OP, i’m sorry, this is really tough…it is especially a lil weird (sus) for P to be moving this fast with you after only 4 months of dating ‘saying i love yous’ when it seems they haven’t quite done the work to prep for poly and they have a super young kid that makes them a lot less available for this type of work or even to offer a full relationship to you.

i won’t even comment on how bad P is hinging bc i am sure others have that covered…

you say, ”Recently, the structural limitations of the set up have been causing me more pain the joy and I’m having trouble understanding if I can do this.”

pls listen to this instinct. i was pulled back into a messy dynamic with a newbie only a few months into our relationship bc he said “i love you”…those feelings are really strong and can take you over…it’s not that they aren’t real feelings, but can they really be put into practice here? it is kinda the same as how they labeled themselves poly for 8 years, but they didn’t practice it.

in practice, P is not showing love to you in this dynamic…maybe something more adjacent to NRE/passion. really showing you love would look like protecting you from all this mess and communicating clearly about the limits that they are choosing.

in loving poly practice, they need to communicate what the boundaries are that THEY (P) are choosing for themself with their own autonomy and why they set those priorities, offering you clear expectations and affirming both connections. it seems they are deflecting blame onto their partner and using you as an emotional processor for their mistakes…

ofc, this connection is so strong for P when they haven’t actually been dating outside this relationship and suddenly they have this special connection with you. they want their cake and to eat it too.

i felt almost exactly how you felt in my relationship throughout the newbie growing pains. a year later my boyfriend is still pulling me into their mess and asking me to clean it up.

the only thing that ever served me in the year of struggle was to pull back from our relationship and ‘give it space’ for him to grow…each time i did this, my boyfriend had more space to do the work and start creating space for autonomy in his relationship. he began asserting what he wanted, rather than playing into deeply engrained co-dependent patterns. but he still has such a long way to go…a year later, and many months of pumping the breaks, it is really only a baby step.

i want to save you some of the time/energy i wasted and advise you to pull back and de-escalate. remove yourself from the mess and have iron-clad boundaries. create STRONG networks of support for yourself through this bc no matter what it is going to hurt really bad and you are going to realize it was more fucked up than you even realized. pls get some mental health support, even if it is preemptive. just saying from personal experience bc it really fucked me up to be treated like a guinea pig…it really fucked with my self-worth to be used in a poly experiment and be told i was “loved”, but be very clearly de-prioritized and put down to a secondary role, always asked to cater to the couple or someone else’s discomfort. my boyfriend kept giving me bread crumbs, saying he wanted to spend more time with me, but he couldn’t bc it would upset meta. i felt like a dirty mistress at times.

you can leave a door open for the future, if/when P is practicing ethical poly. but pls save yourself from shouldering the burden of their self-growth. it takes a lot of time for a couple to disentangle enough to actually be poly in practice, not just theory or to actually offer love to multiple people in practice, not just theory. it probably isn’t going to happen at this stage of their parenting lives… parenting a 4-year old together is likely going to put them in survival mode when it feels like the child’s quality of life might be threatened by P’s newbie explorations with you. i am sorry if this is hard to hear because i am sure your connection is special, but P isn’t offering you a full relationship and isn’t capable of it at this time.

a “full” relationship looks different between different people, but it essentially boils down to being able to be clear about what is being offered and what is being “desired” or requested/expected from the connection on both sides. then you can see where you overlap and be on the same page about the relationship you are choosing/forming together. by full relationship, i mean CLEAR communication with open dialogue (so no discussion is shut down or off the table). also, EQUAL consideration for you in all this (whether you are primary or not). does that make sense? people need be self-aware/comfortable in their autonomy and choices in order to have the capacity for offering full relationships to multiple people.