I'm just venting here. Maybe someone in a similar situation could get insight from this. I''m just disappointed. I thought if I stuck things out long enough, the pain would go away.

My partner still doesn't know if he wants polyamory or just plain old, casual ENM five years after opening our relationship. I only agreed to it because I was deeply in love with him at that point and preferred him to be open and honest instead of claiming that he was only on Tinder to look for friends.

He was my first and only for awhile. Someone he met wanted polyamory, and he tried it for her, and after that fiasco, I could never do mono-poly again without seriously jeopardizing my mental health, and I'm saying that as someone who does not struggle with jealousy. I tried sleeping around a lot and swinging with my partner, even practicing polyamory myself, but it has never felt genuine for me. After getting to the point where I cry on the way to dates, I decided to stop having multiple partners.

A couple nights ago, I asked my partner what sort of relationship configuration he wants because I am no longer willing to date a polyamorous person and need to know if that is what he is. He still doesn't know what he wants, but he for sure likes having multiple sexual partners. And the two times he developed an interest in polyamory was because he caught feelings for someone else.

It sounds like I can either break up with him now or cross my fingers and hope that he never manages to get into an additional relationship, which sounds like absolute hell for my nervous system, not to mention a re-traumatizing breakup.

I probably have way too low expectations for a relationship, even my own partner thinks so. So it sucks that I don't even get to know if we're on the same page or not. I wish I had valued myself more years ago so I wouldn't be sitting here feeling like I'm about to throw away something even bigger and more sentimental. As a woman who heavily prefers other women, I'm worried that my pool might be limited to mostly polyamorous folks anyway (apparently the lesbian/bi community doesn't have many monogamous people in it?) and I'll just have to settle for that relationship style if I ever want intimacy again.