literarylizzle
New member
I am seeking the insights of those experienced with the path of polyfidelity. My circumstances have been evolving through a tragedy which I feel was meant ultimately to make us ready for this path, but things are complicated.
My husband and I were married for almost six years when we came to the mutual conclusion that our monogamous marriage covenant no longer served us, and we desired a change to polyfidelity, in which we were open to members of both genders to join and expand into a larger family unit. My husband is straight, and I am bi, but we were open to exploring possibilities of connection with bisexual and straight females, and straight men.
For us, polyfidelity was a deeply spiritual covenant which wasn't meant to be undertaken lightly. We prayed together and separately as we began to search poly-centric dating sites. And it wasn't long before things took a swift and interesting turn.
In love, it seems it always comes from where you least expect it. In addition to being a stay-at-home mother and grad student, I was also working as a webcam model. And one evening, I connected out of the blue with someone who was a client. Out of hundreds of men, with whom I had never had any kind of personal interactions... suddenly, there he was. We had an instant connection that was inexplicable and so very powerful. And he was actually very conservative and an active duty sailor in the Navy...someone who'd never even heard of polyfidelity. Yet he was astonishingly open to the idea, willing to explore it.
My husband and I had agreed that in the event that we discovered someone acceptable, we would discuss them with one another and if in mutual agreement, we would proceed. He agreed to "meet" my sailor via Skype, as he was several states away at the time.
They seemed to hit it off as potential "brother husbands" very well. They had the same political perspective and love of firearms. They talked for hours on the phone in the spirit of getting to know one another. And in the meantime, the "new relationship energy" between my sailor and I was flowing like a river bursting forth from a dam. This proved to evoke a degree of jealousy from my husband, because he felt I wasn't paying adequate attention to him. And then, one unfortunate afternoon after a month had gone by, the roof seemed to crash in on us.
I discovered that my husband had been looking at the "casual encounters" section of craigslist, which was extremely out of bounds for the parameters we had agreed upon. We were looking for people seeking a polyfidelitous covenant, not people who were interested in NSA sex or swinging. This served to bring up an issue that had boiled beneath the surface for so long: two prior instances in which my husband had been unfaithful to me, as I had discovered by interactions and encounters he'd been setting up online. I absolutely went to pieces...everything that had been so long buried that I thought was dealt with and put away came roaring out. I shared our struggles with my sailor, who had a legitimate concern that if my husband was straying outside of the marriage for sexual encounters with strangers, he could potentially bring diseases to the rest of us. We had several conference calls together to discuss this, but no progress was made. I was becoming more and more distraught; I couldn't lay the past to rest anymore and I couldn't accept my husband's statement that he was only looking, not seeking. Within a few weeks, in a state of grief and betrayal, I chose to leave my husband and be monogamous with my sailor.
A terrible, painful year passed. At times, I felt like I hated my husband for betraying my trust. I mourned for the happy family we had created together, for the marriage vows that were now meaningless and dead. We fought sometimes and said cruel things that make my blood run cold to remember them. But by the time a little over a year had come and gone, I realized something unimaginable had happened on its own... I had forgiven him. What had happened in the past was finally where it belonged: in the past. Civility between us became possible. Then, some semblance of friendship. And now, we're on the cusp of having evolved around to the point where loving one another again looks to be a viable possibility.
And I now realize that the blowing up and splitting apart wasn't something unfortunate at all, despite how painful it was. The choice to enter into a polyfidelitous covenant meant an abandonment of our old covenant... so the old marriage vows we had exchanged would be exchanged for new ones. When we prayed for God to guide us on this path, to make us ready and able to embark upon it, that's exactly what (S)He did. All of the old anger and resentment we held onto beneath the surface while we smiled and pretended everything was fine in our daily lives had to be ripped up and blown away. We needed the time apart to grow into the two whole, autonomous people that we are now. Before, we were enmeshed to the point of being almost indiscernable. Everything he did was based on what he thought I wanted him to be, while I was merely a shadow of what I should be for him, for our family, myself. He pursued stronger relationships with his family, my family, and friends, grew his hair long like he always wanted, began to pursue a career that he enjoys as opposed to continuing to pursue a degree path that he no longer felt a passion for. I wrote three novels and obtained representation by a literary agent, finished my Master's degree, and got a job as a college professor. I admitted myself to a hospital for a week in the aftermath of our separation, and discovered a medication which has granted me a degree of clarity and stability I have never before experienced. We are both at this moment better than we have been in our lives.
So from the moment we asked God to prepare us for this path, through all the pain, and up to this very minute, I feel like we have been readied to go forward. We're now on solid ground and fortified to welcome our next movements forward.
Time is going to take time, however. My husband resents my sailor intensely, admits that he is angry that in all the years he supported me and encouraged me to write my thesis and my novels, I never did...but when my sailor came along, it finally happened. HE wanted to be the one who inspired me to make these things happen, he told me tonight. I have tried to explain that this is how I know he is right for us... when my husband and I could no longer be as one, my sailor helped me to help myself to stand up on new ground, in a new way, so I could come back around and be the woman for them that I needed to be. My husband now claims that he doesn't want to share a covenant with my sailor, just with me and with other women. And my sailor is resentful of my husband basically because he's resentful of him, because he feels like he was put in the middle (he was ) unfairly, but he never did anything to my husband; I was the one making choices.
I don't know how to help heal this situation. I can't bear to admit to myself the possibility that it might not be possible, because my heart only feels whole when I close my eyes and picture them both. I just feel like we are all meant to be together, that all of this has just been one step following the one before it in an evolutionary process. I feel like a woman is going to enter into the picture when we're ready, and there will be balance. This is where I feel really lost and in over my head. My relationship with my sailor is solid. My relationship with my husband is moving back into place. But otherwise I feel like Bella between Edward and Jacob. A part of me wants to encourage my husband to search for a connection with a poly-minded female and to begin to build his own relationship with her, in hopes that we can all adjust to each other as time goes...but oh my lord, do I ever NOT want to even think for a split second about involving another person in an as-yet unstable circumstance, or see the burden of "fixing" things as something someone should be esoterically tasked with...but I just see our situation as being leveled off when there is a balance, two women, two men, as opposed to a MMF triad in which I think they both have the mindset of confusion about who is supposed to be "alpha". I am just not sure. I am just overwhelmed and uncertain but know that I love them both so much that it hurts and I just want us all to be okay.
My husband and I were married for almost six years when we came to the mutual conclusion that our monogamous marriage covenant no longer served us, and we desired a change to polyfidelity, in which we were open to members of both genders to join and expand into a larger family unit. My husband is straight, and I am bi, but we were open to exploring possibilities of connection with bisexual and straight females, and straight men.
For us, polyfidelity was a deeply spiritual covenant which wasn't meant to be undertaken lightly. We prayed together and separately as we began to search poly-centric dating sites. And it wasn't long before things took a swift and interesting turn.
In love, it seems it always comes from where you least expect it. In addition to being a stay-at-home mother and grad student, I was also working as a webcam model. And one evening, I connected out of the blue with someone who was a client. Out of hundreds of men, with whom I had never had any kind of personal interactions... suddenly, there he was. We had an instant connection that was inexplicable and so very powerful. And he was actually very conservative and an active duty sailor in the Navy...someone who'd never even heard of polyfidelity. Yet he was astonishingly open to the idea, willing to explore it.
My husband and I had agreed that in the event that we discovered someone acceptable, we would discuss them with one another and if in mutual agreement, we would proceed. He agreed to "meet" my sailor via Skype, as he was several states away at the time.
They seemed to hit it off as potential "brother husbands" very well. They had the same political perspective and love of firearms. They talked for hours on the phone in the spirit of getting to know one another. And in the meantime, the "new relationship energy" between my sailor and I was flowing like a river bursting forth from a dam. This proved to evoke a degree of jealousy from my husband, because he felt I wasn't paying adequate attention to him. And then, one unfortunate afternoon after a month had gone by, the roof seemed to crash in on us.
I discovered that my husband had been looking at the "casual encounters" section of craigslist, which was extremely out of bounds for the parameters we had agreed upon. We were looking for people seeking a polyfidelitous covenant, not people who were interested in NSA sex or swinging. This served to bring up an issue that had boiled beneath the surface for so long: two prior instances in which my husband had been unfaithful to me, as I had discovered by interactions and encounters he'd been setting up online. I absolutely went to pieces...everything that had been so long buried that I thought was dealt with and put away came roaring out. I shared our struggles with my sailor, who had a legitimate concern that if my husband was straying outside of the marriage for sexual encounters with strangers, he could potentially bring diseases to the rest of us. We had several conference calls together to discuss this, but no progress was made. I was becoming more and more distraught; I couldn't lay the past to rest anymore and I couldn't accept my husband's statement that he was only looking, not seeking. Within a few weeks, in a state of grief and betrayal, I chose to leave my husband and be monogamous with my sailor.
A terrible, painful year passed. At times, I felt like I hated my husband for betraying my trust. I mourned for the happy family we had created together, for the marriage vows that were now meaningless and dead. We fought sometimes and said cruel things that make my blood run cold to remember them. But by the time a little over a year had come and gone, I realized something unimaginable had happened on its own... I had forgiven him. What had happened in the past was finally where it belonged: in the past. Civility between us became possible. Then, some semblance of friendship. And now, we're on the cusp of having evolved around to the point where loving one another again looks to be a viable possibility.
And I now realize that the blowing up and splitting apart wasn't something unfortunate at all, despite how painful it was. The choice to enter into a polyfidelitous covenant meant an abandonment of our old covenant... so the old marriage vows we had exchanged would be exchanged for new ones. When we prayed for God to guide us on this path, to make us ready and able to embark upon it, that's exactly what (S)He did. All of the old anger and resentment we held onto beneath the surface while we smiled and pretended everything was fine in our daily lives had to be ripped up and blown away. We needed the time apart to grow into the two whole, autonomous people that we are now. Before, we were enmeshed to the point of being almost indiscernable. Everything he did was based on what he thought I wanted him to be, while I was merely a shadow of what I should be for him, for our family, myself. He pursued stronger relationships with his family, my family, and friends, grew his hair long like he always wanted, began to pursue a career that he enjoys as opposed to continuing to pursue a degree path that he no longer felt a passion for. I wrote three novels and obtained representation by a literary agent, finished my Master's degree, and got a job as a college professor. I admitted myself to a hospital for a week in the aftermath of our separation, and discovered a medication which has granted me a degree of clarity and stability I have never before experienced. We are both at this moment better than we have been in our lives.
So from the moment we asked God to prepare us for this path, through all the pain, and up to this very minute, I feel like we have been readied to go forward. We're now on solid ground and fortified to welcome our next movements forward.
Time is going to take time, however. My husband resents my sailor intensely, admits that he is angry that in all the years he supported me and encouraged me to write my thesis and my novels, I never did...but when my sailor came along, it finally happened. HE wanted to be the one who inspired me to make these things happen, he told me tonight. I have tried to explain that this is how I know he is right for us... when my husband and I could no longer be as one, my sailor helped me to help myself to stand up on new ground, in a new way, so I could come back around and be the woman for them that I needed to be. My husband now claims that he doesn't want to share a covenant with my sailor, just with me and with other women. And my sailor is resentful of my husband basically because he's resentful of him, because he feels like he was put in the middle (he was ) unfairly, but he never did anything to my husband; I was the one making choices.
I don't know how to help heal this situation. I can't bear to admit to myself the possibility that it might not be possible, because my heart only feels whole when I close my eyes and picture them both. I just feel like we are all meant to be together, that all of this has just been one step following the one before it in an evolutionary process. I feel like a woman is going to enter into the picture when we're ready, and there will be balance. This is where I feel really lost and in over my head. My relationship with my sailor is solid. My relationship with my husband is moving back into place. But otherwise I feel like Bella between Edward and Jacob. A part of me wants to encourage my husband to search for a connection with a poly-minded female and to begin to build his own relationship with her, in hopes that we can all adjust to each other as time goes...but oh my lord, do I ever NOT want to even think for a split second about involving another person in an as-yet unstable circumstance, or see the burden of "fixing" things as something someone should be esoterically tasked with...but I just see our situation as being leveled off when there is a balance, two women, two men, as opposed to a MMF triad in which I think they both have the mindset of confusion about who is supposed to be "alpha". I am just not sure. I am just overwhelmed and uncertain but know that I love them both so much that it hurts and I just want us all to be okay.