I’m looking for support or maybe advice here. My partner and I are both solo-poly and we each have other partner(s). My relationship with this partner is very close, emotional, intellectual, physical, sexual and they happen to be my best friend.

This partner has been under an enormous amount of work stress for the last couple months, and has been working a lot of long hours to try and keep up with their job. To the point where they are having trouble being present with me, and I have felt a little disconnected from them at times.

I have really made a huge effort to go above and beyond to support them and ask them how I can support them. I’m a busy person as well, work, kids, other partner. But I have really done everything I can to bend over backwards to support them.

There was a day recently where I was having a very hard time. Like emotional/psychological break hard time. It had nothing to do with this partner, or any partner, just life. I went to this partner looking for support and was told they can only spare a few minutes because they had work to do and then I had to leave. Once I heard that, I had a moment, snapped and said “I’m gonna go” and left.

The next day I expressed how I felt like I had been really doing my best to support them and it felt like when I needed support they weren’t able to make space for me. They heard me and reminded me how much work they had to do. I recognize that they don’t owe me anything and I should learn to manage my emotions on my own, etc, etc.

We were spending time together this week and it came up that through this time period my meta (my partners other partner) was struggling with a lot of stuff and my partner had been up very late a number of nights supporting them. That just hit me like a slap in the face.

They then asked me to leave early so they could get some sleep and all I could think about was how I had been trying so hard to support my partner, and they had been spending a lot of time and losing sleep supporting their other partner and when I was really hurting and asked for support I was turned away.

It just really doesn’t feel great. So any support or advice on how to handle this would be appreciated.