First Time Disaster

bucky4d4s

New member
I’m married and travel a bunch for work. I’ve met and mildly flirted with any number of women while traveling, but two years ago I did, and something about the woman just captured my heart. We emailed back and forth. I’d spend my days thinking of her and things I wanted to share, and then started feeling lie that was not fair to my wife, or good for my marriage. So I cut it off and told her why.

About 8 months after that, out of the blue, my wife dumped me. I pretty immediately got on OK Cupid, and Tinder, and resumed emailing the other woman telling her what happened, and she me. Not explicitly romantic, but multi-page and intimate.

Six months later my wife agreed to give it another shot. We started going to counseling together and working at it, and I moved back in. Meanwhile the letters with the other woman continued, and I became more and more enamored. I wanted to make it work out with my wife, but it was hard to compete with the unfolding of something new, and, of course, by the fact that it was email, the fantasy.

Six months later I was preparing to go to a conference where the other woman would be. I asked her of she wanted to hang out after the conference was over, and she said yes, and also that if I could come out to where she lived we’d have even more time together.

I was certainly tempted, but it was a lot easier to be with her after a conference than make a trip to just see her, being that I was married.

I was falling for this woman, but at the same time really wanted to stay married. And meanwhile, things were getting better at home. I love my wife, and my kid, and I wanted to make it work, but still, it felt like oatmeal compared to this new thing…

Maybe, I thought to myself, I could meet this woman at the conference, hook up, get it out of my system and return to my marriage, I thought.

A terrible idea, I thought, for me, for my wife, for the other woman.

So I did the right thing. I told my wife what was going on, and why. I told her that I wanted to stay married, but that there were things I was getting form this other relationship that I wasn’t getting from our marriage, that I would rather get them here, but needed to get them somewhere.

She listened attentively, as a friend, and understood. It brought us closer together than we had been in years.

Several days later she suggested that it would be ok with her if I got together with this woman at the conference. I was surprised, but excited at the prospect, and started reading up on polyamory. Checked in with her again to make sure it was all ok before leaving, and went, all aglow with possibilities.

I tried to figure out how best to tell the other woman what was up. It had been a long time for me, and it felt wrong to go the seduction route – ie flirt, get her hooked and then tell her. It seemed the only fair was to just tell her everything right out.

So I did. And she was FURIOUS for my even suggesting such a thing and hasn’t spoken to me since.

I have taken it much harder than I thought I would. Pretty heartbroken in fact. I feel like I made the right choice – in sharing with my wife, and in laying it all out with the other woman. I am so grateful that I approached this honestly and openly and saved my marriage, which is the most important part of it for me, but it still fucking hurts and I am depressed, and I feel bad about being depressed about getting rejected by someone else, when my wife is still with me.

This first time disaster has me pretty soured on the whole poly thing. I don’t think I could go through anything like this again, and maybe its better to just keep the energy focused at home.
:(
 
What you did was approach the woman as if she was a sex toy to be played with by your wife and yourself.

You don't know if the woman is bisexual. I would have flipped out on you too.
 
Hmmm. I wasn't proposing her and my wife together - Just that I have a relationship with her and that it was ok with my wife. Is there a better way to do that than to lay it all out up front? Is there a better way to lay it all out?

Since then I am thinking it was all just crazy - that I liked her too much to be with her and my wife and that that wasn't how it had started. But at the same time, I thought that one adult could propose pretty much anything to another, and that they could simply say no if they weren't interested. Even, Dude, that's ridiculous - I really didn't expect the offense.
 
Maybe I didn't read carefully enough, but did your lady "friend" know that you were married? If she did from the get go, I don't understand why she was so offended.

Although it took you a bit to get there, you were honest with your wife and that is VERY important. Poly does seem to work for a lot of people; just not in this particular situation.
 
Inexplicably, to my mind anyway, many people understand cheating better than polyamory or open relationships. There is a place for cheating in our culture (assuming you are from West, which is what I am familiar with). While it's not a 'nice' place, it fits into established narratives of romance, sex, marriage, relationships. It is something people can fit into an established slot in their thinking. So your friend may have been ok with cheating with you (lots of people are) but could not wrap her head around poly and so blew up at you for proposing something so out of the norm. Or she was really unconscious of the dance you two were doing and blew up at you because now everything is clear and she doesn't like it for whatever reason.

Regardless of the reasons behind your crush's reaction, you did a fine thing with going to your wife first. That is so much easier to deal with than dealing with an affair.
 
For me the biggest surprise of all this was that I thought that if things were good with my wife, and that I was clear that that was my primary commitment, then if the other woman turned me down it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I was very wrong. Normally the concept of a broken heart has all this - no one will ever love me attached to it. But there I was, with someone who loved me and whom i was committed to, but those same old broken hear tapes went off. And that all seems like a lot to lay on my wife.

re: PPG
When we first met I didn't mention that I was married - but that was just meeting and a little flirting. Then I stopped our interactions, because I was married and it was going to far in my imagination, and she understood and accepted that. Then I wrote and told her I had broken up with my wife. A month later she wrote to say she had broken up with her boyfriend. Then I told her I was trying to make things work with my wife but, didn't know if we could. Then we made plans to get together after the conference.

The only thing that could make sense of her reaction is if she was reading this as strictly platonic, but I am not used to getting four page letters from women I haven't known for a very long time, or making plans to travel with them when theres no interest on that front. Who knows.

Re: O

It is true that folks understand and accept cheating more than poly - when I related the story to folks I know, the idea of me cheating was much easier for them to swallow than that my wife had said it was ok.

How strange.
 
When we first met I didn't mention that I was married - but that was just meeting and a little flirting. Then I stopped our interactions, because I was married and it was going to far in my imagination, and she understood and accepted that. Then I wrote and told her I had broken up with my wife. A month later she wrote to say she had broken up with her boyfriend. Then I told her I was trying to make things work with my wife but, didn't know if we could. Then we made plans to get together after the conference.

It sounds to me like she was hoping your marriage was ending and that there was a chance for the two of you to end up living monogamously happily ever after. She liked that idea, maybe even liked nurturing the fantasy of it knowing it was highly unlikely. But she didn't have any interest in being in a poly relationship if you remained married. Depending on how much (or how little) she knows about open relationships, it may have felt like an insult that you were asking her to be the 'side chick' while your wife got to remain your primary partner.

The broken heart part is awful, but it will pass. I hope it's some comfort that you handled all this as well as you could, and were as honest as possible with everyone. Sometimes people are up for one type of relationship with us but not another, and all we can do is respect that.
 
That is one of polyamory's dirty little secrets. There is the possibility of more love and connection - but the possibility for heartbreak also increases.

Time will help. I know that's not a lot of comfort - it wasn't to me in my recent breakup but it is true.
 
It sounds to me like she was hoping your marriage was ending and that there was a chance for the two of you to end up living monogamously happily ever after. She liked that idea, maybe even liked nurturing the fantasy of it knowing it was highly unlikely. But she didn't have any interest in being in a poly relationship if you remained married. Depending on how much (or how little) she knows about open relationships, it may have felt like an insult that you were asking her to be the 'side chick' while your wife got to remain your primary partner.

The broken heart part is awful, but it will pass. I hope it's some comfort that you handled all this as well as you could, and were as honest as possible with everyone. Sometimes people are up for one type of relationship with us but not another, and all we can do is respect that.

This is the way I see it too. Something similar happened between Elle and I.
 
Rejection sucks, plain and simple. Of course, it hurts. But don't beat yourself up for feeling bad about it - you are human and just because you're married doesn't mean your wife owns all your emotions, even in monogamy. I think you just had a lot of fantasies riding on this one. A nice distraction, it was, but probably not realistic. Maybe now you can shift your focus to the reasons why you wanted so badly to indulge in those fantasies. What is not satisfying in your marriage and how can it improve? Do each of you light up when the other walks in the room? If not, why not? [boring, plain oatmeal?] What do each of you need to do to have the sort of fulfilling relationship you want? Did you just want this woman or do you want polyamory going forward? Good meaty stuff to look at, and worth the effort!
 
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