I just typed this to a friend. I'm pasting it here because I don't have the energy to re-explain. I hope it makes sense. Husband and I have been married for almost 8 years, together for 9, poly for 1, open-ish before that for 1 more.
My husband is losing his mind about my other relationship. He has become super jealous, which has made our relationship deterioiate, which drives us further apart, which makes him more jealous--so now, he doesn't know if he can do poly. I think that I have no choice but to do it if I am married to him because he has made it clear over the years that he can't or won't meet my needs for partnership and emotional involvement.
I have intense needs for a certain kind of life/emotional partner. My husband would actually prefer to live in separate households. I couldn't be more different from that. Because he wants so much more space, I really have to make other important connections in order to feel fulfilled--this is how poly came about, basically. That leads me to sometimes think that possibly I could be monogamous if I were with someone else. But I don't actually know. To make matters worse, I think it's possible that I have an inkling I'd like to be primaries with my boyfriend, but I can't tell if that's simply insanity, and I'm certainly not going to tell him or my husband that at this point in time.
We've only been dating 4 months, he's married, I have no intentions of coming between him and his family, but I have a strong hunch we would make good primaries. And, though his wife is his primary (shared space, finances, parenting, long history and still emotionally close), they are no longer physical partners, and they aren't sure if they will remain married in the long run; they both, separately, speak as though they're staying together "for now."
He only knows the barest minimum about these problems with me and my husband because I am worried that if I tell him things are falling apart, he will assume he is the reason why and end the relationship. He has already indicated that if he thought he was the cause of problems between us, he would feel that he should end things--but he also said he'd have a very hard time actually doing so because he is very attached to me and we are very much in love.
He is not the reason why my marriage is in crisis. The fundamental reason why is that my husband and I have consistently and forever had issues around my needing much greater intimacy, empathy, and involvement than he could or would give, whereas he needs a ton of space and autonomy and wants basically, as he puts it, to be married to me 3 days a week. That is what I think "drove" me to poly--though I think I am poly, I don't think I would've inevitably ended up living a poly life.
So now he doesn't like the poly, but I don't know what else I could've done.
My husband is losing his mind about my other relationship. He has become super jealous, which has made our relationship deterioiate, which drives us further apart, which makes him more jealous--so now, he doesn't know if he can do poly. I think that I have no choice but to do it if I am married to him because he has made it clear over the years that he can't or won't meet my needs for partnership and emotional involvement.
I have intense needs for a certain kind of life/emotional partner. My husband would actually prefer to live in separate households. I couldn't be more different from that. Because he wants so much more space, I really have to make other important connections in order to feel fulfilled--this is how poly came about, basically. That leads me to sometimes think that possibly I could be monogamous if I were with someone else. But I don't actually know. To make matters worse, I think it's possible that I have an inkling I'd like to be primaries with my boyfriend, but I can't tell if that's simply insanity, and I'm certainly not going to tell him or my husband that at this point in time.
We've only been dating 4 months, he's married, I have no intentions of coming between him and his family, but I have a strong hunch we would make good primaries. And, though his wife is his primary (shared space, finances, parenting, long history and still emotionally close), they are no longer physical partners, and they aren't sure if they will remain married in the long run; they both, separately, speak as though they're staying together "for now."
He only knows the barest minimum about these problems with me and my husband because I am worried that if I tell him things are falling apart, he will assume he is the reason why and end the relationship. He has already indicated that if he thought he was the cause of problems between us, he would feel that he should end things--but he also said he'd have a very hard time actually doing so because he is very attached to me and we are very much in love.
He is not the reason why my marriage is in crisis. The fundamental reason why is that my husband and I have consistently and forever had issues around my needing much greater intimacy, empathy, and involvement than he could or would give, whereas he needs a ton of space and autonomy and wants basically, as he puts it, to be married to me 3 days a week. That is what I think "drove" me to poly--though I think I am poly, I don't think I would've inevitably ended up living a poly life.
So now he doesn't like the poly, but I don't know what else I could've done.
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