Restrictions--please help

ksandra

New member
So I've run into a bit of a problem lately. I have been seeing someone, J, and things have been going very well between us. I met J at a party in January and we started talking about books since he was starting a book club at his house. I started going to it before there was any kind of romantic interest in J mostly because it was something entirely out of my normal social circle and had nothing to do with any other part of my (incredibly busy and at the time stressful) life. My primary partner was okay with this since he agreed I needed this. However, as time went by I became very interested in J and things progressed since he was interested too.

Now, ever since we have been seeing each other, my primary partner, T, has been getting touchier and touchier about the time I spend with J. It's very difficult to bring up making plans with J since T gets very silent and moody every time though lately he's been getting better. There are still a lot of insecurities and so I have the following restrictions on time I can see J.

-I can only see him on average once a week, but whenever T gives his permission for me to see J

-In order to see him I have to give 48 hours notice to T

-When I go to see him I have to give T an "acceptable" time to be home by, that T decides on and half way through the date I have to phone T and tell him if I'm going to be home earlier

-I cannot see J when T is at work

-If I see J when T is not at work I am going to be taking time away from my relationship with T and T is upset

-J and I are not allowed to cuddle or be affectionate outside of a bedroom

-J cannot come to my house

-I am not allowed to text message J when I am with T, which is all the time

-at the montly bookclub I am not allowed to in any way physically touch J or be near him, it's just supposed to be a book club

These restrictions are driving me crazy. Every time I try to address them with T he flings back past fights from earlier in our relationship and it turns into a huge fight with him storming out of the room. Now it's gotten to a point where I am feeling very resentful towards T and I am having a hard time discussing this without getting extremely emotional and it's getting to a point where I feel like in order to stay with T I need to be either a swinger or monogamous and not polyamorous or latley I've been starting to think that maybe I should leave T since it feels like he can't do this.

The funny thing is that T has two people he sees outside of me and none of these restrictions at all on him. He says they're in place to make sure he stays the primary and so that no one threatens his position but it feels like he's sabotaging himself a bit. Any words of advice would be helpful. Is this rational when we're just starting out? How is a good way to calmly address these?

Thanks.
 
This is what is meant by "relationship with prescriptions". There are a few threads on that on here, do a tag search for "prescriptions". It's bad enough when there are prescriptions at all, but in this case you also have a double-standard. If T can't deal with you having other relationships, he shouldn't be having other relationships either.

Unfortunately, most of the discussions on this forum about prescriptive relationships never got to the point where people tried to figured out what to do if you are in one and want to work your way out of the prescriptive part.
 
Limitations or restrictions should be agreed-upon and accepted by both parties. It sounds like you don't accept the ones that are being put in place against your will. You are voicing a lot of valid concerns, here. I really do suggest that you arrange a time and place to sit down with T and discuss this without him storming off.

Anything like this needs to absolutely be with the understanding of both groups - you need to understand specifically why each of these restrictions are in place and agree to them. I would suggest that because they don't go both ways and you are not happy, then some discussion of fairness and equality might be appropriate.

For the record, I don't believe that things have to be equal, if both parties see why and agree to it, but in this case you are not happy with it and don't understand the reasons why, so they seem arbitrary to you, and this needs to be addressed before resentment builds too far.
 
Is this rational when we're just starting out?

In my opinion, it's not rational at any time.

How is a good way to calmly address these?

If it's not working for you, then you simply say "This isn't working for me. This is why: ...."

Then you finish with: "I'd really like to find a way that this relationship can work for me. Are you willing to work something out that works for us both?"

If he does anything that involves refusing to help figure out how to make it work for both of you--flat out refusal, leaves the room, tries to change the subject in any way, whatever--then you know he's not interested in a relationship that works for you.

That's when I say it's time to leave.
 
For the record, I don't believe that things have to be equal, if both parties see why and agree to it, but in this case you are not happy with it and don't understand the reasons why, so they seem arbitrary to you, and this needs to be addressed before resentment builds too far.

100% agree. Rules don't have to be equal, however they have to be agreed on. If not agreed on then there has to be room to renogotiate.

The funny thing is that T has two people he sees outside of me and none of these restrictions at all on him. He says they're in place to make sure he stays the primary and so that no one threatens his position but it feels like he's sabotaging himself a bit. Any words of advice would be helpful. Is this rational when we're just starting out? How is a good way to calmly address these?

You may want to do this in a letter. It removes the emotion and makes it clear and concise. You could get really formal and create a section for rules, with the ability to renogotiate.

On another forum I am on they have a required meeting once every month to review rules with all parties involved. This is overly complex but we are talking a working family of 5 people. That just gives you an idea of some of the "contract" work involved. :)
 
These restrictions are driving me crazy. Every time I try to address them with T he flings back past fights from earlier in our relationship and it turns into a huge fight with him storming out of the room.

Rightfully so. It's not fair for anyone to tell someone else how they have to live their life. It's one thing for a partner to say "I have such-and-such needs within our relationship" but another thing entirely to say "I have such-and-such needs regarding your relationships with others."

"Storming out of the room" is appropriate. If you're 16. Ditto for bringing up past fights. Fights are bad enough in the moment without using them as ammunition in future fights.

Saying "I need some time to think about this" and then going off by yourself is the mature way to leave a fight.

The worst thing in all of this is that your boyfriend is following a double-standard. If taken to task, he would probably begrudgedly agree to follow the same superficial rules, if only so as not to seem like a total jerk. But I suspect he would feel just as restricted and controlled as you do, and harbour resentment for it.

Sorry, I'm completely devoid of advice right now, but the aforementioned threads have said everything that can be said about the matter of relationship restrictions, so I'll just leave it at my $0.02 about your boyfriend's behaviour.
 
Crippling agreements

However, as time went by I became very interested in J and things progressed since he was interested too.

That's great!

There are still a lot of insecurities and so I have the following restrictions on time I can see J.

That's really not great.

These restrictions are driving me crazy.

They should; they're crazy restrictions. Why on earth did you agree to them?

Since you seem to have already agreed to them, that's going to make any conversations around them more difficult for you. They're clearly designed to destroy the relationship with J, or at least make it absurdly awkward to progress. Meanwhile, your position is going to be that since you and J are getting closer, you need less resrictions. Since the entire point of the restrictions was to prevent that, I don't imagine that's going to go smoothly.

Every time I try to address them with T he flings back past fights from earlier in our relationship and it turns into a huge fight with him storming out of the room.

This is terrible behaviour. Is T under the impression that he has the relationship skills to be in a relationship at all? If you want to work on this relationship, I think that the place to begin is by asking T if he thinks that relationship and communication skills are important, and then to do a self-evaluation of where he is at with them. Does he think that he's at a place where he can continue to have a relationship with you without further developing them, and does he trust you enough to accept your feedback on that process? There's some really basic stuff that needs to happen here for a healthy relationship.

I've been starting to think that maybe I should leave T since it feels like he can't do this.

Yes, this is probably the thing to do. It would be nice to do his (current and) future partners a favour by explaining that he shouldn't be in relationships with people he doesn't trust enough to avoid trying to control their behaviour like that. Unfortunately, he's likely going to think that the relationship ended because you found someone else, which will just reinforce his belief that other relationships are the real threat, instead of his inability to do basic relationship work.

Incidentally, some of the other members seem to be focused on the double-standard issue. Like CielDuMatin and Ariakis, I think that it's totally possible to have completely messed-up relationships where every agreement is perfectly fair and symmetrical, and healthy ones when they aren't. On the other hand, if you notice that you have a tendency to agree to weird relationship agreements, you might in the future use a lack of symmetry as a warning sign for you.
 
Incidentally, some of the other members seem to be focused on the double-standard issue. Like CielDuMatin and Ariakis, I think that it's totally possible to have completely messed-up relationships where every agreement is perfectly fair and symmetrical, and healthy ones when they aren't. On the other hand, if you notice that you have a tendency to agree to weird relationship agreements, you might in the future use a lack of symmetry as a warning sign for you.

I don't see where anyone is focused on double-standards, it was merely pointed out by several people. Of course it is possible to not have double standards and still have an unhealthy relationship or have unhealthy aspects in an otherwise viable relationship.
 
Focus?

I don't see where anyone is focused on double-standards, it was merely pointed out by several people. Of course it is possible to not have double standards and still have an unhealthy relationship or have unhealthy aspects in an otherwise viable relationship.

Fair enough. I should have written that differently.
 
Thanks for the advice, a lot of it has made me think about some things.

YGirl--Thanks for the link, I'm reading it in another page as we speak.

I'm having a hard time dealing with rationality since a lot of the articles and posts written on dealing with emotions say that things don't always have to be rational and that emotions don't have to make sense. I've tried asking T to explain why he feels that each restriction is in place and how that makes him feel and he doesn't explain it in a way that makes sense, nor have the couple of friends I've talked to. In the end I just get upset and frustrated because his emotions are so opposite to mine that I feel like I am never going to understand them, but I need to. He did explain that his leaving the room has to do with him trying to cool off and not get too upset himself, I can't say anything about bringing up old fights. He still does it, I don't know how to get him to stop since his answer is usually: "yeah but it happened and I acted like blank and you acted like blank and now it's coming up again".

In regards to T and the people he sees, I don't mind that he sees them. I get along really well with both of them, I completely ADORE one of them and seeing them together makes me insanely happy. I don't need those restrictions, I asked for some at the beginning but I let go of them several months ago because I realized they were crazy and that I didn't need them to feel secure in my relationship. My only thing for T is that he take a shower between seeing us and practice safe sex. So, some of them come from T wanting equality in rules we had at the very beginning and he hasn't been able to let go of them yet. Sometimes T is feeling better and relaxes the rules, I am seeing J on Thursday and I do not have a time limit as long as I come home. This is new and nice. I think I am going to sit down with T and write out all the rules and we are going to talk about which ones we can start working on. I feel like if I made him follow the same rules that would be a huge step back and totally unnecessary for me.

I also want to say that, no I dont' think very much of this is healthy. It's frustrating and it needs to be fixed or else it's going to end. Having said that, outside of anything to do with poly I have a great time with T. The rest of our relationship is, in my opinion extremely healthy. He is working hard to make me happy, that doesn't excuse this but I just want to make it clear that I am not 100% miserable, if I were I would be gone by now.

Again thanks for the advice and input thus far. If anyone else has things to contribute please do so, this is very helpful.
 
In regards to T and the people he sees, I don't mind that he sees them. I get along really well with both of them, I completely ADORE one of them and seeing them together makes me insanely happy. I don't need those restrictions, I asked for some at the beginning but I let go of them several months ago because I realized they were crazy and that I didn't need them to feel secure in my relationship. My only thing for T is that he take a shower between seeing us and practice safe sex. So, some of them come from T wanting equality in rules we had at the very beginning and he hasn't been able to let go of them yet. Sometimes T is feeling better and relaxes the rules, I am seeing J on Thursday and I do not have a time limit as long as I come home. This is new and nice. I think I am going to sit down with T and write out all the rules and we are going to talk about which ones we can start working on. I feel like if I made him follow the same rules that would be a huge step back and totally unnecessary for me.

I think that the people who have pointed out the double-standard/inequality thing would all agree that the solution is definitely NOT a "tit-for-tat" here - it will not solve your dilemma if you simply put the same restrictions on him. All that would do is keep you both from confronting the underlying problems. It would make things "equal" by making him feel worse, not by making you (both) feel better.
 
I don't know if there's a delicate, non-threatening way to bring it up, but would it be possible to communicate to T that having these restrictions, with no end in sight, are having a negative effect on your relationship with T? That in the long run, it won't be the relationship with J that ruins your relationship with T, but rather the restrictions themselves? Possibly even that the restrictions only make J feel more desirable.

Without knowing him or talking to him, I can't say for sure -- but it seems that T's trying to "protect" the relationship together by making it impossible to have a proper relationship with anyone else. What he doesn't seem to realize is that this behaviour is much more likely to do you in than any external relationship ever will.
 
You could also make a unilateral decision. Decide the boundaries and rules that YOU think are reasonable and communicate them to both partners. You should all sit down together. Tough shit if T doesn't feel like doing that. It won't kill him and it's the least he can do if you mean anything to him at all.
 
On the other hand, if you notice that you have a tendency to agree to weird relationship agreements, you might in the future use a lack of symmetry as a warning sign for you.
I think that that totally depends on how you feel about unusual asymmetrical agreements - if they make you happy, then why focus on some undesirable goal like symmetry?

Let me give you another way of approaching this...

Instead of the one person putting rules in place that the other can agree to, how about the person saying "this is what I am afraid of" or "this is what makes me uncomfortable" - explore a little what aspect of it makes them uncomfortable (and it may not be logical but there may be some sort of reason).

Then work together to come up with rules that would satisfy that insecurity/fear/whatever. Work on addressing the underlying issue, rather than debating specific rules.

Maybe I can try a hypothetical example.

Proposed Rule: "I don't want to sleep in the same bed with you after you've been on a date with him."

When proposed like this you can accept or reject - not really a lot of choice otherwise.

But let's say we dig down a little.
You: "What aspect of us sleeping together after a date don't you like?"
Him: "I hate the idea of you coming to bed after you've had sex with him!"

OK, we've got further - it's not about a "date", it's about sex, specifically. Ask a confirming question:

You: "So if I went out with him to the movies and then came home without having sex with him, would that be ok?"
Him: "Yes, it would. But if you had sex with him and didn't tell me I would still know, so you can't just say that you haven't had sex and lie to me."

OK, so it's been confirmed that this is about sex, but there is also another tidbit in there... dig deeper:

You: "So you know whether or not I have had sex with him when I come home from being with him?"
Him: "Yes, absolutely, and I hate that"
You: "How do you know?"
Him: "You smell like him and sex - I can't stand that."

another confirming question:
You: "So the fact that I smell like him and sex is what really upsets you?"
Me: "yes, it just reminds me that you were with him."

another piece of information.
You: "So if I came home and didn't smell like him or sex, you wouldn't be concerned or feel put off?"
Me: "It wouldn't bother me anywhere near as much, no."

At this point you propose a rule that you feel you can live with and which would address the real issue that he had:
You: "So if I promised you that I would shower right before leaving his place to come home, would that be an improvement?"
Him: "I suppose so."
You: "And if I didn't smell like "him" would you be ok with sleeping in the same bed as me that night."
Him: "Yes I would."

And this you have a rule in place that you have bother agreed upon that addresses his needs and is something that you can do without major inconvenience.

Please note that this is over-simplified, since discussions like this can go on for a LONG time. The important point it to find out what underlies the imposition of a rule, and find out if there is another way to get the concern addressed.

Not only that, but you have worked on this together, have respected the fears and insecurities that the other person has (which is vital, in my mind) and found a solution that can work. It won't always come up with a better solution but as a consequence you will better understand why the rule has been proposed.

Hope this helps the thought process.
 
Yes, thank you that really does help. We sat down last night and made a written list of rules that we have that apply just to him, just to me or to both of us and then categorized them as essential (like safe sex) , okay for now, annoying and unacceptable (the curfew I have to be home by) and we are going to start working on them now and I think the fear of it will be really essential for this. I just found this out but T facebooked J yesterday asking him for coffee this week. J said he wouldn't be able to until next week but if there was something T wanted to talk about they could do it over facebook. I know this is a small thing but I'm feeling so happy about it. It really shows me that T *is* trying to make this work along with the discussion about the rules and him picking the ones he wanted to work on.
 
CielDuMatin...i love you, hahahaha

and gratz ksandra for the positive update. It's good times ahead, i know it!
 
We sat down last night and made a written list of rules that we have that apply just to him, just to me or to both of us and then categorized them as essential (like safe sex) , okay for now, annoying and unacceptable (the curfew I have to be home by) and we are going to start working on them now and I think the fear of it will be really essential for this.
Remember to try to work on the reason WHY of the rule, rather than just work on whether it is really necessary or not.

Synergy means that two people working together on a problem may come up with a better solution than either of the individuals could have thought of.
 
I know this is a small thing but I'm feeling so happy about it.

You should be; it certainly sounds like there have been some really positive developments.

I think that that totally depends on how you feel about unusual asymmetrical agreements - if they make you happy, then why focus on some undesirable goal like symmetry?

...sure, but it didn't sound to me like ksandra was being made happy with the agreements.

If I agree to some restriction, such as allowing my partner to impose a curfew on me, that I could reasonably predict that I'm going to resent to the point of damaging our relationship, I've made a mistake. If I look back over my relationship history and notice that I keep doing this, then it might be useful for me to adopt a rule of thumb to help me avoid letting myself get to that point.

As I wrote:

I think that it's totally possible to have completely messed-up relationships where every agreement is perfectly fair and symmetrical, and healthy ones when they aren't.

Now, I think that it would be interesting to hear an explanation of why, if two partners are both poly-, symmetry wouldn't be the obvious starting point to then negotiate from, but that's probably a subject for a different thread.
 
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