Hi, I’m new here so I’ll introduce myself a bit. I’m 31f and have been with my nesting partner (38m) for 4 years. We have been poly for most of that and I was practicing something very similar to solo poly before that but didn’t realize it until I happened on some poly literature. My NP and I frequently date together. We are both queer and date all genders.

Recently he and I started dating a woman (24f). She is lovely in many ways but there have been a few things that have come up and I wonder if it will be better for me to withdraw from a relationship with her.

We have been on 4 dates so far. We met online and have only met together as a group of three so far. The first few dates went well with some minor things that I didn’t like. The issues so far that I’ve experienced are that she refuses or cannot remember to use appropriate pronouns that my nesting partner and myself prefer. She lives with two non-binary individuals and so uses gender neutral pronouns most of the time. I’m ok with they/their on occasion but it has been constant and she knows I prefer she/her. My NP really prefers he/him only and I feel like we are correcting pronouns ALL the time. I feel like at this point she is deliberately trying to bother me with this but I’m sure. She has also has mentioned a few times that she likes “straight forward communication” and it seems to me she might have trouble with social queues so I’m not sure if she is trying to be disrespectful or if she is just doing so by accident. The other issue I’m having is that she is part of the kink community and I’m not. On date 3 we went to a Halloween party she invited me to. It was lovely and I got to meet her good friends and roommates, who were lovely. The issue there was that she spent the whole night referring to me as “the vanilla one”. I guess everyone else is part of the kink community so it made sense to her to refer to me this way, but I quickly asked her not to. I told her I wasn’t comfortable being referred to that way and she spent the rest of the evening trying to explain to me why it wasn’t an insult. It still felt like she was defining me on her terms instead of actually getting to know me. It felt like I was constantly being defined by a sexual identity she had decided for me. I don’t identify as vanilla. That is a term from a community I don’t identify with. I have labels I use as a member of the LGBTQIA community but I chose them for myself, and anyone choosing any label for me feels like an insult.

We had sex pretty much right away, which I was excited to do at first but am now questioning. I have been struggling with undiagnosed pelvic pain (likely endometriosis) for about 2 years now. It has been really challenging and frequently leads to painful sex for me. Because of this I’m working really hard at communicating during sex, doing exercises to make things easier/possible during, an emotional journey that includes mourning a sex life I may never have again and embracing a very different way of having sex that works for me know, and the struggle to communicate that with new partners. I was upfront about my issues and she shared her chronic pain condition with me so I was expecting some empathy I didn’t receive. We were having sex just her and I when NP asked if he could join us. We both said yes and I won’t get into details other than to say I wasn’t up for penetration that day. NP then moved towards penetrating her. This was perhaps bad timing and honestly I’m also worried she was feeling insecure that he was using her this way (i really don’t think so) because she said “onto the backup pussy”. I had been excited to continue sex without penetration but when she said that I just had to leave. She did come apologize but only after NP said something to her. She wanted to kiss and make up right away but did give me space when I asked for it. I’m not sure I can get over this one. I’m struggling to not feel guilty about not being able to perform sexually the way I used to and the fact that she would outright say backup pussy like it was acceptable to centralize the relationship around penis, to infer that my sexual function isn’t good enough,and also that she would degrade her place within our relationship in two words really threw me for a loop. I do think she means well but then I’m also not sure. She and NP get on really well and I am glad for them, but I think I may need to bow out. On the other hand she is also so great in some ways I wonder if I’m just sensitive right now and being too insecure.

I also think she generally means well and perhaps if I talk to her we can fix it, but I’m unsure if I want to. That feels like it would be opening myself up to a lot of emotional pain for someone who has inflicted enough of that on me already

***Short Version:

My girlfriend made insensitive comments about my sexual disfunction and I’m not sure if I should risk the pain of trying to fix it.