I'm struggling to articulate to a partner about why I find something painful, especially since I don't feel like I have a right to ask them to change the boundary that feels like the source of the issue. So, I am hoping for some guidance on what I can ask for that honors my partner’s boundary but makes me feel more secure. I apologize for the length, it felt difficult to frame the ask without the context.

I (F) have two serious long-term partners and dual nest (i.e. live 60/40 of the week with both). I am married to Peacock (F) for 6 years. We have never been monogamous. My other partner, Fox (M), I have been with over 3 years. Fox is also married, and his relationship with me is his first long-term one since they opened their marriage.

When Fox and I first met, he was very clear that he and his wife (my meta) were not out to their families. Fox's family is very, very religious (but not politically conservative), meta's family is just conservative. Neither family lives nearby, so I didn’t think it would impact me much anyway. I’ve dated people previously who were not out to their families and it was a non-issue.

I... was wrong. Fox has a very loving family and they're all quite involved in each other's lives, even at a distance. Think family group chat, daily texting, regular hour long phone calls. When they do visit, they stay at Fox's home with meta. Meta’s family visits several times a year, and they also stay at Fox & Meta's home when they do. Meta's family contributed to the purchase of the home, so even though meta has expressed she'd love them to stay in a hotel (we are friends independent of our hinge), they feel her parents' stake in the home makes that ask impossible.

Literally none of this should be a problem for me. But Fox and I have developed a very entangled relationship. I live with him at minimum 2 nights/3 days a week, sometimes more, usually at his home but sometimes at mine. I have clothes in his closet, my own side of his bed with my stuff on the nightstand, my own drawer in his bathroom, and a significant amount of real estate on the bathroom counter. We do all holidays together and have for several years now, and take trips just us.

Because of how entangled we are, I am now really struggling with the difference between not being open about polyamory, and being treated like a shameful secret. I realize and agree it is a very personal choice that not everyone has the privilege to make, and that my “if you don’t like it kindly see yourselves out” attitude I have with my own family is not a luxury everyone has. In previous relationships with people who weren’t open, I was just referred to as a friend if needed, and that was that. With Fox, our relationship isn't just hidden, the fact I exist at all is aggressively scrubbed from his life when either of their parents come into the picture.

A few examples of what I mean by that:

• Fox and meta have completely separate bedrooms and do not sleep together, but this is something they hide from their families also. So, when either set of parents come to visit, they stay in "the guest room” which is Fox’s room. All of my stuff has to be out to preserve the fiction that I don’t exist and this isn’t his bedroom.
• I also have to clear all of my stuff out of Fox’s bathroom, despite the fact that meta also leaves some of her things in there (she prefers the tub in his bathroom) and their parents aren’t going to know my girly shit isn’t her girly shit.
• If his family calls while I’m there, I can’t make any noise so they don’t realize another person is there. These calls routinely go on for over an hour and happen regularly. Even meta doesn’t agree with this one: last Christmas I was making breakfast for everyone while they doing holiday calls with their parents. Meta came over to ask why I was tiptoeing around the kitchen and when I told her why, she rolled her eyes and started rattling drawers and shaking aluminum foil loudly in Fox’s direction.
• Last fall, I had a brush with cancer (I’m doing ok) and needed surgery. I was devasted by this news and had to start therapy, which I am still in. Fox forgot to check the calendar before confirming the dates for his in-laws’ Thanksgiving visit, so they were going to be flying in the day after my surgery and staying for over a week. Everything was booked and settled before the conflict was discovered. Fox owned his fuck up, but initially also presented it as of course now this also means he can’t be there for me after surgery as planned. The disagreement we had then almost resulted in us breaking up, as I felt like I don’t often ask for a lot of emotional support and had done everything possible to communicate well in advance that support would be needed for this and when. I told him most people would not find it odd to provide support for a friend going through cancer, so I felt like he wasn’t even meeting the standards of how you should treat a friend, much less a serious partner. And that it was more important to preserve the lie with his in-laws than to be there for me in a crisis. To his credit he did sit with that and agree with my perspective, and we were able to work out a compromise. He was present to be with me after surgery, and came over a couple times over the following week. In-laws were informed a friend had cancer surgery and needed support, which they didn’t question at all. Meta was also incredibly supportive of this compromise (since it involved her parents). In retrospect, I’m not confident he’d have made the same compromise if it had been his own parents visiting.

There are other things, but these highlight the ways in which I feel like a shameful secret. To compound it, I found out from Meta about a year ago that they opened initially because she gave him an ultimatum: polyamory or divorce. We very rarely discuss either of our relationships with Fox, this was an unusual emergency time when Fox was unexpectedly hospitalized and Meta and I were spending a lot of time together dealing with that. I feel bad that I kind of wish she hadn’t told me, because that knowledge has been like a stabby rock in my shoe ever since. It feels like over two years into a relationship I found out that my partner was in a PUD situation, and… I can’t unknow that. I did discuss it with him, and he has been very clear that he loves me, and is with me by his own choice.

So for months now it has felt like being a shameful secret to a person who did not choose polyamory for themselves. It’s crumbled my sense of security in the relationship, and I realized recently that it’s made me scared to bring up some hinging concerns I had with him because it feels like he needs to perform monogamy at all costs to his family, and if I ever jeopardize that, he’s going to get rid of me. This isn’t the case with friends: they are both out in that context. I and Meta’s other partner have been invited to various events by their friends, a few of whom are also some flavor of ENM.

I finally initiated a check-in about the hinging issue, and brought up this feeling of being a shameful secret as an explanation of why the hinging concern was not raised in previous check-ins. He was very surprised, sad to hear I felt that way, and wanted to talk about it more. I initially panicked and said no, because it felt manipulative and like I was asking him to violate his own boundaries. But upon reflection I realized it was pretty shitty to drop a bomb like that and then refuse to discuss it, so I apologized and told him if he wanted to we could. He does want to discuss it but asked for some time to get his own thoughts together as he recognizes this is his hang up and he doesn’t know why, so we have a discussion planned for this weekend.

I’m mostly looking for advice or perspective, has anyone dealt with this before? I’ve been working on radical acceptance but mostly am having to accept I am bad at radical acceptance lol. I’m not at all wanting to be introduced to his family, or anything like that. So, it’s hard to even articulate what I am asking for in concrete terms. I know I want to stop feeling like his dirty little secret and that I’m going to be dropped any moment, but it doesn’t feel constructive to say that when I can’t suggest to him what changes I need for that to happen. Is it even reasonable to ask for changes when this is his boundary and he has a right to have it respected?

Thank you to everyone who actually made it through all that. :)