Hi everyone. I’ve (25F) always kind of accepted that I love people however I want to love them, I don’t like to put labels on anything mostly because labels don’t sit well with me—I’m always changing, so why should I label myself?

I’ve been in a poly relationship before, when I was a lot younger, with a girl and a guy. I was mainly seeing the girl but I would do stuff with the three of us sometimes. Then a little bit after I was dating someone and sort of talking to someone else, but that never really turned into anything. I’ve always kind of loved people openly, and I’m very much an experimentalist when it comes to relationships, so all of this has never bothered me before.

There’s something about this relationship I have now that’s kind of throwing that all out the window. I’m dating this girl (26F) for 3 years and I think she’s seriously the love of my life. We got to talking earlier today, and I mentioned how I’ve engaged in poly relationships before. She’s also very much an experimentalist, but she’s only ever been with me and one other woman, so I was wondering if she would ever want to try other things with other people before we get older and would want to settle down more.

She was very receptive to that, and said she’d like to try stuff with men, and maybe date one and have a relationship with the both of us. The idea didn’t really phase me that much, but for the first time ever I felt a little nervous at that. We haven’t been completely monogamous our entire relationship, we’ve both done sugar babying while dating, although I’m the only one that had sex with someone else. She ended up finding a guy she really liked and he would rather talk to her than fuck, which was cool.

She recently found a coworker who was pretty interested in her, and he was saying how they should go out. She declined because it was before this conversation we had, but when she did talk to me about it that day he asked she said she would have liked to say yes if we weren’t together.

Ive never had a problem with previous relationships being poly, but this one is different. I keep flipping on the idea, like one minute I think it might be fun to try out something new, and then the next I feel really upset and distraught of my girlfriend loving someone else. I told her we should wait until we’re out of school and she agreed, so I guess I have some time to figure this out.

I think my problem is I tend to be pretty clingy in relationships. My first poly relationship, I was living with the girl and she only saw the guy maybe once a month for about a week, then they would go long distance again, so I got most of the attention. The scenario my girlfriend wants is more like he would live with the both of us and we would all date each other, which is very committed.

I see the ups, like I would technically have double the attention. I don’t know why, but when I imagine sitting in my living room and watching the two of them in love separated from me, it’s literally heartbreaking. I guess I’m an attention hog?

I’m kind of battling two sides, where I want to try something and where I don’t. Part of me is saying we can always try it out and if we don’t like it we can stop, but the other side of me is saying what if we do try this out, and it doesn’t work out, but it’s not the boyfriend she leaves and it’s me? I’m very secure in this relationship, but this idea has me worried.

It’s even more frustrating because I don’t know if it’s what my girlfriend would genuinely want. She tends to do things just because she thinks it would make me happy, and half the time she described this relationship it was more “well, when I’m at work or too tired to give you what you want, you have someone else to ask for attention” and I don’t know how I feel about that. We probably need more talking about this.

What are your thoughts? Did anyone hesitate like I am? Thank you so much!