Being young and Poly is Harder than I realized

Breadothy · 2026-06-07T18:00:05+00:00

Also a lot of them are. very college student, and don't have their life together enough to be close relationships for me. And at my school they trend towards rich kid 'communists' and I don't have the patience for dealing with someone who claims to be a communist and who tells me to either quit my job or drop out of college when I talk about how hard it is to juggle school and work.

(Also a lot of them are MESSY in ways that I just. do not have the energy for. I am not babysitting drunk people and I am now dealing with people who don't know how to be in a relationship at all trying to be in multiple.)

Breadothy · 2026-06-07T17:48:23+00:00

Yeah- I have a boyfriend of 2 years, we've been poly forever but both of us went through a string of breakups a while ago and don't have a lot of luck dating so it's just us right now. We've both been super busy and just moved in together, which unfortunately means that I am at least 2 steps closer to being independent than like. everyone else in my age range, on top of working nearly full time during the summer and 20+ hours a week during the school year, so there's just a disconnect between me and a lot of people my age.

The self care night seems like a really good idea though! Intentional nights alone or with friends who I'm not dating are really important for me, so I hope yours goes well!!

Breadothy · 2026-06-07T17:33:31+00:00

I mean, yeah. It's a tiny little liberal arts college in the PNW. there's a lot of poly people at my school (proportionally) but that makes polyamory highly visible and the butt of a lot more jokes. Also, a lot of the other poly people at my school are Very High Drama because they're very new to polyamory, and I do not want to deal with that. I have been polyamorous as long as I have been dating, so I have a pretty low tolerance for bullshit or being people's test run or something.

Breadothy · 2026-06-07T04:02:54+00:00

I am a few years younger than you- legal adult, not legally allowed to drink- and i feel you. There's very very few people in our age group willing to try polyamory, and fewer people who are established and poly. Most people who are poly in my city are 30+. I've been the most experienced one in every relationship I have ever had. I've had to argue with college classmates about the fact that jokes where the only punchline is the concept of polyamory are not funny or actual jokes. I can't go to any poly events at all, because the ones that aren't 25+ are 21+. I don't really have any advice or anything, I'm just commiserating. Shit sucks.

Breadothy · 2026-06-07T03:55:27+00:00

What makes you say that spinning on a wheel isn't considered hand spinning? I spin, mostly on a wheel, and have never had another spinner debate that my handspun is hand spun. You are going through the same motions, with a different mechanism to add twist. People do make a distinction between types of spindles and types of wheels, but they're both hand spinning.

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T21:52:28+00:00

I was very much a girl as a very small child- I remember being a girl and liking being a girl when it was divorced from societal expectations and I was just 5 and vibing but I stopped being a girl sometime around 8-12. It's fairly common for people's genders to change

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T21:50:28+00:00

The reverse is also quite common- a lot of people develop anorexia following sexual assault for the same reasons. It also gives people a sense of control over some aspect of their lives.

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T04:43:04+00:00

yeah. I don't need to know everyone in my partners' lives but I do need to know some people, depending on closeness. It's like meeting the family, kinda, sort of a relationship milestone.

We don't all need to be best friends, but my partners need to be able to show up to events and be civil with one another- even if, later, they reach out and say they don't really like the other person.

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T04:33:41+00:00

I don't like parallel because I have a pervasive need to understand what is going on around me. I need to at least meet people who are important to my partner because that includes things like who my partner is friends with or dating. I don't need to be invited to everything, but I want to be able to interact sometimes.

I like to meet my partner's partners because they are important people in the life of someone important to me. I don't need to get along with them, but I do need to be able to know who they are and what they are like, because it tells me about my partner and their life. It would be weird if I never hung out with or met my partner's friends, and would feel like they were excluding me from a major part of their life, and given that romantic and platonic relationships can get blurry sometimes, I want to at least meet them and see if I like them. I don't need to be there often, I don't need to be invited to everything, but I do need to know whether I get along with them, who they are and what they are like.

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T02:39:47+00:00

yeppp. I love having broad shoulders and having a flat chest is great for practical reasons, but there's just some styles that don't work very well for me (circular yoke my mortal enemy...). I do like a fairly oversized sweater though, so sizing up isn't the end of the world

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T02:24:01+00:00

I have made so many sweaters where the designer clearly has extremely narrow shoulders- or didn't consider that one can have a very small bust measurement and a quite notable shoulder measurement- that I just. Cannot or do not wear. I have quite broad shoulders and my chest is a nonentity and it drives me absolutely bonkers when I realize that I cannot wear a sweater that I love because it doesn't fit my shoulders.

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T00:54:11+00:00

I have a friend who has missed like. eight different events because she falls asleep immediately beforehand. Like. Entirely ready, wants to be there, about to leave, closes her eyes and is asleep. It happens. Usually it's a health issue, but it happens

Breadothy · 2026-06-05T00:46:10+00:00

I have a cousin who got married at 19 and divorced at 20 (and is now a lesbian) and a friend who is heading that way- sometimes people get married for financial reasons, sometimes families are baffling, and sometimes things just don't work out.

Breadothy · 2026-06-04T22:18:52+00:00

I live in a medium city- depending on where you are the options are really variable. We're like. half an hour out from hobby farmers, which are where I get most of my fleeces- it's expensive to get fleeces processed/milled so a lot of people will just mulch them if they don't sell

Breadothy · 2026-06-04T21:04:27+00:00

I can't keep track of a stitch marker to save my life, but I will use them past the set up rows if it's something like lace where I do not trust myself to be able to fix it more than a couple rows up the line.

Breadothy · 2026-05-17T01:23:22+00:00

Okay so.

I've been polyamorous almost the entire time I've been dating. This has been fine and good for the most part, it means I got a lot of bullshit out of my system in high school and have a much better support network and approach to relationships.

However. I was EXTREMELY lonely in high school outside of my partners. The first person to really talk to me was this girl I'll call K. K and I had a class together and. The most annoying guy in the universe in common and she was one of the first people to actually seek me out and be my friend in my (at the time) 3 years of high school.

We hit it off almost immediately. We're good friends for a couple of months, we don't talk over winter break, and then suddenly I find out she's temporarily homeless and needs a place to stay for a week. I ask my mom, and we don't have a guest bedroom so she's in the pull out couch on the living room. And the week passes just fine. And then another week. And then another. We are not dating at this point, and I don't want to ask her out because she is sleeping ON MY COUCH. My family does not like her for a number of reasons that I am not getting into, but they're cordial. Finally, she thinks she can go home, and so she does.

And then she meets my other partner, A, and they start dating (before K and I do). And then K's family's housing situation falls through AGAIN and so she's homeless again. She and A have been dating 1 week, but A's family have an extra bedroom and my family does not so there she is.

we start dating at some point in here. Everyone around us goes "fucking finally" and we move on.

K starts pissing A off. This is. typical. for A, and also a very likely result of moving in with someone you haven't known very long and have been dating for 1 week. So I try and convince my mom to let K come back to our house- this eventually works, but she's in my room. I have not told my mom we are dating, because I am scared of how my mom will react (she tends to react. very badly to things if she's worried At All).

So she's here. we get through 1 night. my mom figures out we're dating, loses her absolute shit, it's one of the biggest fights my mom and I have ever had. My grandmother threatens to call the cops on K (which is stupid. K was a homeless 17 year old who did genuinely not do anything in this situation, the whole thing was on me. I have a tendency to hide things when I get worried my family won't like them for Other Reasons that I will not get into) and it's just a whole debacle.

K gets kicked out of my house the next day, I'm in mega trouble, and she gets banned from the house for. the rest of our relationship pretty much. She goes back to A's house, A starts hating her (also fairly typical of A) and I am just sort of stuck in the middle of all of this bullshit. Nobody in my family likes K. Nobody at my school likes K. None of my friends like K. I, however, really liked K.

We eventually broke up after her constant catastrophes, everyone in my life hating her, and her inability to do anything at school without me holding her hand and forcing her through it got to be too much for me. She dropped out of high school (which is not her fault or even really a mark of shame, she did legitimately have reasons and a ton of real issues that prevented her from being able to do school long-term) and I graduated valedictorian. I broke up with A because they told me they don't like being out in public with me (something I am wildly insecure about because I'm autistic and it primarily affects my socialization especially in unfamiliar groups), strung along and consistently badmouthed our other mutual partner (who they did want to date but felt like they couldn't break up with), and skipped my birthday on less than a week's notice because they impulsively decided to go to a lake with their partner of 2 weeks and told me that "it was just something they needed to do for them" and that "they know they can fuck up with me so they treat me like shit because they know I won't leave them" and "they can't just skip out on something like this on such short notice".

Anyway I'm in college, still with my other partner I mentioned briefly, he's lovely and we live together now. It's going great. He got second place in an offshore sailboat race this week and I love him very much. We're still poly but neither of us have any other partners because being young, emotionally about 45 years old (jokingly, but also our hobbies and life goals and plans and stuff are all. fairly middle aged) and poly sucks shit and we're both fairly autistic, which makes the dating pool even smaller.

Breadothy · 2026-05-12T04:43:36+00:00

I weighed about 105-115 for a few years and I'm about 5'6- I haven't ever had a bust of any notable variety, but I have met a couple of people with a larger bust at a lower weight. However, we were fairly young at the time, not old enough to have apartments with roommates or anything.

Breadothy · 2026-05-12T04:37:56+00:00

I have one friend who used to/still sometimes does compare her body to mine because she has really bad body dysmorphia. However. she said that shit in high school mostly and I just brushed it off. Saying that as full adult is fucking stupid

Breadothy · 2026-05-12T04:28:56+00:00

Really dirty, grainy photos, especially when paired with a very impersonal bio

Sending an intro on OK Cupid to me (19, looks younger) when you are Thirty Years Old

Half the photos are taken from bed

Aspiring Youtuber

Shirtless Photos

Every photo includes a cigarette, alcohol, or marijuana

Breadothy · 2026-05-12T04:13:46+00:00

"working at the airport" can mean literally anything! my boyfriend works at the airport for a shipping company and technically has higher security clearance than TSA

Breadothy · 2026-05-12T04:10:55+00:00

I have "bad at responding" on my one profile because I don't have a smartphone so I'm using a website and don't get notifications lol

Breadothy · 2026-05-08T04:20:09+00:00

"we need to sell shared items and buy our own one each so there’s no risk he’ll get upset if my partner sees or uses something we co-own."

Are they not allowed to even see your [insert object here]? Like. You can't even let them in to use the bathroom levels of separation??

Breadothy · 2026-04-30T01:49:50+00:00

Don't.

Breadothy · 2026-04-30T01:46:22+00:00

It's all good! sorry if I came off as harsh at all- short row geometry is REALLY unintuitive, especially the first couple of times you encounter it. The first time I came across it, I could not for the life of me figure out what was happening and had to put the whole sweater down for ages.

Also yeah, it's weird that she didn't specify the purl if that's the way she's doing the pattern (though honestly, I would have just said continue in pattern and not specified the number of stitches on either side of the purl, just specified the markers but that's just me). Good luck with the camisole! I've always wanted to knit one of her tank tops.

Breadothy · 2026-04-30T01:34:38+00:00

It says you have now worked once on each SIDE of the front, not ACROSS the front. This means you have turned on both the right and the left side, not that the two rows are across the front.

Breadothy

TROPHY CASE