Hi you all!
Would it be possible to get advice from an outsider?
I’m 33-years old, a halftime parent of a young child and work full time. My relationship of nine years ended up badly last fall when the other parent of my child became pregnant to another person and wanted to start a family with that particular human being. We had earlier agreed that our relationship would have an expiration date and were trying to make life comfortable for both of us so that we could stay together to keep the family together and we had agreed to us both having other partners. I trusted her 150% and I thought that if someone were to screw things up, that'd be me. Well, long story short, my ex met someone and became pregnant very quickly and chose to keep the baby. We went through a quick separation and I moved into a new home with my child and started building a new life. That happened nine months ago and the last nine months have been really rough on me.
Then something unexpected happened. Someone I had known for years approached me and told me that she’d like to see what we can become. She's someone I've admired for a long time and I too wanted to see what we could become. She is polyamorous and when we met she had no relationships in her life. She had just recovered from a long burn out and was ready to start building her life again. After a short courting period she told me that she loves me and that she wants to build a life together with me as primary partners. I fell in love with her too and we agreed to start working on a relationship.
When we first met she wanted to make sure that I knew she was poly and that in time she would have other partners. At the time she said that’s something that would happen somewhere after we’d had time to get to know each other and she couldn’t imagine that happening in atleast a year. Few weeks later she told me that she wants to go on a date with someone and that freaked me out. She wanted to build something solid with me, to get to know my child and for me to get to know her child and at the same time she was moving really fast.
The next few months were full of difficult discussions about trying to work our way towards us being ready to start seeing other people and I think at times we put more energy into that than getting to know each other. In my personal life I was struggling with custody-arrangements and finally being left financially on my own with my child. I got my first panic attacks and at that time she said she wants to take a time out from the discussions. That as my situation in life is so taxing, this is not the time to discuss about anything. We agreed to not talk about polystuff during the summer. That lasted for a month and after that she was feeling so bad that we had to continue the discussions.
I don’t know what to do. I love her so much and can visualize an amazing future with her. We could be so good together. But right now I’m at a place in life where I got burned really badly when I tried open relationships for the first time and am with a person who is pushing me over what I can bare continuously. And she is with a partner who moves so slow that she is hurting. Her fear is that I’m someone who would love to be poly but who’s not at her core poly. And my fear or concern is that I can’t trust what she says. That things keep changing too rapidly. I would need time to get to know her to know that she is who she says she is and that she is someone worth building a primary relationship with.
I don’t know what to do. This all has turned into such a mess. I’ve already introduced her to my child, my child who’s had his life turned upside down. I trusted that she meant what she said, but right now I don’t know if I can trust her anymore.
She says we need different things and I guess that's partly true. But some part of me thinks that she's a person who has hard time controlling her behavior and that makes it hard for me to trust her. She says she wants to be with me now, but if she moves this fast, how can I be sure that doesn't change as quickly as it started too? How much time do I need to be sure? Does that kind of certainty come with time at all? And the amount of time I would need would most likely be impossible for her to give. Is the only way to go to just go ahead - go poly and see what happens. If our future is to happen, it'll happen with her being who she is. But how can I handle my trust issues (mostly caused by my fresh wounds and by her changing her intentions multiple times)? Or is this a train wreck waiting to happen (you can post a popcorn-eating meme if so!)?
There’s so much I did not write here and still I wrote such a lengthy post. Thank you to anyone who read this far.
And as a final though – I’m glad to be here! I’m eager to read these discussions and especially ones that deal with parenting and poly. My aim in life is to get back on my feet and build lasting (preferably life long) amorous relationships with people. And I hope one or more of those people become active participants in my child’s life. Quite a challenge, but to quote Barney Stinson: Challenge Accepted!
Would it be possible to get advice from an outsider?
I’m 33-years old, a halftime parent of a young child and work full time. My relationship of nine years ended up badly last fall when the other parent of my child became pregnant to another person and wanted to start a family with that particular human being. We had earlier agreed that our relationship would have an expiration date and were trying to make life comfortable for both of us so that we could stay together to keep the family together and we had agreed to us both having other partners. I trusted her 150% and I thought that if someone were to screw things up, that'd be me. Well, long story short, my ex met someone and became pregnant very quickly and chose to keep the baby. We went through a quick separation and I moved into a new home with my child and started building a new life. That happened nine months ago and the last nine months have been really rough on me.
Then something unexpected happened. Someone I had known for years approached me and told me that she’d like to see what we can become. She's someone I've admired for a long time and I too wanted to see what we could become. She is polyamorous and when we met she had no relationships in her life. She had just recovered from a long burn out and was ready to start building her life again. After a short courting period she told me that she loves me and that she wants to build a life together with me as primary partners. I fell in love with her too and we agreed to start working on a relationship.
When we first met she wanted to make sure that I knew she was poly and that in time she would have other partners. At the time she said that’s something that would happen somewhere after we’d had time to get to know each other and she couldn’t imagine that happening in atleast a year. Few weeks later she told me that she wants to go on a date with someone and that freaked me out. She wanted to build something solid with me, to get to know my child and for me to get to know her child and at the same time she was moving really fast.
The next few months were full of difficult discussions about trying to work our way towards us being ready to start seeing other people and I think at times we put more energy into that than getting to know each other. In my personal life I was struggling with custody-arrangements and finally being left financially on my own with my child. I got my first panic attacks and at that time she said she wants to take a time out from the discussions. That as my situation in life is so taxing, this is not the time to discuss about anything. We agreed to not talk about polystuff during the summer. That lasted for a month and after that she was feeling so bad that we had to continue the discussions.
I don’t know what to do. I love her so much and can visualize an amazing future with her. We could be so good together. But right now I’m at a place in life where I got burned really badly when I tried open relationships for the first time and am with a person who is pushing me over what I can bare continuously. And she is with a partner who moves so slow that she is hurting. Her fear is that I’m someone who would love to be poly but who’s not at her core poly. And my fear or concern is that I can’t trust what she says. That things keep changing too rapidly. I would need time to get to know her to know that she is who she says she is and that she is someone worth building a primary relationship with.
I don’t know what to do. This all has turned into such a mess. I’ve already introduced her to my child, my child who’s had his life turned upside down. I trusted that she meant what she said, but right now I don’t know if I can trust her anymore.
She says we need different things and I guess that's partly true. But some part of me thinks that she's a person who has hard time controlling her behavior and that makes it hard for me to trust her. She says she wants to be with me now, but if she moves this fast, how can I be sure that doesn't change as quickly as it started too? How much time do I need to be sure? Does that kind of certainty come with time at all? And the amount of time I would need would most likely be impossible for her to give. Is the only way to go to just go ahead - go poly and see what happens. If our future is to happen, it'll happen with her being who she is. But how can I handle my trust issues (mostly caused by my fresh wounds and by her changing her intentions multiple times)? Or is this a train wreck waiting to happen (you can post a popcorn-eating meme if so!)?
There’s so much I did not write here and still I wrote such a lengthy post. Thank you to anyone who read this far.
And as a final though – I’m glad to be here! I’m eager to read these discussions and especially ones that deal with parenting and poly. My aim in life is to get back on my feet and build lasting (preferably life long) amorous relationships with people. And I hope one or more of those people become active participants in my child’s life. Quite a challenge, but to quote Barney Stinson: Challenge Accepted!