Hey y'all. I (45m) am in two long term relationships. I'm divorced and have my own teenage kids. Mary (35f) is married with two very young kids & we've been together 5 years. I'm kitchen table with her husband. Sol (38f) is more solo-poly & after a year she noticed behaviors from Mary that made her request a parallel meta relationship with restricted information sharing.

Sol has pointed out that Mary seems to be emotionally manipulating me when Sol & I are together. As a couple pre-parallel examples:

• Last year Sol & I made last minute plans for her to come for Thanksgiving dinner with me & the kids before the kids went back to my ex's that night. After dinner I did a text check-in with Mary when Sol went to have a bath. Mary was sad & in bad health and I tried to console her. When Sol came back, I set my phone aside & it kept buzzing. Sol could tell I was distracted and I let her know Mary was having a bad time so Sol left to leave me to my emotional caretaking of Mary. (Mary had had her own dinner with her & hubby's family that day, a family that doesn't know they're poly)

• Another time Sol was over & my son had a mental health crisis at my ex's that required me to immediately leave to take care of him & take him to the hospital. Sol let Mary know what was up & in their chat Mary seemed less concerned about my teen than she was about wishing she was the one with me at the time so she could be there for me & how she was envious it was Sol instead of her, and how she was sad I would be eventually coming back to my house to Sol instead of her.

At the moment I'm on a long weekend away with Sol & I've only spent maybe 15 minutes a day catching up with Mary. Yesterday Mary started the day letting me know her littlest was sick & she was worried. I gave some advice, told her I hoped the little one got more settled & that Sol & I were off for a day trip so I could meet some of Sol's family in another city. At suppertime after returning from a busy day trip of driving and visits I sent Mary a message asking how the little one was doing.

She gave a "😡" react to my message. Wrote a paragraph on how inconsiderate I was for not checking in sooner, but the little one was doing better. I didn't want to get emotionally dragged into things so I simply stated I was glad the little one was doing better.

I got a passive aggressive reply that it was my job to fix this perceived slight. Then I replied I didn't want to have a charged conversation while away with Sol & how Mary could have sent me an update earlier if she wanted instead of accusing me of being uncaring.

She resent the same "you need to fix this" message & that's where we're at now. It's a full day later & no messaging from me to Mary or Mary to me. I've got other examples of her being jealous/envious and making me feel bad for having another relationship, but I don't want to belabor the point.

I love Mary immensely, but after having Sol point out how (from her perspective) Mary would try to be emotionally manipulative when we're together I can't help but feel really sad that this accusation from Mary that I'm a bad partner would happen while I'm away with Sol.

I don't know how to bring this observation of "you seem to need my emotional support more when I'm with Sol than when I'm not" with Mary & I don't know how to reply to the "you fix this" message. Even trying to not get pulled in to these distracted and negative emotions, it's still affecting how I interact with Sol on the last day of our vacation.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks for reading.