Weird feelings and was I wrong?

rekkerafthor

New member
So, a little background. My wife and I have been in a poly relationship for about 3 years at this point. We both ended up with a second significant other once we opened the relationship and made a lot of the beginners poly mistakes, with both of our relationships with our secondaries ending about a year after we decided to venture in to poly.

We spent the next year and a half pretty much working on our relationship (my girlfriend proved to be a rather toxic individual and my wife and I had a lot of healing to do after the break up). We are finally at a point where we are ok with having other relationships again.

Now to my question/thinky thoughts.

Since we are now venturing back into the poly world some things that strike me as odd have been going in my brain. My wife has a long distance girlfriend that she's really close to, and that doesn't bother me at all. And a male friend of ours that is married and poly has recently shown interest in her. I've known this guy for a long time and like him. I'm not bothered with him going out with her and starting something either.

So at her birthday party, this guy starts hitting on her at the karaoke bar we are at. I'm not too worried. She ends up leaving with his number that night. They go out a few days later, and then he invites her back to his place the next night. This guy has never had any experience with poly, but he still wants to see my wife two nights in a row. And while it sort of bothered me I couldn't put a finger on why.

So, at the end of the week,she wants to go see him again. And I get really pissy about it, because I still had yet to even meet the guy . And when my wife suggested to him that we all go out for a coffee he decides he is kind of freaked out about it and cancels. My wife and I spend most of the rest of the night processing, and I finally was able to get it out that I just didn't trust him. I had no reason not to, but some THING just screamed this guy might not be the best person to have hanging around.

So I guess my question is this. Was getting upset about my wife going out with a guy that I didn't trust (without a reason to distrust him) unfair of me? They had only been out twice, so it wasn't like they were at the point of starting a relationship. While she assures me she accepts my feelings, I can't help but think I wronged her somehow. Ladies, how would you feel if you were her? Guys, how would you have handled the situation?
 
If I were her, I would have been annoyed at you for getting pissy rather than just straightforwardly expressing your desire to meet the guy and/or that you didn't trust him. After all, I'm not a mind reader, how can I know why you're being pissy, all I know is that it sucks! So, good on you for figuring it out in the end and telling her. And good on her for listening and suggesting the coffee date. Aaand, it looks like you were right to be worried, since it freaked him out!

Next time, talk calmly about your feelings earlier, even if just to say "I have a bad feeling about this and I'm not sure why, would it be possible for you to wait a couple of days before your next date so I can work it out?" Getting pissy is never the right answer, especially since your wife sounds like a reasonable person.

Of course, you could also request a guideline along the lines of "Don't have dates with the same person more than once before I get to meet them"? But I doubt that's the real solution, since a variety of other issues could come up that would similarly put you in a position to feel bad/weird. Better to work on the communication overall.
 
Sometimes you can just get a vibe from someone (even from a basic description) and know something just isn't right. If I were in your wife's position, I would probably have been really frustrated with your pissyness until you figured out why you were feeling it and explained it to me.

Do you two normally meet each other's potential dates that early on? If you don't have a general rule about when you meet others, you might want to figure one out based on this experience. Getting the occasional bad feeling is one thing, but if her seeing someone 3 times without you meeting him/her is going to be a problem in the future it would be better to deal with that head-on instead of waiting for issues to come up.
 
I realize getting pissy wasn't the best reaction. I was having trouble articulating myself in a way she could understand, most likely because the situation just bothered me. And she was upset with me. I can't blame her.

The thing is, she's been on multiple dates with guys before without me meeting them early on. I'm having trouble figuring out why this one bothered me so much. I think part of it was because we hadn't spent a whole lot of time together that week already. (She had been out with this guy twice, and with another , the guy I do like once). But I don't think that was all of it.

We haven't talked much about the situation since then. Apparently it freaked this guy out enough that he hasn't contacted her since. I feel bad about that. I'm a big guy, and can be intimidating unless you talk to me, at which point the teddy bear falls out of my mouth. My wife is not that upset. She didn't see anything long term coming out of it.
 
I realize getting pissy wasn't the best reaction. I was having trouble articulating myself in a way she could understand, most likely because the situation just bothered me. And she was upset with me. I can't blame her.

I think that's pretty normal. Recognizing that it's an issue that needs to be worked on is a good thing, though, to hopefully make future communication easier.

The thing is, she's been on multiple dates with guys before without me meeting them early on. I'm having trouble figuring out why this one bothered me so much. I think part of it was because we hadn't spent a whole lot of time together that week already. (She had been out with this guy twice, and with another , the guy I do like once). But I don't think that was all of it.

Ah, scheduling... That's enough to frustrate anyone. :D I'm a big fan of having a household calendar (either digital or one hanging on the wall - I prefer the wall one, but whatever works) so that you can clearly set aside x amount of time for home/you two to have date night, y amount of time for outside dates, z amount of time for family/friends, etc. It's easier (for me anyway) to make sure everyone and everything that needs my attention gets it when I have a visual. It's way too easy to overs-chedule when people keep things separate so you can't tell when your schedules are overlapping.

We haven't talked much about the situation since then. Apparently it freaked this guy out enough that he hasn't contacted her since. I feel bad about that. I'm a big guy, and can be intimidating unless you talk to me, at which point the teddy bear falls out of my mouth. My wife is not that upset. She didn't see anything long term coming out of it.

Well, hopefully it was a good learning experience at least. :) I'm glad it's not causing any huge issues.
 
Also, the fact that it freaked him out and he disappeared, says to me that you absolutely did the right thing. Who knows why, but if he wasn't able to meet you, then that doesn't bode well for a poly-ship (of any kind). right?
 
I don't know why you had that vibe, but if the guy disappeared I think it's good you spotted it early on.
Maybe you were uncomfortable due to his inexperience with poly. Not meeting someone who is familiar with poly is less threatening and scary, because you can trust they already know the situation.
With this guy, there was the chance he might assume things, turn out to be a cowboy, turn out not to understand poly at all and create drama, turn out to have made assumptions...

If he ever re-contacts her, I would suggest you keep trying to meet him, although for his own comfort, I would suggest a date in a neutral place with just him and her (with you knowing where she is) when she can answer his questions first without you being around, at which point you would join them and he could ask you additional questions, or he'd first have an opportunity to leave if he feels it's not for him.

Either way, I think you did the right thing in the end, and in the future you should try and communicate your feelings as early as possible, in a calm manner so you can discuss it.
 
No, I don't think you did the right thing.

Is your wife not allowed to date others unless you've known them for years?

That's not a reasonable position.

I disagree with the people who say your instincts were right because the guy disappeared. If I was expected to immediately meet the spouse of someone I've known for a week and been on two dates with, I would freak out and disappear too.

Maybe the guy was worried you & your wife wanted a sudden threesome or something. There are many reasons why he could have disappeared.
 
No, I don't think you did the right thing.

Is your wife not allowed to date others unless you've known them for years?

That's not a reasonable position.

I disagree with the people who say your instincts were right because the guy disappeared. If I was expected to immediately meet the spouse of someone I've known for a week and been on two dates with, I would freak out and disappear too.

Maybe the guy was worried you & your wife wanted a sudden threesome or something. There are many reasons why he could have disappeared.
PHP:

I actually agree with this. I don't think I was entirely right. However, I did say she has been on multiple dates with guys that I didn't know before and it didn't freak me out like this. And those dates were with guys unfamiliar with poly. I'm really unhappy with the way I handled the situation and I'm still trying to figure out why this particular scenario bothered me like it did. It's not fair of me to limit her dating people I already know. I get that. I think I just had a bad gut feeling about him, but without a reason why I don't feel I can just veto it.
 
Did you completely veto it? From what you've said so far you told your wife that you got a bad feeling from even though you couldn't point out why, so she tried to set up a meeting between the two of you so that you could get to know him a bit. He bolted.

While you handled it poorly in the beginning by letting your emotions get the better of you, you didn't just flat out tell her to never see him again did you?
 
No. I didn't completely veto it. I saw no reason to veto it. And in trying to see things from his perspective, I can understand why he was nervous about meeting him. I'm a big person both physically and I've been told my "presence", for lack of a better term, can be quite big as well. In short, I'm intimidating until someone gets to know me.

I've never used my veto privileges (philosophically I can't call them veto rights). I've had them used on me before and it sucked. I can't say that I won't, but we are both relatively new to poly and I've only ever had my boundaries tested once. I'd rather exhaust all possible options first rather then use veto. But I digress.

We've talked more, and I am not happy that my actions ran this guy off. I'm still willing to give him a chance. But she isn't worried about it. She didn't see a lot of long term potential in him. Kind of silly really. But Just because there isn't long term potential doesn't mean that a short term casual thing can't be a good thing...sometimes.
 
I can understand why he was nervous about meeting him. I'm a big person both physically and I've been told my "presence", for lack of a better term, can be quite big as well. In short, I'm intimidating until someone gets to know me.

You mentioned that twice, and I'm confused. How would he know that if you guys have never met? This sounds like a reason why he might get cold feet after meeting you, not prior to.
 
You mentioned that twice, and I'm confused. How would he know that if you guys have never met? This sounds like a reason why he might get cold feet after meeting you, not prior to.

He had seen me in the bar where my wife met him. But we were never introduced.
 
Ah, thanks for the clarification.

Personally, if you were in the same place... I would have brought the two of you together right away. As in "new person, this is my husband" and then you shake hands, or something, and talk for a little bit.

I know people in the thread seem to have the opposite idea, that it was too early to meet him... but I don't think I'd feel comfortable dating someone until after my boyfriend had met him. And since there seems to have been an obvious opportunity there, in a way that wouldn't have been threatening or creepy (no "you have to sit down and be interrogated by my husband", just "hey, he's right here, let me introduce him to you") I'm not sure why the opportunity wasn't taken.

Either way, I agree his freakout makes sense, that's why I figured he might re-contact her once he's calmed down and thought about it. If he doesn't, how well. At this point you seem to care about him more than either of them cared about the other :p
 
My wife and I like meeting people early on to be sure we all get along, requiring us to have all met by the 3rd date (at the latest), even if scheduling makes it difficult.
 
This is an interesting one!

It's something I've been thinking about lately too and I think it comes down to the key word - expectation.

Do you use any written poly 'guidelines'?

It's something our triad didn't do for a long time, because we didn't want to place restrictions. Then we found that having absolutely no restrictions led to problems with our innate, personal expectations.

Reading between the lines in your post, it sounds to me like you may expect:
- your wife's date to be respectful of you, to make an effort, acknowledge your existence
- your wife to see new dates (or even long term lovers) a limited amount of times a week
- your wife to act like she is poly; not like she is single

There is nothing wrong with expectation, in my eyes. Expectations mean personal boundaries. And just because we are all poly, doesn't mean we have to ignore our personal boundaries.

If this helps - some of the things I (and my primary) expect:
- to meet in person/online any secondaries that we are moving towards sleeping with
- for secondary partners to be respectful of and towards our primary
- to see secondaries generally max. once a week, twice in special circumstances

All that being said; our main guideline is: "be kind to each other, soothe each other and understand that changes happen" - i.e. we all get carried away and act with our own selfish hormones sometimes.

It sounds like the two of you did some really good work ironing out the cracks. Your wife is probably in the "oooh I can date again!" stage, where we tend to get carried away with the excitement of New Relationship Energy.

My advice would be to sit down and as stupid as it sounds, write out some guidelines, (NOT rules), that you both might find useful to keep in mind. It's not about killing each other's fun - but acting in a way that is appreciative of each other and a sensitive way of saying "thank you for being a partner that promotes my freedom. I don't want to be single - I want to keep you, but keep my freedom".

Incidentally... I would have had the same feelings as you did about this guy, rightly or wrongly. Three times in a week is also too much for *my* personal boundary. And I would have expected him to make an effort to meet me. If I met a married woman, all I'd want to do is meet the husband and make sure he was ok. To me, that's the sign of a kind person.

Finally... yes... we all get pissy from time to time. It usually happens when we have an underlying issue that we need to pick at and unravel. I hope that all the answers you've been given help!
 
And when my wife suggested to him that we all go out for a coffee he decides he is kind of freaked out about it and cancels.

I am not happy that my actions ran this guy off.

I suppose how she suggested to him that you all go out and whether or not she mentioned that you were having an issue could affect him freaking out, but let's be clear: you did nothing to run this guy off. He is responsible for his own actions. Nor did you veto anything. Your knowledge of your own emotions and communication of them were not the best to start with, true, but you were willing to meet him and give him a chance. Except for the pissy initial reaction, which we all have once in a while and which you and your wife seem to have already worked through, you didn't do anything wrong. There was nothing else about this situation that was within your control so give yourself a break.

I'm not physically intimidating, but my dad is and we have similar strong personalities. I've always tried to use that a gauge of strength of character: scared off by either of us? Then not worth my time! :)
 
I'm not physically intimidating, but my dad is and we have similar strong personalities. I've always tried to use that a gauge of strength of character: scared off by either of us? Then not worth my time! :)

Very true!

I don't really think it was too early for you to meet him. I don't think the fact that you're intimidating-looking ran him off. I don't think you or your wife handled the situation too horribly. What I do think is that the guy wanted to act like your wife was dating him and him alone and as soon as he was going to be forced to recognize your presence in her life (by fully interacting with you), he was done. Meeting the husband/wife/OSO or whatever is a great test of character, too, I think. It really shows whether or not a person is willing to put in the effort that a poly relationship takes. This guy apparently wasn't.
 
I too would certainly expect somebody who hadn't had any experience in poly to meet my husband (or vice versa) before things went far at all. There have been tons of threads over the years about mono people not meeting a poly person's partners, and trouble ensuing down the road from issues stemming from the mono person getting to operate under the fantasy that the other partners aren't really important since they are abstracts instead of actual people to them.

I'm glad to meet people's partners, and in fact after one experience with meeting a person's spouse after we'd become involved and finding out they weren't that happy about the new addition, I wouldn't become physically involved with anybody without meeting any other important (local at least) partners of theirs. I want my poly to be all happy smiles, flowers and sunshine. I'd rather meet them before I became too invested.

I'd tend to think if the guy wasn't mature enough to counter with meeting later, or differently, or just the two of you, or emailing instead, anything other than disappearing, he probably doesn't have the emotional maturity for the communication needed to be in a poly relationship.

I also see that you might benefit from scheduling X amount of set nights together a week with your wife, since part of the problem was that you felt you hadn't gotten to spend much time with her (and probably part of the pissy-ness was that you missed her and might be a bit resentful she wasn't feeling the same way and going out of her way to make make you feel she wanted to spend time with you too?)

I have asked my husband to not schedule a date before when we hadn't really spent quality time together, but I usually don't have a specific awareness that we haven't had the time, more of a vague unease and unhappiness, so recognizing and articulating that CAN be hard, which is why we have Tues/Fridays pretty much set in stone for date nights for ourselves, so that situation doesn't happen, or if it does we at least know we have some "us time" coming up soon.

I'm not surprised you had a weird feeling either, two mono people can easily have a bunch of dates in a row, but when you have other relationships involved, a bit more thought about how that affects the other people in your life is usually called for.
 
Very true!

I don't really think it was too early for you to meet him. I don't think the fact that you're intimidating-looking ran him off. I don't think you or your wife handled the situation too horribly. What I do think is that the guy wanted to act like your wife was dating him and him alone and as soon as he was going to be forced to recognize your presence in her life (by fully interacting with you), he was done. Meeting the husband/wife/OSO or whatever is a great test of character, too, I think. It really shows whether or not a person is willing to put in the effort that a poly relationship takes. This guy apparently wasn't.

Good point. I've mentioned before to my SO that I'd have to meet a metamour before they got deeply involved, physically and otherwise. He didn't respond too kindly to the idea but frankly some of the posts here just confirm my thought process in regards to it. I might direct him here to read lol.
 
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