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Unique circumstance to start an ENM - advice appreciated!
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I'm a 35M that seeking advice on a new relationship that is navigating ENM. However, our circumstances are a bit unique.

I met, let's call her "P," for anonymity, on some recent travels to Southeast Asia. I was on a month long holiday from my country and P (30F) is at the beginning of a 9 month sabbatical from her country. We had a travel fling for roughly a week and quickly fell for each other. While the connection was rooted in great sexual chemistry, we soon found that our sense of humor, our values, and perhaps most importantly, our willingness to be open and sincere with each other in communication has been unparalleled compared to our prior relationships. The icing on the cake is, we have similar humor and can genuinely bring a smile to the other's face.

Now I'll preface that both of us have relatively varied and substantive relationship experience throughout our lives. I've been in committed relationships with 7 women over my life and sexually experienced close to 40. P has had 4 relationships and sexually engaged with another 9.

However, while I've been curious about ENM, I've never dabbled in any such engagement. P on the other hand had a non-committed ENM "situation ship" prior to leaving for her sabbatical. Four of the 13 men she's been with have been in the past year.

Even before we said our goodbyes in person, we had deeply honest conversations about our potential together. The challenges we are working with:

1) cultural differences (although this is probably the most manageable)
2) geographical distance (she's European; I'm in North America)
3) language barriers (she has high level of proficiency in English but definitely is not a native speaker; I know practically none of her native language)

As such we decided to "play it by ear" and see how we felt about each other once I returned to my country of residence.

Despite these challenges, as we've continued to communicate daily through text and video calls. We prioritize each other and find time to have meaningful, substantive conversations (aka not just "what'd you do today?, or "show me a picture of your meal").

We've engaged in historic conversations about insecurities, family issues, prior relationship trauma, and in future oriented conversations such as career ambitions, values we desire from a primary partner, and familial goals.

Since the onset, P has maintained that she would like to have her "freedom" during her travels in SE Asia and not be committed to anyone. However, as we've gotten closer, we recently established that we're acting more and more like a committed relationship. She thinks of me as her primary partner now and I reciprocate that feeling. For what it's worth, we've exchanged "I love yous" as well.

I have plans to visit P again in 6 weeks time (Christmas/NYE). We will spend two weeks together traveling around SE Asia and are both wildly excited to see each other.

I apologize for the wordy history here before I ask the question, but I hope this context is helpful in considering my question below.

Where I'm struggling now is maintaining support for her desire for an ENM approach to our relationship. At least during her travels and perhaps after as well, since we don't yet have plans (understandably given the nascency of the relationship) to cohabitate in the same country. Having never been in an ENM relationship before, I'm experiencing a helplessness of jealousy despite rationalizing her request as a reasonable one. I also don't feel as if it's an equitable trade to allow me to "date" freely in my home city as I have a demanding career (frequent travel) that limits my capacity to seek casual sex through traditional means. This freedom would mostly be for her; she recognizes this imbalance.

I also worry that despite our intense connection over the past month, which truly has been next level, it's not enough of a foundation to flow into an ENM relationship. On the other hand, I don't think asking her to exclusively commit to me at this point is a reasonable request. I don't want to stymie her chance to explore her sexuality and be (reasonably) free.

So overall, my question is: aside from packing up shop and giving up, how would you approach this situation? Are there things I can do to become more "comfortable" with the ENM idea? What parameters or boundaries do you think would be essential to maintaining the love but limiting the jealousy? How should we handle the sexual health conversation?

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2 months ago