Hey all,
This is my first post. I will give a little background and describe my thoughts..
Am a woman in mid-20s. After a long and in the end unsuccessful monogamous relationship a few years ago, I tried first avoiding love for the rules and norms I felt that it implied and the negative impact it had had on me, but eventually I started redefining my ideas about relating to others.
I fell in love and was introduced to relationship anarchy and it made me realize that I could develop deep relations not neccessarily meaning the negative sides of traditional relationship. This made me more secure in actually having relations and following my feelings, without setting up boundaries for myself or others. It was not always easy but it was logical and made sense to me. Since then I've had a number of different relations, spontanous one-time experiences, continuous dating and also longer and deeper connections to people.
For about half a year I've had a relation with someone who has been aware of my thoughts from well before he fell in love with me, and eventually I fell in love with him, but he is not experienced in RA/poly, and has endured a lot of insecurity and confusion about this. He expresses that I am the centre of everything for him, that he is not interested in anything else, but that he is open to the theory of it and wanting me to be free and happy. Still the feeling that he might not be the centre of my feelings makes him freak out and he has gotten very insecure.
Although he is basically my primary relation when it comes to both feelings and everyday life, his doubts and insecurity has gotten us in an assymetry, where I need take most responsibility and initiative, which does not make the relation better, since this has established these roles more solidly. And I am not all-knowing and solid in my beliefs myself, I need constructive work both together and individually. It also gives me bad conscience in the way that I sometimes feel like cheating or acting unethical when it comes to having other relations, which is not an original feeling for myself but I feel it because I'm afraid of hurting him. I feel selfhish, at the same time as I know that a monogamous relation would not work out for me and would thus not solve anything.
It is a dilemma in the way that I do feel so much more secure from not having a strict relationship, whereas this makes him insecure. We try to communicate but I am not really sure about how we are to understand each other fully and find a solution, and also about what, how and how much I should tell about my other relations. I don't mind telling anything really, but I want to do it right. Maybe we need to define things more clearly, but at the same time avoiding setting boundaries was how I found my way into this, and I am not sure how to define things and how to make them still work out, or work better.
I've read some threads around the forum and find it very interesting, but I felt I wanted to make this post to see if there are any thoughts or ideas considering my situation?
It got quite long, but hopefully someone managed to get through it and might have some advice?
This is my first post. I will give a little background and describe my thoughts..
Am a woman in mid-20s. After a long and in the end unsuccessful monogamous relationship a few years ago, I tried first avoiding love for the rules and norms I felt that it implied and the negative impact it had had on me, but eventually I started redefining my ideas about relating to others.
I fell in love and was introduced to relationship anarchy and it made me realize that I could develop deep relations not neccessarily meaning the negative sides of traditional relationship. This made me more secure in actually having relations and following my feelings, without setting up boundaries for myself or others. It was not always easy but it was logical and made sense to me. Since then I've had a number of different relations, spontanous one-time experiences, continuous dating and also longer and deeper connections to people.
For about half a year I've had a relation with someone who has been aware of my thoughts from well before he fell in love with me, and eventually I fell in love with him, but he is not experienced in RA/poly, and has endured a lot of insecurity and confusion about this. He expresses that I am the centre of everything for him, that he is not interested in anything else, but that he is open to the theory of it and wanting me to be free and happy. Still the feeling that he might not be the centre of my feelings makes him freak out and he has gotten very insecure.
Although he is basically my primary relation when it comes to both feelings and everyday life, his doubts and insecurity has gotten us in an assymetry, where I need take most responsibility and initiative, which does not make the relation better, since this has established these roles more solidly. And I am not all-knowing and solid in my beliefs myself, I need constructive work both together and individually. It also gives me bad conscience in the way that I sometimes feel like cheating or acting unethical when it comes to having other relations, which is not an original feeling for myself but I feel it because I'm afraid of hurting him. I feel selfhish, at the same time as I know that a monogamous relation would not work out for me and would thus not solve anything.
It is a dilemma in the way that I do feel so much more secure from not having a strict relationship, whereas this makes him insecure. We try to communicate but I am not really sure about how we are to understand each other fully and find a solution, and also about what, how and how much I should tell about my other relations. I don't mind telling anything really, but I want to do it right. Maybe we need to define things more clearly, but at the same time avoiding setting boundaries was how I found my way into this, and I am not sure how to define things and how to make them still work out, or work better.
I've read some threads around the forum and find it very interesting, but I felt I wanted to make this post to see if there are any thoughts or ideas considering my situation?
It got quite long, but hopefully someone managed to get through it and might have some advice?