I mean this kindly, ok? It may not be what you want to hear.
What I want?
To have knowledge what I can and can't expect.
You can expect basic manners, respect, healthy communication, and healthy boundaries in any relationship shape, regardless of the actual model. (Ex: monogamy, Open, swinging, poly, in a V, in a quad, in a wider network, etc)
It is most neatly summed up in this chart:
http://familyconsumersciences.com/wp-content/uploads/Power-Control-Wheels.pdf
I could be wrong, but at this time this relationship seems to fail in shared responsibility.
Shared Responsibility:
- Making decisions together
- Splitting or alternating the costs on dates
- Doing things for each other
- Going places you both enjoy
- Giving as much as you receive
Also
- Accepting change
- Being willing to compromise (Which is different than compromising oneself or one's values)
- Working to find solutions that are agreeable to both people (Which sometimes includes "If we cannot be happy together, we have to be willing to be happy apart and part ways as an agreeable solution)
- Agreeing to disagree sometimes
Your wife is making a unilateral decision for the couple -- like whatever she says goes. You and the kids are just supposed to fall into line.
You sound like you do TOO MUCH for her, including bending yourself into pretzels to avoid breaking up even though she behaves poorly.
You do not enjoy this farm idea. That's not going to places you both enjoy.
You give a lot from the sound of it. I'm not sure what you get back.
I suggest you examine the other pie wedges in the chart and determine how healthy this relationship ACTUALLY is. I sense you have strong feelings for her, and you love her, but I don't think you are loving this behavior she's doing lately. And perhaps your love for her is not letting you see some things clearly as you otherwise might. If it was a close friend in these shoes... what advice would you tell them?
When someone you love and care about is behaving poorly and treating you poorly... All that can feel hard. It's hard to reconcile them
saying they love you with the less than loving behavior
actions they do toward you.
Gunnar said:
I have gotten to know him well during this half a year and he is a very good guy and I consider him a good friend now too.
That's from your
other thread. I think if he were a jerk or an asshole it would be easier for you to say "No way!" But because you have friendly feelings toward him, it's hard to reconcile that too. You thought you were signing up for occasional recreational threesomes. You did not bargain on them falling in love and her wanting to have what sounds like two husbands or something and everyone to go live at the Farm he owns.
For me to know that, I need to know what poly means and what it can do for me. As someone with no knowledge at all about these kinds of relationship, I was hoping for your advice.
Healthy, consensual polyamory means the grouping figures out how they want to be together and if they are even compatible. I do not see where this group is deeply compatible because you don't want to be doing poly things.
A primary-secondary model is the easiest to imagine from monogamy. People often think "Like this... just add another person." And it might feel like the compromise place like "I don't want to do it. But if I did then it has to be with me as the top priority so I can still feel safe here."
That is not coming to compromise. That is compromising one's values. Do not do this. Because it just doesn't work that way. There's a lot written about "couple privilege." Labriola writes about primary-secondary model drawbacks here.
http://www.kathylabriola.com/articles/models-of-open-relationships
However, a major drawback of this model is that outside relationships are not so simple or easy to predict or control. Having a sexual relationship with someone else often leads to becoming emotionally involved and even falling in love, frequently causing a crisis in the primary relationship and even divorce. Initiating a sexual relationship is opening a door to many possibilities, and often secondary relationships grow into something else which does not fit neatly into the confines of this model. Many people who become “secondary” lovers become angry at being subjugated to the couple, and demand equality or end the relationship. For this model to be successful, couples must be very convinced that their relationship is strong enough to weather these ups and downs. Conversely, some couples who start with this model decide eventually to shift to some form of the Multiple Primary Partners model to allow secondary relationships to become equal to the primary couple relationship.
Just because you are up for occasional "no strings" recreational threesomes, doesn't mean you are up for dating/relationship-ing outside the marriage or polyamory or whatever else. Like casual one offs are one thing but "serious" is another.
I get that you want more help, more knowledge, more information about "serious" or "polyamory" an so on. Maybe you want some reassurance that it will turn out ok.
I think all you need to know is already inside your heart. If you don't want to be doing any of that? You just don't. And that is OK! People don't have to be up for EVERYTHING. As for reassurance... nobody knows how this is going to turn out in the end. That part of the story isn't here yet. Right now? Things don't look too good.
I think you may be in the bargaining stages of grief. Trying to turn the puzzles pieces every which way to
still make it work. Not yet at full acceptance that this isn't likely to work like this. Because there is mourning, deep mourning, at the end of that road. It's gonna get worse before it gets better, I think.
From your posts? You sound like really do not want to be doing this. You also sound like really don't want this relationship to end. Not yet, not like this.
You are stuck between two tough things. I am very sorry for that.
Yet you have dependents and your OWN self care to attend to. Do NOT uproot yourself and your children and disturb all your lives to plunk all you in Dude's Farm and be at Dude's mercy at Dude's property.
My suggestion?
Remain where you are. Let wife go. Decide to be separated for a while -- 6 mos, a year.
Whether she regains her senses and comes back and you want to work things out with her?
Or it becomes clearer during the separation that this is best being over and you move from a separation to a divorce? Time will tell.
So give it the time. While separated, I encourage you to seek a counselor for extra support. This whole thing sounds like a mess and airing out on the Internet can only help you but so far. I truly think you would benefit from having extra support in real life.
Galagirl