Couple-hunting in Unicornia

The mandatory I've given up on poly post

I don't go out much unless I absolutely have to, don't like to go to see friends, either. A poly/cheating disaster just blew up in my circle of closest friends, and has cost me at leat one best friend and possibly also the support of that spiritual group I loved and cherished for so many years. If somebody calls, I don't like to pick up, since I don't want to hear anyone going on about their problems.

Besides, I don't like to think about anyone in a romantic or sexual context at all. All of it just feels really yucky.

But eschewing that, I also think that poly is just not me, like ray also figured out some time ago. I am not interested in A romantic relationship, much less in multiple ones, and the same goes for sex right now. And the things that give me joy right now are decidedly non-sexual/romantic.

I'm quite content.
 
I am not interested in A romantic relationship, much less in multiple ones, and the same goes for sex right now. And the things that give me joy right now are decidedly non-sexual/romantic.

I'm quite content.

Then by all means put your time and energy into these types of relationships. However, don't let yourself be cut off from everyone, that only feeds depressive tenancies and is not healthy (yes, I speak from experience). If you feel you aren't connecting well with certain people, look for others you may have more in common with, but don't cut yourself off completely from everyone else while you look.

It's OK to tell your friends "I'm on drama overload right now, can we just go out, see a movie, band, etc and not talk about anything deep and emotional tonight?" If your friends are REALLY friends, they will understand and be happy to just have a fun evening.

Thursday's happen to be the highlight of my week now, as that is the day I meet up with a group of people I now consider to be my best friends. I may not talk to any of them the rest of the week, except on fb, but meeting up with them once a week (usually as a group), to just sit and chat, watch movies, sew, etc is wonderful. Obviously not everyone can make it every week, but we try. The routine helps build that closeness, especially when the rest of the week is taken up with family and work activities. If I didn't have the set schedule, I'd probably never see them.
 
Hi Blackie,
It could be a misinterpretation on my part, as often can happen when reading the written word rather than hearing something expressed in person, but something is coming across in your last post that belies your statement that you are "quite content." You sound a bit angry and fed up.

I don't think isolating is the way to go now, for you, but perhaps you need a new set of friends. People who are able to really be friends without serving their own interests first, and who act with maturity and compassion. Keep looking, good people are out there. And be sure to be kind to yourself.
 
BU,

I'm sorry that you are dealing with so many losses right now. It seems to me sometimes that life is incapable of throwing one loss at a time at a person.

Also, it's a good thing to hibernate and think one's thoughts after losses. It can be very healing. But the other folks who warn you about isolation and depression enabling behaviors are wise folks.

Hugs and best wishes!
 
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Some background on the situation now

My friend Flattie has been after a married man for two years now. She got out of one relationship, which had lasted for five years and was her first one, to be with this man. She wanted to platonic life partners, since the man was still involved with the wife. She didn't like the wife and vice versa.

Now the situation has finally blown up in everyone's faces. Flattie started saying her prospective partner is mentally ill for staying married with a woman who was making him so unhappy and that he should be admissioned to hospital. She wanted to move in with the man. She moved to the same city to be with him, away from the wife. She said that they were stricly study buddies (she had applied to the university to study the same subject, which she previously vehemenently derided and said she had no interest in).

She (Flattie) moved in with him, that man she had pursued, about a year ago. She said it just until she could find her own place to live in eventually. The housing project he was living in questioned him, because he was supposed to be living there by himself and they were not married but instead, he was supposed to have a regular address at his wife's home. Flattie got very angry and threatened to kill herself. She almost convinced him to move out of there to be with her and live together farther away.

Flattie eventually got her own place in the new town but continued living basically together with her "best friend", essentially spending every night together. She started telling me in the beginning of this year that they were sleeping together everynight, huddled close together, with little to no clothes. This was right around the time my own relationship with Vanille started to go south, and I didn't know what to think.

During this two years, Flattie has gotten increasingly physically demonstrative with her love interest. She kisses him on the mouth every time they meet, continues kissing and cuddling and stroking him and asking if he feels good. She has initiated sex two times, but according to her, has been turned down. She is very touchy-feely in public and spends most of the time, when we are in public somewhere, in his lap. At first she didn't sit in his lap when the wife was present, or touch him, but now she has also gotten the wife to sit with them, holding hands and crying together.

Flattie says she is his best friend, special friend, something no one else, especially his wife, can never be to him. He is reluctant to make other friends. He is clinically depressed. They are having a major relationship crisis with the wife. Flattie is telling the wife that she should just let Flattie take care of her man and rest. Flattie has suggested Flattie to take charge of his treatment and become his guardian in a way, and that the wife should give up and accept the situation.
 
So once Flattie had confided to me that she had managed to convince the hubs that he was better off without the wife, I felt I needed to intervene. I felt it was unfair to let a plot I had seen hatching in front of my eyes for two years, ONE I had actively encouraged by saying stuff like "Love comes in many shapes and sizes", "This stuff happens", "Maybe you should talk to her/him/together", "Maybe you should take your distance". And it was I, so to speak, who started this whole alternate-loving thing in my circle of friends.

So I talked to the wife and told her that she should not allow Flattie invade her privacy like that. Previously she had already said that she does not want to discuss her husband's treatment plans with her, and that she is taking charge of her hubbie's treatment, and that besides, he was not so unwell as Flattie thought. Flattie said that her husband was lying to her all the time, that he only told her things about the wife he resented and how badly he felt about their relationship. She has been telling this same thing for two years but only now to her face.

Flattie has severe paranoid thoughts about her rival. She for example thought that the wife was plotting her downfall, trying to separate her husband from the only one who truly understands him because the wife was a petty, envious soul who just wanted everything for herself. I said she was projecting her own negative qualities and fears onto this other person, but she said I was abusive and controlling myself.

Now Flattie has decided she wants to be friends with the wife so they can together move into taking better care of the hubbie. I told the wife that what I see happening is basically Flattie moving in to secure her place as the primary or "first wife". The wife had already decided there was no need for the two to be in contact, and I supported her in that and said that imho, people like Flattie won't stop unless you break off all contact with them and explain to them why, then refuse from "communicating" in the foreseeable future.
 
So everyone's in a crisis right now. Also, people seem to think I am the expert on what has been going on for the last two years. Everyone is very interested in hearing my perspective on things.

Now that I now longer wish to share that perspective, they are all turning to Flattie to hear "her side of the story". People are struggling with deciding on whose side to be on.

Especially one friend has taken the role of main confidante and supporter of the wife. This supporter friend contacts me all the time and asks me to give my perspective on stuff, if I have any news, what do I think etc. I don't want to talk to her but I feel I have to. This friend is a terrible gossip and basically lives for relationship drama. She is flourishing in this situation.

I like everyone involved and want to stay away. Everyone is gathering together on Friday and Saturday to talk this over, but I don't want to participate. So until then, I avoid phone and FB :).
 
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Thursday's happen to be the highlight of my week now, as that is the day I meet up with a group of people I now consider to be my best friends. I may not talk to any of them the rest of the week, except on fb, but meeting up with them once a week (usually as a group), to just sit and chat, watch movies, sew, etc is wonderful. Obviously not everyone can make it every week, but we try. The routine helps build that closeness, especially when the rest of the week is taken up with family and work activities. If I didn't have the set schedule, I'd probably never see them.

This was unfortunately exactly the type of group this cheating disaster has affected. All female particpants are part of the pow-wow (not an actual pow-wow btw, hadn't thought it might be offensive to Native American people o_0).

Hi Blackie,
It could be a misinterpretation on my part, as often can happen when reading the written word rather than hearing something expressed in person, but something is coming across in your last post that belies your statement that you are "quite content." You sound a bit angry and fed up.

I don't think isolating is the way to go now, for you, but perhaps you need a new set of friends. People who are able to really be friends without serving their own interests first, and who act with maturity and compassion. Keep looking, good people are out there. And be sure to be kind to yourself.

You are so right as always. I joined a self-help group for autistic women, and plan to talk to my psychologist about getting a diagnosis in order after she returns from holidays.
 
Wow! This situation sounds a little to familiar right now. Obviously the details are a bit different, but I fully understand the different sides rallying for supporters and attacking the other side. It's hard to stay neutral when your gut is telling you something is definitely wrong.

Best thing to do is NOT give your view point to uninvolved parties. Frankly it's nobody's business except those within the relationship, Flattie, wife and husband. You can certainly give your opinion to those involved, but I would be rather vague with anyone else. I just tell people, "keep in mind, there are always 2 sides to a story and in this case there are 3. Nothing is black and white, there is a lot of grey areas."
 
I love your shopping list Blackunicorn. It was nice to read and get a new prespective out of the second women. I would have to agree with you.
 
Finally progress!

I am so happy with myself for making a decision that I feel genuinely good about.

I've decided to quit the blame-everyone-else-for-your-troubles -game for now. Instead, I have my first AA meeting tomorrow. I hope I get up the courage to go. I have read a lot of the literature involved with this group and feel happy about their philosophy of accepting personal responsibility for things you can change and letting the rest go.

I've looked through a lot of self-help groups lately. I was thinking of going to one that is directed to family members of narcistic individuals, but decided against for now. I think I need to start learning how to separate my personal issues from everyone else's. A self-confessed drama-addict, I need to learn how to live with my own past and solve the questions and challanges it has brought to me, and start treating everyone else later (if ever).

I am now living at a shelter for women who have fallen on hard times, which is good, and I also contacted the police today and told him I want to start living in peace and not live in fear of my mother. I've read on how the AA people believe that everyone needs to hit their personal rock bottom before they can start to build up a life for themselves.

So now that I have broken up my relationship with everyone I truly care about, burnt away all my cash and some cash that's not mine too, run like an effin lunatic and gone past paranoia and desperation to the good calm place of knowing that really, it can't get any worse, I feel I'm finally ready to accept what has happened.

I have realized that I am an addictive personality. Everything fun and pleasurable, I try once and I am hooked. Nothing except complete abstinence can help me now while I am on my road to recovery.

I feel a lot of anger for some stuff that's been done to me. I am resentful, for example, for the constant head injury my mother courteously dealt during my formative years. I hope I can one day get an MRI scan and really know what has happened, i.e. which areas have been hit and how hard, but it's not super-important now.

Another thing I would like to learn is how to deal with being continuously molested as a child. I know people do live happy productive lives and have partners etc., but I'm not there yet. I would like to develop a sexuality and intimacy that feels good to me, and not just use sex and love as teddybears to cure the terrible inner longing I have.

And third on the list is learning how to cry again. Everytime I cried as a child, somebody would hit me in the face or in the head or throw something at me or pull at my hair or try to smother me etc., no need to go into great and gory detail right now. I tried to keep an about face, but would also get hit for that. Laughing and smiling were considered disrespectful, since there was nothing to laugh about, and about face showed I was secrectly plotting something. So when I was around seven or so, I discovered that everytime I felt something, I could calmly, in my mind's eye, take it, examine it, and then crush it into little pieces and let it die. So except somewhat drugged but generally benevolent stupour, I've not felt anything since I went to school, and everytime I felt real anger, joy, sadness or fear, I've smothered it.

I've read a lot of stuff people who have been tortured have written, and I realize that is what has been done to me. It's not nice to admit that you have been tortured with abandon, sincerity and spite for 20 years, and probably moreso, since the really early stuff I've tried to forget about (like the real reason for my head injury I strongly suspect I have). Also, my lack of empathy is a little more palatable now, since everytime somebody is speaking about their troubles, I'm secrectly scoffin like "yeah, you think you have it difficult! try me life for a change".

I think I became so emotionally distant since everytime I protested, my mum would tell me that I knew nothing of real suffering, that there were a plenty of kids who were worse off, living in war zones for example, and nowadays I think she was wrong. I had it pretty darn bad. Not to wallow in self-pity, but honestly, no mum should be hell-bent on killing their kids. People don't believe families that bad exist, but they really do. Just so you know.
 
Good for you! Keep us updated as we hope all the best for you!

PS I's like to see you change your tag line to something more positive :D
 
I couldn't read this without feeling the urge to say 'something'. But I honestly don't know what to say. I am sorry. Sorry for all the suffering and the lost childhood as well as the missing normality you are still struggling with. I hope you will be able to work through this with time and some official help, but after reading this I have to say: I have no idea at all what this must be like. Just wishing for the best outcome possible for you.
 
There's so much here I'd wish I'd known earlier. Wish we'd known. Other than that I don't really know what to say either...

In any case, we ARE still your friends and we're here if you need to talk...
 
Aw BU...

the only thing I can say is that I'm happy you are facing these phantoms, and with determination. Oftentimes things happen to us and we deal by pushing them down down down until it's almost like they never happened. Then life reminds us that yes, it's all still there. Sending you nothing but hugs and positivity on this new journey.

Whenever you're able, keep us in the loop. I hope you gain some clarity and understanding soon.
 
oh, BlackUnicorn, that was so beautiful. Welcome to reality. As someone else who crawled over shattered glass to get better, I assure you, someday you will feel better. You will know it was worth it.

I'm so glad to hear you're looking for help, and that you're letting some folks help you, and beginning to learn to help yourself.

My heart goes out to you. <3
 
Hugs!

BlackUnicorn,

I am so glad to hear that you are doing what you need to do to be safe and work through past scars (and recent ones...). I don't know if you remember me, but I remember you from when I was on here about a year ago.

I can hear in your "voice" that you are an incredibly sensitive and lovable soul. AA is a great place to go for support and to learn more about yourself as well as others.

You deserve to be happy and healthy (emotionally and physically). I send hugs and best wishes to you! Feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk.
 
back to bedlam

My stubborn refusal to deal landed me here three weeks ago, but it was for the better. Now they tell me I'm too well for a closed ward, so I might look at going home in two weeks!

Thankyou everyone whose commented or Pmed me. I will answer when I get better. And I do remember everyone, including you Lady. Thank you so much. I'm in recovery now.
 
You are alive.

That's the real first step of anything: being alive. Committing to staying that way is the second. Then we get to figure out how to do the rest.

It sounds like you're well on your way. Congratulations. :)
 
night musings

I agree, lfag!

I can't sleepzzz and am a little overwrought. I'm so glad I have this blog and this forum.

I have been thinking a lot about marriage and what it means to me. And how I go about things related to marriage and commitment.

I don't have a lot of good rolemodels when it comes to marriage. 90 % of the marriages I've seen are not happy. And by unhappy I mean that the partners are still on talking terma with each other and not actively trying to kill each other.
 
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