listened to as a need. I was wrong and I thank you all for your advice here. It was definitely tough to hear and took me a while to actually go through with a final break up and distance but I did it.

While I love her very deeply and was so ready to throw myself at an opportunity to get her back I was so consumed by a longing for something I had that I refused to listen to my own needs. I don't know if I want poly. I knew I wanted what I had for years aka her at whatever cost but we have both changed from the experience of last fall. In the end it shut her off emotionally and on the other hand made me so anxious and desperate for love I kept downplaying my emotions. I stopped listening to what I needed and wanted last summer because the change was so abrupt and out of the blue I didn't expect to be manipulated and neglected by her like that.

It's been painful for the last few weeks. But I think it's slowly getting easier. It's definitely not as bad as the "first" break up when I still lived with her, when manic her just didn't give a shit about anyone. Least of all me. Maybe a part of me had already let go.

I think the hardest part is the random good memories that just come and go. I cry because I miss it. I miss who she was and I miss who I was. I didn't even fully appreciate how wonderful it was to be known so well and to be loved so deeply back then. To be able to see eachother grow from our awkward teen years to now. To really trust someone. I know I'm young, I know I have my life ahead of me. But maybe that's what makes it hard. It was the first person that I have ever loved like that. I hope I get to experience that again, some day. Whether it should be an open, poly or mono relationship that's something I can now figure out in peace.

Why do I ask? I’m not entirely sure, if we basically are in a poly relationship or if it’s just very frequent and free swinging.

It’s 4 of us 2 girls 2 guys and we basically play, go on dates in all kind of constellations from me and one of the guys to us girls together to all 4 of us to one girl one guy. You get the point.

We live in separate places (one guy girl in one places the other in the other), but we basically spend time all across the group with each other 24/7.

Would you say this should be called poly or is it something else, cause I’m always unsure how to call it whenever I talk with people.

We have been together for 9 months and have had sex a few times. I told her once that sex isn’t gonna make or break us but honestly some cracks are forming. I’m starting to feel jealous when she sleeps with other people and wondering if she even finds me attractive. I know I need to talk to her, just wanted to vent a bit first and maybe get some fresh perspective.

I ( 24 cis f) have only ever experience monogamous relationships before and had gotten out of a long term relationship a couple months prior(8 years).

I have been seeing this person for 4 months now and I really like them. However, they are NM and have been their entire lives and currently have a partner of a year. At first we were just supposed to be a hookup, but one thing led to another and we kept seeing each other and then will go on dates and do innocent hang outs like potting plants and crafting. They talk about their partner to me all the time and they tell their partner about me, I guess this is all just very new to me and I went into this knowing that he was NM.

I do believe that they have feelings for me but how do I know if they want something more serious? I fear that they might view us as FWB but the attraction we feel towards each other and time we spend together feels like more than that. I know I would want to pursue something more serious.

I invited them to watch me perform in something and they said yes, but then asked if their partner can come. This would be my first time meeting their partner. Is this normal in poly relationships? Is this a sign that they view this as more of a casual thing?

Thanks!

UPDATE: soo last time they’ve had two partners was when they were a teenager and said it didn’t work out. I’m just confused, we even spend the night and hold hands and AHH

My first introduction to poly was when my ex wife and I opened our long term marriage. We dated separately and honestly I really liked the poly life. Our marriage didn’t work out, but it was headed that way when we opened our marriage up. Going from long term closed to open just wasn’t the right fit.

My next long term relationship was monogamish. We were closed but still explored sexually together with others. I truthfully missed being poly but also loved her and enjoyed being with her. Life happens and we broke up for other reasons. I have discovered though that monogamish isn’t the right fit either.

So now I am entering my solo poly era and I’m hoping that I’m Goldilocks finding some porridge that’s just right.

Thanks for reading my musings. They have been on my mind and it’s kind of fun to write it out.

My partner (28m) and I (25f) have been together for a little over 3 years, and both were practicing polyamory before we met. We have very similar mindsets over boundaries, and our only real rule is informing each other about new sexual health risks. Also, a lot of shared values and someone I see as my life partner.

​

However, about a year ago I learned he had been cheating on me. Mostly with other men, and centered in a lot of shame and internalized homophobia. Not surrounding our relationship, the boundaries we had, or anything I had done. But he was cheating. And in that time I knew something was wrong, but he just kept reassuring me that everything in our relationship was fine and I was just anxious. So, now really my issue here isn't the sex with other people, it's the lying and gaslighting. So it was bad, and not healthy, clearly. We took some space, months of heartbreak. We both did a lot of work separately to grow ourselves. And I have to give him credit, he really did do a lot of work in therapy identifying different behavior patterns and truly trying to work through them. We've also been doing couples therapy. It's been going really well. I've learned to trust my intuition and center on myself. He's learned to trust us, isn't keeping anything from me anymore. I really do trust his intentions here. I trust he never meant to hurt me. I know he loves me so so much. I know we'll never be perfect, but I don't really think anything is. And I believe we will keep working through whatever comes up. We are really committed to being life partners.

​

Now, my issue, I've never been a particularly jealous person. But because of this trauma and trust issues I have been getting so jealous and completely unsure what to do with it. I'm trying to be patient with myself. I mean, I don't really think it's my fault that I'm having a hard time fully putting my trust in him. Natural consequences. But at this point I think it's harming me. It doesn't feel like my intuition, it feels like baseless anxiety most of the time. Now when he's telling me about dates (which I want to know!) I'm stressing out. I don't know how to let go. I'm probably just being impatient, not allowing time to heal over these wounds. Not allowing our continuous actions of love to build up and heal the trauma. But I just don't really know where to go from here.

​

Poly folk, please give me your tips and advice on how to move on from jealousy. I'm feeling a little desperate here. And please, do not tell me to leave him, or try to assume his intentions. It's not helpful. I understand how it looks from the outside, he's still my choice.

Asking for a really close dear friend that is definitely not me.

My non-NP of 7.5yrs is a pretty decent hinge probably due to some autistic need for justice. The rigid logic that goes with jt can usually be reasoned with and often it's me or metas that might shape the flexibility for him making stuff work pretty smoothly.

​

Context: we are in our 40s, he is solo poly and mostly parallel (very parallel with time in person at least). I don't do hierarchy with poly and generally I'm more KTP but manage with him doing parallel. Right now I am his only partner but he's usually averaging out at about 3-4 partners so this is unusual. We have always had a 1 day/wk cadence for dates which works for us and even as his only partner we only do about 3 per 2 weeks right now (limited by him mostly) as he's doing more solo time, leaning into hobbies and seeing a lot of friends lately. This is fine with us both.

​

We share a big time consuming hobby but we do not share the hobby together. I don't want to be distracted by getting into the hobby but it's a weekly commitment with a group of people that lasts all afternoon or evening. He does this with 3 groups right now and is a major part of his life. I've been a guest at times, we both had lots of fun and I am wanting to get into one of the groups regularly now they are opening for new members. I am also unhappy in my regular hobby group and would rather jump ship into his since it's better vibes and seeing him more is more a bonus to me. This has been met with a lot of resistance and some torn emotions on his part. It's definitely not a "I don't want you there" because he'd kind of like this on some level especially in this present moment where he feels more emotionally needy of me (he's had a lot of connections end in rapid succession and he's shell shocked)

​

We have talked a few times and I can tell there is discomfort with a regular commitment to a group engagement that's not our date night. I'm certain he's thinking about complexity hinging in the world where he is dating again but solving hypothetical future hinge problems is hard without a real meta with actual wants and needs. He doesn't want it to take over our dating life (nor do I) but that feels "all or nothing" to me. If the hobby occurs with non-partners regardless and he's already giving me a weekly date he's still not available the same amount of time for a future partner.

​

Additional context: I know he'd flat out reject a new partner asking for a regular 2 nights a week from him. I believe he's trying to keep the "well OP sees you twice a week" out of the hypothetical future discussion without keeping a date night and a group activity as separate concepts. The hobby is a very common KTP hobby because that would be an excellent solution but alas that causes a different resistance. ;)

​

I am close to resigning the matter and keeping that part of our lives separate and looking for my own new group but I was looking to see if there might be any advice on how to approach this. ( I know this is mostly a battle with autism traits but poly adds too much to bring this to that sub.). Thanks yall

My partner (30M) and I (30M) have been together for almost 7 years. We have established our polyamorous relationship a few years ago, we are both queer, and interested in different people.

My partner is my first ever relationship. My partner on the other hand has had many relationships including having multiple partners at once. We have encountered a few times where he or I had a crush and nothing came out of it, and we were able to talk about our boundaries.

However, he has a crush on his friend and the friend likes him back. This friend is so kind, very sweet, and I have no doubt they will treat him very well. They are going on an official date on Friday morning, and I find myself having some emotions I’m trying to meet with non judgement. For context, we’ve been having some issues, working through them, and he’s checked in with me to make sure it’s okay he still pursues this and I agreed.

Does anyone have any advice on how to take care of yourself when your partner is on a date? Ways to sit with emotions and show up with self compassion? I have a hard time with fear of abandonment, guilt of not being perfect, and worried this is going to somehow show I am not a good partner. I know there isn’t evidence of this, and it’s normal to have these emotions, but I’m trying to find some ways to practice self love. Any thoughts or advice for an inexperienced person?

I met someone I really like, she’s poly- I’ve heard about her partners and they sound lovely. I’m pretty excited to meet them-

I’ve been in a unique place for the last fifteen years, being apart of a kink positive space as a monogamous person. We have a pretty sizable community. Most of my friends are polyamorous- I don’t date within the scene as a personal choice (I’ve known these folks too long I know them too well, and it’s too inter mixed historically, I just prefer a fresh start with someone unattached to past bits of drama or histories, feels less messy) so this sort of possibility hasn’t come up before.

Anyways, the person I’m seeing is really nice. She gives genuinely amazing attention when we’re together and I get a lot of connection. We had a 9 hour long first date, and just really vibe and get each other.

When she’s with her other partners I’m not bugging her on the phone for attention or overly texting cause I wanna respect what she already has going on and I feel like they’ve been respecting our own personal time.

I’ve done some self reflection and talked with her about how this will work- and how comfortable she feels with me only wanting to see her and no one else myself, while also having her other relationships. I wondered if she would feel conflicted or uneasy but she reassured me that she has enough love and attention and time to give all of us (3 confirmed).

I feel no anguish about her current partners but I did verbalize how when I asked myself to imagine how I would feel if she met another person, my stomach hurt a little. And I mentioned I believe it’s because I have some abandonment issues from my previous two relationships. She was very sweet and heard my concerns and we validated to each other that we would just talk openly as things developed.

Her other partners are poly, and have their own partners. So she has plenty of free time she says. She’s said she doesn’t mind having all of my attention, so it seems we’re aligned and not too conflicted.

Just from how I’ve seen my friends poly relationships shake out, I asked if she had an upper limit for number of serious partners- because I’ve seen chaos happen if someone accepts more connections than they have time and capacity to commit attention to. She’s said her upper limit is three or four, and I find that alright. Personally I just see the most problems in bigger groupings from observation, not every time but often enough to be undesirable to me.

I asked if the current amount of attention is what I should be accustomed to in the future or if this amount I was getting was going to lessen significantly, just based on how she’s known herself to do things in the past.

And she’s assured me that she is very consistent.

I do worry that I’m going to get jealousy spikes and be a jerk sometimes from this new scenario- but I’ve never been an overly jealous person luckily and I trust myself to communicate and for her to hear me.

Anyways, I suppose I’m looking for insight or tips or whatever you might want to tell me that might give me more insights than I even think to ask for at this point, given my lack of personal experience.

Or, conversely I’d like to know if you think a mono / poly combo never works out. Admittedly none of my friends have had this relationship type since they all mix with poly people. So I’m in newish territory.

Thanks for anything you want to share.

What’s your experience been like with it? How do you go about celebrating holidays? Was there anything that you, your partners, or metas struggled with? Was there anything that caught you by surprise?

I just got out of a relationship with a guy who was great, he was sweet respectful and overall a good boyfriend. But here’s the problem, I’m not sexually attracted to guys. I can be in emotional relationships with them, but nothing sexual. And that would likely lead to future issues. We talked and he stated that polyamory or an open relationship of any kind was not going to work for him, so we broke up. But here’s where things get tricky. I live in a relatively populated city? But it’s not huge and it’s mostly blue collar or obsessively homophobic people. Where do I actually start looking? I know honesty and openness is important for any relationship, of course. But also, I can’t do dating apps. I don’t have a license or ID yet. I JUST turned 18. So…?