Looking for advice. Sorry, it’s a long one. Trying to give some background info.

My nesting partner/husband and I had some conversations around opening up our boundaries.

When we first opened up our relationship, about a year ago my male partner experienced a lot of jealousy and many of our established rules were to make him feel more secure. I personally experience very little jealousy and have the capacity to feel a lot of compersion. For context, we’ve been together since 2017 and have been married since 2021.

As a bi woman, I started dating other women which I wanted to explore more of- and a boundary was set for me to not to date men. A few weeks ago my partner told me he felt like that boundary should be done away with since it feels patriarchal. I agree but I never wanted to push the envelope. Despite feeling attraction towards men, I was also happy to just date other women/fem NB’s for his comfort.

My partner has been dating someone for maybe 6 weeks or so. He’s had an abundance of NRE which I’m happy about. He went through a phase of constantly talking about her, telling me stories about her, talking about her family. I like hearing about her but one day it was almost all he would talk about and I became a little annoyed. I kindly told him that I’m happy for him and want to hear more about her but not all at once and that it would feel better for me to taper it back a little bit. He acknowledged this and also apologized and he’s been pretty good about not overdoing it since then.

Some things have felt very fast in their connection- like my partner meeting her 4 year old son within the first couple weeks and her pushiness to try to meet me right away (mentioned even on their first date). I’ve met her since then and I do like her and am happy for their connection.

He’s moving surprisingly quickly with her compared to the speed I’ve had to move with other people. I’ve only actually dated a couple folks. One person I only went on a couple dates with and the other person, we had a couple dates about a year ago and then reconnected in April. We’ve been seeing each other slowly (she was gone 6 weeks this summer). I’ve had to take it so slow with her for my partner’s sake. I may have had some NRE but felt like I had to tamp down anything I felt to the point of not even knowing if I had NRE with her or not which is a little confusing for me tbh. I’ve had to move incredibly slowly and be very careful about talking about dates with her to my partner. I will say that when he started taking an anxiety med this summer, his compersion increased significantly and his jealousy decreased significantly. He has since met her and they get along great.

For a while he also felt a lot of jealousy that I was able to make connections on apps but he wasn’t. I changed his profile for him and suddenly he was going on dates- even had a one night stand (not saying this is bad!). At this point, he’s actually gone on dates with more people than I have.

Basically, I’ve been taking things VERY slowly for his sake and now with his new lover, things are moving so quickly- like he just let the reigns loose and it honestly really surprises me because of how I was restricted for so long.

Before he started dating other people, he required me to go on a date with him before I would go on a date with someone else. This made planning hard for me when trying to connect with other people and schedule anything. I limited it to seeing someone else only about once per week. Since then, we’ve talked about seeing other lovers about maybe twice a week. I’m fine with it being more but I don’t have as much desire to see my current lover more than I already do. My partner, however, has been seeing his new lover a lot more. Which I don’t mind but it’s a big change compared to the dynamic we had before.

A couple days ago he last minute wanted to drive 2 hours away to pick up his lover from the airport. I supported that- even told him to bring condoms just in case. He said he’d be home around midnight. He was home closer to 4am but didn’t send me a text about the delay. I actually couldn’t sleep that night and was awake when he got home. He asked me if it was okay for his lover to eat breakfast at our house the next morning and since he knew I’d probably sleep in, they would be quiet. I agreed and had no problem with it. Although I guess in reality if I didn’t sleep in, I would probably be tired and grumpy which I don’t really want to be like in front of my metamour. They actually ended up hooking up that morning as well- which I don’t mind it at all.

Anyway, the past week he’s mentioned several things he wants to explore outside of our current boundaries and yesterday we had some very long conversations about changing even more boundaries. This big conversation came up within a couple hours after their morning hook up.

The topics include: allowing sleepovers now, having sexy weekend vacations with a lover, wanting to pursue an actual relationship with his newer lover, Changing our dynamic from being “poly but emotionally monogamous” to “emotionally non-monogamous.”

These are things I’m open to especially because like I said, these were more boundaries that were established for my partner’s comfort and not mine. But I do think that having more boundaries at the beginning of being poly does feel like a better way to ease into it.

Side note: Sooo I’ve been crushing on one of our good friends. The feelings are reciprocated and there is a really fun dynamic there. I would like to pursue it more- the attraction feels strong and I think we could have a lot of fun playing together. I sort of feel like I have a precursor to NRE which feels exciting because I haven’t really been able to experience that yet. My partner and I have great sex and it’s really sweet and romantic… but I can’t get too kinky with him because it’s not something he’s interested in. Meanwhile, I have the strongest urge to tie up my friend and do naughty things to him 😈. And I know he wants it. I think it also feels safe because there’s trust built between us and the feelings have had such a long time to build… and that’s really hot to me.

Anyway, so after these long conversations about getting rid of a boundaries after my partner stayed out all night and had a sexy morning, I lightly mentioned that I think our friend has a crush on me. I was trying to break the ice to see how he’d respond. He asked me if I had a crush on him too… I slowly and kind of sheepishly said yes.

He got so upset. He couldn’t talk about it- he had to leave. He texted me after a little while saying this: “ I would like to revisit this conversation with you soon. One boundary we discussed in the beginning was no friends, and that (like the emotional boundary) kind of snuck up on us without specifically talking about it. Ultimately, you can date whom you want. And to be frank, I dislike the idea of you and ___ together. But again, that’s my boundary. You can decide whether it’s your own for yourself.”

Tbh, I don’t remember having a lot to conversations about not dating friends in the beginning.

He actually recently mentioned interest in sexually exploring with men- with one of his best guy friends who is bi.

Anyway, then my partner came back home and wanted to chat more. He’s feeling jealousy. All I’ve mentioned at this point was having a crush- I’ve not said anything to him about wanting to act out on it. To calm him down, I told him that nothing has to come of this or be acted upon (in regard to the crush). It felt like he needed reassurance that I wouldn’t do anything behind his back. He’s really upset about it all and eventually told me that I can’t date our close friends and that’s a boundary he’s setting for us. Basically end of discussion upon his decision of this boundary.

For context, I have friends who I’ve been intimidate with in the past and it hasn’t negatively impacted my ability to be friends even after the intimacy has ended. This was before we were together, though. But my partner has met those people and even has been to one of their weddings with me!

I feel kind of let down. I feel tied to only being able to abide by boundaries that my partner decides he wants- until he gets to the point where that boundary becomes desirable and then he wants to change it. So if one of our friends expresses interest in him and he reciprocates it, maybe he would bring up his desire to change the boundaries again? It feels like a trend. I want to respect boundaries but I hate feeling like my boundaries are all set by him and then I let him change boundaries when he wants.

And I’m always okay with chatting about boundaries and renegotiating them when he wants to. I’m truly very flexible and understanding. And I want him to feel happy because it makes me happy!

I feel like there’s just a little bit of a double standard in what I’m allowed to do and at what pace. But that it’s kind of a free for all for him. It feels like I’m more limited and don’t have control over my sexual freedom.

I think also seeing the friendship he’s formed with his metamour has painted a picture for me that he could potentially be comfortable with being friends with who I’m dating. I do understand there’s a difference when a good friendship has already been established.

And on the flip side, I do understand the concern he may have about a friendship being damaged… but I feel that his concern is more about jealousy or potential distrust.

To be clear, I do feel very strong in my relationship with my partner. We normally have very clear communication, are supportive, and love each other dearly. He’s also my best friend. We live together, own a home and vehicles together, share a pet, and are each other’s primary partners- and that’s something we both feel very strongly about and don’t want to risk. I feel that there is no threat to me losing him to someone else and I hope he truly does feel the same about me.

Ironically, I opened up IG today and saw a post from polyphiliablog about dating friends 🫣

I’d love any advice!