Curiosity and concerns with poly

Hello friends! Recently, my Wife and I have been exploring the world of polyamory.

We have been married for 10 years, have 3 beautiful children and are very happy together.

We do have some concerns and questions with starting the first step into this door.

Our biggest concern is jealousy. She is more jealous than I am, however I do also have some jealous tendencies. What tools have others used to work through jealousy issues on their own, and what tools have others used to help their partner deal with jealousy?

Being new to this, where would we start? We recently purchased the book More Than Two, however we have not yet begun reading it as we would like to hear from others how they started into polyamory.


Thank you for your time reading this post, and providing any comments or help that you can provide!

Happy Monday!
 
Hello individuallywrapped,
Here are some tools for working through jealousy:

More than Two is a good book on poly, also I recommend "Opening Up: a guide to creating and sustaining open relationships," by Tristan Taormino.

And keep on reading and posting on this forum, there is a lot you can learn (and teach) here. Welcome!
With regards,
Kevin T.
 
You can also search the term "jealousy" here. There have been tons of threads on this topic.

Also, learn the difference between envy and jealousy. Envy is when you want something someone else has, jealousy is when you worry someone will take away what you have.

You must learn to work through both envy and jealousy when you become poly.

You might be envious of your wife's dates. You might wish you were going on fun romantic dates with others. It's often easier for a woman to get dates (although no easier to actually establish a new working relationship, so remember that. Us women might get quantity, but we get no more quality.) You might wish you were going on more romantic dates with your wife!

Make sure to date your wife. And make sure to establish healthy boundaries. My worse bouts of jealousy or envy (with my ex husband and with my current long term partner) were when they broke agreements, or we had shaky boundaries that left me feeling insecure and feeling uncared for.

For example, my ex h's gf was visiting and they wanted time alone. They went out to run a quick 20 minute errand but were gone an hour and a half. I got really upset.

One time early on, my gf went on a date and said she'd be home that evening but didn't get home til the next morning. And didn't text me. She had a good excuse, but I had a couple very upset hours, and it took time to heal. It felt like jealousy at the time, but it was really worry for her safety, anger/hurt that she didn't contact me, and worry that her feelings for her new bf overrode her feelings for me.

One more example, I also had envy and jealousy when my ex h would go to see his gf. She lived a 6 hour drive away, he'd regularly spend a 3 day romantic weekend with her, dinners out, long walks in her lovely city, uninterrupted talking and sex. And I was home with our 3 kids and the animals and the mundane chores, all by myself. He wanted to do this once every 3 weeks, and I was extremely envious. I could go on about him! He was doing it all wrong. So was I... this was back in early 2000 and we didn't have resources telling us how to do it better.
 
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