So, my old relationship is over but I wanted to reflect on what happened in order to get some perspective in case poly is something I do try again in the future. After the previous blow up I’m not sure if I will, but I would like to get some experienced perspective for the future.

I had been with my partner, let’s call her M, for almost a decade and from the beginning I had mentioned how I don’t know that I believe in monogamy. She agreed. We had done some light flirting together, the occasional thing like meeting other couples that didn’t really come to anything and once or twice some same room, no swap type stuff. At one point, I got an okcupid account and dated a bit, and she met the woman I was dating but ultimately said that she wouldn’t be comfortable me being sexual with this person. I respected that and we all are still friends with this person but nothing sexual happened.

After that, we both put the poly thing on the shelf, especially with covid and worked on a lot of our own stuff. We would have a fair number of arguments over trivial things. I have my own issues and she has a history of trauma, abuse, neurodivergence and the like. I tried to support her through these things for our relationship but often it would feel like a lot for me as these ideas were not something I’m super familiar with. I worked on compassion but having someone mention suicide as a potential when we’d get in arguments was heavy for me and I often felt like supporting her would override any concerns I had in the relationship. So, I’d often sit with her through dour moods and work on reassuring her insecurities.

Things were pretty good for awhile but there was a stretch where it felt like when we were together, that she wasn’t paying attention to me at all. I could say things and she’d ignore them. Sometimes she’d repeat back the thing I just said to her as if it was her own idea. It felt very bizarre and isolating. I mentioned these things to her, and it almost felt like it just got worse. Between not feeling heard and simultaneously feeling like she would dump frustration from work onto me and use outside frustrations as justification for treating me badly, I ultimately asked for space. We had been living together in a small studio and she then moved into the rental adjacent. I was very wary of this, but we did become more cordial while having our own space.

I had started dating again on my own but as it felt like certain issues were improving, we (M and I) pivoted towards an open relationship. I ended up becoming friends only with the woman I was dating at first because she didn’t want to be poly without a basis of a stable relationship first which I respected but I wanted to still work on the long-term relationship with M despite our issues. The next woman I dated B, I told her right out of the gate about my situation and she was cool with it as she had a primary as well.

I was as radically honest with M as I didn’t want to hide anything, but it never quite felt like she was happy for me, it was almost as if the more I told her, the more she disliked it. At a similar time, I could tell M was starting to like someone she was talking to online who was long distance. I was happy for her, especially that she was relating with someone who was also neurodivergent. I told her that I don’t mind anything she does if she’s honest. She downplayed the attraction, but I knew what was up. Eventually she lied about sending nude pictures to him even though I told her I didn’t mind. I called her out on the lies, and she still denied but told her that I had seen the conversation because she had left her facebook open on my computer. Later she justified the lying by saying that “we weren’t together” at the time.

Despite the lies, I was just happy that she let go the pretense and tried to be honest moving forward. She had been going on “first dates” but hadn’t really been connecting deeply and I had been dating the B for a few months now, had went on several dates and really enjoyed that she was a great listener and that we had a lot of non-sexual intimate touch. From her trauma M wasn’t the biggest fan of a lot of touch, but I personally love touch and find it very therapeutic. I let M know that I was into this new chick, that I found her sexually attractive and even asked how shed feel if we were to be sexual. She told me that she wouldn’t know until it happened.

During this time frame, the issues with M ignoring and not listening to me popped up again. Later, she blamed this on me dating and stress from work. There were times where she said we’d hang out at certain times but then she’d meet with a girl from online and keep pushing back our hang out time until I’d realize four hours later that she was prioritizing someone she just met over me. She said she was having a hard time interrupting the new girl because they were relating on trauma and such. I was aware that the dating situation had new relationship energy, but I couldn’t help but feel drawn to someone who actually listened to what I had to say and was such an active participant in conversation and kept her word on timing and meeting. I wanted to continue working on the long-term relationship but saw the new girl I was dating about once a week. After each time, M would be upset for about half a day or more.

Me and M booked an appointment with a couple’s counselor we had been using off and on to talk about our issues. Even within the counseling session, she would interrupt me and explode with anger while I tried to speak. The counselor had to stop her a few times to allow me to speak. Ultimately the situation was tabled until our next session without much of a conclusion. The therapist mostly mentioned that we both had been operating from a low emotional bank account and that we had been turning away instead of towards each other.

The day after our last session, M got into a car accident. She called me hysterical, and I talked to her for about an hour. When she got home, and I got off work I went to hang out for a bit and talk and work on calming her down. I was happy to try to help but my mood was dampened when some of the same communication issues of interrupting/not listening popped up. I left her place telling her if she needed anything to let me know.

The next day she went to work, and we texted a little bit but when she asked me to talk about my day, I told her I was getting ready to go out for the evening and told her we could hang/talk the next day/anytime this weekend. I told her after that I had been hanging with B and looking back, I should have just said that from the get-go but something felt like she would be mad at me either way. Despite having talks about sexual interest with B, mentioning that we had talked about spending the night and such, the next day M blew up. B and I had spent the evening talking, doing food prep together, making out, cuddling, lots of touching, and getting bad sleep. But M wouldn’t hear anything about it and called me a liar, cheater, etc and has told our mutual friends and my family as such. For her it was all about sex when the reality is that M and I have had great sex but I just wanted someone to talk to and felt heard by. I haven't even been able to maintain an erection around another woman since dating because I feel like my head is so messed up and to this day, M is still the last person I've had an orgasm with. Meanwhile I've seen nude pictures she's taken that have popped up on our shared account with titles like "For you daddy." We had another couple counseling sessions but mostly to separate any remaining assets and such. She has never allowed me to tell my side of things without bursting into anger, throwing stuff, breaking a mirror, etc.

Sorry for the novel but I’m at a bit of a loss. I could have slowed things down, but I also feel like I wasn’t being heard at all both literally and figuratively throughout the process. Now she’s saying I abandoned her after a nearly fatal accident even though she went to work the next day. I heard she called my family and told them I’m a liar and cheater even though the counselor advised against doing so. I feel like the whole thing was/is a mess. Going through the resources on here, I get the feeling that the relationship was doomed from the start but is this all my fault?