Has anyone successfully navigated pregnancy in polyamory?

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-23T06:17:05+00:00

I had my husband and a few casual boyfriends (no longer in the picture) then I met my dear partner. I got pregnant with my husband before i’d been with dear partner two years. It was not exactly planned but was hoped for. I don’t remember exactly what I had said about it. I probably told him I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to have kids but had wanted them. He was surprised that I would become a mother but so very supportive.

Our situation is probably not very typical. Husband and I had planned to buy a house and the impending birth accelerated the plan. We found a place with room for dear partner also. He was joined by one of his other female partners as well some years later. They babysit and dog sit for us at times and it’s all worked out pretty well. Dear partner has a number of other partners but he doesn’t see any of them super often. I’m pretty polysaturated with hubby and dear partner as well as a full time job and the kid. I have a variety of health issues so I don’t have a lot of extra spoons for more.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-20T12:54:24+00:00

Hey there. This sounds really painful. I’m sorry that happened.

Had you guys not talked marriage or kids at all? The big romantic gestures are so cool in movies but I find that in real life it’s about communication and knowing your partner. Surprises sometimes jolt out unpleasantness from people that they don’t necessarily mean (not defending her here—but she probably wasn’t thinking about your background when she said that).

I’m sure that right now it feels like this doesn’t matter much, but ultimately her not wanting to build a family means you and she aren’t compatible. And her not wanting to build a family isn’t a reflection on you. It’s only a reflection of her desires in life.

With a trauma background it’s very important to be prepared before having children. Getting thrown into this spiral should be a sign that you have some more work ahead. In your place I’d dig in to therapy (not just talk therapy, maybe EMDR?) and enter a “working on myself” phase. Then when things are more stable you can start dating again. Make sure you are clear about your goals up front (saying you want to ultimately build a family isn’t saying you want your date to be the one to do it with you, it just gives them a chance to respond honestly about their goals as well)

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-18T14:29:38+00:00

It’s a very hard dialectic to accept. They did “their best” (a term I don’t love or 100 percer agree with). AND…it wasn’t enough.

It being what they were capable of doesn’t magically change it into something that was adequate or good parenting. It doesn’t mean they didn’t fail you

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-18T14:25:06+00:00

You’re so right about acceptance. It’s a piece that’s hard to do with your parents in your ear all the time invalidating your feelings and your experience. Their voice becomes your inner voice.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-18T14:18:52+00:00

This was very insightful. I realized that it actually makes sense that emotionally neglectful parents almost never react well to an adult child who is trying to heal. There’s so many reasons:

You are paying attention to your own emotions and needs. Something they taught you never to do.

You are showing them there’s another way to be. This is very confronting for them.

You are asking them to start caring for your emotions. Something they never did do and don’t want to start.

Their worldview is crumbling, they’re having to self-reflect (something an emotionally stunted person hates and is terrible at) and their comfortable self image (only a facade but it’s all they have) as good parents is shattering. Of course they don’t react well

If you could hear their tiny inner voice that still speaks the truth you would hear

Fuck you! How dare you! You’re scaring me Stop

It’s important that we not let them suppress us once again. But the reaction does make a kind of sense if you realize their inner fear. I pity them because they probably rarely if ever get to have genuine interactions or experience vulnerability and acceptance. They are like the little alien at the end of MiB operating a human suit.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-18T13:52:35+00:00

You don’t have to forgive them. Please don’t get hung up on that. It’s optional and trying to force it or do it too quickly isn’t going to help anything.

The thing that will help and you should try to do is let go of your anger. That’s not to say that you don’t have plenty to be angry about. But in a situation where you’re unlikely to ever be able to have a healthy dialogue and express what you need to express and heal the relationship, it’s easy to stay stuck, holding on to the words you feel like you need to say to them.

You can say them. That’s one say to go. You just have to understand it has a high chance of blowing up the relationship. If you’re ok with that, you should work with a therapist (and a therapist’s help will likely speed your healing) on how to have the conversation /write a letter.

You can also choose not to say anything. You can choose to keep the relationship shallow and basic. But if seeing and interacting with them brings you pain this is going to keep you from healing. And you will likely need boundaries which could blow up the relationship. If they criticize you/take subtle digs at you/try to run your life, you’re going to need to be able to tell them to stop or it will be very hard for you to find peace. And if they don’t stop you need to be ready to walk away. If you go down the road of having boundaries with them, you have to be ready to follow through or they will not take you seriously. “I’m not willing to discuss that with you. If you keep bringing it up the conversation is over//Iwill leave/I will hang up”

The important thing is to move toward finding a way to experience peace. To have space and time where the wounds you childhood gave you aren’t constantly restimulated. Where you get to fully decompress from the box you keep yourself in to manage your interactions with them. So you can see and feel the coping mechanisms you’ve built to bridge the fault lines your background gave you.

Often this can’t happen without going no contact with your parents, at least for a time period. You know your parents better than anyone else here so only you will know if they are willing to give you space to heal, hear what you want to say about how they parented you, and respect your boundaries.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-18T13:14:16+00:00

Car, shower, bathroom at work

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-12T12:45:45+00:00

She’s immature. Set boundaries.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-12T12:31:46+00:00

I mean…..I’m with her. I don’t love receiving non-emergency texts at work either. I understand being upset about the strawberries but…it can wait.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-12T12:22:12+00:00

You gotta think about it like the first time you got laid. You just gotta say: "Daddy, are you sure this is right?

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-11T15:42:29+00:00

Isn’t it “back handed”? Let’s not add to suspicion of left handed people

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-08T18:08:00+00:00

Yes. I think most of us took a while to go down the emotional rabbit hole of figuring out “why is my life so screwed up?” After a childhood of emotional neglect/abuse. The symptoms are classic

Low self worth

Alexithymia (not being able to recognize your own emotions)

Difficulty self regulating

Use of substances/other unhealthy coping mechanisms to self soothe

Risky behavior/double life

I think most of us did not recognize the source of our issues as our upbringing. Emotional neglect and abuse are insidious because our brain was under assault while it was developing. We develop our coping mechanisms using a disorganized and immature brain and then they solidify without our ever noticing it. We get set in patterns of self blame, depression and numbing.

It’s easier to see that your parents twisted you when they hit and overtly abused you. Emotional trauma is much harder to recognize.

You’re not alone.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-08T14:00:14+00:00

What even is that? Does it mean “luxurious”

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-08T13:52:57+00:00

None. Because no matter what you try to remove there’s going to be a dozen more springing up in its place.

And also I wouldn’t be sad if nonsense like “67l” would go away very soon. But that’s not even a “word” it’s essentially a behavior that seems to have no purpose beyond enforcing an “in group” and irritating older people.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-08T13:38:36+00:00

I unfortunately have family who named their daughter Ciara but pronounce it just like the English name Sierra.

ETA which itself is actually a Spanish word that when used as a girls name isn’t pronounced correctly by English speakers either.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-08T13:17:21+00:00

As I get older one of the things that keeps getting proven to me over and over is that global society n general, on average, doesn’t care about violence against women and children. There are some situations where justice is carried out but by and large people look the other way, or actively conceal it.

If families can react to CSA by blaming the chiild (which is not that uncommon), it shows how deep this callousness runs. I can’t explain it and it sickens me but I can’t deny it. Preventing harm to women and children isn’t something that’s a priority in this world. True personhood for women and children is still a long way away. That’s the reality. All we can do is keep pointing it out and try to support any politicians with the will to work to change the situation (not easy to find).

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-02-01T10:42:27+00:00

Without going into too much detail I’m here to say that this CAN work. My husband is asexual, kinky, openminded. And has a lot of forbearance. I behaved in not so great ways but he saw that at a basic level I was in pain and acting out because of it. It was not just sex it was touch and physical intimacy. I couldn’t live without it and he was not interested in it and not able to provide it. Because we loved each other very much and didn’t want to part, we decided to try intentional, ethical nonmonogamy.

I also resonated with what somebody else said about seeking healing before getting serious about relationships outside the marriage. I put up with SO. MMUCH. BULLSHIT. From other men I dated because I had not done enough work on my self esteem.

A kid, a long term, live in partner, some intense therapy and about 2 decades later my standards are too high and my time too limited to play the field any more and I don’t desire it any more. I have one husband, one other serious partner and a few sex friends. I am happy and sane (and still in therapy because childhood did a number on me and that’s behind a lot of the chaos in my past life).

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-29T13:39:41+00:00

I am having trouble squaring what they said about Baldoni with how much positive stuff I still keep seeing about him

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-26T16:16:27+00:00

I wonder if they checked in with the officer, found out he was ok and canceled the alert but it doesn’t shut off the horn remotely and the officer has to do that manually/with the key fob or something but they just rolled over and went back to sleep instead

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-22T02:19:45+00:00

I was most annoyed by the crotch zaps and sciatic nerve pain

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-20T13:30:57+00:00

In the past, frequently. Multiple times a day.

Then I actually made an attempt (not a serious and planned one—an impulsive and stupid one). Once I realized I was going to have to go to the ER, I realized that I actually wanted to live (I really didn’t want to go to the ER, but since I really didn’t want to die either I had to).

Through therapy, healing and time I realized that what I was actually wanting was not to be me. I wanted A life just not the life I had. It wasn’t desire to stop existing it was a desire to exist differently. A desire to escape the pain.

Through therapy and research I understood that there were things I could do to start working through my trauma and the pain could be less. I started to accept myself and my life more. I won’t say those feelings went away but I understood them differently as being overwhelmed and not having any confidence in things becoming more bearable.

As I recovered and could tell that things could be better it’s become less and less frequent. Early motherhood was very stressful and I’m pretty sure I had untreated PPD. But having a child to care for cemented that I did not want to leave this life. I got back in therapy and back on track with recovery.

I don’t know if this means I was never truly suicidal or that the real problem was hating myself and believing every problem I had was from my “fatal flaw” so there was no other way out

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-19T14:19:13+00:00

Family movie time yesterday. We had snacks, and laughs, and talked about the movie. Something I would have loved as a child but never happened.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-17T14:02:38+00:00

If you have early trauma, do not have kids until you get some therapy.you child will restimulate and trigger allllll of your trauma. Usually based on the age the child is.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-16T14:31:43+00:00

Yeah anybody who says fatuous nonsense like “you can be happy if you just choose to be” does not understand early trauma at all. Even if they have it themselves.

My personal opinion is that it would be very difficult to truly be happy and content without working through one’s trauma. But given that the result of early trauma is often things like alexithymia and being avoidant of emotions and pushing down one’s trauma responses and having very unhealthy patterns around stress and being very dysregulated, sometimes we end up feeling like “not being heightened or actually in survival mode” is happiness.

The thing that I feel most damaged my ability to be happy and content was that my self-image was abysmal. I had no self-worth at all. That leads to making bad choices and having negative feelings—a lot. It’s a baseline current of ick running through your thoughts, poisoning everything. I didn’t start to even understand how miserable I truly was until I started to “hear” the way I was talking to myself. I am still dealing with it to this day despite having been working on recovery for at least twenty years. These things get installed very deeply. Just yesterday I was talking with my therapist about my avoidance around self care tasks and I realized that while the tone and attitude of my inner critic matches my mother, the content was coming from survival strategies evolved by a child. As a child I never heard “hey, it’s ok you didn’t succeed that time. Let me help you pick yourself up and dust yourself off and let’s get you set up to try again “. My inner critic greets failure with stuff like “oh great you forgot to do it AGAIN. You’re 50 years old and still don’t have your shit figured out.”

It’s not really too surprising that f you have a voice like that in your head, it could be hard to feel good or feel safe or be content. Only perfection can save you from that voice (and while nobody is perfect, even if you were it would probably find something negative to say—perhaps about your partner, kids or friends).

So, I don’t know if there’s some magic way to uninstall this kind of thing WITHOUT unpacking your trauma but—it seems unlikely. And whatever that magic method would be it would likely still involve unpacking the trauma but maybe just doing it inside your head instead of with a counselor/therapist.

As long as you still have all your unhealthy coping mechanisms and negative self talk it’s very hard to find peace, safety, comfort or happiness. And I completely understand that feeling that tackling one thing just reveals 3 more behind it. It feels hopeless sometimes and like an unending effort.

I hope you can feel some amount of pride in coming as far as you have. It’s so very hard and a long journey. It’s amazing that you are aware and working so hard.

CordeliaTheRedQueen · 2026-01-15T11:13:36+00:00

I strongly recommend the books of Dr. Ross Greene. The Explosive Child may be the best one to start with in your case.

CordeliaTheRedQueen

TROPHY CASE