My transition to poly has been rough

In My Humble Opinion
21

In other words, you mind.

My advice, as someone who is currently in a poly relationship and has been for 5 years and counting, (I don’t really feel like going into a lot of specifics on here, but my situation involves double relationships but nothing casual, so we may be atypical; I’m not really into the poly “scene”) is to fix this situation immediately. Things that bother you a little now will not magically fix themselves. They will not. You are telling yourself, “Well, I am bothered by this, but not TOO much, and I’m sure it will get better eventually.” That is not true. It will either remain the same, or get worse. Your husband has zero incentive to work towards changing his feelings on this issue. What I can see happening is resentment building up and eventually poisoning either the poly aspect of your relationship, or the entire relationship.

What you really don’t want to have happen is for your husband to start “messing with” a girl that he then establishes an ongoing relationship with, so that then if/when you decide that his double standard is untenable and you would prefer he not mess with other women, this will mean breaking apart a relationship that at that point may hold great meaning to one or both of them and may be quite painful to end. Not that you should necessarily let that stop you if that’s what you need in your marriage, but that’s a lot of guilt on your shoulders that you can avoid if you just solve the problem right now.

If I could only give one piece of advice to people considering a poly relationship, it would be to never let resentment fester for even a day. With multiple relationships, there are so many possibilities for hurt feelings and misunderstandings and trampled boundaries. When that starts to happen, you need to speak up and put an end to it right away, whatever that means for you.

22

My mom and her boyfriend are poly, and so are several of their friends. From what I have seen of the “scene,” poly people don’t have time to waste. When someone is splitting their time between 2+ significant others, a job, and maybe kids, they don’t need a whole bucketful of friends to make their lives feel fuller.

Poly folk also tend to be highly perceptive and unflinchingly honest*, so don’t go in anticipating some kind of game. Be honest and expect honesty in return, or you’ll never be accepted within their community. The fact that you didn’t take the woman at her word when she said she just wanted to be friends means *you’re (unwittingly, perhaps) *playing a game. She likely picked up on that.

*also drama-bombs, but that’s not necessarily relevant here

Also, and this is unsolicited advice, but if you are not capable of unflinching honesty with your husband, I don’t see how on earth you are ready to be polyamorous.

23

How am I being dishonest with my husband?

24

No, really I would like to pursue men, but that’s not the top of my priorties. I have the itch to get with women. My husband is mostly fulfilling my “man” needs.

25

Wow. I predict a massive trainwreck in your future.

26

Sigh…this has been a very demoralizing experience. Both in seeking poly and female relationships.

I communicated with this woman that I was having trouble transitioning into poly and same-sex relationships, when we met one on one. She didn’t seem to have a problem with it, and still invited me to her party. So she knew ahead of time that I was struggling in these communities. It should’ve not been any surprise that I was a little uncomfortable. Instead of her/them showing me the ropes, it appears like I was judged/rejected. I’m about to give up.

27

I am seeing a lot of what we in the publishing biz call “weasel words” here. You don’t mind “that much.” You are being “mostly” fulfilled. This is a very dangerous situation for your marriage.

As for the main problem you originally posted about, dating and finding partners is just tough. It sounds like this person maybe took a chance on you and then decided you weren’t her cup of tea, for whatever reason. Try not to dwell on it, and move onward.

28

She’s not a therapist or a guide. She’s a random human being. For whatever reason, you didn’t click with her, so it’s time to move on, like any online dating situation where there isn’t chemistry.

29

Was there anybody you were interested in getting to know better? In those conversations that fizzled, how much talking, listening and asking were you doing?

If you’re bad at meeting and establishing new relationships with people in general, then you need to improve that, regardless of whether sex is part of the relationships or not.

30

Themis00, after re-reading your OP and your responses to others in this thread, I’m starting to wonder exactly why it is you and your husband decided to “open” your marriage in the first place. If I’d read this thread of yours* before this one, I’d assume you were somewhat of a prude to be honest. When you went to the poly party, even though you were trying to describe yourself as enthusiastic, all I could think of was “that’s how I act at a party I don’t want to be at.”

The one thing I haven’t heard from you yet in this thread is what you actually WANT out of a poly relationship. Because what I’m hearing is “my husband wants to bang other chicks, and I’m trying to salvage the situation with my bisexuality and my desire to bang other chicks too…except we both really know that’s not going to happen.” Really if I was feeling uncharitable I could cut that off to say “my husband wants to bang other chicks.” Poly isn’t something you run into to save a failing marriage or a husband who decided infidelity was something he wanted to try out. Because everything you’ve written screams “not ready for polyamory”. Firstly, sure there are introverts who have had moderate success with it (I being one), but I’m getting the sense you’re not going to be one of them. We introverts need to work hard at social situations of any sort, and the right answer to the situation would have had to be “time to go to party number two” rather than the constant second-guessing you’re putting yourself through. But secondly, and more importantly, you’re trying to do two things which you’ve never done: start a relationship with multiple people and start a same-sex relationship. I’m not bi, but I’m friends with enough LGBT folks to know it can take a lot of self-examination to switch “sides” as it were. I’m not optimistic you have that capacity for self-examination simply because you haven’t been able to articulate what you want from polyamory. So what do you want from a same-sex relationship in your situation? Do you even know?

I’m with MsWhatsit, I see a lot of “weasel words” in your posts. If you “don’t mind much” that your husband is being with other women, you mind. I didn’t think I’d mind my girlfriend being alone with our partner, but I did and that stunned me…if you already know you’re jealous, that’s a bad sign. If this is your solution to his infidelity, it’s a bad one that I don’t see ending well. Ask yourself this: what would his reaction be if you asked him “I’m not finding any suitable women for myself–can we end this open relationship experiment?” I have a strong feeling I know what the answer would be.

Lest you think I am attacking you, I want to end by saying that I think you should start protecting yourself mentally. If you want to go ahead and try to find another female partner, realize that it will be emotionally draining. But first ask yourself what you want. Just sex? A deeply platonic relationship? A whirlwind romance? Someone you’ll see alone or someone who will also be involved with your husband? Maybe you’ll find the answer is none of these…and maybe you’ll be able to step back.

*Just as I was typing that I was listening to The Weakerthans’ song “Reconstruction Site” which contains the words “I’m your dress at the back of your knees and your slip is showing.” John K. Samson, sexy lyricist?

31

One penis rule, huh? :rolleyes:

Is it reciprocal? Is he only allowed to pursue male-bodied partners or he gets to do it with whoever he wants?

I don’t have any useful advice to offer you w/regards to that individual person you met, except to say that I’d interpret the behavior as uninterested-person behavior and move on. I do want to suggest OKCupid though.

32

I see this is going to be one of those threads where someone asks for advice, then rejects all the advice that’s offered with a bunch of excuses and justifications. For instance:

So your hostess wasn’t paying much attention to you, but she wouldn’t have thought you were singling out her girlfriend because while she was ignoring you she would have realized that all your conversations with other people just happened to fizzle out, but at the same time she was too drunk to notice what was going on. Yet somehow “She was quite drunk” did not occur to you as an explanation for your hostess’s puzzling behavior, and you only think to mention it when I suggest that you might have done something that offended her…after you specifically asked us what you might have done that would have made this woman not want to be friends with you.

I don’t know you, I don’t know this other woman, I wasn’t at this party, and don’t know or even really care what actually happened there. What I can tell from your posts is that you went into this party with unrealistic and unfair expectations of your hostess – you even say in the OP that you didn’t take her at her word as to her intentions – and that you’re focusing on this party situation now to avoid dealing with whatever your real problem is. I have no idea what your real problem is, although others in the thread have some good suggestions, but whatever it is you need to stop making excuses and trying to pin the blame on others.

33

Some of my friends have a theory why she started acting weird…

This woman may have not read my profile thoroughly. I listed a specific age range for women and men I was interested in meeting. The woman I met was a few years older than my age range. I liked her profile and pictures though, so she was an exception, and I went ahead and meet her in person.

In our first meeting, one on one, she asked me what’s my preferred dating range. I’m not sure why she asked, since she claimed she wasn’t interested in dating me. I assumed she was thinking of people who she wanted to fix me up with. I told her that so far I have only met women who were younger than me, except her and one other woman.

Some women are offended by people’s age preferrences for dating. Could it be possible that she did not read everything on my profile, and overlooked my age preferrences? And was offended when I mentioned my age preferrences in person?

34

“preferences”

35

You didn’t want to talk to her because she was straight?

Look, your social skills sound remarkably poor as is your attitude towards other people. In this thread, you say

You have 254 posts and have started 80 threads. Seems like you often post several times in your own threads, so have much have you participated in threads that you didn’t start? Are you interested in anything other than your own narrow interests?

That does sound like you were trying to use her for your own purposes rather than genuinely trying to be friends with her. Did you actually like her or did you just think she would be a conduit to sex? Did you blow off the straight girl because she wasn’t sexually available? Maybe her friends noticed that.

Yeah, probably.

36

This. Definitely seems shady to me. Reminds me of an acquaintance in high school who bragged that he cheated on his steady girlfriend all the time, but if he ever caught her doing the same, he would kick the guy’s ass.

I consider that a copout. It is often the very same (unhealthy and unfair) imbalance in power and self esteem between the two members of the couple that produces the unenthusiastic “agreement” on the part of the one with less power.

I find this all very interesting. I am someone who has always looked very sceptically at many of the dominant cultural norms surrounding relationships. I roll my eyes when people are shocked–SHOCKED–by marital infidelity and treat it as a moral outrage on par with murder or child rape. Also groan-inducing is the “kinder/gentler” approach to psychoanalyse the “cheater” as having various issues either with the marriage or just with their job/life/etc. (think of the discussions around Eliot Spitzer).

When people (rarely) dig into what I think is most commonly the real reason behind infidelity, at least for men (craving sexual variety and youthful partners), they are treated like they dropped a turd in the punch bowl. HBO’s Mind of the Married Man brilliantly delved into this a few years ago and was absolutely excoriated for it (and this at the same time, IIRC, as the network’s most prominent show was Oz, for chrissakes). It was taken off the air posthaste and essentially banished from the pop culture arena.

But another notion that always bugs me, when it is presented in fictional accounts of characters having affairs, is the idea that once it happens, the only right thing to do is tell one’s spouse or partner. WHY?!? What possible good will this do? Similarly, I don’t at all understand the reasoning behind your poly couple’s agreement to tell each other about lovers.

My wife and I have chosen not to go along with the dominant social norm of strict monagamy. But we have taken a rather different approach than any of the “polys” I have heard about here or elsewhere. While “don’t ask, don’t tell” was an unfair policy in the military and I’m glad it was rescinded, it is our policy with each other. Don’t tell, don’t even hint, and don’t try to find out. This just seems far better in line with human nature than the alternatives.

I sometimes wonder why you don’t hear about more people taking the DADT approach, but then it occurs to me that it may be more common than it seems, and that the desire on the part of those who practice it for discretion is precisely why we don’t hear about it. It also seems likely that there are any number of couples where this approach is taken to another level, where there is a tacit understanding of this sort without it ever having been explicitly discussed as my wife and I did (though we do not continue to address it on an ongoing basis). My impression of French culture, for instance, is that this is the default.

37

Yeah. I have a friend whose relationship basically operates this way, but I’m one of the only people who knows about it, because we’re very good friends. He doesn’t broadcast it publicly.

I’ve found that a) there are a lot of people in some variety of poly or open relationship who just don’t tell anyone else about it for fear of social repercussions, and b) a lot of the people who ARE open about it tend to be the ones that participate in poly communities online and in person, go to poly “events” and just generally are part of the whole scene, which comes along with its own set of norms and conventions. Another friend of mine, who I now kind of wish I hadn’t told about my situation, keeps trying to get me to go to poly meetups with her, and frankly I would rather stab out my own eyeball with a dull spork.

Anyway, the “DADT” method of doing things wouldn’t work for me, but I see no reason why it shouldn’t work for you or anyone else who wants to go that way. But I am pretty laissez-faire about relationships. If it works, and if both people are happy, then great.

38

So why do you say it wouldn’t work for you? How would you know it wasn’t working, if you get my drift?

39

Because I find the idea of operating that way unpleasant. I would constantly be wondering what my partner was doing and with whom. Just the way I am.

40

Okay, I see. So you’re not a believer in “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” like I am.

I would think though that once someone feels that strong desire to be kept informed, just being given a verbal update wouldn’t be enough. I’d almost think you’d either have to do it DADT, or have all of it be supervised by the other partner (and I suppose that latter approach is followed by some couples). But then I just imagine if someone moans a little more than they do with their partner, or whatever, it would still cause jealousy to flare up. I’d much rather just have no idea, no sign that anything at all is going on.