Hi everyone, I’m really struggling with my current relationship, and I’m hoping to get some advice and clarity from others in the polyamory community. I want to share some background about my relationship and why we’re in this situation now, as well as my confusion and pain. I’m not sure if this is all on me, or if my partner plays a bigger role in how things have progressed. This is the longest poly relationship I have been, and the first that has actually worked out for the most part. We are still quite new to this and in our early 20s, and I have posted before so if any portion of the context seems similar that’s why.

The Background: My partner and I have been together for over a year. For the first part of our relationship, we were long-distance, and I was really looking forward to him moving back to my city so we could spend more time together. Before he returned, he set a lot of expectations about how things would be once we were back in the same place. He said he would prioritize me for the first couple of months, that we’d spend a lot of time together, and even that he would “practically be living at my place.” We’d also talked about eventually living together, and to my understanding, we had agreed that it would be something we did together first.

However, when he came back, one of his other partners decided to join him. Initially, we were going to try to all get a place, which already I was a little uneasy about yet I was willing to give it a shot. Due to some extenuating factors that didn’t end up being a possibility, so she moved in with him at his mom’s house for financial and logistical reasons. I wasn’t thrilled, but I tried to be understanding since they were both unemployed at the time and needed a place to stay. He reassured me that it would be a temporary arrangement of about 4-6 months. The issue was that this other partner ended up getting a lot of his time because of their living arrangement, and it felt like I was pushed aside after being long-distance for so long. This wasn’t just about jealousy, and more so about the fact that I had been looking forward to reconnecting with him. He had said he would prioritize our relationship for a little while, and I was worried about how this all would change with his other partner being here too. Unfortunately, those possible changes were not properly and continuously discussed in order to figure out how we’d move through them, so it was a rough transition for me.

We spent many entire weekends together initially, but within a few weeks, that became difficult to maintain. His other partner didn’t feel comfortable staying at his mom’s place alone (his mom is emotionally abusive), and he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her there, so on several occasions I would host them both. Already that was hard enough due to how small my space is (I rent a tiny room in a shared apartment with no living room/communal area), but it became even harder when—during our solo dates—he grew increasingly detached and worried about leaving his other partner alone. This started to cause tension because I felt like I wasn’t getting the quality time I needed with him, and I was disappointed by how much had changed from what we had planned before he moved back. I understood the situation, but I was angry we were in it to begin with; my meta could have waited to move, and my partner knowingly put her in a bad situation by moving her into his mom’s. When they moved to his dad’s because the situation at his mom’s became too toxic, I hoped it would improve things, which it didn’t. I also later found out that she felt that I was acting possessive of him, in spite of me warning them both explicitly that I would likely want to spend more time and be a little extra affectionate with him at the start. I had missed him a lot, we’d been doing long distance for nearly ten months, and when I brought it up they both said they fully understood. After only a few weeks though, she started to worry that things were always going to be like that. Instead of talking to me, she kind of internalized it and let some resentment build on her end. All of this was discussed with my partner and my other meta without my knowledge, which I feel led to even more confusion for me, because it was clear that something was off but no one was talking about it.

The Growing Disconnection: Things only got worse when my partner got a bartending job, which meant he worked late nights on weekends—exactly when I’m free. I work early morning weekday shifts, so our schedules became completely mismatched. Weeknight sleepovers didn’t work, so we agreed to reserve any overnights for weekends; I even made him a set of keys to get in when it was late, and had all of his essentials stored at my place. On the one weekend night where he didn’t have work, which was Sundays, he’d prioritize coming over and I really appreciated that; sleepovers were a lot more disorganized for the other nights though. For a while, he’d come back after his shifts, but he would come back really late because the closing shift took long, or he’d gone out with his coworkers after closing. This bothered me at first, but after he explained that close took two hours, I grew more understanding; eventually, I was more comfortable with him getting back even later. We agreed that if I needed him up at a certain time so we could go out and do stuff, I could wake him up. What really continued to bother me was that he then wanted to sometimes stay at a coworker’s place if it got really late, and he wanted to be able to do that at random. I tried to ask if he could maybe plan ahead, picking one of his work nights to stay elsewhere if he wanted and reserve the other for coming back home to my place. Initially, he agreed, but as I’ll detail later, he changed that.

Since he and his other partner lived together and had similar work schedules, they naturally got to see each other more often during the week and have multiple overnights. This made sense due to logistics, but then when the weekends came, they started to go out together and head back to his dad’s to sleep. It hurt when this happened, as from what I could see, they’d have many opportunities to hang out and spend time together during the week, as well as have many nights together. I get that a lot of this was incidental time, yet they had more frequent opportunities to connect regardless. To then also get to have more time to connect and socialize and spend the night together on the weekends—the only nights when he could actually stay over at mine—felt really inconsiderate to me.

The imbalance in time really hurt, and I’ll admit that I didn’t handle my feelings well. I became more anxious about our time together, trying to ask for more sleepovers and overnights, which I realize now was due to the emotional disconnect I was feeling. It was even more upsetting because he wasn’t really addressing or acknowledging how much this all differed from the expectations he’d set. He’d reassure me and try to justify things, but I feel that throughout that time he became progressively more emotionally detached. I picked up on that, and I really feel this aspect only amplified my anxious state at the time. I would come to him with my feelings and needs, and I could tell he was placating me and not opening up about what he actually wanted—but he’d tell me otherwise, so I felt like I was going crazy. All I wanted was more consistency and consideration, and instead, I would get mixed signals.

Eventually, after a period of conflict and confusion, we had a meeting with his therapist. All the built up tension and the factors leading up to it were brought up, including how my meta had been feeling, and how my partner felt he couldn’t meet my needs. I was very much overwhelmed by all this information, as I felt it could have been brought up sooner without letting it slowly build up. He then told me he could only commit to having one guaranteed overnight a week and a weekly dinner date, with more nights at his discretion. This was after he’d initially agreed to my request for one extra planned overnight in addition to Sunday. I reluctantly agreed to this, but I wasn’t happy with the arrangement because it felt like it was something imposed on me instead of a collaborative decision. There were a lot of unmet expectations from earlier promises, so I was already feeling vulnerable, and because he wanted so much flexibility for the extra sleepovers, I felt like I had no say in how much time we got to spend together. Soon after this meeting, he once again reassured me that the living arrangement with my meta was temporary, and that we’d be able to have more than one set night together after he started school as our schedules would be more aligned. He later shifted both those expectations as well, which only hurt more as my trust had already taken a hit the other times he’d done that.

For a while after this meeting, he only really came over for our weeknight dinner and our Sunday sleepovers, which was difficult for me to handle due to the vague promise of “more nights” at his discretion. I feel it had less to do with wanting multiple nights every weekend, I just would have appreciated more structure and to have more of a say in the extra overnights as opposed to it being entirely up to him. I was also still feeling some level of disconnect, so this distancing was painful. A little more time passed, and he did start to spend extra weekend nights with me, which I appreciated. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all a little bit off. He didn’t really plan those extra nights, and when he did, it was often after he had not been great at planning our weeknight dates or at communicating throughout the week. Him telling me he’d stay over an extra night or two felt more like he was doing it to make up for the times he wasn’t as consistent in planning and communication, and less like something he wanted to do.

About a month after that meeting, he suddenly told me that he and my meta would actually be moving in together. He gave me a bunch of reassurances and explanations, detailing the logistics of it, but again he didn’t really properly acknowledge that he was once more shifting an expectation. I told him that I wasn’t happy about this, and all he said was that he knew, and that we would still eventually be able to live together. The thing is, I did get the logical and practical reasons behind this decision. I just didn’t want to hear that as a first step in communicating that to me, and in turn, I felt increasingly anxious and continued to bring it up. It wasn’t just the fact they’d be living together; it was all the financial and practical considerations, the ways this could potentially impact our relationship further, and a bunch more fears that I felt building up. I only got more confused and upset with time, which came out it not so productive ways.

A couple weeks later, when I said that I was looking forward to us having more consistent overnights once he started school, he shifted that expectation as well. I think that what I was actually seeking in the moments where I’d bring it up again, and why I grew increasingly fearful and frustrated, is an apology for breaking what felt to me like promises and to listen to me talk about my fears without judgement. My moments of emotional overwhelm were only amplified due to not feeling understood and also dismissed when my need for support and acknowledgment was met with solutions, explanations, and often, defensiveness. What led to me realizing this might be the larger problem, was when he actually said he was sorry in a sincere way after I got sad and upset when he said things might not change once he started school. It finally felt like heard what I truly needed to hear, and a weight was lifted off me, but by that point it was too late.

I realize now that he took me bringing up my fears and requests for how we could renegotiate our overnight arrangement as me being demanding. I get how it may have made him feel that way, though I feel the fact he was not communicating this and noticeably emotionally distancing himself only led to more panic and confusion on my end. Once again, I was picking up on the subtle cues, on the bids for connection decreasing on his end, all while his words said something entirely different. The growing disconnect only intensified my fears, my behavior grew more frantic, and his grew all the more defensive and detached. Eventually, this all culminated in him making a really sudden demand for space.

The Break:

So, after about a month or so of tension and frustration, my partner started to really distance himself. For over a week straight, he was practically ignoring me—taking forever to reply to messages, even the ones that had important information and questions that I needed answers to for other long-term plans. He would consistently only answer one of my texts and ignore the rest. I made a point of telling him that I noticed the lack of communication, and finally, he told me that he had been thinking about a lot of stuff and was being distant because of that.

I then found out that he had once again been discussing our issues with my metamours and that they had all been talking about me, in what I can only assume was a not so great way (and very likely biased to his perspective). I told him I wasn’t okay with this, that it felt triangulating, and that I was hurt that he hadn’t tried to resolve things with me first. Later on, he sent me a long text, saying I was being too demanding, that he didn’t feel satisfied with our dynamic, and that he felt he had to tiptoe around my feelings and couldn’t talk to me. He also said that me telling him I wasn’t comfortable with him sharing our private issues with my metamours was an attempt at disrupting “healthy communication” and not triangulation.

A part of me was relieved because he had finally told me how he was feeling instead of keeping me in a place of having to decipher his confusing actions and mixed messages. Another part of me was really hurt—it felt like he hadn’t taken any consideration of how his avoidance of difficult conversations and conflicts played a massive role in how things unfolded, and it felt like he was shifting most of the blame onto me.

I sent him a message detailing my experience, highlighting that his avoidance was a massive contributing factor, but still holding myself accountable for my part. I had some friends I trust read over both mine and his messages, as well as run them through ChatGPT for feedback (an app I feel has been super helpful in helping me view and word things from a more objective lens). The consensus was that his message read as more confrontational and defensive, while mine expressed more accountability, as well as a desire to understand and resolve things.

We had a FaceTime call to discuss things, and I was expecting us to finally have an open and honest conversation. Instead, he basically took control of the call, said he had read my message and would take my observations into account, then requested (or more like demanded) a month-long break. There was no room for discussion, no room for compromise—I had no say in it. He decided the terms: no contact except for one snap a day to keep our streak going. He just dropped all of this on me, and it left me feeling blindsided and hurt. I understand that he was feeling overwhelmed, but it felt like a punishment and an extreme way to handle the situation.

He was very apologetic, saying he knew the timing was bad (he was supposed to meet my father before the break ends) and that it wasn’t meant to avoid breaking up, but that he and the people he had discussed it with felt this was the right thing to do. He called it an “emergency measure” and claimed it was a way to prevent further damage. But this has left me feeling confused, scared, and unsure about where we stand.

I sent him a list of questions asking for clarity about his reasons for the break, what he hopes to gain from it, and how we can move forward. I’m planning to answer the questions too. I also included a closing statement, where I reiterated that I felt this break was unfair and unreasonable. I set a boundary that if he ever dropped something like this on me again, I would opt out of the relationship. I tried to be gentle and explain that I wasn’t trying to scare or punish him, but needed to look out for myself too, as the suddenness of it all was really painful.

When I asked if he received my message, he responded very curtly on Snapchat with “message was received.” In his previous daily snaps, he included an emoji or two (very gen Z of me, but yes I do feel emojis alter the tone of a message), but in this one he didn’t which only increased my anxiety. I’m really struggling with the lack of reassurance and the feeling that this might be the beginning of the end, even though he said it wasn’t.

Conclusion:

I feel like I’ve been trying to work through our issues, but I also recognize that I’ve been reactive and emotionally intense at times because I’ve felt neglected and undervalued. I know that I didn’t handle some things well, especially when I came off as demanding more time or pushing for reassurance. I can see that I contributed to the tension, but I also feel like my partner has played a big role in how things escalated, particularly with how he’s handled communication and conflict.

Now, because of how he went about this demand for a break, I’m left questioning whether I’m solely responsible for all of this or if my partner’s behavior has also contributed significantly to the situation. I feel like the trust in the relationship progressively wore down because of the pattern of broken promises, and as a result our conflicts and issues were a lot more complex to navigate in contrast to his other relationships, where there wasn’t as much of a pattern of broken promises. It seems like he believes relationships should be easy, and that my reactions are the only part that made things difficult. I’m also struggling with the fact that he talks to my metamours about me, in ways that feel like he’s sharing private issues before working things out between us. I don’t think this is helpful, as it only validated his own POV and led to resentment growing, in spite of none of this being properly addressed with me in a timely manner. I feel that if he was able to drop this break on me out of nowhere, he could have found a way to bring up how he was feeling sooner, in a kind yet honest way, before everything escalated to a profound level of disconnect.

My Questions:

1.  Is this break and his handling of the situation reasonable, or does it seem like he’s avoiding responsibility for his role in our disconnection?

2.  How can I tell whether this break is about him needing space or whether it’s a precursor to a breakup?

3.  In a polycule dynamic, how do you balance your own needs with the time your partner spends with others, especially when the imbalance leaves you feeling sidelined due to unmet expectations?

4.  What steps should I take during this break to reflect on my role in this relationship, while also maintaining my sense of self-worth and boundaries?

I’m really struggling right now, and feeling incredibly vulnerable and overwhelmed. I don’t know if I’m in the headspace for any tough love or firm advice, but at the same time I feel this is the best forum I could go to for any advice I might need to hear. Support and kindness are more than welcome too. I also want to add that I do have a support system, in the form of friends and a therapist, so I’m not entirely on my own here if anyone is worried about that. Just very much emotional and scared :’(