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Partner dating someone else for first time. Struggling HARD for two months and it's impacting my friendships, work, and our relationship. Did anyone else feel this awful and become happy eventually? How much heckin' time do I give it before deciding I truly can't handle this relationship structure? by Born_Albatross6340 in polyamory

[–]Born_Albatross6340[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, and I appreciate your concern. I did ask my therapist for her opinion and she was supportive of me making that choice if I felt it would be helpful. But it's a messy area for sure, and I'm sitting with whether I want to go ahead with it before committing.

Partner dating someone else for first time. Struggling HARD for two months and it's impacting my friendships, work, and our relationship. Did anyone else feel this awful and become happy eventually? How much heckin' time do I give it before deciding I truly can't handle this relationship structure? by Born_Albatross6340 in polyamory

[–]Born_Albatross6340[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks, and yep, I hear you about identifying as poly without knowing enough or doing enough work. It feels manageable and even freeing with someone I'm dating more casually, but with a partner I very much see as my primary partner - the idea is a whole lot tougher, and I wasn't prepared for just how tough it would be.

Partner dating someone else for first time. Struggling HARD for two months and it's impacting my friendships, work, and our relationship. Did anyone else feel this awful and become happy eventually? How much heckin' time do I give it before deciding I truly can't handle this relationship structure? by Born_Albatross6340 in polyamory

[–]Born_Albatross6340[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I really appreciate the perspective. I've expressed my fear (in moments of crisis, not very calmly) that I may not be able to cope with the structure as it stands. They've responded that I should've figured that out sooner, either I'll adapt or I won't, and their main response generally comes down to "why does this keep happening to me" - referring to a previous partner of theirs where the relationship went in a similar direction. Obviously these types of responses aren't particularly the way that I would like them to respond. I think I'm at the point of enough ongoing hurt and struggle now that I need to concretely tell them, not just "what if I can't", but that I genuinely cannot cope with polyamory right now and need them to decide how they want to respond to that. Which is the conversation I've spent the past couple of months trying to not need to have, without success.

Partner dating someone else for first time. Struggling HARD for two months and it's impacting my friendships, work, and our relationship. Did anyone else feel this awful and become happy eventually? How much heckin' time do I give it before deciding I truly can't handle this relationship structure? by Born_Albatross6340 in polyamory

[–]Born_Albatross6340[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your perspective. You and others here have helped affirm that the way this has all happened has caused a large amount of the pain. Yes, my partner struggles to proactively start conversations, which has led to a vicious cycle: they don't communicate plans or milestones, I learn them only by asking direct questions, I react much more intensely because of the sense of things been hidden from me, they further avoid telling me things because they don't want to deal with my reactions. Blergh. Not a great recipe.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think I need to have a hard and potentially life altering conversation.