I need some advice. I'm not sure who's in the wrong or where to go from here.
Beginning of October last year, I started playing DnD with a former coworker of mine, S. While we worked together we started to form a friendship, and I was very attracted to them. While they worked with me they told me they are poly. At the time I had been in a monogamous marriage for four years and I had had one poly relationship before. So after they left the company they invited me to their DnD group and I started going.
Important context: I had been married to this woman for four years and in a relationship with her for 9. This woman is transphobic, homophobic, and was very manipulative in a lot of ways. I did not leave her for S and C.
Over the course of the next few months, S and I grew to be really close friends. I came to them with struggles over having feelings for other people. They told me they could relate because their husband (C), who was the DM and I also grew really close with, didn't want them practicing poly. They told me he was monogamous and struggled with the idea. Over time, I confessed to them that I'm trans but couldn't do anything about it because of who I was married to. They started encouraging me to leave, and I was seriously considering it. At around the same time, both of us started to realize deeper feelings for each other.
Eventually it came to a head. I was venting about how I develop feelings for people super easily, and was telling them about the people I'd developed feelings for recently trying to process through it. I almost said their name but instead I said there was one other person but they know this person and I'm not sure I should say. During that night's session, they like stroked my foot with theirs, and it escalated and by the end of the night we were full-on holding hands. They texted me when I got home that night and we talked. They told C about it and he was okay with it. Over the next three weeks we were cuddling and holding hands throughout the whole session. Eventually we decided we needed to meet up and decide on some boundaries until I left my wife. So we had lunch together and talked. We decided that physical contact might be okay but it needs to be limited. We continued to text all day every day for a while.
Throughout all of this, C and I were also growing closer. He was reassuring me that he has no issue with poly, and that he actively wants it, but that S has really struggled with seeing him be intimate (physically or romantically) with others and so it was more of a them thing than a him thing. He said the only rule he wanted to set was that if S and I were having sex and he wasn't involved, to not do it when he's home. Totally fair, but like... That is in direct contradiction to what S had told me.
Also during this time, the three of us were researching and planning to get me out of my marriage. Our plan was we would set a day and they would come help me get all my stuff, and then I'd live with them for a bit while I found a roommate, as S did not want me living there when we first started dating, which is totally fair.
Well, at the beginning of February, my wife found out about EVERYTHING. There was a huge screaming match and I got out and went to S and C's house. We got all my stuff the next day and for me settled in.
Now, important context again. S and C are in a 24/7 kink dynamic. S is purely a sub and C is a switch that leans towards domming. I am a switch that leans towards subbing.
So. Day three of me being there, C is giving S an punishment. We had had a discussion about whether this was okay with everyone while I was present and we had all agreed, so it was okay. The punishment went further than it should have though. C invited me to join and we had a threesome. C and I both checked in with S after the aftercare and they were okay with it. We checked in the next day and they were still okay with everything that happened. We decided to drop the pretense and start officially dating.
Well, over the next couple of months things seemed good. We went on dates, lots of physical contact, lots of loving messages. I moved out and into a house with the other person in our DnD group, but would still spend Friday and Saturday nights with them. C worked early on Sundays so he would wake me up and I'd go join S in the bed.
During this period of time, C was trying to push S and I closer together. He would give me advice, initiate cuddle piles, and encouraged our first kiss during one of those cuddle piles. He stated multiple times that his goal was to build an equal relationship without couples privilege. He also initiated more threesomes, but S had a major panic attack due to trauma being triggered during one of those. After that, we could never have a successful one again. S would always panic and safeword, or panic so badly they couldnt.
Also during those months, C and I started also developing feelings for each other. Eventually we started dating too. S told me it was more than okay because they had always wanted kitchen table polyamory anyway. (Another contradiction.)
Now, at the end of March, Sky had a really big meltdown. When C and I got them calmed down we had a conversation. Things had not gone the way S had wanted. Things went way too far too fast. They had no issue with the first threesome but they hadn't wanted to do more, but felt like they had to. They hadn't been comfortable with the level of physical affection there had been. They hadn't been comfortable with C pushing things further. They had also really been struggling with how affectionate C and I were. We are both aware that S often struggles with physical affection and were trying to be respectful of that by filling that need with each other more often, which made S feel like they were gonna lose us both. So we agreed to slow things down. We agreed that in front of S, C and I would only do what S is comfortable with doing with me, and that my relationship with S would progress at their pace, not mine. Cool, no problem.
What was NOT clearly communicated, or communicated at all, was that S had expectations for mine and C's relationship that included when they weren't there. The week after our conversation, C and I were spending some one-on-one time with each other while S was in class. We ended up having sex. We were totally safe, using a condom and everything. S got REALLY upset when C told them, and we all had a long conversation about it. They had thought they'd made it clear that they didn't want either of them sexually involved with me yet, which they had not. C and I apologized and we all worked things out. It was fine. But we decided that we would wait a month and see where things went and reevaluate. Until then, no sexual contact with me.
So we waited. We didn't do the check in after a month, because June was busy for us. Things were still going really well overall though, despite the recent bumps in the road. Week three of June, things got interesting. Sunday and Tuesday there was a LOT of physical contact, multiple kisses, and even some sexual flirting on Sunday, all of which was being initiated by S. Thursday C was punishing S and gave them a choice: have me untie them when I got home from work or have me do whatever I wanted to them. They chose the second option. So I got home and we had sex one-on-one for the first time and it seemed to go really well. I checked in with them exactly the was C had taught me, and during the aftercare they were super lovey. It was great overall, and when I checked in again the next day they were still super happy with it. C and I also had sex that night, in front of S, which they were also okay with although a little less so. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I was being incorporated into their dynamic as the other domme.
Then the next week came along. On Monday, I asked if they wanted to go out the next Sunday. They said they would like that, but they also sent me a long message about how they hadn't been feeling the romance. (After last week?) So I started trying to plan a date with them where we could build that by spending fun quality time interacting with each other, rather than just lunch, movie, window shopping. I asked C for advice and he gave me some suggestions, which I used to plan a fun date that would last from lunch until C got home, but could be made shorter if they couldn't handle that long. I thought it made sense to ask their husband what kinds of activities they'd like to do that would build that.
Now, I'm really anxious. I developed a lot of insecurity that S was going to break up with me and was talking through it with C. Eventually he told me to just be confident in myself, take the advice he's already given me, and use it, but that he couldn't help me anymore.
Thursday S was really distant. I went over after work and we were hanging out. I was feeling really insecure and they had mentioned that when I was feeling that way I should ask them for a little physical affection and reassurance. So I did. Their response was no, because they were feeling very overwhelmed and overstimulated and overheating and didn't want any touch at all. 30 minutes later C got home from work, and S was instantly ALL over him. Kidding, cuddling, laying on top of him. They did not break physical contact the entire night.
Friday was also really bad. They were very distant and monopolizing C. Then Saturday came. On Saturday, as we were running some errands, S has a really bad meltdown and yelled at me to go away. I did. S and C talked for a bit. C came to get me, and before we went back to S he told me the plan was gonna be to finish our errands, grab lunch, and then I would go and give them the rest of the day because S needed some space. So we got back, I repeated the plan and S yelled at me saying they didn't want to talk about this right now. We finished our errands and went to lunch. While we were eating, they did what I'd seen coming and broke up with me. Both of them.
S explained that they had been feeling unsafe and uncomfortable in this relationship. C said he hadn't been feeling like a priority, which is fair. My feelings for S have always been stronger and I naturally gravitated to them more. They said they wanted to still be friends and that S still wanted to hang out the next day, but it would be a friend hangout and I would leave before C got home because he wanted some distance from me to adjust to friendship. A few days later C and I started talking again. After about a week it came out that he wanted to try again and so did I. Eventually it came out that S had pressured C to break up with me, and that C hadn't wanted to.
Well, over the two months following the breakup, C and I were working on improving things so we could all try again. Both of us kept noticing small behaviors from S that indicated they also wanted to try again. At the beginning of August we all sat down for a series of conversations about what would need to change for us to try again. Middle of August, S started to talk more and more about getting back together and on one occasion was telling C to stop being such a jerk so we could all be together.
The last Saturday in August we were all out shopping together. During that, S spoke up at one point and said "Why aren't we all just dating?" So we talked about it and came to the conclusion that we could work on things together. We started dating again.
The first two weeks things were good. We had physical contact, initiated by me and by them in equal amounts, and flirting and went on a date. C and I did all the same things. Beginning of week three, S and I decided we would talk about kink dynamics, since that was something we wanted to start thinking about how to incorporate. The conversation didn't go the way they wanted it to, partially due to my lack of experience with kink and especially domming. They withdrew a lot.
A couple hours later, they told me they just hadn't been feeling comfortable with any of the physical contact we'd been having since getting back together and that they wanted to drop all labels and expectations and just let things happen however they were going to. The made it very clear that they were not breaking up with me and that they were still my partner and I was still their girlfriend, but they wanted us to just... Be friends, but let things progress further when it felt natural. I agreed.
The very next day, S started a two-week meltdown/panic attack/BPD episode. During this time there was a lot of chaos and a lot of hurt. I didn't really see S or C a lot during that time, due to S wanting space, S and C fighting, and other stuff. C did tell me at one point during all of this that S was trying to convince him to break up with me again. I made some new friends during that time since I couldn't handle being alone.
As S started to come out of it, I had formulated a plan. This is where I know, for 100% fact, that I fucked up. This part is my fault and I recognize that. I thought, S wants someone confident. They want someone stable and strong. They want someone who can dom them. So I decided I would try to give off that energy, and the way I would do it is by being as confident in our relationship as possible. And the way I would do that was that I would display how I was feeling about them with full confidence. So, with the sexual aspect of the energy I was trying to give off, I made some sexual comments about them, mainly about our Halloween costumes. We had one night where our plan was for sexy costumes, so while we were planning the costumes I was making comments about how great they were going to look and how I couldn't wait to see them in it.
Well, they got mad. Also, during this same time, C and I were hanging out at my apartment one night. We didn't have sex, but things did get close. Now, C and I had determined that we wouldn't be having sex until he had been on birth control for a few months, but we had been talking about our dynamics and he'd been trying to teach me how to be dominant. He had not set boundaries about what was okay to do. So I was just kind of going with it and
So then, the next week, they were both upset with me and sat me down for a conversation. Both of them broke up with me again.
So we tried to continue being friends but things have been really rocky. We went a few weeks seeing each other very sporadically and not really talking a lot. At one point during all of this, C and I were texting and I asked if he wanted me to bring his blanket from my apartment. He had left it there intentionally with the first breakup. This time he wanted it back. Then he said I should bring a picture of my dead brother that we'd set up next to a picture of their dead friend home. This felt like a permanent rejection and like I would never be able to be close friends with them again either. So, I admit, I lashed out. I had been thinking a little about moving states to be with my now only partner, and in a moment of pain and hurt I lashed out and made the decision in a split second and told him I'll probably start getting all my stuff because I'd probably be moving states. That turned into a long argument about how I was just running away because I didn't want to be friends with them if we weren't dating.
Every time we would hang out, it was preestablished plans and routines, and when I would text them both in the morning to ask what the plan was I wouldn't get a response. They would look at the message and then just not respond. I'd just be soaking in my anxiety, and eventually I would text C asking if things were okay and FINALLY get a response, sometimes with as little as 30 minutes until the planned time, and sometimes with last-minute changes that affected everything else about the weekend.
One such day happened a week and a half ago. We had been trying to get together for a movie night on Friday nights, so I texted S in the morning and asked if we were still good to do that. They looked at the message and then just... Never responded. I finally texted C and asked him after a few hours, and he said that we wouldn't be meeting up that night because S had a queer board meeting. I was really hurt and a little angry because S could have told me that in the morning when I asked. So I made plans to hang out with my new friends the next day, and I sent a message in the group chat to say that I wouldn't be able to hang out the next day because I had plans with some other friends, and I wouldn't be available Sunday because of a work obligation. Well. S got pissed and we got into a multi-day argument over text because apparently I shouldn't have made plans because we had plans for Saturday, but nothing about that was ever communicated to me and I hadn't even been receiving any communication about plans lately. We ended up hanging out on Tuesday and finalizing our Halloween plans, and then we did all our plans on Halloween weekend.
Friday and Saturday were great, although a little awkward at times. Saturday was actually really fun and I started to wonder if there was a chance of one more shot. But I didn't get my hopes up. Sunday was mostly great but C was very distant and seemed mad at me all day. When I got home after that day, I texted him to check in and was ignored. He didn't talk to me at all on Monday either. Tuesday I texted him again and asked if he was mad at me and got a text from S saying I needed to chill and that I was being really weird and that C was allowed to need space, and also that I needed to stop looking at them like I'm in love with them. It was a whole thing and we haven't talked since.
Now, during this whole thing S and C (S more so than C but yes, both of them) have been really focusing on the mistakes I made and the problems that were my fault and putting the blame on me. I'm not crazy, right? They're in the wrong too?
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