Heya, feel free to answer the question generally without the whole context.

As for personal context my long time gf (28) and I (27) of almost 9 years have been open for 4 years. The catalyst of the opening of the relationship wasn't for healthy reasons on my end (bipolar hypersexuality - death in the family leading to hospitalisation leading to diagnosis, leading to still a hypomanic/mixed comedown - immediately post all of that) but was still none the less recieved well on her end at the time as I'd researched the heck out of things and came to her 80% authentically (and 20% terrified of my brain and any ensuing impulsivity, afraid for what I'd rationalise and then fess up if we didn't have established agreements and conversations around boundaries and commit to ongoing communication.)

I tried poly for month, decided on my end at least that was unfair to anybody I saw because I wasn't emotionally equipped for that, so I kept things to a non-romantic style to try to be fair to everyone involved, and initially had a messy hook up relationship for a year. Then a lovely kink play partnership for a year, then a 3 month fucked up relationship, and a 3 month lovely polyesque relationship that ended in heartbreak because I have to sort out my bullshit, but is becoming a friendship after turbulent months, and there were long stretches of time between the 3 month ones of complete mental health turmoil, and occasionally flirting with people I wasn't interested in and having to apologise later.

I've had various up and down cycles and times of the closest thing to stability throughout all of these relationships and inbetween, and have been learning my bipolar diagnosis and about myself and about grief.

Over this time I've read lots of books, listened to podcasts and videos, attended an alt relationship discussion group for a good year until it stopped, and made poly friends - who often wondered why I wasn't straight up poly based on how I acted when stable. I've always been poly leaning my whole life and first heard of it went 17, but nowadays it's all tangled up in the bipolar hypersexuality/grief and subsequent development of using sex to cope so I generally avoid polyamoury, but the polyesque relationship I speak of was accidental romantic attachment.

I held for a long time the hope that equipping myself with the tools would be enough to be healthy and fair in these relationships, but ultimately I fail when my mental health and addictive (?) moments get in the way.

I obviously need to sort out my issues for potentially a long time before I can consider non-monogamy again personally even as my gf is, but I wondered if anybody here has ever recovered from using sex or attachments in the way I have ? Did you ever have a break to sort this stuff out to be somewhere healthy in things now?

Whether fwb or relationships, I just want to know people's experiences or advice if anybody has personally overcome this.

Thank you 💖