My partner (D) and my relationship started as friends with benefits, at times we were just benefits and not terribly good friends, at other times we were excellent friends, sans benefits, and at times completely out of touch with each other. We decided to say that we were dating about two and a half years ago, and both had a terrible time figuring out what to call each other. We decided to take our relationship one day at a time, and be monogamous while we solidified our relationship to each other, and sorted out some of our individual issues. (Okay, while I sorted out my issues, he's a reasonably stable person on his own
)
While D and I were friends with/without benefits D lived with L, and her two kids, his niece and nephew, and at times his brother. Independent of D and my relationship, the three of us bought a house together halfway across the country after all deciding we wanted to make a drastic change in our living situations. D, L, and I have been living together for about a year and 8 months (give or take) with both kids really happily. Before we bought the house we did do some lawyer time and write up what happens if someone wants to move out/move someone else in, sell their part, break up, etc.
D and I have always had fun checking out other guys together and the fact that I might be jealous that he thought other guys are attractive didn't really occur to me. I mean, I find other guys attractive and still love him, so why should it be any different? Philosophically, our relationship has always had room for multiple attractions, we just weren't practicing polyamory. Over the past six months or so we've been transitioning to actually practicing poly, and it feels
so much more natural to me than to define our relationship as monogamous.
It's also freed my own little brainbox up to spend more time with L and appreciate my attraction to her and develop an individual relationship between the two of us. D is thrilled haha. I was reading
Opening Up and came across the section on "compersion" and dragged D over to point out, "This is you! This is that 'I'm happy if you're happy' thing you've been trying to explain to me for the past two years! I get it!"
Lightbulb city.