New to Polyamory, Uncertain, and Jealous.

I. Hate. This.

This is worse than high school ever was.

I just got a call from my wife while she was in-between classes, talking about her interactions with the original guy who hurt her. They're sort of starting to patch things up. They apologised to each other, and now there's an even bigger clusterfuck for me to deal with. I think I serisouly need to get out while I can. I can't survive through high school a second time, especially since my high school was much more tame, in comparison, when it came to the social clusterfucks.

I feel like the walls are closing in, and it's only a matter of time before the garbage compactor has mashed me into a cube of space trash to be ejected from the Death Star's...garbage eject ports.

Seriously, there is way too much going on, and I'm really tired of my wife running around throwing her interest, love, and sex at every guy she meets lately. I really feel like a dick for this, but the way things are changing back and forth so wildly, I can't cope.

Maybe I need to take a break. She can go live in the new apartment for a month, while I stay in the old one. I need her to figure her shit out, because it's seriously distracting from the two of us figuring our shit out.

Fuck. Me. I can't take this anymore. What the hell. It seriously needs to stop, and since I'm technically the one who started it, I'll be treated like I'm the world's biggest asshole if I try and stop it. Cuz I was kind of treated like that when I started this whole thing.

She has a huge fight with him, she says she's done with him, then the very next day she lets him back in. And again, she does exactly the same thing. Twice, now, he has hurt her deeply and immeasurably, and still she marches onward, letting it continue. She probably doesn't even know the extent to which this shit is completely driving me fucking crazy.

I can't think about anything else at all ever, because now the only thing ever going on up in my head is her fucking drama.

Fuck her drama. Mine's legitimate. Hers is manufactured. She doesn't need to be involved in all this shit, she could have avoided it. I, however, have to sit and be quiet and watch it happen, and if I say anything about it or try to focus on our relationship, instead of her social shit, I'm the bad guy, I have all the problems, and it's my fault I can't cope.

I want to warn her where this is all leading and make her stop for a while and just focus on us, but my voice is so tiny now. I'm lost in the crowd, and I'm no longer the primary interest, and I can't bail on the relationship, because I'll be an asshole if I do. I bring in the vast majority of the income. She can't even afford the rent at our current place on her own, much less our new place. So if I leave, I'm basically screwing her out of a life and lots of hard work. If I don't leave, I'm stuck in the middle of this fucked up shit that I never asked to be a part of and don't want to be a part of.

I am powerless, and in a lose-lose situation. This is bullshit.

I give up.

...and thank you, Ariakas, or your input and the links. I'll do some more reading. I guess one can never do enough learning, I need to keep remembering that.
 
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She has a huge fight with him, she says she's done with him, then the very next day she lets him back in. And again, she does exactly the same thing. Twice, now, he has hurt her deeply and immeasurably, and still she marches onward, letting it continue. She probably doesn't even know the extent to which this shit is completely driving me fucking crazy.

Its your job to tell her. Never assume she knows anything you haven't explicitly said or written her. :)
 
Not your fault

Not her fault

You have tonnes of power

There is always hope

Her life is not your responsibility

No one can blame either of you

You are young

You don't sound healthy

Get the pain over with now as opposed to dragging it out. That is a shitty rollercoaster ride you are on.

High school did suck...and yes, this sounds like high school stuff.

This is a learning situation, not a lose lose one. Learn from this experience and find what you truly need to be happy. Maybe it's her, maybe not. From my perspective it's not her.

Sorry, my friend:(
 
I need to stop using this forum as a place to dump my freakout moments. God, I'm sorry for being such a dick.

I'll make it up by offering support in the future. :D

I just need to chill the fuck out and be calm and reasonable.

...

So I wrote a long post and my browser crashed and it got deleted.

Basically, I texted my wife, telling her I was completely lost and needed help. She called me immediately. I explained the situation to her, and she listened, she helped me calm down, and she agreed to put things on hold and have us all just hang out and be friends for a while first, while she and I work out our issues.

Also, the thing with her fucking the new guy was actually a poorly-timed joke. I do that to her all the time in an effort to soften the blow when I tell her things, and it always makes it worse, and apparently she thinks it isn't the same way the other way round. Basically, she promised me she wouldn't fuck on the first date as a joke to soften the blow of telling me that this guy was really interested in her.

She's going to continue to develop that friendship as a friendship.

As for the older situation, we're all going to hang out on Wednesday and play games and just be together and be friends. Meanwhile, my wife and I will actually start talking about our issues and working things out.

This was all my problem, not her fault at all, you're right. I wasn't communicating to her clearly enough just how deep and painful this whole situation was for me, and now that she knows, everything will be okay.

I thought I was being clear in my communication, but I guess since she already had so much on her plate, some of it was lost in translation.

Thank you all for your support. I will be updating this thread, and next time I won't be freaking out.

I'll also be lurking around and reading and maybe offering some helpful advice about some of the things I've learned to other new members.

Sigh.

I'm glad that's over. I feel 110% better, except for being too hot in this cramped office and too tired from lack of sleep and hungry from lack of eating the last couple of days.

Thank you all.

-Simian
 
Sometimes what we need is a good vent. I have found this forum and it's members wonderful and supportive and although I don't think I've ever gotten as freaked as you did here (totally subjective, eh Mono?) I know that the people here try to be supportive no matter your state of mind.

It really is amazing what a little miscommunication can do to a relationship and what a resultant finally communicating can do to releave it. I'm glad you two were finally able to turn that corner, together. And no, everything won't be peaches and cream from here on out and you will probably have more drama and freak outs to deal with, but just remember that you make it over one hurdle, you can make it over the next.

In cases like this where communication types may differ, I have to go with Mickey Mouse as opposed to Yoda. "Do or do not, there is not try," just doesn't cut it. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," sometimes is the answer. (love the sci-fi ref's btw. :) )
 
I'm just glad the miscommunication has been resolved. I really thought it was completely obvious based on my recent uncharacteristic behaviour and freakoutism in-real-life that there was a problem, but whenever I tried to bring it up, she ignored me, or got mad at me. But she's been displaying highly avoidant behaviour lately, because that's how she deals with problems; withdrawal.

And thanks. That's actually my main priority in finding a mate. She must LOVE science fiction. I hit a winner, here. She's more knowledgeable about my fandoms than I am. And she considers herself a casual fan. Makes me look bad. :p

But the first thing I ever really said to her was "Do you like Star Wars?"

When she replied with "Yeah, who doesn't?" I knew I had to ask her out at the end of that class period.

We spent that Saturday at a local forest preserve (Waterfall Glen at Argonne National Lab), and the following day around Chinatown, and then back to her place.

I could never actually leave this relationship, no matter what it might put me through sometimes. I love it too much. There is too much to lose.

I've found my soul-mate. Even though she may be capable of having other soul-mates besides me, at least I get to be one of them.
 
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I could never actually leave this relationship, no matter what it might put me through sometimes. I love it too much. There is too much to lose.

I've found my soul-mate. Even though she may be capable of having other soul-mates besides me, at least I get to be one of them.

:) Makes me smile....
 
I've found my soul-mate. Even though she may be capable of having other soul-mates besides me, at least I get to be one of them.

This is probably the best way to put it. Just because one individual feels that they only have one, doesn't mean that everyone else has to only have one. Love is not a zero-sum game.
 
Yeah, I just feel jealous when she pays attention to other guys (or girls) instead of me, because I feel like I'm going to lose some of the attention I used to get, and to be honest, the sex is a big issue for me, too. While love may be infinite, sex drive is not. And it's not fair that with monogamous women, I could use something like jealousy to strengthen the sexual bond. Like letting my SO catch me looking at other women in THAT way. I would imagine that the jealousy could, in a healthy person in a healthy relationship (instead of leading to self-loathing, as it is apt to do in today's youth), lead to having a stronger desire to prove why they're the only one you fuck. It's not fair that that could work in a monogamous relationship, but because my wife doesn't feel jealousy, I can't do that. I really have no idea how to fuel her desire for physical and spiritual connection. She's a very vocally-oriented person, and it drives me up the wall, because I don't trust words. Actions are the only concrete thing in my experience.

It just makes me feel kind of inadequate that I'm not enough to captivate her. I literally based my whole life around being a guy that a woman could love and be captivated by and need no other, even more so in my teen years, because I heard a lot of women complaining all the time about such things.
 
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because I don't trust words. Actions are the only concrete thing in my experience.

Question: Have her words and her actions, with you, been so different as to make you not trust her words or are you only going by past experience?

And then is it the words you don't trust or the possibility of different definitions and meanings for the words?

Just something to think about.
 
I'm really just going on past experience. I think the one thing that was consistent throughout my entire life were the amount of lies that were told, especially in relationships. It's emotional baggage that I'm trying to work out. I want to trust her words, but it takes ten times the amount of trustable words for me to believe something as the action that could replace it.

If she could make love to me, instead of just having sex with me, I would believe her love for me much more deeply. I only believe it as deeply as I do because of her past actions in proving her love to me (not sex related, mostly). And sex is hardly the center of love for me, it's just the most powerful way of communicating it that I know of. I really don't think any of the other methods I have of communicating my love nonverbally actually have any effect on her. Apparently, being told "I love you" every time it pops into my head is good enough for her, unless I'm really missing something.

And it's not the variable definition of the words, nor the words themselves, so much as the intent behind them. Words are a quick, easy-to-make mask that can cover any situation and make it look like whatever the author wants it to. Words are the very foundation of our civilisation, and even those words, supposedly infallible, turn out to be merely gold-plated and not actually made of gold. I inherently distrust all Humans, especially if they're talking big but not acting big.

Yes, I have strange and pointless problems, and while they make it more difficult to communicate properly with my wife, it's not really a problem I need to be tackling anytime soon. Instead, she and I spoke last night about this, we are going to start practising communicating with one another in one another's language. I'm going to start learning how to use words to properly display my affection, and I imagine she's either going to start focussing more on other actions, or perhaps even on sex itself. We only brought up the concept and agreed it was a good idea, we didn't really go into too much detail over it just yet, because we were short on time (it was 2:30 AM, and we were due to wake up at 4:45 AM).

I just wish she saw my lovemaking as what it is: an attempt at being spiritually connected to her. I wish that we could be more compatible in that way. I wish I knew if she experienced the same thing, but merely didn't talk about it as much or know how to express it. I wonder if she does actually realise, in her heart, that my sexual expression of love is as meaningful as I think it is. I really hope she does. I hope she doesn't feel used, or like a sex object or something. That would make me feel horrible. We've talked about that all before, too, and I never really managed to get a clear understanding of the situation.

So anyway, that's slightly off-topic. Basically, my short-term focus is having the two of us learn to communicate in one another's language. She has the notion that it can't be done, and actually compared the situation to Chewbacca and Han Solo, where neither one is capable of speaking the other's language, though they are capable of understanding it.

So at the very least, we'll be understanding one another fully, which will be more than good enough for me. If we can't speak each other's language, no big deal. As long as our point is getting across.
 
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So anyway, that's slightly off-topic. Basically, my short-term focus is having the two of us learn to communicate in one another's language. She has the notion that it can't be done, and actually compared the situation to Chewbacca and Han Solo, where neither one is capable of speaking the other's language, though they are capable of understanding it.

ok, who is chewy? :)...

Sorry it had to be asked :p
 
Yanno, I really didn't think about that...but I think I'm Chewy. I'll talk about that with my wife, too. Thank you for that, now I won't be able to stop thinking about it until I ask her. :p
 
Nice one Ariakas! My guess though would be that Simple is Han and his gal is Chewy though. Han can express himself in words, but he is even more expressive physically while with Chewy, it's all words. ;) Although a better comparison might be R2D2 and C3PO. :p

If I may recommend a book that my hubby and I read for our counseling sessions. It's called Passionate Marraige. The author uses real life examples of clients and I do believe there are at least one or two who seem to have if not the same "polar" differences then similar problems with communication. Everyone we know believe (and rightly so) that hubby and I are probably the best communicators they know, especially between ourselves, but this book helped even us figure some things out.

Also, if possible, I'd check out alternative lifestyle friendly marriage/sex counselors. Some are very good at pointing out and helping "fix" areas that need work, communication especially. Plus they can help with individual issues as well.

Good luck friend. It's a long road ahead, but the skies appear to be clearing a bit for you.
 
So I fucked up. Big time.

First, by unleashing my irrational, fearful responses in this public forum, where my wife was previously given explicit permission by me to read them and take part in them. I did not stop to think who I would be hurting by saying what was on my mind, nor the effect it would have on my relationship.

I find it necessary to explain myself here and let you all know that most of what I said was not rational, nor well-thought-out, but instead my lizard-brain fight-or-flight instincts showing themselves. I never knew I was that fucked up inside. I kinda made my wife to to be a bad person. She is not. She works so hard at making sure everybody's needs are taken care of, but she couldn't take care of mine properly because of my big communication problem. Also, she was pretty busy dealing with her end of this shit.

Second, by not realising how deep our communication issues ran (VERY DEEP, on a fundamental level -- fundamental differences in the way our minds work, and fundamental differences in our beliefs about things, especially relationships). The depth to which my issues with polyamory run is great. Almost immeasurable. But I have faith, I believe, I know, in my heart of hearts that I am capable of growing to be happy in a polyamorous relationship. And hell, if I can't, then I can't, and we go our separate ways, but I'll be damned if I don't grow until I can grow no more.

I don't know what it is about the way I think of things, but it's absolutely acceptable to me for somebody to love someone else with their entire heart, too. I do that. It's also acceptable to me for somebody to have a fuck buddy (as long as the fuck buddy doesn't try any funny shit, and as long as there is relationship consent to this fuck buddy existing at all). I have very few reservations about that. But for some reason, when the two are combined, it hits me on a very deep level that it's completely wrong. Like bordering on disgusting. I can't imagine having a sexual/romantic relationship with ANY of the friends who I deeply love; with whom I would happily engage in a monogamous relationship. To do so would be to betray my partner's deepest trust, in my mind. To do so would be to undermine everything a relationship stands for, in my mind.

I need to root these feelings out. I need to replace them with something more constructive, more useful. I have five years to do it. That's my goal. Actually, my goal is to get this fixed within the next couple of months, but if I can't do it in five years, then my wife and I agree that we're actually fundamentally incompatible and we go our separate ways. Or at least, that's what we talked about. Maybe she'll get sick of my shit before then. I just asked her to try and be that patient with me.

When I saw my future with her, I envisioned the two of us, our ship's crew, and our biological descendants (children, grandchildren) on our spaceship, exploring the skies. She saw the same thing. We rejoiced at our mutually-compatible vision of the future.

It was, however, the subjective differences, rather than the lack of objective ones, that got us. They're super-sneaky little bastards, and I wish I had known about them sooner so we could have cleared them up, so she could be happy, because finding these differences out has made her miserable. However, if she had known about them in the first place, then we never would have gotten married, and my opportunity to take part in the greatest relationship I can imagine would have been lost.

Subjectively, I saw this crew as our family, whom we would be in love with and attached to, and close to on a very deep level. Like family. Like brothers, sisters, soul-mates. My conceptual lean, here, is that it's possible to have an incredibly deep, loving relationship with people, even so far as to have multiple soul-mates. Even to be able to tell multiple people "I love you" and really, truly mean it with all your heart.

Subjectively, my wife saw this crew as our family, whom we would be in love with and attached to, and close to on a very deep level. Like family. Like brothers, sisters, soul-mates, and like lovers. Her conceptual lean, here, is that it's possible to have an incredibly deep, loving relationship with people, having multiple soul-mates, and being able to tell them you love them and mean it. But it also means sometimes expressing love through sexual attention.

Apparently, we define "family" differently, but there are as many different ways of defining "family" as there are colours in the visible spectrum of light.

That difference hurts me on a very profound, deep, gut-wrenching level. Sex in a loving relationship, to me, is a sacred thing shared between two committed people who love one another more than anything, and would do anything for one another. They don't share that special sexual connection with anyone else, because that's the only thing that makes their relationship unique and better and more important than any others. I can't imagine having sex with any of the other people I love without feeling horrible about it, and without worrying that I'm cheating, and without worrying that my primary lover would think that I'm going to leave them for this other person, in a serial-monogamy style, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are just so many things wrong with the idea I can't even think about them without being overwhelmed.

It feels wrong. Morally wrong. But I REALLY hate enforcing my morals on other people, and refuse, outright, to do it. Especially on my wife. Especially on the woman I share my soul with. The woman who gets my soul in a special way that nobody else does. In a tangible way. While I can imagine there being intangible uniqueness to my relationship, which differentiates it from any other relationship, I can't really respect that uniqueness as much, and it most certainly makes me feel useless, expendable, and identical to everyone else. It opens up the possibility for the idea of her loving somebody more than me to creep in. It is the root of all my problems, and I know it. I know I've found it.

Sure, there will remain some unique things about my relationship with my wife, like our bed (a previously-declared sacred space, which she finds ok and will keep sacred, if not for our sake, than at least for mine -- I don't know if she really thinks of it that way, herself. One of the very few visualisations that makes me feel jealous involves her in *our* bed with somebody else, even for casual sex.), certain mannerisms we share and things we do together that we do with nobody else. However, it makes me feel like I am not, in the slightest, worth anything to her to know that she feels like she can share that special, sexual love with others. That special love that I save only for her and promised to her from the moment we first began our relationship.

I am totally okay with her just being in love with other people. I am totally okay with her just having sex with other people. I am totally okay with her lavishing attention on other people. But I am not okay with the idea of her sharing MY unique sexual love with anybody else. And I'm not okay with the idea of getting less of that sexual love from her, because that's just about the only thing that makes me feel the true, deep extent of our love, and just about the only thing that makes me feel truly fulfilled in this world. Fuck everything else, if that's the only thing we had, I would be less happy than I am, but I would still be happy to the core of my being, which is what matters. If she never had any time for me, other than to express that unique sexual love, I would be happy enough to stay for life. (However, now that I'm used to having her other kinds of attention, the idea of getting less than the small amount I already have is painful.)

Let me digress to explain how I feel about this:

Imagine a circle with a dot in the centre. This circle is the threshold between inner happiness and outer happiness. This dot is the maximum point to which my inner happiness can be filled. Everything else in a relationship contributes to my outer happiness. The unique sexual love contributes somewhat to the outer happiness, but it's the only thing that can shoot right to the core of my inner happiness and fill it to its maximum; and any surplus just pushes the level of outer happiness higher. Merely knowing that this sexual love will no longer be unique makes that inner happiness harder to fill. I feel like I can't be filled fully by that unique sexual love, anymore, if it's being shared with somebody else. The more people it's shared with, the less it fills me.

To add to that, in my mind, lesbian sex doesn't really hurt anywhere near to the level that heterosexual sex does. It's truly miniscule in comparison. Like comparing a field mouse with an elephant. I could live with, and even be happy with my wife having infinite female romantic sexual partners. But even one male sexual partner cuts my inner happiness gain in half, and I have to expend that much more of the energy I used to spend on social things and hobbies focussing on trying to keep my inner happiness from becoming so empty that the emptiness begins to consume my outer happiness. If all that happiness is consumed, I die. I have never come close to this point, but I have come close enough to see it off in the distance, and those times were REALLY scary.
 
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!!!!!!!!!!

The thing is, I haven't actually tried, so this could just be a horrifying fearful preconception, and there could really be nothing wrong, and everything could be okay. Should I give that a go before trying to lobotomize myself? Should I wait and just tough it out until a sexual romantic relationship forms, and then see if I'm actually okay with it?

!!!!!!!!!!

So, to wrap this up, I have a core piece of my psyche, to which everything else is linked, that I need to lobotomize and replace with a similar, compatible component. The problem is, I have no idea what connections go where, and I have no map or list of the connections, so once I disconnect these connections, and make the replacement, I will have no idea how to reconnect any of it.

I will need lots of help, lots of support, and lots of love, trust, outside hope, reassurance, and near-infinite patience. I know I can ask my wife for that, and I know she will try to give it to me, but I don't know if I can do that without dragging her so far down as to make her beyond miserable. I am very sad at that notion. I need people to help support me while I lobotomize myself. I don't care how much work it will take from me, and I don't care how much of anything it will take, even time. I WILL DO IT. Because I love her. More than life itself.

And it pains me to know that while I've been telling her that the whole time, through my physical affection, AND with my words, that she might not truly believe it, understand it, grok it into the core of her being so she can use that knowledge to give her hope and energy in the darkest times. I really hope she knows, in her soul, the extent of my love for her. Because I need her to be okay with me making this change, and I need her to stay with me through the whole thing, otherwise, I could mess up in the middle or get stuck, and who knows where I'll be then? In a really bad place, that's for sure. I'll be in a place with less than a whole functioning brain, and who knows what else to deal with. Scary.

I really hope it doesn't take five years.

I really hope five years is enough time.

God, I feel so sick to my stomach over this. And the funny part is, until we had a fight over what I posted here on the forums prior to this post, I was fine. I could honestly even envision my wife and her new partner doing things that would make most people blush (surprisingly, imagining it actually kind of turns me on), and it didn't shake me one bit. And I feel better because our conflict has been resolved, and because I'm expressing myself clearly here, and because I intend to make change in my life. Psychologically, I feel pretty good about this. I don't know why I feel so sick to my stomach.
 
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It may seem daunting now, but if you really want to make the changes needed to maintain the relationship you have with your wife, while understanding how that has to expand, then the changes will come.

You may suffer with pain, exhaustion, tension...experience joy, love and acceptance (all in one day btw) but you can relearn what you think you know. It was a violent lesson for me, moving from FWB threesomes to loving someone beside my wife to realizing the why, how etc.

With how open you are to yourself, you also seem introspective...I don't think it will take 5 years. :)...might I recommend writing a log or a journal to view your feelings. Share the journal with who might be able to help. Journaling helped me a lot. It still took 6 months to come to this point but it can happen.

One thing that can help the totally lost in space feeling you are getting. Friends, ideally ones who understand. Maybe join a poly group or hit up OKC for poly friendly people to talk to in your area. This web thing is just dandy, but in your face communication with people who are your friends does wonders. You have put your whole life (dare I say existence) in one basket...diversify, every human needs more than one interaction.

:)...gotta love the curveballs of life.
 
I'm sorry she reacted to your post the way she did. I do hope she continued to read the rest of the topic before discussing your posts with you. I, for one, didn't think bad or poorly of her. We are all different in how we communicate, act, react and believe. I saw her as a partner who was under a lot of stress and spinning around trying to figure out what was happening to her world. This is not bad, this happens anytime something huge happens in our lives.

For you, SS, I have more questions. :D I'm a great devil's advocate you see and always am coming up with questions to get people to think about things either closer or differently. If anything, do as Ariakas suggested and start that journal, use some of the questions asked in your topics here as cues and starters.

Q1: What is the difference between male and female sex to you and why?

Q2: Why do you feel that she would be sharing "your sexual love" with someone else? If I read correctly, she doesn't look at sex the same as you but you seem to expect her to? If she never looked at sex as "sexual love" like you do, she is not sharing "your sexual love" with anyone else. She is sharing sex, plain simple sex.

Q3: It might be good to figure out which parts need to be "labotomized" and which parts just need a little tweaking and reprogramming. Sometimes that is really all that is needed. The fundamental base is still good, it's just some of the other parts that need looking at.

You feel sick to your stomach because of stress, emotions and change. No matter how good you feel about something, a huge change in yourself or your life can have that effect on a body.

You will be ok. Take a deep breath and remember that. Re-center yourself and try to relax a little before taking huge steps. Start that journal, paper or processor. Share here, but more importantly, share with her. Smile. Trust me, you may not feel like it, but it will help. If laughter is the best medicine then a smile is second best.
 
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