The bomb explodes.....

aljs

New member
Here goes.......

I love my wife first and foremost, she's my sun and stars (to refernce game of thrones) we have been married for 10 years, and together for 12. We have two children 6 and 17months. Like any relationship, we have had hard times, and we're still working on recovering from those together. Earlier this year she decided that monoagmy wasn't working for her, and that was a crushing blow to me.

I cried a lot, I questioned myself and my value and worth, I considered bailing totally. We did a few sessions of couple counseling, which she then decided she did not wish to continue, because I was crying a lot in there, and she couldn't take it. I started reading online and in books, both about open relationships, specifically, and relationships in general, trying to help myself and heal this wound.

I recall I said "If this is what you want, I can't stop you, but I don't know if I can handle it, and what the consequences to our relationship might be"

It seems she took that as a threat. Maybe I said it wrong. we've talked about it since, and I asked that we get our own heads and relationship into a good and solid place before this can of worms got opened completely. We are still trying to recover from both of having depression issues, and losing a big part of our emotional intimacy, and trying to get it back when you have children, work, school and all the things that take up time, getting that time for each other is hard.

So anyway, it appears that we were making progress, then last night it all exploded. She has been visiting family out of town for the summer, looking for job opportunities, etc. She got involved with a poly support group, which she said was really good for her, and I am glad for that.

At any rate she calls me last night after a blow-up with her family and said "I refuse to accept Monagamy, and if you can't accept that then we are done."

I was crushed. I've been trying to educate myself, to get there, to be as understanding as I can be while working through my own fear and insecurity about it. Now it's "you decide RIGHT NOW, because I'm going to do what I want, and you can either deal with it or go to hell" Not the exact words, but certainly what was implied. Well, I love her, I love my children, so here's what I am going to ask for in negotiation.

1. I want us to remain exclusive for 3-6 months (time frame to be discussed)

2. I want us to engage in counseling together during that time frame, as well as continuing the individual work we've been doing.

3. I do not wish to open the relationship until we BOTH agree that it can withstand the additional stresses that this will create.

I also want to make it clear that I acknowledge and respect her views, and that I do not expect her to hide them from me, only that we are honest, and that we will care for each other.

I sincerely hope we can make it work.


I have ideas for boundaries, but I think that is something we need to work through together.
 
Well, I love her, I love my children, so here's what I am going to ask for in negotiation.

1. I want us to remain exclusive for 3-6 months (time frame to be discussed)

2. I want us to engage in counseling together during that time frame, as well as continuing the individual work we've been doing.

3. I do not wish to open the relationship until we BOTH agree that it can withstand the additional stresses that this will create.

I also want to make it clear that I acknowledge and respect her views, and that I do not expect her to hide them from me, only that we are honest, and that we will care for each other.

I sincerely hope we can make it work.

As the poly one in a poly/mono relationship all I see in your list above are YOUR WANTS... What about hers? You need to come to the table with some concessions.
 
All of those wants are a starting point. I'm trying to get the discussion back to how we make this work together, and not have it blown away. She wants to be non-monagamous, no more specific than that. I'm trying to crystallize the vision. I'm also trying to get to a safe place where I can fully deliver the compassion and understanding she deserves.
 
1. I want us to remain exclusive for 3-6 months (time frame to be discussed)

I think that sounds reasonable.

2. I want us to engage in counseling together during that time frame, as well as continuing the individual work we've been doing.

You might use this as a place of compromise. Exclusive for 3 months IF she is willing to go to counseling with you to help speed up the work you can do together OR 6 months if she refuses to help with your need to process the change. Or exclusive for 4 1/2 months if she is only willing to go to three more sessions of counseling. Something like that. It sounds like you two really need to work on supporting each other, and while I understand where she's coming from (it is VERY difficult to watch your partner cry week after week about the same thing when it's something that you need that is causing it), she needs to be there for you. "Relationship broken, add more people" is generally a recipe for disaster so if you two can't get on the same page, then opening up probably isn't going to go well. At all. And there are 2 young children to consider during all of this.

3. I do not wish to open the relationship until we BOTH agree that it can withstand the additional stresses that this will create.

Once again, fair but also kind of vague and could easily be used as an excuse to put it off indefinitely. Not opening up the relationship until 1 - you can talk about it without crying and 2 - you two have gotten on track to become more intimate (scheduled date nights, regular affection, etc going on) would be more specific goals. At that point, I would think both of you and your relationship should be able to handle the stress.

I also want to make it clear that I acknowledge and respect her views, and that I do not expect her to hide them from me, only that we are honest, and that we will care for each other.

I sincerely hope we can make it work.

Honestly, I think what you're asking for is completely normal. You've been monogamous for 12 YEARS and all of the sudden she wants to change the rules. Of course you're going to need time to figure it out! The fact that you sought counseling, reading material, and advice are signs that you are truly trying to process this and get to a place where you can support her need to be poly. If she can't respect that, then she can't respect you or your relationship either.

Take care of yourself, take care of your kids, and take care of your relationship. THEN think about adding other possible relationships to the mix.


I have ideas for boundaries, but I think that is something we need to work through together.[/QUOTE]
 
Honestly, I think what you're asking for is completely normal. You've been monogamous for 12 YEARS and all of the sudden she wants to change the rules. Of course you're going to need time to figure it out! The fact that you sought counseling, reading material, and advice are signs that you are truly trying to process this and get to a place where you can support her need to be poly. If she can't respect that, then she can't respect you or your relationship either.

I agree. I think talking about opening up a marriage at all...and discussing how and when to do it...is the concession. It's saying, "I want to give you what you want...here's how we can accomplish that."
 
Turning a relationship from mono to poly cannot be done at the flick of a switch. It takes time and work. Hopefully if you are willing to put some sort of plan in place that you can both agree to in order to work towards poly, then hopefully she will be content. What she may be feeling is frustration that things just aren't going anywhere.

You may be able to accept that she is poly (hard to do anything else, since that's what she says she is), but that doesn't mean that she has to act on it right now, even if she does have someone already in mind (and you haven't said one way or the other whether this is the case - it might be worth asking, if you don't know).

A while ago I wrote a piece on my blog about the negotiations - how to structure things in terms of the prep work and then a structured way to discuss things - it's here: http://cieldumatin.livejournal.com/4437.html Several folks have used this and say it helped. It does involve some work on both of your parts. If you like it, maybe you could run it by her and see if this would work.

This is a tough time for you. I just hope it turns out to be valuable.
 
All of your requests seem completely reasonable to me. It would be interesting to get her perspective here. Great resources at www.morethantwo.com, if you haven't been there already. Best of luck!!
 
Your requests sound reasonable to me. You aren't saying "No!" you are saying "Go slow. Be easy on my heart here. And let's work out the plan that allows for slow, be easy with my heart (my want/need) and gets you the open marriage (what you want/need) so we can both be at a happy medium. "

The only thing I might add is

4) Let's work together on a framework for rights and responsibilities for this new configuration so we can stay in right relationship to each other while Open and you are dating. We can tweak if your relationship(s) move to something steady/committed.

There is ours.

And then an agreement for conflict resolution.

I know you are talking about "Opening a Marriage" and not "Getting Married" but sometimes a lot of those questions can help you crystalize things too. How will this change Money, Time Management, Parenting, Chores, etc.

http://marriage.about.com/od/engagement/ss/engagedissues.htm

Hopefully she's willing to still be in it here (Marriage to You) and once she calms down from the rush of "Flight or Fight" adrenalin rush of doing something scary... Revealing/outing herself to you and her family. Going all on the defense mode because she anticipates being attacked? Or because she's being attacked from some she's lashing out at all? Where's her head at?

Is she still in it? Committed to the marriage?

HTH!
GG
 
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...which she then decided she did not wish to continue, because I was crying a lot in there, and she couldn't take it.


It seems she took that as a threat.


She has been visiting family out of town for the summer, looking for job opportunities, etc. She got involved with a poly support group, which she said was really good for her

"I refuse to accept Monagamy, and if you can't accept that then we are done."

Now it's "you decide RIGHT NOW, because I'm going to do what I want, and you can either deal with it or go to hell"



I'm going to give you my opinion. Please understand this is only my opinion. These are the words of someone who wants out of your marriage. Her stubbornness, pushiness and plain lack of interest in the pace of moving to poly that your marriage can handle indicate this.

My guess is she has wanted out for a while. This feeling has been building up for a while. She has felt too scared or guilty to do anything about it until now. Something happened. She either met someone she became attracted to, or met someone who gave her the idea of poly. Using the built up pressure of wanting out as a foundation, she decided to use poly as an escape hatch from the marriage. The idea is to use the pent up pressure to push it on you so fast that you resist it. She can then use that resistance to turn "I feel guilty for hurting you by wanting out" into "I don't feel guilty because I can now say I want out because you can't accept me for who I am". By pushing this on you too fast, she can go from "It's my fault" to "It's your fault". She may not even be poly. People can be very dedicated to the strategies they use to help them avoid looking at things they don't want to see.

If she does want out (emphasis on if), there is nothing you can do to save your marriage. Her strategy will be to respond to your reasonable requests with unreasonable behavior. She wants this to be enough to fuel her ability to say "It's his fault our marriage ended". What if the therapist made a lot of sense by telling her to slow down? That makes it that much harder for her to say "It's your fault". If everything I'm saying is true, no wonder she didn't want to stay in therapy.

True poly wants to nurture all relationships. She is not nurturing your marriage at all. She's treating it like it's in the way of something else she wants, which leads me to believe she is not interested in your marriage at all. It's important for you to take a realistic look at her behavior and decide for yourself if she really wants in or out. If she wants out, the only thing you will accomplish by continuing to be reasonable while also continuing to accept her unreasonable behavior is hurting yourself more than a divorce would.
 
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Being new I don't feel I'm in a position to add any good advice but just wish it works out in the best way to lessen the amount of hurt you have to deal with :(

My wife and I are only about 3 months into being Poly and aside from about a week of bliss it's been a pretty rotten experience for me as a male and hoping our marriage does not end because of it. I guess my advice to anyone would be you need a DAMN SOLID relationship before trying being poly if you do not want to risk your relationship.
 
As the poly one in my marriage, I find your concessions/suggestions very reasonable. In fact they mirror my thoughts.
 
I guess my advice to anyone would be you need a DAMN SOLID relationship before trying being poly if you do not want to risk your relationship.

My thoughts exactly. Our relationship is in repair mode right now. I personally do not feel that addidng more complication to it is going to be beneficial. The challenges we face really started to build after the birth of our first child (adding more people) and they only really came to a head in December of last year. She has felt dis-empowered by the role of the stay at home mom, not working, and I've been overwhelmed by the role of the provider, taking all that responsibility on. Just those things coupled with the logistical difficulties of having together time when you have two kids and all the stresses that come with that have impacted us a lot. Before kids, we did darn near everything together, shared almost everything, and still had independant activity and alone time available. We don't have that now, that feeling of sharing everything, almost every new experience together, and we suffer as a result. We haven't recovered our own relationship strength yet. My timeline thought of 3-6 months I feel like is a pretty fast paced schedule, as in my personal opinion we need substantially more time just to get ourselves in a solid place to be able to handle this.

Sometimes I feel like I am being tested, evaluated to see if my dedication is strong enough to her. I know at some point I am going to fall short, I'm not a superman, but I will always try my best, as she deserves no less.
 
I'm going to give you my opinion. Please understand this is only my opinion. These are the words of someone who wants out of your marriage. Her stubbornness, pushiness and plain lack of interest in the pace of moving to poly that your marriage can handle indicate this.

My guess is she has wanted out for a while. This feeling has been building up for a while. She has felt too scared or guilty to do anything about it until now. Something happened. She either met someone she became attracted to, or met someone who gave her the idea of poly. Using the built up pressure of wanting out as a foundation, she decided to use poly as an escape hatch from the marriage. The idea is to use the pent up pressure to push it on you so fast that you resist it. She can then use that resistance to turn "I feel guilty for hurting you by wanting out" into "I don't feel guilty because I can now say I want out because you can't accept me for who I am". By pushing this on you too fast, she can go from "It's my fault" to "It's your fault". She may not even be poly. People can be very dedicated to the strategies they use to help them avoid looking at things they don't want to see.

If she does want out (emphasis on if), there is nothing you can do to save your marriage. Her strategy will be to respond to your reasonable requests with unreasonable behavior. She wants this to be enough to fuel her ability to say "It's his fault our marriage ended". What if the therapist made a lot of sense by telling her to slow down? That makes it that much harder for her to say "It's your fault". If everything I'm saying is true, no wonder she didn't want to stay in therapy.

True poly wants to nurture all relationships. She is not nurturing your marriage at all. She's treating it like it's in the way of something else she wants, which leads me to believe she is not interested in your marriage at all. It's important for you to take a realistic look at her behavior and decide for yourself if she really wants in or out. If she wants out, the only thing you will accomplish by continuing to be reasonable while also continuing to accept her unreasonable behavior is hurting yourself more than a divorce would.

I hear what you are saying. I have had those very same thoughts. They have caused me sleepless nights, and enormous physical and mental pain by even acknowledging that they have the potential to be true. I believe she is lashing out in pain and frustration from so many other things in addition to our relationship exclusivity, and right now I can only treat her with care and compassion as best I can, and then we can see where we are going.

My heart says that she doesn't want the end of us. I guess I'll find out if it's right.
 
Hello aljs. My heart goes out to you and your wife in this difficult situation. I think your wife is being harsh and should be way more patient, comforting, and supportive towards you in dealing with this. It sounds like you're trying very hard, pushing through many painful emotions, and she is not appreciating that. I especially don't like that she can't take you crying. This seems very cold. I know from experience that crying in some cases cannot be helped... there have been times when I wanted SO MUCH to express myself without crying (because crying caused humiliation), but couldn't help it. It's not like being angry and yelling, you can always control your voice volume no matter how angry. People act like crying is always a choice.

I don't really have any particular advice but just wanted to reassure you that you're doing a good job and your wife should appreciate your efforts.

And remember that if she's poly you can be poly, too. Finding another partner can help you feel better about her having another partner.
 
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Just to add another supporting message. I'm the poly one in a mono/poly marriage finding ways to open up.

I very much like your list of "I wants."

They are clear, well defined and reasonable. It took a while for hubby to be able to express himself like that and I believe you should feel proud of yourself for being able to do that already.

I cannot give you advice really, but I would say that she needs to learn patience and that she needs to work out what she wants from your relationship together before embarking on anything with anyone else. Underlying problems in a marriage have to be resolved before trying this path.

Good luck!
 
I agree with snowmelt sounds like a step to an exit or forcing you to do the dirty work and just leave.

Her explanation on not want to continue counseling, was it " I can't stand watching you in pain, pain that my decision caused. Or I'm not going to waste my time listening to your pathetic crying ?


Have you consider going by yourself to talk with someone get your thoughts and feelings clear. Separate the conflicting signals of heart and head. Maybe add her back into the process later.
 
As a mother of 3 children, I well know how having kids can be so draining and make one lose track of who one is. Going from only being responsible for oneself, and having lots of free time with one's partner, to always having to look out for the needs of young children can really do a number on you!

I get the feeling she might have had more time to herself when she was with her family, with built in babysitters, and is looking back at the time of feeling younger, more care-free and sexier. This may have made her think what she needs is a lover, someone who sees her as HER, and not as the mother of their children. Maybe she even got a crush on someone, or... had a date of some kind.

This kind of extreme life change, going from childless to being in full on madonna mode, can be very hard to deal with. Kudos to her, at least, for not just going out and cheating. (Unless she already has, and is hiding it from you while demanding immediate polyamory.)

Polyamory has its root in the word "love," though. This means love for your primary partner as well as love for your other(s). Love means caring, compassion, patience. You are asking for her patience, time for you to wrap your mind around this new concept. You are asking for her compassion, to be able to watch you cry and put herself in your shoes for a while.

I truly hope she can be made aware of your confusion and hurt, in the midst of her feeling overwhelmed by her changing role, going from married, no kids, to married, 2 toddlers.

Perhaps you could go to individual counseling for a while, so you can talk, and cry if need be, without feeling judged for it.

I think your requests are quite reasonable. I just wonder why she is in such a hurry. There is a puzzle piece missing here. Invite her to the board so we can hear her side?
 
Sometimes I feel like I am being tested, evaluated to see if my dedication is strong enough to her. I know at some point I am going to fall short, I'm not a superman, but I will always try my best, as she deserves no less.

That is a kind thought.

But remember if you are being tested? Or feel like you are? It could be to see if you are strong in YOURSELF.

Nobody is superman.

Everyone could try their best.

But what do YOU deserve? The right to clear communication. The right to support and nurture.

Now if she is too broken to give you full partner support and nurture, that is one thing. But let's move it along on the clear communication!

I hope today finds you closer to that.

GL!
GalaGirl
 
As a mother of 3 children, I well know how having kids can be so draining and make one lose track of who one is. Going from only being responsible for oneself, and having lots of free time with one's partner, to always having to look out for the needs of young children can really do a number on you!

I get the feeling she might have had more time to herself when she was with her family, with built in babysitters, and is looking back at the time of feeling younger, more care-free and sexier. This may have made her think what she needs is a lover, someone who sees her as HER, and not as the mother of their children. Maybe she even got a crush on someone, or... had a date of some kind.

This kind of extreme life change, going from childless to being in full on madonna mode, can be very hard to deal with. Kudos to her, at least, for not just going out and cheating. (Unless she already has, and is hiding it from you while demanding immediate polyamory.)

Polyamory has its root in the word "love," though. This means love for your primary partner as well as love for your other(s). Love means caring, compassion, patience. You are asking for her patience, time for you to wrap your mind around this new concept. You are asking for her compassion, to be able to watch you cry and put herself in your shoes for a while.

I truly hope she can be made aware of your confusion and hurt, in the midst of her feeling overwhelmed by her changing role, going from married, no kids, to married, 2 toddlers.

Perhaps you could go to individual counseling for a while, so you can talk, and cry if need be, without feeling judged for it.

I think your requests are quite reasonable. I just wonder why she is in such a hurry. There is a puzzle piece missing here. Invite her to the board so we can hear her side?

I am going to individual counseling, and so is she. It has been enormously helpful for me at least to improve my skills in communication, and handle some of my own issues in context of me, not us.

You definately hit the nail on the head of the overwhelming role of primary caregiver. She's not only feeling overwhelmed, and isolated she is ANGRY about it.

I'm on the other side of the coin of stress, feeling like everything rides on me and my employment at a job that no longer gives me any satisfaction, which sucks almost everything out of me everyday (Like staying home with two kids does) So we are kind of in the same boat, but we both react in different ways.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and hypothesize that she means exactly what she has said-- that she has concluded that she cannot live in a monogamous relationship for the rest of her life.

Based on the way you described your initial reaction, and the way you describe yourself during the ensuing conversations and therapy, she may have also concluded that you are not capable of a non-monogamous or poly relationship.

It's up to you to look at yourself and decide if she's right about this, or if she's wrong. If you don't know, and if you want to maintain a monogamous relationship while you think about it and process, she is probably going to presume that she's right.

I don't mean to say that rushing into things is a good idea-- nothing about your situation is good. I just wanted to give my perspective as to why your request to delay things might not sound reasonable to her. It might just be strengthening her belief that this is an insurmountable incompatibility.
 
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