A poly newbie with some experience making major mistakes

RYEQuinones

New member
So this is my story. Last year I was involved in a serious of open relationships with a few partners, I was honest and happy, and spent quality time with all of them. I started trying to understand the kind of life I was living and started reading about open relationships. I read the book Ethical Slut and found the concept of polyamory. This concept fit perfectly with my ideals, morals and how I lately had envisioned my personal relationships to be like. I met a guy and was completely honest about my lifestyle, he thought it’s what he wanted too, and in the way he express himself as to what he had hoped his personal romantic life to be well he had just found a new dogma. We started going out and even met 1 of the guys I was involved with, and we ended up hanging out a couple of times. Months passed and he assumed the position of primary, I continued to see the other guys but made clear to all of them that this guy was my priority because he was the one I felt most comfortable with. The rest of the guys were ok with that. He moved to my house and we started a life together. 5 months into this stage he met a girl at work and they started going out, I was ok with it at first but he refused to be open with her. That is when all hell broke loose. He started seeing her more often and eventually I had to throw him out of my house because I found myself waiting on him every other night, plus I was going through a really hard time and I needed his support more than ever. I expressed my needs and wants clearly and I asked him to be open with her and explain to her that I needed support and needed to be with him more. He was always around but when she was busy. He made her think she was the one and only and was too available for her. After two months of that relationship he decided she wasn’t what he had hope she’d be and decided to end the relationship. During the time he was with her I felt she had taken the position of primary, and I was a secondary, so after some serious consideration I re-took to seeing other people again more frequently, but I started lying to him, not about seeing other guys but about the extent of my relationships with them. I met a new guy to add to my poly family, whom I was honest and open about my lifestyle too and turn out he was poly himself also and we decided to start going out. I told my primary about it and he was ok with it at first (when everything was a plan), but admitted to feel a little jealous. When the reality of the situation came in, the day I made a date to go to the new guy’s house, since we had decided to become sexual, I told my primary and he established some rules and we made a commitment. The other day he called and wanted specifics, I told him as I used to tell him things, and he started feeling jealous, really jealous. He expressed his feelings in a very assertive way and I worked through them with him, I explained that I had passed through the same exact feelings when he started giving more priority to the girl at work, and how to work through them. He decided he did not want an open relationship anymore, so we became “traditional boyfriend and girlfriend”. The day after that I slept with a co-worker and lied about it. I told him the truth a week later and from that moment until today it’s been 3 months and he is still mad at me. I still haven’t gotten thru the hurt of being relegated to second chair that first time either. He had been trying to get a third into the relationship for quite some time now and I have told him that we need to work through our loss of trust after doing that. We have talked about our main concerns but we always end up fighting and emotionally attacking each other. He met a girl the other day, and again failed to be honest with her. I did not like that, and felt fear about having to go through all that again. He decided last week to not be my boyfriend anymore after a fight we had and the day after that (the fight was left inconclusive) he invited 1 girl to go out and made contact with 2 others. I felt really bad. Today we sat down and are trying to work through all this again. HELP please!!!!
 
Help how? It sounds like you broke up. Why not figure out what you need and want from a relationship and go about finding that....clearly with all the disseption on his part you can do better.
 
thanks

Yesterday was a very productive day for us, we decided to forgive each other and let go of all the negative things and move forward. He said he wants some space to experiment but still is willing to see me everyother day. This confuses me a little bit. But we made some agreements and are going to work through them. I want advice from poly people with more experience.
He attributed his mistakes to ignorance and selfishness and he promised to consider me more and make me a priority.
I guess I am ok with seeing him a couple of times a week.
 
He said he wants some space to experiment but still is willing to see me everyother day. This confuses me a little bit. But we made some agreements and are going to work through them.

Did you express to him that you were confused? Don't agree to things you are unclear about. Very often people have different ideas and understandings about words and concepts and it is up to you to communicate any confusion you have or discrepancies that come up. So keep talking! It can only help to ask for clarification.

"I'm a little confused when you said ___. What do you mean by that? How do you envision that happening?" See if the pictures in his head match or come close to the ones in yours. And so on...


PS - I couldn't really read your first post because there are no paragraph breaks in the wall of text, so I apologize if I'm missing important info in your story. I just had to respond to this part of your second post, though.
 
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The lack of paragraph breaks here is really confusing and frustrating. If you are still within your 12 hour block of time to change your post, could you do us all a favour and go back and do some editing. Thanks. Much obliged. :)
 
I see its past the 12 hour time. Too bad.

It seems both of you have done the whole "whatever, I'm just going to do whatever I want" thing and it hasn't worked... if you have forgiven and are moving on, then maybe next time you should clarify and confirm that you are both on the same page and check in with each other (however hard that might be at the time) constantly until you both have increased your integrity with each other. Both of you seem to be lacking in this department. It doesn't conjure up trust when integrity is not present I find.
 
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