christinaballenstrausse
New member
I would appreciate a little direction in our endeavour to open our relationship to polyamorist life style. I am a 54 yr old female who has been monogamous for 33 years through two kids and multiple grandkids. My spouse had read Sex at Dawn and the Ethical Slut and though I didn't read each entire book, it wasn't hard to see the philosophies as practical and probably healthier than the traditional closed and restricted social order our parents taught us to live.
I didn't know while we spent many many nights and hours discussing this openly and agreeing that it made very good sense that my spouse was already practicing. He finally decided to tell me that he had been seeing someone and they were physically intimate but that it wasn't a threat to what we had and he just wanted to explore other relationships and experience other people. She was also polyamorous and had two other friends and a spouse. I was very hurt and felt betrayed but I had openly agreed that these ideas made sense and have since been trying to work trough my issues of jealousy and inadequacies.
Its been two months and I have invited her to our home to meet. I still have emotional and spiritual issues but I had decided to put every effort into making this work. My problem is that I keep getting signals from him that make me think that I really don't matter anymore. He says things like "if you weren't here, she and I would be together" which (because I still have issues) I interpret as "I wish you weren't here".
I get upset and then we fight about how my reluctance is going to mess the whole thing up for him because she doesn't want to come between us. He put his profile up on ok cupid to find her and set his cut off age at 50--she is 45. He later changed it to 60 but when I asked, he didn't hesitate to tell me that it was 50 without the slightest notion that I might be hurt by the fact that at 54 I'm disqualified.
I got upset and we had a similar mini battle about how I'm reading too much into it and I'm not trying hard enough to get my head around all of this. On the eve of the weekend she is suppose to spend getting to know me he spends a day with her and when he comes home I (proudly) have worked through any negative feelings about that and greet him with a genuinely chipper attitude and dinner. We sit down for an evening with a glass of wine and conversation.
We are talking openly and without incident for several hours and then he makes the pronouncement that there will probably be physical intimacy between them while she is here this weekend (while I lay in my bed alone I guess and listen). I got extremely upset because he said I was in charge of the boundries and one of the boundries I set was that I wasn't ready to see/hear any of that --right now-- just knowing that it was happening was all I could process. He said he didn't remember that conversation but it was a conversation that we've had twice since I invited her to spend the weekend. He then launched the very familiar "you are going to mess this up because you will upset her with your negativity and she will be gone because she never wanted to damage a 33 yr union."
I would like to note that I think she is probably a wonderful person and I don't have any animosity towards her. I also realize you all are only getting one side of this- but the battles are always about what might upset her and what might damage what they have and at this point I really don't believe that I matter at all and I am pretty ready to bail.
Philosophical convert but emotional mess~
I didn't know while we spent many many nights and hours discussing this openly and agreeing that it made very good sense that my spouse was already practicing. He finally decided to tell me that he had been seeing someone and they were physically intimate but that it wasn't a threat to what we had and he just wanted to explore other relationships and experience other people. She was also polyamorous and had two other friends and a spouse. I was very hurt and felt betrayed but I had openly agreed that these ideas made sense and have since been trying to work trough my issues of jealousy and inadequacies.
Its been two months and I have invited her to our home to meet. I still have emotional and spiritual issues but I had decided to put every effort into making this work. My problem is that I keep getting signals from him that make me think that I really don't matter anymore. He says things like "if you weren't here, she and I would be together" which (because I still have issues) I interpret as "I wish you weren't here".
I get upset and then we fight about how my reluctance is going to mess the whole thing up for him because she doesn't want to come between us. He put his profile up on ok cupid to find her and set his cut off age at 50--she is 45. He later changed it to 60 but when I asked, he didn't hesitate to tell me that it was 50 without the slightest notion that I might be hurt by the fact that at 54 I'm disqualified.
I got upset and we had a similar mini battle about how I'm reading too much into it and I'm not trying hard enough to get my head around all of this. On the eve of the weekend she is suppose to spend getting to know me he spends a day with her and when he comes home I (proudly) have worked through any negative feelings about that and greet him with a genuinely chipper attitude and dinner. We sit down for an evening with a glass of wine and conversation.
We are talking openly and without incident for several hours and then he makes the pronouncement that there will probably be physical intimacy between them while she is here this weekend (while I lay in my bed alone I guess and listen). I got extremely upset because he said I was in charge of the boundries and one of the boundries I set was that I wasn't ready to see/hear any of that --right now-- just knowing that it was happening was all I could process. He said he didn't remember that conversation but it was a conversation that we've had twice since I invited her to spend the weekend. He then launched the very familiar "you are going to mess this up because you will upset her with your negativity and she will be gone because she never wanted to damage a 33 yr union."
I would like to note that I think she is probably a wonderful person and I don't have any animosity towards her. I also realize you all are only getting one side of this- but the battles are always about what might upset her and what might damage what they have and at this point I really don't believe that I matter at all and I am pretty ready to bail.
Philosophical convert but emotional mess~
Last edited by a moderator: