Have you found that having outside relationships has enhanced your primary relationship over the long haul? Has it strengthened that bond or has it diminished it as your feelings for others have grown?
My V was a long time ago and it was run as two separate rships. They each knew the other existed and had contact info but I left it to them to do more than that as they chose. They chose to leave it as it was -- the polite place, but not much more. I loved both as hard as I could. Loving BF2 did not diminish anything for BF1 (who later became my DH).
Enhance? I'm not sure. They were each their own person, and each rship was its own thing. It isn't like one was ketchup to the other one being a burger.
Appreciate? Yes. It was interesting how being with one reminded me of the other. Like "Oh, I want to tell this to ___ too!" or "Oh, ____ would get a kick out of that too!"
Strengthen? I did grow to love both more because they played well, and they played well with each other in limited context. The few times they checked in with each other was about MY well being, and I never knew they did that til much later after the break up. Remarkable to me because not all metas want to operate that way and I knew each had some jealousies of the other. But they put them aside to check in on my well being. I held them both in high esteem to begin with but when DH revealed checkpoints with BF2 along the way years after the V was over it made me love them than much more, and both rose several notches in my esteem. Without it being a V situation for that to happen in, it would not have happened that particular way. I'm sure they each would have demonstrated a concern for my well being in some
other way though. It was just in their character. So it didn't need to be in polyship.
Assuming other rships with automatically enhance the already established one? That's not a given. Otherwise terms like cowgirl/cowboy would not exist. I think it will be a mixed bag/luck of the draw thing to some degree.
Do you limit how attached or how deep your outside relationships can become? Have you implemented safeguards to protect your core relationship?
No, I did not limit the Loving. Both had the potential to go out to co-primary. Our limitations were LDR things, school, work, time available to spend with each other. Things not in my control.
It was NOT my Loving being limited. In my universe, the core relationship does not need "protecting" from anything. It stands on its own two feet and the people involved are together because they want to be, and are in agreement about wanting to be together in right relationship to each other.
I did put safeguards to protect ME. Going slow in Opening myself up to each in Mind, Body, Heart, and Soul because I wanting minimal dings as we got to know each other. Going slow and not spreading myself too thin. There is such thing as a
polysaturation point. Love may be infinite but TIME is not. There's only 24 hrs in a day.
After I realized these were the ones I wanted to be with most, I narrowed down the playing field to just the 2 and for a short while a 3rd tempted me but adding more to the mix was not the right thing to do at the time. It would not be fair to any of them for me to spread myself even thinner if school/work/time/ldr was already imposing limitations on my time.
I think what it boils down to is that I don't want to share the limited amount of time I have with him.
See? Is your BF's polysaturation point such that you are feeling shortchanged on time spent with you? Your needs are not being met? Are you being given a lick and promise rather than truly being present when it is time with YOU?
GG