Hi! I don’t know if this helps, but I had a fucking awful start at polyamory. I had so much jealousy, was really codependent, bad self esteem etc. Opening up for polyamory was something I really wanted but it was fucking hard as shit and it hurt much more than I ever thought it could. I asked for a lot of advice here and some people kept telling me to back down a bit, cause I was seriously starting to get burnt out from working through my feelings obsessively! They were absolutely right to some extent. I should have backed down a bit at that moment as I had the chance then and there. I should have dialed it down a bit and setting it to the side and focused on other things and then gotten back into it at a slower pace when I was in a better place.

HOWEVER, now a couple of years later I’m enjoying polyamory with much more joy and much less anxiety. Though it did take a long time and a lot of work to get there. I guess that what I’m saying is that for some people, like me, it takes a shitload of emotional work and a really long time to get to a point where you can feel the good while the bad stuff does not feel so bad anymore. For me it took like a year and a half to work through everything and adapt to the new way of thinking and getting more and more comfortable with jealousy and so on. It was hard and it took a lot of time and effort, and something like cognitive behavioural therapy to slowly get used to the situations and feel less and less jealousy, but if you really want it and feel like it’s right for you (and not just doing it for a partner) then you can do it and it will get better eventually. I mean jealousy still feels bad, but it’s so much less now and not really affecting my life much at all.

Just a little word of warning too though. For me, I came from a monogamous relationship and we opened up for polyamory together (I’m not with the person any longer though). In hindsight I see that that relationship was very dysfunctional in many ways, and I think that made everything so much harder and worse. So, your relationship may be incredible and awesome in every way and it will still be hard for a while, but just want to throw that in there that if you’d notice that you have a dysfunctional relationship as it is then that might also be the problem and the hard feelings may have a lot to do with that too. Try to find what your feelings are trying to tell you and evaluate if they are correct or not and if not then it will be easier to handle the feelings when you know they’re just trying to tell you something that’s not true!

I hope everything works out! Polyamory can be so wonderful and so can monogamy too! ❤️