Hello wonderful people. I was wondering if I could ask your help in gaining some clarity about how I feel about something that is currently happening in my relationship. My partner and I are in the process of opening up the relationship. I am mono leaning and they are poly. I've done a deep dive into the process of being in an open/poly relationship, definitions, processes for opening, aiming for compersion as a goal, or at least being okay with opening up. They are wanting to be open. After alot of unethical behavior, lying (both outright and by omission), which my partner recognized and is trying to take responsibility for, we are continuing to try to maintain the relationship. As we are working on this, I'm finding some behaviors and talks/arguments are making me feel uneasy and I don't know why. My questions are:
- We'd come to an agreement that we will keep the current structure, where I do my research and continue therapy (that I just started a few weeks ago in response to this), and we will not open up the relationship and have a big check in after 5 months. However, as part of this agreement, they stated they require at least a little amount of "openness" in the form of getting phone numbers of people in whom they are interested pursuing after I'm "ready." They are asking for specific definitions now of what is deemed appropriate for interacting with these people they are interested in, like, is it okay if it is 1:1 hang outs if, in my partner's mind, that it is purely platonic acts, or group hangouts with the same provision, where previously, they said they will not. The back and forth feels like pressure, but I'm not sure. I tell them that this feels like turning thoughts and intentions into action and that the back and forth doesn't feel right. As I understand it, attraction for other people will happen, and that's fine, but this feels like action. I'm not sure. Why does this make me feel icky?
- We are working on defining the structure of the relationship including what is okay and what is not okay. What makes me feel unease is that I'm the only one coming up with these definitions; and I have to be incredibly specific about each possible situation, whether emotional or physical. I also don't know why this makes me feel unease.
I was hoping I might gain more insight from anyone in this dynamic and what you've done to successfully navigate this opening up process? As I am incredibly new to this, please let me know if there is any additional information that might be helpful. Thank you so much in advance.
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