Trying to figure me/poly out

Well, I made an introduction and have been lurking for a couple of weeks now. I can definitely say I'm not poly because I have never actually been in a poly relationship but I still feel the same way about my two loves of my life. And the back story:

I've been married going on 14 years, together 16 to my beautiful, amazing wife. She's been the backbone of our relationship most of the time. We've had our ups and downs like any one in a any kind of relationship would have and almost split a couple of years ago. We went to counseling and things have been pretty darn good the past couple of years. I wouldn't trade her for anything. It's a very deep love and companionship. I'll call her "Baby".

Now I also have my best friend who we'll call "sweetie" that I just adore and have since we've known each other, probably 13 years. We can tell each other literally everything. We've always had a connection, one that would be exactly like the one I have with Baby if we'd met first.

A while ago I was thinking a lot about Sweetie, and really thinking about our relationship together and what we mean to each other and how much I truly love and appreciate everything about her, just like I do Baby, and I started thinking about why is it fair that the only reason we can't be together is because I happened to meet Baby first. Oh well better luck next time, should've met Sweetie first.... I started to become upset about this notion. Sweetie comes over on occasion for dinner and drinks and to console her from again over her now ex boyfriend. We hope it's finally ex. But Sweetie jokingly said we should all get a compound and just all live together as one family.... That's what got me thinking about this a while ago. Baby said "yeah you can do all of the dirty stuff that I don't want to do with him", which obviously I'd be fine with Which also brings up the point of myself and Baby have different sex numbers but also still have wonderful sex I just want it more often and kinkier.

I believe there was a bit of truth in both of their statements, just not to the extent of let's start a relationship right now, which I wouldn't do anyway because of Sweeties recent break up. I love these two women with every fiber of my being and would do anything to make them feel loved and appreciated.

But reading the threads on here has definitely been eye opening and making me rethink my position on everything regarding relationships. A couple of questions that have been running through my head is am I really I love with Sweetie or am I just really horny for her? Do I have the fortitude to actually go through with even opening up to Baby much less Sweetie and have enough to make this V work out? I'm definitely finding some things out about myself and will be going to a therapist in the near future. Part of me can see this being an amazing relationship between us three but the other part sees me losing both or at least Baby because of it. All have been and are brought up on total monogamy, which is fairly standard form my readings.
Also this all started because of my feelings towards Sweetie so if she's not interested will I still want to keep my marriage open to others? I'm not one to jump into anything quickly and this has been growing for a number of years with Sweetie so maybe or maybe not. So many questions....

Thanks for taking the time to read this, it's been very helpful writing it all out. I'm sure there'll be more to come.

Cool story. I'm not getting any red flag vibes, which is a good sign. It doesn't sound like the usual "My wife and I are searching for a magical third to add to our relationship." It seems to be one of those organic, happened-naturally type of things. It also sounds like your wife is actually open to the idea, given the comment she made about Sweetie being able to do the nasty stuff Baby doesn't want to do.

I say just tell them what you've said here, even show them the post. Start with Baby obviously, since you need her consent and support before things with Sweetie could progress any further. And then just keep an open dialogue, be very open and supportive of what she has to say. Give her time to get used to the idea, since this has been stewing in your mind for a while and she'll have to play catch-up.

I doubt this is going to come as any kind of surprise for either one of them, given how close you all seem to be.

Take things one step at a time. Between steps, give everyone lots of time and space to get used to the changes. Make sure everyone has a safe space to speak up about their fears and concerns. Don't get hung up on goals or objectives, just let things happen naturally. You'll be fine!

Oh yeah, and remember that you're opening a can of worms. Right now, you're focused on "I love these two women and want them both in my life." Don't forget that once you open that door, it's a two-way street. Baby or Sweetie might also like the idea of having another partner. So make sure you're 100% okay with that before you bring it up, because otherwise you'll be a big hypocrite and that's just shitty.

Thanks for the advice SC. And it seems like very sound advice at that. I'll definitely be taking my time if it happens. Like I said I need to make sure I'm really feeling what I'm feeling or if it's just a pipe dream. Thanks again!

Also, make sure you're not just all such close friends that joking around about a thing like that is considered normal behaviour, rather than any kind of invitation. You would hate to have over-read the situation only to find the girls were "just having a laugh" and would actually be horrified to discover you'd been thinking of Sweetie in a romantic/lustful way for a long time.

There is great potential for Baby to feel betrayed and become very insecure and uncomfortable around your best friend IF it transpires that she has no idea of your inclination. Similarly, Sweetie might be weirded out to discover your interest has turned into something besides platonic friendship. (Has the subject EVER been broached, even in the distant past? No "almost" kisses, near misses between you two?)

So, as SchrodingersCat says, take it reeaaallyy slooowwllyyy until you can ascertain for sure that there is some degree of non-platonic interest on the past of Sweetie, and that Baby might be open to that in a non-kidding-around manner.

lunabunny said:

Also, make sure you're not just all such close friends that joking around about a thing like that is considered normal behaviour, rather than any kind of invitation. You would hate to have over-read the situation only to find the girls were "just having a laugh" and would actually be horrified to discover you'd been thinking of Sweetie in a romantic/lustful way for a long time.

There is great potential for Baby to feel betrayed and become very insecure and uncomfortable around your best friend IF it transpires that she has no idea of your inclination. Similarly, Sweetie might be weirded out to discover your interest has turned into something besides platonic friendship. (Has the subject EVER been broached, even in the distant past? No "almost" kisses, near misses between you two?)

So, as SchrodingersCat says, take it reeaaallyy slooowwllyyy until you can ascertain for sure that there is some degree of non-platonic interest on the past of Sweetie, and that Baby might be open to that in a non-kidding-around manner.

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Thank you lunabunny and I couldn't agree more. The more I think about it I don't think Baby would ever agree and would probably react exactly how you propose. Baby and I were on a date Saturday night and we were walking down a street in a very busy little neighborhood in our city and I caught 2 older business gentlemen checking her out as we walked by and I pointed it out and she said that I'm the only one she cares about checking her out.

Unfortunately she's mono to the core and has said in the past that she doesn't want to share me but also we have great sex but I really need more and kinkier sex an she knows my kinks but doesn't seem to care. Again we have sex about once a week and it's great but we may be best friends but I don't think we are completely compatible sexually.

And as far as Sweetie, we have had some very close calls but is 100% against cheating as her father did that to her mother and is strictly against it which I agree with her whole heartedly.

Thanks again for your response

Hi lovewith2,

I guess the thing to do at this time is, decide in your own mind if you are willing to risk your marriage in order to tell Baby that you are interested in polyamory. If you don't tell her, you'll never know how that would have played out. But if you do tell her, she may conclude that you and she are incompatible, and maybe there would be some truth to that. It depends on how important poly is to you ... and on how important Sweetie is to you. If things progress as far as confessing to Sweetie your love for her, you'll be taking another chance. On the other hand, if you never confess to her, you'll always wonder if she would have reciprocated.

It is a difficult situation. I hope you'll be able to work it out in your own mind, and that things will work out from there.

Sincerely,
Kevin T.

lovewith2 said:

Unfortunately she's mono to the core and has said in the past that she doesn't want to share me but also we have great sex but I really need more and kinkier sex an she knows my kinks but doesn't seem to care. Again we have sex about once a week and it's great but we may be best friends but I don't think we are completely compatible sexually.

And as far as Sweetie, we have had some very close calls but is 100% against cheating as her father did that to her mother and is strictly against it which I agree with her whole heartedly.

Thanks again for your response

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You're welcome. This is a difficult dilemma to be in, but one more thing occurred to me, reading your last response:

You say you desire more/kinkier sex than Baby is able or willing to provide. There's nothing wrong with wanting that or admitting to it.

However, what makes you think - even if you got together with Sweetie, regardless of Baby's involvement or approval - that SHE would be into that kind of sex, or interested in helping you explore your particular kinks?

Perhaps she IS into BDSM or some fetish type stuff, and maybe as her best friend you are aware of that already, but considering those things can be very specialised and particular, the fact that you *love* Sweetie may not mean you're any more sexually compatible with HER than you are with Baby. (i.e. What if it turns out you and Sweetie are both more the Dominant type, for instance? What if you love role-playing and she finds it ridiculous and a turn-off?)

Thanks lunabunny, I completely agree with you, I'm still trying to sort all of my feelings and needs out. I have scheduled my first therapy session for the 21st so I'm actually excited to get some of this off of my chest with a real human. No offense to you guys at all you have been great and have helped me a great deal in this.

I did wake up thinking about Sweetie again. It's almost every day that this happens. Baby and I had a most awesome weekend with friends out of town and I would have loved for Sweetie to be there as well but that didn't happen unfortunately. We were drinking pretty good and it's always easier to talk about tough stuff when you have some liquid courage up in ya

Well unfortunately that's all I have at this moment, I'm a pretty boring dude I guess. Well here's to keeping the dream alive!

I hope your therapy session goes well, I'm sure it will.

Thanks ktd, I'm sure it will.

So Sweetie has gotten back with her horrible boyfriend that is a complete douche. She just chooses to forget everything that has happened in the past and he actually makes her think that she has done him wrong. Maybe part of my infatuation is wanting to help her out of this situation? I love her and she is now the "godmother" of my son but it definitely makes me question her decision making. It's like she just can be alone even though 4 or so years ago and for the most part of me knowing her she's always been very independent then all of a sudden she can't.....

It just breaks my heart to know that she's settling, and I can be just fine knowing she was at least happy. I think I might have to unfortunately limit contact with her. I can't be her shoulder anymore after she keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Yes the definition of insanity......

Sorry to hear she's gotten back with her horrible boyfriend ... maybe she believes she doesn't deserve any better than that.

So it's been a couple of crazy weeks and had my first therapy session and that went very well. I hadn't seen sweetie in over a month which was good because I really was able to focus and try and figure things out.

There was a wedding last night of a mutual friends daughter of sweetie and I. Of course she was there looking just amazingly beautiful and I had to go by myself because Baby was on a camping trip. This was a good thing because I was able to test the waters a bit and ask some random pointed questions to try and gage her responses. Which went okay I guess but not seeing her in over a month and then seeing her all smoking hot has me crushing super f'ing hard. I'm going freaking crazy right now, but luckily I have my next therapy appointment Thursday so I can get a lot of this worked out I hope.

My therapist is really good and is already having me come up with answers to some questions she emailed me. Very good questions:

What are the pros and cons of opening up to your wife about these feelings? Even if you are not quite ready to share your ultimate dream/ goal with her, could you start by letting her know you have feelings for Sweetie? What would happen? What's the scariest thing about it?

What are the pros and cons of opening up to Sweetie about your feelings for her? You have a desire to all be together, and the first steps may be to see if that's what Sweetie would even want before rocking your marriage to express it.

All completely valid and good questions that I must answer. Still very mixed up about how I want to proceed. Any comments would be appreciated. Thank you!

A couple of points:

- It seems you've identified Sweetie by her real name in your update, above. You might want to edit that, or if it's too late, get a Mod to edit it for you.

- In September, you said Sweetie had gotten back with her old boyfriend, yet you made no mention of him being her "date" at the wedding. Did they break up again?

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I think it's great that you are addressing these issues with a therapist. Keep doing that. It's possible you're obsessing over Sweetie (this wannabe White Knight to a damsel in distress behaviour) as much as being "in love" with her.

As a few of us had advised in earlier replies, I definitely concur with the therapist that it'd be prudent to ascertain IF Sweetie even has any kind of romantic interest in you at this stage, before attempting to seriously broach the subject with Baby or make any move on Sweetie.

On that subject... you say you asked some pointed questions of Sweetie in order to "test the waters" - can you be more specific in regards to how you approached this, and what her response was?

It's sounding like approaching Sweetie first with your feelings may be the thing to do. Like, don't even tell Baby about those feelings and poly unless Sweetie expresses a mutual interest first.

So I finally had another session with my therapist and we discussed coming clean with both of them but since my primary relationship is with Baby I need to honor our relationship first. Baby would ask if I had talked to Sweetie yet and if I did she may be more hurt since I didn't come to her first since we are married. So I'm going to tell Baby first and I will tell Sweetie not long after. For anything more than to get it off of my chest because it's seriously got me in a tail spin and I can't internalize it any longer. I think I might have Baby come to my next session and tell her there. I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable there. Again thank you for all of the help and advice. This site is truly awesome with amazing people!

Glad the site is helpful so far. I hope things go well with telling Baby.

The cat's out of the bag.....

So this just happened last night after I got home from a business trip:

I say hello to Baby and my son and start to unpack and what not. Baby follows me into the kitchen and asks me point blank "do you want to have other relationships?"

My body immediately turned numb and I was literally like a deer in headlights. She found the book in my nightstand that I completely forgot about. A couple of months ago I bought The Ethical Slut to possibly feed my curiosity about this open relationship thing.

Well she took it like I thought she would, she was devastated. Immediately she's feeling like she's not good enough, that even though I stated over and over that I would never try and replace her she feels the exact opposite, and rightly so just hearing about it. She definitely doesn't like the idea of me being with another woman and she can't fathom being with another man herself. Staunch monogamy ingrained.

So now we will be talking a lot and going to see a counselor or therapist in the very near future. She's completely freaked out right now and I'm doing everything I can to reassure her and show her that I'm still madly in love with her.

I'm sure I'll be updating this in the very near future....

When you say she took it like you thought she would, can you clarify if you admitted to having feelings for Sweetie, or did you simply admit to wanting to open the marriage in general?

A couple of months ago when you last posted, you were in therapy and it sounded like you were on track to finally broach the subject (with the therapist's help) to Baby about your feelings for Sweetie. From what you'd written in here, it sounded like you could no longer keep a secret of such magnitude from your wife, and were getting desperate to know one way or the other how she (and Sweetie) felt about opening up.

In the intervening time, what made you decide to say nothing after all, may I ask? Because in my experience, things usually go worse if one is "found out" to have been lying, hiding something or keeping a secret, rather than being up front and honest about it. Which is what happened, more or less, when Baby accidentally discovered the book you'd been reading. Now you have a lot of ground to make up to combat her fears - not only her obvious "freaking out" about not being enough - but the underlying distrust she will probably hold onto for a while, due to having stumbled on your secret desire for another lover. She may feel that if you could hide such a major thing from her, you could very well be hiding a lot more.

She did ask because I told her that I kind of went down a spiral all of a sudden and she asked what possibly could have caused such a dramatic change and I was about to but told her I wasn't ready to talk about it, so unfortunately I didn't. And I was terrified of how she would have reacted given her already obvious shock and dismay.

I assume you meant this discussion took place a few months back.

Most spouses would react with shocked dismay if they find out their loved one is spiralling downward emotionally, without any obvious or understandable reason. Especially if they ask why and are told their partner doesn't wish to discuss it with them. It's your right to talk, or not, of course. However Baby's reaction is totally understandable and I'd be surprised if your partial admission back then didn't trigger her to be on alert re: your mental health and overall well-being.

I guess this was one reason I'd previously said it might be a good idea to ascertain if Sweetie even has any romantic interest in you - because if she doesn't/didn't, it might've made your dilemma a non issue, presuming your "poly" feelings exclusively related to her.

If you're still seeing your therapist, do you think Baby would be willing to go into therapy with you?