Married, non practicing poly woman

Castava

New member
I decided to explore polyamory about 15 years ago, with my then-husband. He admitted to me, after several years of marriage, that he was bisexual, and so we agreed to open up our marriage. Eventually, we became a triad with the man I'm married to now. I think triad is the right word- we were all three in a romantic and sexual relationship. It was all kinds of fun and fulfilling for me. I know they were enjoying themselves, too, but jealousy got the better of my ex after 6 years. My ex got his girlfriend pregnant, on purpose and against my wishes, and our marriage broke up a few years later. He and I have two daughters, who didn't know about their parents' polyness, until I decided they deserved to know about their half-sibling. My youngest struggled with the news much more than my oldest, unfortunately. I think both girls took the news that their parents weren't monogamous fairly well, but my youngest was afraid she would lose her dad to the new child.

We lived in another country then, far away from our native home, the US. My ex drifted apart from both me and our other partner, but the partner and I got closer. Until he was pressured by his family into an arranged marriage. I didn't want to have an affair with a married man, even though we had been together for 7 years at that point, but I couldn't let him go. I honestly tried, and I even told him our relationship was over, but I couldn't go through with it. He came to my house and cried and begged me to stay in the relationship, and even though I felt horribly guilty, I simply felt incapable of turning away from him.

By the end of the year, I knew I was getting divorced and going back home. I was totally heartbroken, both because of the break-up of my marriage and because I would be losing my other love. Those were such bleak days for me, and I fell into a deep depression. I did sign up for a ploy meet up in he town I would be moving to, though, hoping that finding poly friends would be helpful.

Then, about a month before I had to leave the country, I told my BF that I had signed up for the meet up, and he told me he would divorce his wife. He told me he wanted to marry me, and only me, and that he didn't want either of us to continue being poly. At that point, after months of misery, I told him I would give up being poly so he and I could be together. And I believed I could.

I had to wait two years for my now-husband to get to the US, and although I was faithful in practice, I didn't stop having feelings for other men. I moved back to my ex's home town for a while, and I resisted his suggestion that we get back together until his new wife got to the US with their son. I got a huge crush on a man from the church (UU church, actually, not a specifically Christian Church) I attended. When I moved to Texas, I got a crush on a coworker. I'm sexually interested in a man in a political group I joined. It never ends.

I've gently introduced the subject to my husband, and I pointed out that he was happy in a poly relationship for years. He's still not interested. I'm not 100 % sure he's faithful to me, but he doesn't want me to have a relationship with anyone else.

I still don't know that I can be as happy as I want to be in a monogamous relationship, but I do love my husband and I am trying.
 
Dear Castava,

My condolences for the hard road your life seems to have taken you. For what it's worth, I think you have incredible self resilience and a strong ethic.

You may be surprised to hear, but there are quite a few monogamous people on this forum, myself amongst them. Most of us are open to the idea of polyamory, and support the philosophy of it, but choose monogamy for the time being. A few of us are also deliberately single, again for the time being.

If you have chosen a monogamous relationship with your current partner but are struggling with feelings for others and fear that these feelings can lead to an affair, I would recommend the book "not just friends" by Shirley Glass, which, amongst other things, describes the theory of attraction to others and how to deal with these very normal emotions and avoid the disaster of an affair.

With kind regards and best wishes,
Shaya.
 
Greetings Castava,
Welcome to our forum. Please feel free to lurk, browse, etc.

It sounds like you are in a really tight spot right now. FWIW I support you in whatever you decide to do. Which for now appears to be staying with your husband and trying to be monogamous. Which really is possible, you may have feelings for other men but that doesn't mean you have to act on those feelings.

Glad you could join,
Sincerely,
Kevin T., "official greeter"

Notes:

There's a *lot* of good info in Golden Nuggets. Have a look!

Please read through the guidelines if you haven't already.

Note: You needn't read every reply to your posts, especially if someone posts in a disagreeable way. Given the size and scope of the site it's hard not to run into the occasional disagreeable person. Please contact the mods if you do (or if you see any spam), and you can block the person if you want.

If you have any questions about the board itself, please private-message a mod and they'll do their best to help.

Welcome aboard!
 
Hi Castava - welcome to the Forum and best of luck in working out a solution with your husband! Al
 
Thanks, kdt26417 and Al99!

It's good to be able to discuss what happened, when normally I simply can't.
 
I'm not really contemplating cheating

I know how to resist my sexual and romantic urges ( I'm a romantic idealist by nature, by the way ). What I don't understand is why my husband, who happily participated in a poly relationship for over six years, won't even think about it now. He won't admit he's bisexual, either, which is bizarre to me. He's had years of evidence that even though I'm very hetero myself, I don't care at all if other people are bi or gay or whatever. He admits to having sexual relationships with a least one man before he met me and my ex, but he says that he prefers sex with women, so he isn't bi. I don't know why he can't be honest with himself, if that's what is happening here.

The alternative is that he isn't being honest with me. I'm an introvert and he's a total extrovert, so he's gone a lot, supposedly hanging out with friends. And maybe he is, but I have wondered if he tells me the truth. Part of the problem is that in the culture he's from, he had to lie all the time. He lied to his family about me for years, and I've caught him lying to me a few times. He's used to making the calculation that if he feels especially compelled to do something, even if there are reasons why he shouldn't, he can do it and lie to escape some of the consequences. I mean, it really is worse in his culture than in mine. I keep quiet about much of my personal life to my family, so I do understand that part. But I try, I really try not to lie to him. I'm afraid that when we got married, I automatically became one of those people who he had to lie to. I'm probably not explaining it well enough, but I do have reason to be concerned.

So, for all I know, he could be out there having sex with both men and women and feeling justified in lying to me about it. He's told me that he doesn't want to lose m to someone else like my ex did, but there's the little fact that my ex majorly betrayed my trust. It wasn't being poly that broke us up, but I guess my husband is insecure enough to doubt that.

But of course I could be wrong in my suspicions, too. I'm not certain about anything except what I want, and what I expect of myself.
 
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Forgive me for continuing my thought process

Since I have to mostly keep my poly tendencies secret, I haven't had the opportunity to work through my position like this before. I admit that I'm mostly doing this for my own sake, although other thoughts would be appreciated. And id be thrilled if someone else learned something while watching me work through my situation.

So while writing, these are some of the conclusions I've come to

A. I don't understand how anyone could be content to go from being poly to monogamous, since I can't make that transition comfortably myself.

B. Past experience has taught me that my husband could be lying about how he feels. Even though I don't want to be that kind of liar, myself, it's not as if I don't understand the impulse to lie. I come from a religious family who wouldn't accept my preferred way of life. I've lied to them. I'm in no way perfect myself.

C. I don't think there's enough trust in my marriage as it is. So really, my marriage is no shape to withstand another poly relationship, anyway.

D. But. My husband elicited a promise from me to become monogamous at a time when I was miserable and vulnerable, partially because of his decision to marry someone else who he didn't tell about his relationship with me. I understood his decision, partially because he explained to me that in his county, there was no such thing as social security or senior housing facilities. As the oldest son, he had a duty to his parents to take care of them when they got old, and a woman from his culture would understand and help him. I thought he had a right to have children, which he couldn't do with me. But still, it put me in the worst position. He could have refused, for my sake, especially after he found out I was getting divorced. He could have let me go, knowing that I had a right to live my life in a way more in tune with my values. But of course I didn't want to let him go, either.

Ultimate conclusion: It was, and is, complicated.
 
Forgive me again, I can't seem to stop myself

What I have to decide, and what I've had to decide for a while, is what is most important to me right now. It's complicated by the following:

I do love my husband, and I have for the last several years.

He left his much loved parents, siblings, and friends to come to my country and marry me, based on my promise to stay monogamous.

He's an immigrant, and a member of a religious and cultural minority that many people in America look on with suspicion and fear. And once again, that's because he married me.

If I decide I want to divorce him, he most likely will have to leave the US. Which, frankly, will be terrible for his career.

Under those circumstances, I'd feel like a horrible person if I made the decision to divorce. I already carry so much guilt over breaking up his first marriage, and I don't know how I could stand disrupting his life again.

On the other hand:

I suppose it's always an uphill battle to "be true to yourself."

Staying with him for the wrong reasons will only make me more and more resentful.

It's not like me being poly and him being, reportedly, mono, and our lack of perfect trust are our only problems.



Well, it's pretty clear to me that he and I probably need counseling.
 
Hi Castava,

Once again, sorry for the hard road in life you have been forced to go through. Mixing of cultures often results in a clash of ideals and values that can be hard to resolve. I'm sure if you were to go live amongst those of his culture, they would view you in a strange light as well for your values and beliefs.

You may get the help and support you want from this forum. More likely, I suspect you will get better advice from a counsellor in real life. I find this forum excellent for polyamory, good for relationships, good for sexuality (bisexuality issues, gay and lesbian rights, transgender, high libido, low libido, etc). But I find the forum relatively poorer when it comes to ethnic minorities, culture clashes, cultural awareness, disordered psychology and psychiatric concerns. Most (but not all) on this forum are white and privileged and without proper training, we can find it hard to view things from the perspective of a group with which we don't identify with. Some of us on this forum can do it well, but many, myself included, are unable to see things through the lens of someone whose shoes we have never trod in. A trained psychologist or counsellor however, who devotes his or her life to these sorts of issues and helping these sorts of people, can often do that due to the nature of their training and profession. I agree with Jenn that counselling is your best option for the issues you describe.

Nonetheless, I hope this forum helps you in other aspects. If you find some of us have strong opinions on what you should do, my only word of warning would be that a lot of us give advice based on our personal experience. Often what we advice you to do would work for us, with our cultural backgrounds and our life experiences, but may not be applicable for you.

You seem to me to be filled with some regret and pangs of anger. I would caution against allowing this to become contempt, as contempt has been thought to be the main destroyer of relationships.

Good luck. Your problems in your relationship seem to extend beyond polyamory. My relationship suffers similarly as well. My wife and I found this relationships vulnerability quiz useful to do separately and to compare our answers. I wonder if you might as well. It comes from the book by Shirley Glass I mentioned earlier.

Good luck, Castava. I wish you and your husband well,
Shaya
 
Thanks for the advice. I know my situation is a little odd, but I was hoping it wasn't unique. At this point, I'm used to discarding advice that doesn't apply to my situation, and I do understand that lots of it is just a matter of perspective. I understand because my perspective has changed quite a bit due to my circumstances.

I'm not so angry as I might seem. Or if I am, it's because I find myself in such a complex situation, and what seems like a good idea one minute changes after I think about it for a while. Figuring out what I want is hard enough, but all the factors I have to consider make it harder. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But how could I?

I understand quite well that sometimes, life is like this. Sometimes, in spite of everyone's best intentions, life is just hard.

The counselor thing seems like a better and better idea.
 
My heart really goes out to you. That is a heart wrenching situation.

Did he every say specifically why he wants poly out of his life? Does he associate the pain he's been through specifically with poly?
 
When we talk about it, he says he doesn't want to lose me like my ex did. I think he's afraid I will meet someone else who I will come to love more than I love him. And I actually understand that. I'm pretty good about not getting jealous, and I don't mind sharing, at all, but I understand that it is possible to lose a partner because they want to be with someone else. Even in poly relationships, it happens. I haven't found heartache to be any less intense in a poly relationship than it is in a monogamous relationship. I think he wants to guard against that kind of pain.

Obviously, since I made the decision to have polyamorous relationships, I had to face these kind of fears initially, too. Ironically enough, I'm not a very secure person. In fact, I've always been wildly insecure. I can be pessimistic, too. It would seem that I was the wrong person to choose to try polyamory. The thing is, I learned to face many of my fears head on by experimenting with opening my marriage, and I surprised myself. I learned things I never would have learned otherwise, and to me, that made it worth it. Even going through the immensely painful times I had to go through, I still feel like it was all worth it.

I can't make his decisions for him, though, and it wouldn't be fair for me to assume that he can face life in the exact same way as I do. What's fair beyond that, I still don't know.
 
I've often wondered why people think monogamy will protect a relationship from ending because one of the partners falls in love elsewhere. That happens in monogamous relationships all the time. But pointing this out does little to reassure people. I guess hearing but 'that asteroid could totally hit your planet anyway!' when thinking about a relationship extinction level event already is really not helpful. Maybe it's easier to pretend the asteroid isn't real if monogamous? Not saying all monogamous people do this - just that willful ignorance is easier to maintain if one chooses. At least that's been my experience. I've also found that monogamy does not mean less pain in my life. Some people have differing experiences for that.

Sounds like your partner is willing to be honest and open with you about what's going with him. That's a critical thing and a hopeful one, whatever path you and he decide on.
 
He's honest about why he doesn't want me to have other lovers, but I'm not sure about how honest he is, otherwise.

It's perfectly true that being monogomous doesn't stop anyone falling in love with someone else. I'm not certain why that doesn't figure into his thinking. Maybe he thinks that if he gives me the go-ahead to find someone else, I'll find a "better deal" and leave him. That's not my plan, though.
 
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