Hello, all.

I've been dating a girl for almost a year now. Because of past traumatic experiences I wanted to try to keep it ethically non monogamous.

She has this guy, she has been seeing for longer than me but who lives on another country and they meet when he is around. He was here a couple of times since we are together and I knew about it and managed my feelings, it was fine.

Last week he was around and she didn't let me know before hand, I ended up "finding out" when I invited her for something else and she told me he was here and she was with him. It was fine at that moment, I was supportive and told her to have fun. Latter that day she told me he had been here for 3 days already and that caught me off guard. I felt cheated felt left aside. Felt really hurt.

Yes, she avoided a supposedly difficult conversation with me and we are talking about this to improve our understanding on each other's needs.

But that is not exactly the point I want to address at this moment.

The thing is. On every single other relationship I had in my life, I had a partner keeping secrecy over someone they had interest on and kept feeding the interest although we had a monogamous relationship. I was never actually cheated on, but there is a lot of trauma there.A lot of agony on needing to fight for them, which, at the time, I confused for passion, infatuation, love.

After thinking a lot and having many supportive conversations with her and friends I started to think that: - We had communication issues and it was not clear to her how important knowing it and processing it was for me. We will address that together. - I believe this was a huge trigger for me as it replicates some of the features of my past traumas. This led to a really really strong reaction from me, crying like a baby for 4 days straight. Feeling like it was the end.

I know for a fact she won't stop seeing this guy, and hell I don't even feel like this is something I could ask for on my own relationship terms. But I also don't want to let this become tied to my past trauma, I keep thinking, "now that this happened, will I be able to manage the next time like I used to do before?

The question is: Are there any particular methods or techniques to help turn down this kind of traumatic response? I want to keep things open between us both in terms of seeing other people and in terms of communication, but being tied up to the past seems to make it way harder. The situation kind of made me go through the same response route of fight for her but in fact, I don't need or want to be that person right now, it is different from what I had in other instances it is a really supportive person, who made a mistake, but it is not the same. Still, I feel the exact same way, as if I was transported back to that same exact place and time.