Repost because I didn't understand how updates work on Reddit.

Original post:

My apologies for how long this is about to be.

My nesting partner (29M) and I (34NB) have been together for almost 8 years, polyamorous for 3. I'll call my NP Dennis for the purposes of this story. Our journey was a little wonky as we started off as newbie, inexperienced poly folks, and our relationship became functionally monogamous as busy adulthood ran us over. Eventually, we did some reading/work together, and jankily waded our way into polyamory in earnest.

For the most part our progress has been steady. We've worked on communicating as much as we can, respecting each others' boundaries, and working on our respective issues with jealousy. I have two other partners and he has one (whom I met for dinner recently and got on like a house on fire!). We've talked about polyamory being a great fit for us and how it enables us to explore relationships with people we care about - we have both known all of our respective partners for over a decade.

The one recurring theme is that Dennis gets huge amounts of NRE when he meets someone new and there's mutual attraction. Unfortunately, most of the time these people end up either not open to ENM, or are brand new to it. I've supported him through many bouts of grieving when he realises a relationship can't possibly happen, or crashes and burns because the other person realises ENM isn't for them.

I've also encouraged him to be proactive with finding people who are already experienced in ENM to avoid heartache down the line. Especially after his first relationship, with a childhood friend who ended up wanting to cowgirl him, exploded spectacularly and put us all through a huge amount of pain.

Overall, however, I had thought Dennis and I had a strong relationship. We're at the point in our lives where we own a small business that we operate on Saturdays together, have two beautiful old greyhounds, and are only a couple months away from moving into our dream house, which we purchased in 2020 and has undergone a ton of renovations. This was also stressful as we got a couple bad contractors before finding our current one, so a renovation process that should have taken 6 months has now been over 2 years in the making. We also want to expand our business soon to a standalone space and make it our full-time gig.

A few months ago, Dennis told me about one of his staff where he works. We'll call her Cheryl (25F). Dennis works in a small corporate cafe space. While Cheryl isn't his direct report, she is the employee of Dennis' co-manager (we'll call her Kinsey). Dennis and Kinsey work closely together to manage the space as a team, and Dennis often will ask Kinsey's staff to do tasks on her behalf if she's not available. The team is small and tight-knit, and regularly go out for beers and to play pool together.

Dennis told me that he and Cheryl have a flirty relationship at work (to the point where Kinsey had to tell Cheryl to dial it back a notch), and they had mutually expressed interest in each other. Cheryl has never been in an ENM relationship. He asked me my opinion about the situation. I told him truthfully that I thought it was a really bad idea to date a member of his staff from both an ethical perspective (power dynamic) and a logistical standpoint (citing his first relationship). As an HR professional in my day job, I also told him I'd be very hesitant to start a business or remain in a relationship with someone who couldn't draw that line in the sand. He was disappointed but seemed to take in and appreciate my perspective.

A week or two later, a stressful situation at his work happened after Dennis had gone out with his other partner. Cheryl had previously expressed that she didn't want to hear about his dates with other people (though has no problem hearing about me), but also was suspicious about his whereabouts the night before as he had simply told her he had "plans." He told her that he had been on a date, and she was cold to him the rest of the day and told him she didn't want to talk. Dennis ended up leaving work early because of the stress and toxicity, and Cheryl ended up calling out of work the next day. Dennis spent 48 hours feeling stressed out about the situation because she refused to talk to him, outside of a couple of passive aggressive messages along the lines of, "How long have you been with this girl?" and "How long have you been lying to me?"

Eventually the situation cooled off and Cheryl did apologise for how she reacted, especially since they aren't together, and they went back to being flirty but platonic at work.

A few weeks ago, I noticed Dennis acting nervous and less affectionate than normal. He asked to talk. I made us dinner and he expressed that he is incredibly close with Cheryl and wanted to talk to me about the ethical implications about dating her. In summary:

• He isn't her direct manager, and doesn't have a lot of power over her outside of asking her to do some work-related tasks. He has no control of her pay, vacation, scheduling, etc.
• He is genuinely interested in a relationship with her and expressed that he would work hard to ensure there wouldn't be favouritism at work, and their feelings for each other are very strong.
• He spoke with others who work in the same industry as him, and the opinions he got validated his own feelings - as long as it can be kept professional at work, it shouldn't be an issue.
• He feels that she is open to learning about ENM, though admitted she hadn't yet cracked open the book he had loaned her about the subject.

I responded:

• Though he doesn't have admin-related powers over her, there is still a dynamic at play that creates invisible but tangible obstacles in the workplace for a manager-staff relationship.
• Even with the best intentions, there could be consequences such as: toxicity from other staff due to perceiving favouritism, real or imagined; the possibility of HR getting involved and them losing their jobs, drama from their relationship spilling over into work due to high emotions, etc. There are a million reasons that a manager-employee relationship can end badly that are outside of his control.
• They hadn't even been dating when she had had a jealousy blow up at him large enough to cause multi-day drama at work and in our home life. How does he truly expect to keep the level of professionalism immaculate if they actually do date?
• His first relationship had been a hot mess because he and the girl hadn't jointly done the work to build a solid foundation for an ENM relationship, that he was repeating the exact scenario now, and that I was going to lose patience for having to go through the identical predictable drama again.
• I would not stay with someone who couldn't see the ethical implications of dating their subordinate, nor would I start a business with someone with a history of doing so. I don't want to put my own livelihood and/or reputation at risk.

I also suggested that if this is something he really wants to pursue, there are many avenues for doing so that are a lot less of an ethical grey area. Such as:

• Waiting until they were no longer working together.
• Communicating with the company's HR department and seeing if one of them could be moved to a different space within the company, or at least examining their office dating policies.
• Find a different job, since he's been working at his current one for nearly a decade and hasn't been particularly happy with it in some time.

He was unhappy with all of these suggestions, as he wanted to act on these feelings so a relationship could develop organically, didn't want to get higher ups involved in his personal life, and doesn't want to have to force a big life change in changing jobs just to be in a relationship with her. He sees her every day and doesn't want to lose that. He just wants to be in a relationship with her.

It escalated into a horrible fight, and things have been tense between us ever since. He has since expressed that he feels I am restricting him in "telling him who he can and can't date." I can see why he feels this way, but I also don't feel that I can compromise my own ethics and feel good about staying with him. He's also now said that he's uncertain about everything now, including our relationship, expanding our business soon, and polyamory itself. He told me he has been "unhappy for a while now." He doesn't want to blow up his life and end our relationship, but he's upset and frustrated with my stance and is no longer certain about what he wants. He's even acknowledged perhaps this is due to NRE, but he feels so strongly for Cheryl that he feels "stuck."

He says that Cheryl makes him feel special. Makes him feel wanted. Tells him, "You're my favourite person" and calls him handsome at work all the time.

My heart is breaking. We've had several fights over and over about this. We've built a life together and it feels like it's slipping away. If he wants to be with Cheryl I don't want to stop him from pursuing her, but I just wish he could look at the situation with more clarity and go about it in a better way.

The other night when he went out for beers and pool with his staff, I was doing a bit of cleaning around our shared apartment when I found what looked like a pile of receipts on his nightstand. When I went to go throw them out, I realised they were 30 love notes from Cheryl, calling him "baby/handsome" and saying things like, "I just can't fucking help myself around you." My heart was racing and when he got back, I asked him to be honest and tell me if he was already in a relationship with her. He told me no, that the notes were from much earlier, when Kinsey had to ask her to dial back the flirtiness, and before they'd had their conversation about remaining platonic. She's since toned down the constant note-leaving, but they made him feel special and he wanted to keep them. I put them in a jar so I wouldn't mistake them for receipts to throw out, and gave him the jar.

We've had a few more conversations about the situation and he did apologise for how he was acting towards me, but that he felt hurt, manipulated and controlled and was trying to not take it out on me. I asked him to still show up for our relationship and asked him to take the time and think things through before making any rash decisions. I think the situation is a combination of having an existential crisis combined with blinding NRE. I also feel as though me being busy for the last year (I was involved in several community theatre productions that took up a lot of my time) made me a less attentive and present partner. I've taken a break from theatre for my own mental well-being and to take more time to work on my relationships.

We've agreed to work on our relationship and seek advice from a poly-friendly therapist to work through this impasse, and to at least wait until we've moved back into our home in case part of the existential crisis has to do with us being in survival mode for the last couple of years (pandemic and the reno stress). He's considering a few avenues but isn't sure how to move forward, and we fundamentally disagree on the ethics of the situation.

Sorry for the long post. I don't feel like my ethics, perspective and boundaries are unreasonable, but I also don't want to come off as controlling of who he dates. Everything just feels like it sucks right now and I need to hear other perspectives.

Update 2023-05-19:

Dennis had been cold to me all week, saying he needed time to think about what he wanted. We slept separately and he went out most nights this week, to visit family as well as have dinner with a friend. He said we'd talk on Sunday once he "gathered his thoughts."

I spent days being stone-walled, crying, with my stomach in knots. I lost a few pounds from no appetite and was in a holding pattern of terrible anxiety.

Finally, tonight when he came home from work, I set out a nice dinner and cocktails for us, and had taken care of his tasks for our Saturday business so he could relax. I couldn't hold myself together and started crying while I tried to eat, but then had to go to the bathroom to sob. He ignored me and kept eating while I cried.

I finally came back to the table and said I wanted to respect his wish to not talk until Sunday, but my anxiety was through the roof, and if our relationship was over, I wanted him to tell me rather than drag it out for days.

He finally said that it was over, and that he'd wanted to wait until Sunday to figure out what to say. He went on an impassioned speech about how he hadn't been happy in a long time and realised he just wasn't poly. I begged him to still go to therapy with me, even if it were just to get some closure and learn what we could have done better, and he refused, saying that he didn't believe therapy could fix us. I was upset and asked why, after 8 years, a house, and a business together, he couldn't have said something sooner, and why all of the life we built wasn't worth even considering therapy.

I then asked, again, if he was already with Cheryl.

He froze and said, "We're really close, emotionally I guess."

I asked, "Did you sleep with her? Kiss her?"

He admitted he had kissed her. Yesterday. At work. While I was waiting for him at home, with my stomach in knots and staring down the barrel of our possible end. Before we ever got to our conversation on Sunday.

I am fucking devastated. He would never have admitted it until I dragged it out of him. He was my best friend and I'd always trusted his honesty.

I asked why he couldn't have been honest with me and he couldn't give me an answer.

I told him to pack a bag and get out of our apartment, and leave his keys behind. He's staying with his brother.

A fleet of people, including one of my other partners and some friends, rallied at my doorstep. All of them held me as I cried, reassured me as I asked why I wasn't worth going to therapy with, and told me my value wasn't predicated on Dennis' scummy behaviour and atrocious handling of the whole situation. They wouldn't let me clean up the half-eaten dinner still sitting on the table or walk my dogs myself. My one partner is sleeping beside me as I try (and fail) to get some sleep, and my friends are showing up tomorrow to work the cash register of my business in Dennis' absence.

Things suck a lot but it's good to have friends in your corner.

I'm going to be okay.