poly/mono advice needed

Chloects

New member
My partner and I have been in a committed realatiosnhiop for 8 years. 3 years ago we started swinging to add some variation and excitement to our lives. This worked for a while but then my partner asked about finding a single girl. At the time I was open to this as I have a much lower sex drive and I thought this would satisfy his needs better. He found one and our situation has now evolved into something more like Poly as he cares for this girl as well. To him this is better as he did not like the randomness of swinging and prefers to have feelings for someone. However I do not think we have gone about it the right way; I did not know he cared for this girl until it was too late. Last night he told me that he had been seeing her on Mondays while I was at work without my knowing ( and it had already been discussed that I was not comfortable with him seeing her while I was at work as to me it did not seem fair that I am working while he is hanging out with her; he works but has his own business and can manipulate his schedule and right now does not have full time work as I do.). The original terms were for her to see him once a week and all 3 of us to hang out every other weekend. Now he is letting me know that he did Mondays without my knowledge as that was not enough time with her. I am trying to be fair and open minded and really need to hear from some poly people about how they deal with time issues. he wants everything to be 50/50 between me and her but I feel like I've got 8 years in with my partner and am now pretty much being told this is the situation I have to deal with to continue to make us work. He is very clear that he does not want to lose me but feels like this is who he is. Any advice you could offer us would be greatly appreciated as I am really afraid that this is going to break us up and I don't want that.
 
So, he cheated on you with her.

You guys had all talked together and come up with the structure of how your relationship would work, and he (and she) violated those, not by accident, but deliberately and often.

The open and honest way to have gone about this would have been for the three of you to sit down and talk about how he was having feelings for her, and that he would want to spend some time alone with her and, so that it wouldn't take away from either your time with him, or your time with her (or with the three of you together) he would rearrange his work schedule to make it work. It would have been something that you could have discussed, each could have brought up concerns about it, and you could have reached an agreement about the change before proceeding.

So no wonder you are feeling hurt and that your trust has been betrayed.

Time to get things back on track - I really would suggest that the three of have a sit-down and talk about your evolving needs and concerns, and try to work together to find out whether there is a solution where everyone can be happy. Also, you need to reaffirm that any changes that are desired can be discussed openly and honestly between the three of you, rather than anybody going behind anybody's back and lying.
 
You and he have built a life together, whereas his relationship with her is very new and who knows if it'll work out long-term yet? Therefore, for him to want everything to be equal between you and her is not reasonable. It sounds like he's in the throes of NRE, or " new relationship energy"... basically he's letting himself get caught up in all these strong emotions and hormones and not acting rationally. He needs to recognize this, make amends to you for the lying, and take things a lot slower.

I would encourage you both to check out the How-To Guides section of this excellent website to begin to get some basic principles in place as you move from swinging to rule-breaking to, hopefully, actual ethical poly: http://www.morethantwo.com/

Best of luck!
 
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