Hello :)

OK, so you're the one pushing for being poly with your husband... And the only "bait" you've got is the hot bi babe. Who would become the sister wife and he'd get to be coddled by both of you sexually and emotionally.

Now, you're ready to give up just at the idea that she might prefer you and he'd not get to have his poly fun.

Think about it. There are so many configurations of poly here, read around, read people's sigs for their relationship status. Some women have 2 bfs, some ppl are married and only see other lovers a few times a year. Some have FWBs and are dating others, trying to find another decent person. Some people are independent and not currently dating. Some are even asexual.

So, you've chosen ONE possible configuration and if it doesn't work out, your h will be so jealous, he'll bail. Well, jealousy can be lived with and then overcome and compersion can result. Takes work though. Many threads here on jealousy! Many articles in cyberland.
 
I suppose I have a lot to discuss with my husband before we do anything else. The triad was what seemed to work for us and I'm not sure he would be as open minded to other configurations, but I guess I won't know until we talk. Hopefully he will be open minded and understanding.
 
Good luck with the talking. It can really only be to your benefit whatever happens since communication is the key to having healthy relationships, mono and poly! :)
 
Basically it sounds like your husband is ok with poly if he gets a new play thing. Not a good path to start down.

For example when I started seeing other men.. my husband tried to basically blackmail me into partaking in BDSM with him. Which honestly made me feel dirty and nasty. "If I let you see so and so then you will do y for me." I shudder at the memory.
 
Last edited:
Beam?
 
Lol.. damn autocorrect. I am posting via my cell.
 
I suppose I have a lot to discuss with my husband before we do anything else.

Hell, yes! How long have you two been talking about it? Some couples take a year or more to prepare by talking with each other, with others, maybe even counseling, going to poly meet-ups, etc.. I think it's a great idea to read a good poly book together, such as Opening Up by Tristan Taormino or Polyamory in the 21st Century by Deborah Anapol, and review each chapter/issue with each other.

You can also download some worksheets at Taormino's site: Free Downloads from Opening Up

The triad was what seemed to work for us and I'm not sure he would be as open minded to other configurations, but I guess I won't know until we talk. Hopefully he will be open minded and understanding.

There are so many ways to practice poly!
 
Last edited:
Hi,

please don't get discouraged so soon. First of all: talk to your husband. talk bout how you feel and what you would want. Ask him how he feels. Tomorrow, talk some more, and the day after, talk some more. You seem to be doing a lot of assuming about how he will feel and how he will respond. You won't know for sure until you actually ask him.

Secondly: these things take TIME. A shit load of time. You can't map it out and know what you want. Things change, you meet people, dynamics shift. Once you start down the poly path you won't believe how your thoughts and systems and beliefs will be challenged.

I'll tell you a story. When my husband and I opened up our marriage (this is what we called it at the time - I would never describe it like this now) this is what happened.

We had decided, and agreed, that we would look for another guy to have a threesome with, ideally a guy we could have multiple threesomes with. My husband 'found' them for me online, showed me their profiles, he made initial contact with the guys I fancied, then I would meet them for a drink, husband would join us IF I texted him that I was interested in said guy, we would get to know each other, and make a date for a threesome.

Wow, I never wrote about this on here before, and it almost makes me queasy to write about it now. What were we thinking?

I remember talking to one of these guys, way in the beginning, and I said 'now we would have to meet in a hotel room, for sex, because, you know, my home, that would be way too private.'

The thought that my husband would date someone? Out of the question. The thought alone made me sick.

Fast forward a couple of years. My husband and I both have relationships with others. He just came back from a week long trip to another country with his girlfriend. While he was gone, I entertained my FWB on one night, and had my lover MrBrown over for a BDSM session on another night. Right now I'm house sitting for a friend, and enjoying the time alone. This weekend my bf C will come and visit me here. Oh and tomorrow I'm having dinner with my husband and his ex GF, because she is traveling to a country I've done a lot of research on and I want to give her advice (also, I really like her).

Sometimes I think of that poor guy who was actually looking for a real poly relationship, to be told by me he could only meet me in a hotel room with my husband present.
I've come a long way since that conversation.

Be patient and stay open to all possibilities and don't rush things and don't judge yourself for wanting things a certain way at this moment - just be open to change.

Good luck!
 
Cleo,

Thank you very much for your input. I guess it is just hard for me to see the future at this point. I don't know why I am letting myself get so discouraged so quickly. The first time I even suggested having a poly relationship with my husband was while we were looking for our first apartment together and he IMMEDIATELY dismissed the idea. I never nagged, I never pushed, I just let it go. I continued to bring it up now and again to see if his feelings changed and over time he started to open his mind to the idea. Maybe he started to trust me more? I'm not sure. So to answer your question, nycindie, we have been talking about this for a couple of years, but he has only been on board for about 7 months or so. Now he is very open minded to a triad. So I shouldn't jump to conclusions that my husband will be totally against it and this will be the end of our polyamory exploration. This wouldn't be the first thing that I have gotten him into and gotten him to love. We will have to do a lot of talking and reading and thinking together and hopefully we can come to a conclusion that makes us both happy.
 
well, my husband suggested poly / open relationships for the first time about 11 (eleven) ELEVEN!!!! years ago.
I told him he was out of his mind.
so yeah... that's what I mean about being patient.
 
You've said on your blog that your h is JEALOUS. In caps. This is a huge red flag to successful poly. Even if you 2 do find your hot bi babe, he could get jealous when you and she are sexing each other, or texting each other, or go out shopping and end up with a couple private jokes, or talk about girl stuff, or brush each other's hair...

Sex: women can go longer than men. I've read about men getting jealous after a 3some, he cums and passes out, the women keep going and he gets mad when he realizes this.

Et cetera, et cetera.

And he's a manly man, truck driver who likes to blow things up? Eek.
 
And he's a manly man, truck driver who likes to blow things up? Eek.

Lol. You have no idea how many people ask me how we ended up together because we are completely different people. Yes, he is a burly, manly man, vanilla, redneck, truck driver and I am an artsy, completely girly, like to shop and have my nails, kinky, poly, bi, blogger. We have almost nothing in common aside from our music interest and our love for each other. We met in high school, but I refused to date him for years because he wasn't even my type. I love a well dressed, book smart, clean cut, business type man. . .this is not my husband at all. I find that we compliment each other perfectly. Where he is strong, I am weak and vise versa. It just works for us and I think we have something beautiful.

He is jealous, I put it in caps more so to bring the focus to that emotion/trait than to say that he is EXTREMELY JEALOUS. He isn't over the top. He isn't going through my phone and not allowing me to go any where, but he does express his discontent when I bring up a story regarding an ex when it is relevant to the conversation or if I see one of my old guy friends and I give them a hug.

We did have a very lengthy discussion about everything from his jealousy to dating separately and the conversation went 150 times better than I could have imagined. It started out kind of how I expected it to with my husband being closed minded to dating separately, but the more I talked, and read to him the more he understood and warmed up to the idea. By the end of our conversation he told me that he was 100% comfortable with me dating and having relationships with women without him. But he wasn't comfortable with me dating men. This is alright with me because, at this point, I don't want another relationship with a man, I want to date women, but I did tell him that we would have to work on that because at some point I might want to explore a relationship with another man and I would want him to be open and comfortable with it. He agreed to work on it. I asked him if he would be comfortable dating and having relationships with women without me, he said it would make him uncomfortable, but he was open to trying. He expressed concerns of being able to meet someone because he isn't very tech savvy and spends next to no time on the computer. I offered to help him as much and in any was as I could.

I think he still has his heart set on the triad and he does hope that one will develop naturally. I do hope for this too, but my heart isn't set on it like his is. I do feel a lot better after talking to him and I probably shouldn't have assumed he would be completely against it. We still have a lot more talking to do, I feel like I overwhelmed him a bit last night. But, all moves in a good direction I think.
 
Last edited:
Yay... always like good news.
 
That's not the type of people we are.

I notice you use the word 'we' a lot. That is, for me, a red flag of warning.

What happens when you discover that you have a different relationship to this new person than your partner does? What happens when it is no longer 'we' but instead a complex 4 relationship situation (AB, BC, AB and ABC)?

The reality is that most people who have a relationship that identifies as 'we', rather than two individuals sharing SOME aspects of their lives, are often co-dependent (you might go do some research on that if you don't recognise the term).

Bringing a third person into a co-dependent relationship is, trust me, not a recipe for long-term success.
 
I notice you use the word 'we' a lot. That is, for me, a red flag of warning.

What happens when you discover that you have a different relationship to this new person than your partner does? What happens when it is no longer 'we' but instead a complex 4 relationship situation (AB, BC, AB and ABC)?

The reality is that most people who have a relationship that identifies as 'we', rather than two individuals sharing SOME aspects of their lives, are often co-dependent (you might go do some research on that if you don't recognise the term).

Bringing a third person into a co-dependent relationship is, trust me, not a recipe for long-term success.

This is one of the most fundamental basic important things. And the changes start from the INSIDE, not from the outside. One way to ease into changing the way you think is instead of "we" start using "so-and-so and I" or "so-and-so and me" (use "I" when it's a subject and "me" when it's a predicate. Also there is no such possessive compound pronoun as "so-and-so and I's" That is WRONG. Don't do it, and if you already do it, STOP IMMEDIATELY).

That is all.
 
I notice you use the word 'we' a lot. That is, for me, a red flag of warning.

What happens when you discover that you have a different relationship to this new person than your partner does? What happens when it is no longer 'we' but instead a complex 4 relationship situation (AB, BC, AB and ABC)?

The reality is that most people who have a relationship that identifies as 'we', rather than two individuals sharing SOME aspects of their lives, are often co-dependent (you might go do some research on that if you don't recognise the term).

Bringing a third person into a co-dependent relationship is, trust me, not a recipe for long-term success.

Yes, I do use "we" a lot, but I also use "my husband and I" a lot also. I just don't like to sound too repetitive. That doesn't mean that I don't recognize that my husband and I are separate people and are going to have separate relationships even if we did find a triad. Also, we have decided not to seek out a triad, but to date separately. When I start trying to meet other women then it will be "I" that is seeking them out and "I" they will have to have chemistry with. When I do start a relationship with someone and she becomes by girlfriend then she and I will become "we" just as my husband and I are "we". I understand the difference.
 
That's grooovy. A lot of people think it is splitting hairs, but it is important to be in touch with the conditioning that makes us word things the way we do. There's that pesky "we" again.
 
I am finding that the way I word things is very important in portraying my intent. I am also finding I am not nearly as good at wording things as I thought I was. I am doing my best to word things correctly, but I don't even really think about some of the different ways my wording can be interpreted. It is never my intent to offend anyone, nor is it to sound like I don't consider all people individuals. I have been much more conscience of how I word things lately, but I still find that I am making unintentional mistakes. I'm new, I'm learning, Rome wasn't built in a day.
 
I am finding that the way I word things is very important in portraying my intent. I am also finding I am not nearly as good at wording things as I thought I was. I am doing my best to word things correctly, but I don't even really think about some of the different ways my wording can be interpreted. It is never my intent to offend anyone, nor is it to sound like I don't consider all people individuals.

Basically the reason why most members here point these things out to people is not to judge them or say they've been offended, but to help them look at any thinking, mindset, prejudices, beliefs, expectations, etc., that may be behind how an idea is expressed. It's not about wording things "correctly" to please us or anyone else - other forum posters are not grading you on your language. What a lot of folks fail to recognize is that pointing things like this out and letting one know how the words that are chosen affect others, is meant to be helpful information so that someone can be successful moving forward -- this kind of feedback is not just a criticism.

For example, if you read many stories here from women who have been in triads that bombed, you will see how the prevalence of a "we" mindset really made them feel like they were valued less than the core, pre-existing couple because everything was "us and her" rather than him and her and her. That is a lot for an individual to be up against in a relationship every day. In reality, triads, quads and other multiple-partner relationships are all made up of dyads, and it behooves everyone to stop thinking of a triad in terms of a "couple plus one." Language is pointed out to newbies only as something to be watchful and cautious about, so that one can see where any bumps in the road might come up. I appreciate that you've taken all this in a positive light, and as something to examine and be aware of. Awareness is key!
 
Last edited:
Back
Top