I screwed up

My husband and I have been talking about polyamory for a while and have kissed a couple of people each but nothing more. He’s decided he’s mono.

On Saturday night we were at a friend’s house. Friend went to bed and I asked husband if I could join him. We have previously talked about this friend a couple of times and husband said he’d be ok with it. Husband said yes but sent me a text saying we could only kiss.

Needless to say I didn’t read the text til the morning and we had sex.

Husband heard banging and thought to himself “they’d better not be shagging” but clearly didn’t really think we were because he went on to have a solid 8 hours sleep by himself.

I know I screwed up. I’ve broken the trust and closeness that all these difficult polyamory conversations have helped us build. But to me, I had permission to be in there with him and it’s my body, not my husband’s.

Is this fixable? He’s basically given me an ultimatum - monogamy or nothing. After all the work we’ve put in studying this I feel like it’s the equivalent of learning all the benefits of breastfeeding but then choosing to bottle feed.

Thank you.
 
Hi Pidge!

On Saturday night we were at a friend’s house. Friend went to bed and I asked husband if I could join him. We have previously talked about this friend a couple of times and husband said he’d be ok with it.

Have you talked about this relationship before recently? Was the text just a confirmation?

Husband said yes but sent me a text saying we could only kiss.
Needless to say I didn’t read the text til the morning and we had sex.

I'm a little confused, if you waited for his affirmative, then how did you miss the limitation he set?

I know I screwed up. I’ve broken the trust and closeness that all these difficult polyamory conversations have helped us build. But to me, I had permission to be in there with him and it’s my body, not my husband’s.
On one hand you're saying that you've done something wrong; but also are justifying doing something wrong? Have situations about this specific situation (him setting a physical limit that he'd be okay with)? I know with Z he set those at first as a way to build trust and they quickly left. He needed more small steps than me, as he is more mono than me.

Is this fixable? He’s basically given me an ultimatum - monogamy or nothing.
Well, to me there are only two options. You decide if monogamy is enough for you and either choose to leave or choose to stay; or you at t he minimum put polyships on hold for now. As it for something to be revisited at a later date.
He's bound to be feeling very hurt right now, and things probably feel out of control so he's trying to gain some normalcy back. You essentially, imo, cheated on him. When it comes to building up trust, you have to ask him different ways to do so.

In the end, it being fixable is hard to say. I wish I had more advice for you :(

After all the work we’ve put in studying this I feel like it’s the equivalent of learning all the benefits of breastfeeding but then choosing to bottle feed.

Thank you.[/QUOTE]
 
Fixable in what way?

If he has decided he is only happy in a closed, monogamous relationship, then things are only fixable if you agree to be in a closed, monogamous relationship and then will be happy with it as well. If you aren't happily choosing this relationship style, then I don't see this being a compatible relationship for long.

I'm not a big fan of the type of control in your husband's text that you could only kiss, but you're the one in the relationship and the two of you get to decide what works. What did you agree on before? Did you consent to him being able to set limits of this nature on you?

I don't feel like this is in the same ballpark as cheating, depending of course on what your previous agreements were. There's no deception and if you thought you were following agreements then it is nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Basically, I agree with you that it's your body and you can choose to share it with whomever you like. Your husband, however, is allowed to decide that he wants to have a wife who shares his boundary of being physically monogamous, whether or not you want that for yourself.

If your husband is set, and it sounds like he is since you termed it an ultimatum, you will have to decide if you want to be in the relationship style you want, or have him as your partner. Unfortunately, sometimes people become incompatible and there simply isn't much to be done in that case.
 
Thank you for your responses.

Husband was physically sat with me when he said yes to me sleeping in other guy’s bed. The text came afterwards.

The trouble is we both heard what we wanted to hear. This is someone we’ve talked about before, so whilst my questioning might not have been quite as explicit as “can I go shag our friend?” to me it was clear what my intentions were. He, on the other hand, wouldn’t have had the desire to do it so it appears that it didn’t even cross his mind what I was thinking. Clearly a communication issue here!

Previously I have told husband a specific fantasy and he’s said “X would be good for that” and another time we were talking through possibilities, whether I’d choose that person and how husband would feel about it and he said he’d be fine with it.

The trouble really is this was just too big a jump. Perhaps if we’d just kissed this time we could move further next time, but I may have ruined that now.

What I’m really looking for from you more experienced people is - is this a necessary stepping stone? There’s got to be a first time and it will bring up difficult and maybe unexpected emotions for most people?
 
The misunderstanding about how far you can go with the friend is a misunderstanding.

The trouble really is this was just too big a jump. Perhaps if we’d just kissed this time we could move further next time, but I may have ruined that now.

You could ask him that. Was it too big a jump? And have you ruined it for continuing with this friend?

What I’m really looking for from you more experienced people is - is this a necessary stepping stone? There’s got to be a first time and it will bring up difficult and maybe unexpected emotions for most people?

Someone has to be the first "other partner" if you guys are going to practice poly. It can bring up hard emotions.

But if in the end, your spouse wants to to be monogamous? Like just 2 people in the relationship? And you don't? Then you guys are no longer compatible. The misunderstanding won't matter in that. Neither will "going slow."

If he just doesn't want to participate in a relationship model where there ARE other partners? He doesn't want to do poly.

If you do? Best you clear that up and part ways clean before you move forward with some more poly. It may be a case where he wants to get off the bus, and you continue on the bus toward poly town on your own.

Is this fixable? He’s basically given me an ultimatum - monogamy or nothing.

To me that is not an ultimatum. That's telling you what HE can do. He is willing to do monogamy with you. Or he prefers to part ways if you are going to move on to poly.

That is fair. He has to state what he is and us not up for.

After all the work we’ve put in studying this I feel like it’s the equivalent of learning all the benefits of breastfeeding but then choosing to bottle feed.

It is ok for him to put all the work into studying this and deciding it is not for him after all from a place of information.

I get you might be disappointed in that choice.

But to me, I had permission to be in there with him and it’s my body, not my husband’s.

Just like you get to have a body and make your own choices?

He gets HIS his body and and his own choices. His participation and consent belong to him. If he doesn't want to be participating in poly stuff after doing all the research, it's ok for him to go "Nope. Not for me after all."

Galagirl
 
Things have got worse throughout the day. He’s not slept or eaten since yesterday. He’s kicked me out so I’m at my mums with the kids. I’ve been with him since I was 18 - that’s 15 years. We were so happy, the perfect couple that everyone looked up to. I can’t believe I screwed this all up. I have told him polyamory isn’t worth it if it will hurt him this much and I hope and believe our live will ride this out. I think it will. Thank you guys for your support and advice.
 
http://www.polyamory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120355

Things have changed somewhat since my introductory post yesterday!

The difference is that when I wrote that he thought we’d just been “kissing and fumbling” and later he discovered it was more. The worst bit is, if I had just stuck to kissing we’d probably be fine right now. In my head I knew that’s all he was ok with but at the time I really and truly thought it was ok. He’s hurt because he feels I lied to him. I had no intention of lying but was so surprised by his reaction to the kissing that I just couldn’t do it to him. I’ve told him all the gory details now but he’s having trouble believing there’s not more to tell.

What an idiot I am.
 
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Sounds like you are willing to stop exploring the poly thing and return to monogamy. Is that so? Will it make you happy?

If yes, then tell him so. If not, tell him you are sorry for jumping the gun. You are willing to Close again to heal from this, but eventually will want to try Opening again without jumping the gun.

Either way?

Apologize for the misunderstanding and own your part in the situation making.

Ask if he will give you opportunity to make amends. And for your part, in future to minimize communication problems from happening again? You will be EXPLICIT. Ask if he will own his part and do same.

You thought you heard an ok but did not stop to verify. "So you are saying it's ok for me to share sex with friend then?"

He thought he was hearing kissing but he didn't stop to verify either. "So you are saying you will cuddle and kiss and that it?"

I think both of you could do better to minimize misunderstandings in future.

Nobody is a "perfect couple." Over a life, there's going to be mistakes and misunderstandings. Make it a habit to verify. Could ask like "Ok. I just said X. Could you please be willing to repeat back to me what you heard in your own words so I know you got it how I meant it? I don't want misunderstandings."

Hopefully your track record over the last 15 years demonstrates that you aren't a person that just ups and hurts him like you are out to get him or out to be mean to him.

Unfortunate all this happened like this. Yet it still shows you both can grow in how you communicate. Even if you return to monogamy, that's an area you both could work on.

I hope things work out for the best.

Hang in there!

Galagirl
 
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How and welcome to the forum.

From your initial post for this thread I was going to say IMO your husband knew and agreed to you having sex with this other guy AND after the fact he GOT COLD FEET decided to throw in the kissing only part in.


However after reading the link with the set up discussions / dumping him in luke warm water and then gradually turning up the heat he may have honestly thought you were going to execute the earlier discussed plan.

WHATS more likely. He got cold feet/ instant regret OR he was that clueless, trusting, etc, etc ??


I really wouldn’t take the attitude that YOU screwed this all up. But rather WE have a temporary communication issue and after things calm down and reality sets in that you can be back on track.

IMHO I would capitulate so quickly. I don’t think either one of you should be making rash decisions like being open or closed married or divorced until sleep has returned maybe some counseling, etc.

As you said you want the freedom to do what you want with whom ever you want including sex and IMO life’s too short to settle. And that’s what you’d be doing if you agreed to monogamy.
 
Hello Pigwidgeon,

I think "I screwed up" is rather overstating what happened, and "What an idiot I am" is both overstating it and is counterproductive. It is possible to make a mistake without being an idiot, smart people make mistakes all the time. You and your husband are both new to poly and are bound to make mistakes in it. In this case your mistake was that you didn't communicate clearly with each other. That happens. So you make a mistake, you learn from it, and hopfully you do better next time. I suppose that technically, you could say, "We *both* screwed up," but I would prefer, "We both made a mistake."

Your husband is very upset right now; I would suggest you not make any big decisions until he's had some time to calm down. Go back to monogamy for now, find out if you can stay married on that condition. If so, then tell him that eventually, you would like to discuss with him what went wrong, and ask him if he would eventually be willing to discuss poly in general. If he says no, I guess you know it's off the table. Then you have to decide if you can live with this man, knowing it means you'll never be poly. Don't make that decision quickly, don't try to decide while you are in a state of panic about losing your marriage.

It's possible that this mishap merely sped up a process that was going to happen gradually anyway. Your husband might be hardwired for exclusive monogamy; it just didn't come out until you had this mishap. What you then would have to figure out is, are you exclusively hardwired for polyamory? If you try to live monogamously for the rest of your life, will you ultimately be unhappy? Will you even come to resent him for putting you in that position? If so, then breaking up might be the kindest thing both of you can do with each other. You grew apart; that is one possible outcome.

Hopefully it won't come to that.
With sympathy,
Kevin T.
 
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and respond to my story so thoughtfully. I have absolute faith in us as a couple getting through this. Being apart last night was the right thing. I’ve slept and had some thinking time. Not much yet, but enough to realise I have an awful lot to process myself too and I need space to do that just like he does.

I’ve realised that actually my conscious intentions were good. It’s not that I failed to check in and ask specifically about sex. I really think I thought we would just snuggle and kiss. I didn’t really know how the friend would respond and didn’t even consider it really, it was so outside of my normal experiences and opportunities. It just got out of hand really quickly. I own that. I know my husband trusts me and genuinely didn’t consider that I might be doing more and I have broken that trust and need to work on it.

Now that he’s (hopefully) got some sleep I think my priority today is to get in touch with the logical part of his brain that knows all the theory and understands this was about novelty and excitement, not any lacking on his part. He does understand that but couldn’t get too it when his emotions were so high and physically he was so low.

I don’t want to give up on this journey. He says it’s like we were travelling together and just sprinted ahead five stops without asking. I want to go back to where he is (and maybe he’s a couple of stops forward now too), not back to before the start. Yesterday I think the problem was that he just wanted me to make a rash promise and say I’d never do it again. I couldn’t do that and don’t think he’d be able to trust me with it even if I did. He couldn’t cope with me being calm and collected yesterday when he was so broken, but I was ready for this, I knew it was coming.

There’s a lot else going on for us too (family illness stuff mainly) and I had an awful vision of my beautiful, perfect, fun, happy life going to tatters with a divorce and losing my mum (not yet but expected this year) all in one year. The kind of disastrous year that throws your life into turmoil but you emerge a butterfly! I was almost excited about it, but I feel more capable of healing this now.

Thank you so much for your time. I can’t tell you how much it’s helped. Update to follow!
 
Pigwidgeon,

I have great empathy for your situation as it feels similar to mine. I have suggested opening our marriage and been working towards this as a possibility for a while.

This comment may or may not apply, so take it whatever applies and leave the rest.

My greatest hurdle has been what is behind the communication, ie, a certain amount of uncomfortably / anxiety around communication. While I am a great communicator, in general, communicating with my wife around this topic is one of the hardest things to do. I am only just now, after quite a few years, able to be completely calm in her presence while discussing this topic.

Previously, with the anxiety in place, the discussions were more like statements. I would make statements about my desires or my thinking, but not really follow them up with questions like "What do you think about that?" or "How does that make you feel?". This was because I wasn't calm enough to be fully present. With anxiety around the topic, never allowed our conversations to be complete. I think we both felt awkward about the topic and wanted to get off it, or were too full of emotions that prevented us from really being present to what emotions were going on within ourselves or each other.

While the topic was broached, it was never really fully explored. We would talk about it, but never really dissect it, poke it, prod it, turn it over, and explore it with the detail that was necessary. The first step before complete communication could occur. was to be able to create a completely calm place where we both felt relaxed and safe, before thorough communication could occur.

This was my situation. Might this apply?
 
Thanks

Our communication is pretty good in that we are able to talk openly and honestly about this stuff. This last couple of days we have found writing to each other, reading it and then talking to be easiest.

We have discovered that our issue is not double checking each other’s interpretations of what’s been said/agreed. So we are now going to summarise each conversation to each other to check we are in the same place.

We have also started using a scoring system ie how would you score X out of ten and what can I do to change that score for the better? X being happiness, trust, anger, connection etc. A wheel of life basically. We are writing down our scores so we can see changes. This has already proven really useful, for example he was surprised to see that my trust in him has reduced (we also have scores for how we felt before) but connection has increased.

I’ve also written up a sort of polyamory scale, with 1 being super-monogamy (controlling, only socialise together, always know where the other is and who with) and 5 being completely open to anything. On our version of the scale we were at 2.9, I skipped to 3.8, he’s asked me to go to 1, we’ve agreed to go for a 2. I think this will be useful if we get to a point where we can talk about opening up again in the future.

As for an update: He went for a drink with friends last night, one told him he should leave me, which only served to make him realise that’s not what he wants. He bumped into the naughty friend today and they had a chat which was awkward but ultimately helpful. He said he could only stay with me if I agreed to a ton of crazy controlling things which I said no to. I want to be with him but not at the loss of myself. He says he feels there is Hope now. We’ve still got some anger and trust to deal with and he can’t bear to touch me still but we’ve made massive progress.

Thank you for listening!
 
Pigwidgeon,

Good to hear things have settled down a bit and marriage hasn’t crashed and burned. :D


The scoring system and the poly wheel are interesting ideas to further common action and keep your journey moving toward open poly relationship(s). Loving romantic emotional relationships ( drama ). However up until this point the toe dipping and water testing has been about limited sexual contact ie kissing to full on sex won’t change the way we / I feel about each other from the internal prospective. Clearly if he won’t touch you yet it’s changed the way he’s feeling at the moment.

Your husband has declared he’s mono and doesn’t have the interest or bandwidth, time ...whatever to pursue parallel relationships. And presently he’s having some issues with you being physical with others but have you discussed the emotional impact of being in love with /having another partner or partners ??? From my own experience it was glossed over at best. I don’t know if it would have made a difference at the time but at least you’d have a better idea of the enormity of what’s being asked for.


Have you discussed and thought about the effects of NRE ??? Does he know this is coming his way like it or not.


In my earlier post I told you life is too short to settle. I truly believe that but unfortunately that cuts both ways is this journey going to force him to settle for things he’d rather not?? Because of the kids...because of the expense and hassle and turmoil of divorce?

My wife’s parents were married a collective 7 or 8 times and I saw the effect that had on her and some of her family members so I was determined not to have that happen to my kids. That’s one reason I settled when I was asked to take this same journey. And we’re divorced anyway so that was a lofty/ empty goal on my part.
 
Hey, just to give an update on my situation! You guys really helped a lot, so thank you.

We are really good now, we have done a lot of reconnecting. We are on holiday at the moment in Croatia - I was worried at one point it would just be me and the kids but we are all here and having a great time.

We both agree that we are stronger and our relationship is better than “before”. He wishes we’d got to this point any other way but acknowledges that I really did try to get us here in many other ways (I really did!) and I think he accepts some responsibility for that.

We both want to be together forever and I’m confident we will find a middle ground that works for both of us. For example, when our youngest was a toddler (so no longer breastfeeding) my husband would get up to him during the night and then I’d get up early in the morning. We both felt like we had the better deal. I believe we’ll find a similar solution here.

I am a strong person and won’t agree to something I don’t believe in. I’d rather be single than in a controlling, unhappy relationship. I think he respects that I’ve never rolled over and said “I regret it all, I’ll do anything to keep you” but instead maintained that I had a good time and my regret is all around the bad communication rather than the act itself. So he knows I still want some form of polyamory.

I think we’ve settled on: if I say I’ll never kiss anyone again, I’d have to lie if it happens, therefore he’d never be able to trust me to be out without him. So the agreement is that if I find myself with this sort of opportunity again and want to take it, I have to ring him for explicit consent. If his yes sounds less than enthusiastic, it’s a no. If I can’t get through, it’s a no. If I don’t feel comfortable asking him, that’s my signal that it’s a bad idea, so it’s a no. It might always be a no but that hint of possibility is enough for me for now.

Thanks again for all your responses xx
 
If his yes sounds less than enthusiastic, it’s a no. If I can’t get through, it’s a no.

This one I'm torn on. Because it shouldn't be your responsibility to discern if he's essentially lying to you. If he lies and says it's okay when it's not, then that's a him problem. And sometimes, our voices just sound kinda blah or distracted when we aren't.

I'd say if it sounds less than enthusiastic say something to the point of: "you don't sound sure. I want to double check now that this is an enthusiastic yes"

Then if he gives an affirmative, you're good. If he then fesses up doubts, then you're covered.

EDIT

Also I'm so happy everything worked out!
 
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Thank you - you’re right, it’s that kind of communication that’s got us into a mess before - we need to be looking for more black and white explicit consent now.

This is called having good boundaries. Good boundaries mean that we don't hold others responsible (and thus carry around resentment when they "fail" us) for what we need and how we feel. Good poly experiences (and good relationships in general) always involve partners with good boundaries - partners who know themselves and stand by what they need without apology, guilt or resentment.
 
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