SuperbOwl Logistics

Reverie

Active member
The situation:

- Metamour likes to pretend I do not exist (used to be DADT, but we're about a step beyond that now, to where she knows, but does not like to see evidence).
- We've divvied up our days of the week such that they begin and end around 8-8:30 p.m., which usually works nicely.
- Boyfriend's best friend—who is also a partner of mine—will be in town this weekend, and the two fellows would like to watch the SuperbOwl together.
- I love being domestic with the two of them, and have offered to cook snacks for them and keep them company, though I don't care much for the game.
- Metamour's time is not supposed to end until 8ish, but the game starts at 6:30.
- Metamour also does not care much for the game, nor for boyfriend's BFF.

The question:

- How to handle the time-dividing during the game?

The possible solutions:

- Boyfriend invites metamour over for half of the game, kicks her out at half-time. I come over with food at that point. (Seems rude to me to kick her out, but this was his suggestion.)
- Boyfriend frames it as a party, invites several more people, explains that I will be there because I have offered to cook, and lets her make her choice about being in my presence. (Possibly miffs her because would shave off about 1.5 hours of "her" time, since there is no way she'll actually opt in.)
- I opt out of the game, therefore losing out on time with TWO lovers at once. Boyfriend's BFF is leaving right after the game. (Ugh.)
- I host the "party" and boyfriend shows up around 8-8:30 after leaving her presence. (I have the shittier TV, sound system, and am known to be indifferent on the topic of football. No guarantee that anyone would actually come.)
- We split the difference a little, and I give up time on Saturday to put toward her Sunday deficit. (Would mean canceling my Saturday dinner plans with my two lovers.)

Absolutely none of these seem like a good solution to me, and I really wish she would just learn to tolerate my presence, but you can't force a thing like that. Can any of you see a better solution that I have not come up with yet? This all seems terribly petty, but terribly petty things have a way of blowing up with metamour, and she and boyfriend generally do not have great communication (i.e., he can't present a similar menu of options to her and ask what she'd prefer, because often even him ASKING sets her off).
 
I think your boy friend suggestion is the best you show up at 830 after she leaves that way you're not sacrificing any of your time with him and she's not sacrificing any of her time with him and you both get half of the football game
 
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Seems that he's now taking that option off the table, realizing that she will likely throw a hissy fit when she realizes what is happening. :p
 
I just decided to bow out. Told him he can offer it to her, and if she doesn't want it, I'll take it. If she does want it, I'll find something useful to do with my time. There is certainly no doubt that I have plenty to do in my life.

If she decides that she'd rather not spend her Sunday watching something she doesn't like with two dudes that include one she doesn't get along well with, it will be a bonus for me.
 
Well, because it's the middle of the event, and if she is asked/expected to leave in the middle of the event, she will have to think about the fact that my imminent arrival is the reason, and she is made uncomfortable by being reminded of my existence. I know. It's unhealthy and silly. Sometimes it's tough breaks being madly in love with an awesome person whose other partner is immature.

Ideally, he should be able to say to her, "Hey, I know there is an event currently happening, but Reverie really wants to spend some time with me and Sam before Sam leaves town at the end of the game, so I'll have to ask that you either leave at your normal time, or that we all hang out together."

And she would be totally reasonable about it. But she won't be, so instead, he has to frame it in terms that omit my existence:

"Did you want to watch the SuperbOwl with me and Sam [whom she doesn't really like] or did you have other things you'd rather be doing?"

Which makes it an all or nothing thing. Part of me worries that she will say yes ONLY to spite/cockblock me (because she's previously made statements that made it clear to me that she places extra value on time that she perceives has been taken from me). But maybe she won't. She's been occasionally surprisingly charitable recently, compared to how she's been historically.

Either way, I refuse to be the source of the stress, and her childish antics rarely squeeze more than an eyeroll out of me anymore. I have other stuff I could be doing, and I'll get to see Sam plenty more times over the course of my life, I'm sure. If it makes life easier for everyone for me to bow out, then I will go do something super girly like bake a cake and drink champagne. :)
 
It's nice of you to bow out and be the more mature one here. I do wonder, as a close follower of your blog, why Rider continues to keep up with her shenanigans. I think that if my partner participated in a relationship like that I would start questioning his integrity and possibly lose interest in being with him. Especially as this stuff is having an impact on your life too.
I hope things work out for the best!
 
The thing is...Rider is SUCH an incredible human being with a heart of gold. Walking away from him feels more foolish to me than staying.

It's true that sometimes I take issue with his standards when it comes to other people—I hold myself to higher standards (emotionally, intellectually, communicatively, physically) than a lot of the people he's interested in, and especially Claire, so it chafes that it doesn't seem to matter much.

But the truth of the matter is that I really want to be with him, and being with him means tolerating her. And I'm a really nice person! I'd be totally cordial and even friendly if she could learn to grit her teeth through being in my presence.

And speaking of that very thing: so a more recent development is that he told me a little while ago that she does want to hang out for the game, and he thinks he DOES want to have a party after all. Now THAT irritated me, because I'd offered the party as a potential solution, and he'd balked when it meant excluding her, but apparently it's fine when it means excluding me.

So I bitched at him a little and told him that he needs to ask her if I can be there, because if he's throwing a party and I'm not invited—instead I'm all alone—that's just plain rude. So we'll see what she says. If she says no, I may very well write her a letter. I am tired of using his easily cowed self as a middleman. It's about time I had a conversation with her. I am a year into this polyship, and things are getting VERY serious between me and Rider, and I'm tiring of being an inconvenient fact for her; it's about time I achieved personhood in her eyes.
 
It's true that sometimes I take issue with his standards when it comes to other people—I hold myself to higher standards (emotionally, intellectually, communicatively, physically) than a lot of the people he's interested in.

That's how it is with Nate, most of the people he associate are losers. Its like hes scraping the bottom of the barrel. I know he'd like to find an attractive, start, hardworking woman to be fwb with but he hasn't found any willing to date him long term if at all.he pretty much takes what he can get but recently he's decided that smoking is a deal breaker for him which kind of limits it because most women he runs across are smokers
 
Re (from Reverie):
"Boyfriend's best friend -- who is also a partner of mine -- will be in town this weekend, and the two fellows would like to watch the SuperbOwl together."

Heh ... anyone who has ever spotted the Superb Owl knows that it is truly a magnificent bird to see.

How come you can't shave some of your time off of another day besides Saturday? or could it at least be a week after this coming Saturday? What if you agreed to shave a larger chunk of time off of some day (or time off more than one day) to sweeten the deal for letting you have the Superbowl which is important (extra valuable) to you?

I guess the bottom line is you have a difficult hair-trigger metamour, and Rider chooses to keep her as a girlfriend. Perhaps not a wise choice on his part? Regardless, there's nothing you can do about that variable, it is superglued into the equation. Arrangements are going to be difficult, no matter what.

Re (from Reverie):
"Seems that he's now taking that option off the table, realizing that she will likely throw a hissy fit when she realizes what is happening."

Which option is he removing? Oh, you mean the one where Claire leaves at the normal 8:00 or 8:30 time?

Re (from Reverie):
"I have other stuff I could be doing, and I'll get to see Sam plenty more times over the course of my life, I'm sure. If it makes life easier for everyone for me to bow out, then I will go do something super girly like bake a cake and drink champagne. :)"

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Re (from Reverie):
"I'd offered the party as a potential solution, and he'd balked when it meant excluding her, but apparently it's fine when it means excluding me."

See, now that's not even Claire's behavior; that's Rider's behavior.

Re:
"I may very well write her a letter."

Might be a good idea.
 
Sounds like you've really thought through the options on your end. I've also been a close follower of your blog, and it seems that this really lies on Rider's shoulders as the hinge. If he wants to spend that time with you, it should be his time to give. I can't imagine bargaining for a mere 90 minutes and requiring my metamour to give up that time on another day so that everything's "equal." The lack of flexibility on Claire's part is irksome, but I do believe Rider needs to work on being more direct and upfront with her (which sounds like an ongoing problem). If she doesn't want to be "reminded" of you, then simply stating that he has plans that will require him to cut their date short by two hours. While it may result in a "shitstorm" from Claire, his avoidance of being direct just serves to reinforce her rigidty.

Ultimately, I totally understand your frustration in this situation (and the history of many past situations like this one).
 
The two of them ended up arguing about this for most of Saturday night, after which Claire grudgingly agreed that we could both be there. Except then, in the morning, she changed her mind. And then she changed it back. And then she changed it again. In the end, Rider was more pissed off than I have ever seen him (he is a very easy-going, happy-go-lucky kind of guy), and he made her drop him off early (around 4 p.m.) and refused to see her after the game, which she had requested.

Before the party, while Rider, Sam, and I were setting things up, Rider talked to Sam and me, confiding in us that he's not sure he wants things to continue with Claire. I am being very careful to remain neutral in my words, because even though I think that their relationship is unhealthy and that Claire is difficult and immature, I want Rider to make his own decision without influence from me.

Rider said that that morning, he'd been out to brunch with Claire and her GBF (gay best friend), and GBF had asked Rider whether I was cool about both of us being at the party, and he told him yes, and GBF had looked at Claire and been like, "If everyone else is cool with it, why can't you just be cool about it too?" So even her own friends think that she needs to grow up about it—it's not just me.

I drafted a letter that I am going to send to Claire if Rider decides to stay with her. In it, I explain that she has nothing to fear from me; I'm not trying to drive her out of Rider's life, and I've done a lot behind the scenes to try to make things between them run more smoothly. I don't ask to become her best friend, but I do think that we need to be able to at least attend the same events and be polite and cordial to each other. She likes to pretend that I don't exist, but the fact of the matter is that I do.

I had a fine time at the party, cooked up a storm, and got lots of affection from both of my guys. This party was the first time that we all were sharing affection without really toning it down for the other people present, who didn't necessarily know about my involvement with Sam. They've known Sam for years, since he's Rider's BFF, and I wasn't sure how much Sam is comfortable with them knowing, but I guess he's pretty cool with it. No one acted weird.

So overall, things turned out to be a success, although I bought/made way too much food because I thought that Claire and her friends were coming, since her flip-flop switch was on "yes" while I was at the store. Rider's fridge is so full of buffalo wings right now, haha. I just feel sorry for him that he has to consider a difficult decision right now.
 
Glad to hear the "owl watching party" :) went well. Jeezh, Claire sure does have some issues, doesn't she? I see what you mean.

I have a situation very slightly like that, in that my metamour isn't comfortable seeing PDA's between me and his wife ... therefore she and I refrain when in his presence. But that's where the similarity ends! He doesn't mind sharing space with me at all. He likes me. It's okay for me to exist in his universe!

If Rider decides to stick it out with Claire, I hope you'll be able to send her that letter and that it will soften her heart a bit.
 
If he decided to stay with her even if you send that letter doesn't mean she will want to share space with you. I personally don't want to have anything to do with the people nate are involved with. Even if they were to send me a letter wouldn't change things for me. I have a relationship with nate, what he does with other people is his business but "our " life is our life and has nothing to do with other people he's involved with.

sorry I'm not sure why its showing an angry face lol the point of this post was just to give you a different perspective where my style of practicing Polly is not where our other relationships are intertwined basically mate spend time with people during his time and out of the home, our family time is our time and we don't include other people. The exception would be Jane because she's a good friend of mine I invited her to everything but that's not going to ever happen with anyone else
 
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If he decided to stay with her even if you send that letter doesn't mean she will want to share space with you. I personally don't want to have anything to do with the people nate are involved with. Even if they were to send me a letter wouldn't change things for me. I have a relationship with nate, what he does with other people is his business but "our " life is our life and has nothing to do with other people he's involved with.

basically mate spend time with people during his time and out of the home, our family time is our time and we don't include other people.

I think that, at least based on the info in these quotes, your situation is quite different, though. They don't share a home, and he has never expressed any desire to live with her, nor indicated that he thinks of their time as "family time." I would never try to tag along on a date of theirs or insist that I be invited to HER house or HER events or anything like that.

It's only for group occasions such as a party he's throwing, a musical performance of his, a birthday celebration of his out at a bar, etc., that I think she should chill out and accept the fact that yes, we are both in his life and will be at these events. Instead, she refuses to go if she knows I'm going to be there, then complains about feeling left out when it was her own choice not to go.

The reason I think the letter might help is that it might help to a) humanize me in her eyes and b) reassure her that I am not a threat to her; I am not trying to push her out of Rider's life. If it doesn't, I guess there's nothing else I can do. I do know that Rider is pretty fed up with the whole thing.
 
Yeah, you could express in the letter that you at least wish she wouldn't forbid you to ever (ever ever ever) be in her presence. A superbowl party seems to be an example where maybe she could stand to make an exception and share a little space with you. [shrug] That's my perception, anyway.

It's cool if she doesn't want to share space with you on most occasions. Metamours don't have to be BFF's.
 
^^ That was exactly my thinking. I'm not trying to be her best friend, or even her friend at all, really, if she's not into it. I just don't want a prolonged "custody battle" every time there's a shindig.
 
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