First poly experience and lessons learned

Just a little vent and sharing to add to the pile of “play unicorn games” stories. I definitely made some dumb newbie choices that I’m not proud of.

Early on in the convo of opening up for poly I discussed with my husband that sometimes that will mean he gets to comfort a heartbroken me. Happy to report that my husband has fully showed up and been supportive in both my highs and lows.

I never had the cliche dating experience of someone sweet talking me to just get me into bed. Up until recently my husband was the only one who id had sex with. Well now I had a whole couple do that. Not maliciously I don’t think. But many months of non stop chatting, day dreaming, promises of future plans, them expecting labels on the relationships and talking though boundaries and expectations. I was crushing big eventually and excited for a summer romance. The worse part is that initially I had interest in a casual but safe sexual exploration but it got built into a whole potential long term poly situation and I was enjoying the NRE too much to acknowledge that a little box was being built. Clear boundaries about poly fidelity were set on me suddenly without real discussions and I just went along. Read unicorns r us plenty of times but kept telling myself - I have a solid marriage, I can deal with messy stuff.

Eventually on a long planned vacation I slowly realized my role was to show up mostly for a threesome experience and for the wife to have a girlfriend experience. None of the planned affection or fun dates and the girlfriend label had completely disappeared with all other sweet nothings. A few times I considered leaving early but kept thinking I didn’t want to cause drama between them and I still had feelings so I wanted to give it as much of a chance to work as possible. Kept telling myself it’s just stress and adjustment. And in the evenings we had sex and I enjoyed the experience of a threesome and having an actual connection even though brief. It wasn’t easy to ignore the red flags anymore but I was really trying to. We had discussed how I didn’t sleep well alone and different configurations of cuddles that could happen at night or in the mornings, in the end I’d sleep alone in a separate room every single night. Felt like a good summary of our reality.

So after this week (yeah that was a dumb length of time) I’d like to say I did the mature thing and put up some clear boundaries…but no. Very much still having some ghost of NRE I convinced myself I could be a casual fuck buddy because the sex was good and I don’t want an endless row of new partners so might as well stick it out and see what can grow out of it. My whole poly thing was largely fueled by wanting to experience being in a relationship with a woman and having a higher libido than my spouse.

Over the next weeks I kept getting tiny nagging feelings of “I want something better”. I met with someone in a random social situation and we naturally flowed into an evening date and then a follow up meeting and I was a little surprised at how easy it was. I found someone with years of poly experience just in the wild! This person was into me and showing affection (gasp! Hugging, hand holding, pecks) and intune with their emotions and what they are able to offer in a relationship. Because of long distance I didn’t really entertain any crush feelings but it was a good pick me up to realize that someone finds me dateable even though I’m married and also that I need to get rid of these feelings towards the couple and move on.

Both sides of the couple have been a pretty horrible hinge and I was unsure how to bring this up. Well and little trickles of hope kept getting to me.

Somewhere a few months into our chats (after some big red flags) I marked my calendar for the 6month anniversary of our first chat with a gentle reminder “at 6 months you’ll know if this communication is working or not” well 6months is as Saturday and I had to admit that it is not meeting my needs and more stress than it should be. What helped to cement the decisions was realizing that they are about to hook up with more people without a clear idea of health boundaries. I just immediately felt like I don’t want to be connected to this weird mess anymore and sobered up.

So for my own peace of mind I let them know I don’t have any intention of future meetups anymore and only see online contact as possibility. Im pretty sure they knew this already but I needed to put it out there clearly, message was taken nicely. And while there is some feelings of foolishness, sadness and being used to be processed, I feel such relief and feel like I got a good crash course into what I expect from poly. I guess I didn’t have to learn it the hard way but I was having too much fun in the good moments.

The 6month thing was something I read in this sub a while ago in a response to someone feeling unsure and it spoke to me at the time. I forgot I had it in my online calendar. If that little notification hadn’t popped up who knows how long I would’ve kept this limbo in my head. Thank you whoever wrote that.

I woke up with a huge sense of relief today and a lot more optimistic about polyamory. Definitely not going to invest in connections that haven’t done some reading and internal processing in the future. And no starting to date a couple at the same time.

“Don't let your wild, majestic unicorn heart fall in love with someone who has the emotional intelligence of a soggy cat turd.”