PolyButNot
New member
Forewarning the read that this post is likely to be fairly rambling and make end up not making a bit of sense.
Anyway. I'm nearly 40, married, and male. I've been married for 16 years, and we have no children (by choice). For most of this time, we've been fairly isolated. We were morbidly obese and just weren't comfortable being out in public and such. But now we're normal weights so we're a lot more comfortable.
We've been monogamous all these years. Sexually adventurous, but mono. So this summer we were talking about things that might excite us, "spice it up" as they say (but we both hate that cliche). I mentioned maybe involving other people might be fun.
That's where things started to go pear-shaped. I was thinking "fun, casual stuff. Threesomes, foursomes, etc." She was thinking polyamory.
So, we both read Ethical Slut, and I understand that love is not a limited resource, etc, etc. But time is, as is money, and as is my brain capacity to keep track of other relationships and all the things around them... So, for me, I'm NOT polyamorous. She is, and I accept that. But now the problem is how to move forward.
What happens when she wants to spend a night with someone? Note, there's no someone now, and she even says maybe there never will be, but my brain doesn't like maybes and such. What happens when it goes further and she wants to spend a weekend, a week, or longer, with someone else? Again she says those will probably never happen but they DO HAPPEN in the context of poly relationships. Scary to me.
So, basically, I brought up what I thought would be fun and casual (basically, swinging/threesomes/foursomes/etc), she took it as an opening to something deeper (polyamory). And now we have to move forward.
During the summer, she was interested in someone else, but he ended up triggering some really bad things for her so that ended, but during it, I, to put it mildly, was not handling things well. I hurt her (NOT physically) and she hurt me (again not physically), and things are still just kind of weird.
I don't want to lose 16 years of fun, happiness, and closeness. I want this to work. I'm just not sure if it can, and it's sort of killing me.
Anyway. I'm nearly 40, married, and male. I've been married for 16 years, and we have no children (by choice). For most of this time, we've been fairly isolated. We were morbidly obese and just weren't comfortable being out in public and such. But now we're normal weights so we're a lot more comfortable.
We've been monogamous all these years. Sexually adventurous, but mono. So this summer we were talking about things that might excite us, "spice it up" as they say (but we both hate that cliche). I mentioned maybe involving other people might be fun.
That's where things started to go pear-shaped. I was thinking "fun, casual stuff. Threesomes, foursomes, etc." She was thinking polyamory.
So, we both read Ethical Slut, and I understand that love is not a limited resource, etc, etc. But time is, as is money, and as is my brain capacity to keep track of other relationships and all the things around them... So, for me, I'm NOT polyamorous. She is, and I accept that. But now the problem is how to move forward.
What happens when she wants to spend a night with someone? Note, there's no someone now, and she even says maybe there never will be, but my brain doesn't like maybes and such. What happens when it goes further and she wants to spend a weekend, a week, or longer, with someone else? Again she says those will probably never happen but they DO HAPPEN in the context of poly relationships. Scary to me.
So, basically, I brought up what I thought would be fun and casual (basically, swinging/threesomes/foursomes/etc), she took it as an opening to something deeper (polyamory). And now we have to move forward.
During the summer, she was interested in someone else, but he ended up triggering some really bad things for her so that ended, but during it, I, to put it mildly, was not handling things well. I hurt her (NOT physically) and she hurt me (again not physically), and things are still just kind of weird.
I don't want to lose 16 years of fun, happiness, and closeness. I want this to work. I'm just not sure if it can, and it's sort of killing me.