A struggling mono in love with a poly

swedel

New member
I'm seeking advice from monos who've found ways to overcome feelings of jealousy in their relationships with polys.

I am fortunate enough to be in a deep, passionate and loving relationship with a woman who's in healthy, happy relationship with a husband who's been very nurturing of our relationship.

From the beginning, she's been honest with me, and I trust her. As such, I know she loves me as we share an amazing connection that neither of us has ever experienced before, and she sincerely wants us to have a future together. I do as well.

It's ideal in so many ways...except I'm intensely struggling with not being the only person with whom she's intimate. I tell myself and her that my love for her is stronger than my frustration at sharing her, but I find that every time I make a forward stride emotionally, I soon fall a step or two back.

I feel as if I'm being "cheated" in our relationship since I feel incapable of loving more than one person with the depth which she loves her husband and me.

How can I overcome these possessive urges? My desire is to ultimately appreciate hers and her husband's relationship for what it is, and putting my focus solely into hers and mine.

Please share your thoughts because I'm in completely foreign emotional territory here. I don't want to sabotage our relationship.

Thank you so much!
 
Hi Swedel,

Do you think that your jealousy and concern is directed specifically towards her relationship with her husband... or... is it possibly to do with the potential addition of another boyfriend besides you?

I'm not sure I can help because I have never felt jealousy or negativity towards my poly partner's husband, but I have/do towards the idea of other people entering her life in the future.

I aslo experienced this lack of jealousy or "possessiveness" for lack of a better word, when I had an affair with a married woman. A friend of mine also experienced this when he had an affair with a married woman. He felt no jealousy for her husband either.

For me it has a lot to do with the institution and bonding of marraige. For some reason this by-passes my natural desire to have some one love me the same way I love them...with initmate exclusivity. I think I have figured this out to some degree but need to think about it more.

I suggest you really get to know him. Try to develop a type of friendship. If you care about him you will inevitably care about aspects of his life such as relationships...which in this case just happens to be with the woman you love.

You have to embrace a different way of life and loving someone. You can't pretend that her husband doesn't exist and you have to respect the bond they have. I would assume her husband is also struggling with you on some levels. Get together and talk about your concerns with him. I did with Redpepper's husband and it helped a lot :)

If you want to fully enjoy your love for this woman you have to give up things in order to get things. It will take time..lots of it likely.

Good luck and feel free to ask anything :)
 
Hi Swedel,


I suggest you really get to know him. Try to develop a type of friendship. If you care about him you will inevitably care about aspects of his life such as relationships...which in this case just happens to be with the woman you love.

You have to embrace a different way of life and loving someone. You can't pretend that her husband doesn't exist and you have to respect the bond they have. I would assume her husband is also struggling with you on some levels. Get together and talk about your concerns with him. I did with Redpepper's husband and it helped a lot :)

Good advice Mono. I usually reach out first to my wife BF, to make him feel welcome and part of our lives. Things seems to go better when everybody is friends. Maybe I'm weird, but it’s a turn on to me when my wife is with her BF.
 
Thanks for your thoughtful replies.

The issue is definitely with her husband since she is not seeking out other partners.

If I were having an affair, if the relationship were solely sexual, then I'd have no hang ups about her husband. But I'm emotionally invested in the relationship, as is she, and that makes all the difference.

When I'm at her house, she, her husband and I often eat dinner together. One night, he and I were alone and began talking about our respective relationships with her, but I wasn't in a place emotionally where I could comfortably talk about it. But he and I get along fine. I wouldn't call us friends, but we are on genuinely friendly terms.

I realize that if I choose to work through these frustrations, it will take quite a bit of time, which I'm willing to do if I can see some glimmer of hope that I'm actually capable of doing it. Some times that hope seems more likely than at other times.
 
Hi Swedel,

This is the same situation that my wife's other guy is in. He has always told me that he does not feel jealous of me because obviously I was here first. We have not really had a good talk about it though.
When we do talk we tend to concentrate on the positive things I suppose.
I would suggest self examination of your jealous feelings are the way to go. Try to dismantle them logically and they might go away.
By the way it seems like you two are doing pretty well under your own steam. Give it time.
 
If I were having an affair, if the relationship were solely sexual, then I'd have no hang ups about her husband. But I'm emotionally invested in the relationship, as is she, and that makes all the difference.

.

Just to clarify, the affair I had was emotionally invested as are many.
Things do change when you become more invested for sure though. Your needs /wants often expand to reflect what you are willing to put into the relationship. For mono people this usually brings up the natural desire to want some one "for ourselves". As this is not possible with someone who is involved with another person, we either finds ways to thrive and be healthy, live in constant dull pain, or simply find some one who is wanting to share love the same way we do.
It sounds like you are making headway and taking good steps to communicate with her husband. More of that, and more of determining what you want out of this relationship might give you direction.

Take care
Mono
 
Thanks for the additional thoughts and advice.

It's almost comical the situations that arise that force me to deal with these feelings. Case in point: I've been really excited to be with her tomorrow night as it's been a few days since we were last together, which turned into a night of struggling through emotions instead of just enjoying each others' company.

I got off the phone with her a bit ago and learned the first thing we'll do tomorrow is go get her first tattoo...of her husband's name (in Japanese characters) on her wrist. That came as a complete surprise.

It just seems that even though she's so in the moment when we're together, there's more often than not some sort of visceral reminder of her husband's presence. In this case, I see the humor in it even though I feel pretty crappy.
 
For about 8 months my visits with Redpepper went as follows:

Excitement
Argument
Struggling through the issue
Deeper connection
Sex

Over and over and over....and worth it :)
 
For about 8 months my visits with Redpepper went as follows:

Excitement
Argument
Struggling through the issue
Deeper connection
Sex

Over and over and over....and worth it :)

That sounds familiar. How long have you two been together? If over 8 months, how would you describe your visits with her now? Still working through the same things? If not, what changed?
 
That sounds familiar. How long have you two been together? If over 8 months, how would you describe your visits with her now? Still working through the same things? If not, what changed?

Not to interrupt, but have you read ANYTHING on this forum? Because it's almost impossible to read any part of this forum without finding something about Mono's and redpepper's relationship. I'm not trying to be a jerk, they're both friends of mine. But I'm just saying...
 
Haha! NK :) Too true though, we are on here alot. I need a real job that gets me away from my computer ;)

To answer your question, my struggles had very little to do with her husband. I never felt jealous towards him but was worried I was hurting his relationship. We've been together for almost two years and have just starting living in the same house.

We both got to know ourselves better and found out what we wanted to achieve. We then looked at how we both could be happy and healthy in doing that. But that is not really related to your problem.

What are you hoping for from this relationship? Do your goals/wants include her being married to another man? Can you achieve what you want?
 
Our world is much different now. We have been writing on here almost from the beginning and are very active here. I invite you to read about our story by looking through our threads and posts...

I can't say I understand what you are going through, but I am reading it and Mono and I are talking about it... as we do most threads.. thanks for posting. good luck. :)

(I was particularly interested in your comment about cheating in a sexual way meant you likely would not feel the same way. A topic I am interested in in my own journey :))
 
Swedel, your posts remind me of some conversations I have had recently. But first, let me say that I am not yet a mono in a poly relationship -- I am someone who was married for 10+ years (totally mono), now getting divorced (not my choice), am just embarking on a new relationship, and currently investigating polyamory to see if it's right for me, although I am not yet involved with more than one person.

So, regarding jealousy, I have long considered myself to be someone who isn't usually very jealous -- with a caveat. In my relationships, which have always been monogamous, whenever I've had complete trust in someone's faithfulness to me, it never bothered me if they flirted with someone or visited an old girlfriend, things like that. Whenever I have gotten jealous, it's usually because I have doubts and insecurities, or if the person I'm with has lied to me or been deceptive in some way. So, for me, the degree of jealousy I experience is closely related to trust.

Recently, I've begun seeing someone. This is the first relationship since my husband up and left me (yes, I'm still pissed about that -- I've only been separated since June). Anyway, this new guy and I live kind of far from each other, and he's had some urgent issues and obligations to handle that have prevented us from being together much since we met. This past Sunday night, we talked and he told me he went to visit a woman friend of his that day to help her get settled into a new apartment. She lives at least twice as far from him than I do.

While he told me this, I felt myself immediately become jealous. I wanted to know if this was someone he was attracted to (I just thought this, I did not ask him). Now the funny thing is, he has told me he is a "one-woman man," but still, I had this reaction probably because the relationship is so new and I am still fairly insecure about it. Anyway, he went on to tell me that he had wished he could get out of it, but felt obligated to help her because she had helped him with something, and basically elaborated in such a way as to give me the clear message that this was just a friend and not someone he was interested in, even though I hadn't asked (a very mono maneuver). However, during the conversation, I experienced something that is unique for me. I somehow stepped back from the jealousy that had risen in me and examined it. I kind of asked myself why I was jealous, and I realized it wasn't this woman I was jealous about. I was jealous of the fact that he had traveled so far to give his time and attention to someone else when we have had so little opportunities to get together. I was a little hurt that I wasn't the first choice for who he would spend the day with, even though I had a really bad cold and wasn't feeling up for anything other than staying bundled up under the covers with cough drops and a box of tissues! I realized my jealousy stemmed out of my loneliness, feeling a little sorry for myself, and wishing someone wanted to be with me. For me, it's much easier let myself feel jealous than it is to feel lonely. I know I am much more willing to get caught up in the emotional drama that is stirred up by jealousy than to just sit and feel lonely or whatever else is underneath it.

I have read recently that jealousy is usually a conglomerate of various emotions, so maybe yours is also what's on top of other feelings that you are perhaps less willing to look at. It's something to consider.

The other thing that happened to me recently is that I got in touch with an old friend with whom I corresponded years ago (using actual pen-and-ink letters, not email! Anyone remember those?). We are catching up with each others' lives after 20 years' distance, and I told him how I have good days and bad days in dealing with my marriage ending. I was not having a good day when I wrote this email to him. Anyway, he responded with something that has really been food for thought. He wrote: "Your job is to love yourself unconditionally and energetically disconnect your projections from your partner. We always project ourselves onto our partners and when we lose our partners - unless we reclaim those facets of ourself we have delegated to the other - the feeling is as if our very selves, our souls are being sundered." And it occurs to me that this is very true.

I think people often want the other person to fulfill something in us, and we do somehow project something onto them -- perhaps it is indeed an aspect of ourselves that we project. You have stated that you know she loves you but you feel "cheated" and possessive. When you feel jealousy about your girlfriend's relationship with her husband, is there a part of you that you feel is being neglected, hurt, or that you're losing? I think that it is important to become aware of things like this and look clearly at the dynamics of a relationship, whether poly or mono, and at the feelings of jealousy themselves. When I stepped back from my jealousy to look at it, I was surprised at the sense of calm I experienced while doing so. We don't need to get wrapped up in our emotions, we can actually observe them. As I read more and more about polyamory and consider what it would be like to be involved in such a relationship, I think becoming clear about who one is, what one wants, the mix of emotions we experience, and what needs one hopes our partners will fulfill, would help deal with any jealousy (and other uncomfortable feelings) that comes up.
 
oh my

Thanks for the additional thoughts and advice.

It's almost comical the situations that arise that force me to deal with these feelings. Case in point: I've been really excited to be with her tomorrow night as it's been a few days since we were last together, which turned into a night of struggling through emotions instead of just enjoying each others' company.

I got off the phone with her a bit ago and learned the first thing we'll do tomorrow is go get her first tattoo...of her husband's name (in Japanese characters) on her wrist. That came as a complete surprise.

It just seems that even though she's so in the moment when we're together, there's more often than not some sort of visceral reminder of her husband's presence. In this case, I see the humor in it even though I feel pretty crappy.

Like you, I am very very new to this and have found myself evolving into your position. Is it me, am I misunderstanding something, but I thought time with you was supposed to be around your needs as a pair .... I am probably talking out of turn but to book to have a tattoo of your husband on your wrist whilst with your second lover seems a tad inconsiderate of your needs and your feelings. Well, that is how I would see it but what on earth do I know!! And like you, I wonder how long this hardwork has to go on and if it is really worth it when, like myself, you have already spent half your life working hard at a monogamous relationship!!!
 
Nice post nycindie. Some really good points there.

I agree with naivecurious, to an extent. I think if you are uncomfortable with going to do the tattoo then you should back out and rearrange your date time. I don't know if its grounds for throwing in the towel so much as letting her know your boundaries around stuff like that. Communicate.

The thing with tattoos is that they are a pivitol moment for those who are getting them. I remember every detail of getting mine and am reminded of that everytime I look at them. Perhaps she wants to share that with you. Why she doesn't want to share the experience with the man who's name she is getting tattooed I don't know. Seems odd to me, but what do I know ;)
 
Why she doesn't want to share the experience with the man who's name she is getting tattooed I don't know. )

I'ma little confused on that too. The thing with having the person in the room with you (if you believe in the concept of tangible energy) is that the needle carries the energy of the person you are reaching out to into your skin. I had a lot more than ink injected into me the day Redpepper joined me to get the tattoo to celebrate our connection..I have a part of Redpepper's energy there...it is alive with her essence :)
 
Misplaced Tattoo

Why she doesn't want to share the experience with the man who's name she is getting tattooed I don't know.[/QUOTE]

May be reading to much into this but... perhaps she is, in a concious/ deliberate symbolic way 'marking' herself in his presence the importance of her husbands significance in her life as an ever presence... Meant as a positive "ceremonial" involvement with her significant other. This way, even when she is with her significant other alone her husband is still 'with' her and in so being a positive (meaning good) part of their lives.
I suppose this could be taken in a bad way but I am thinking of it in a positive light.
But then Im a struggling mono trying to find terms and "ways" to help myself understand, cope and hopefully thrive with loving a poly.
 
May be reading to much into this but... perhaps she is, in a concious/ deliberate symbolic way 'marking' herself in his presence the importance of her husbands significance in her life as an ever presence... Meant as a positive "ceremonial" involvement with her significant other. This way, even when she is with her significant other alone her husband is still 'with' her and in so being a positive (meaning good) part of their lives.
I suppose this could be taken in a bad way but I am thinking of it in a positive light.

I will admit that this was how I saw it when I first read it also.
 
Like you, I am very very new to this and have found myself evolving into your position. Is it me, am I misunderstanding something, but I thought time with you was supposed to be around your needs as a pair .... I am probably talking out of turn but to book to have a tattoo of your husband on your wrist whilst with your second lover seems a tad inconsiderate of your needs and your feelings. Well, that is how I would see it but what on earth do I know!! And like you, I wonder how long this hardwork has to go on and if it is really worth it when, like myself, you have already spent half your life working hard at a monogamous relationship!!!

I've not checked in for a few days--so much great stuff on which to comment. In no particular order...

The tattoo: this has become less of a sore spot over the last couple days, maybe because I've not seen her or it in the last couple days.

Some background: When she first told me about it, I shared what I was feeling. She said she really wanted me to be with her, but understood if I was too uncomfortable.

I chose to go and, to be honest, can't say whether or not it was the right choice or even the better of two crappy choices. During and afterward, I felt as if I had little self-respect, dutifully holding her hand while watching his permanence marked upon her skin. But would it have been any better to stay away only to see the end result soon thereafter?

If it was to her somehow ceremonial, as stated, it felt like going to the wedding of a best friend who's marrying someone you just know is going to make her life miserable. In other words, I felt no joy in what should have been a cause for celebration.

I've tried using humor to deal with it ("Uh oh, they mistranslated. That actually spells my name!"), but when all is said and done, I find myself looking away from it, not wanting to even see it. And though I don't like letting anything have that kind of power over me, for the time being, that's how I feel.

Just talking about it now, I feel this wellspring of negative emotions bubbling over. Looks like I've got more work to do (not that it comes as any surprise).
 
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