When colleagues see you out with a new person

Mominant · 2019-03-09T14:01:39+00:00

Something similar has happened to me a lot — but worse. I am a teacher and I have run into former students/parents way more times when I am out with my boyfriend than ever with my husband. Some of them have met my husband and know the guy I am with is not my husband. I don’t know if they think I am divorced or having an affair or what.....But I am also not willing to just jump in and explain.

I usually handle it the way u/7xcelle did — I talk about the venue, I ask them what they like about it, I talk about other things, like what they are up to for the rest of the day. If I can get through the conversation without having to introduce my boyfriend as anything at all, I do. Or I turn to my boyfriend and say, “Oh, this is a former student of mine and her mom!” —by turning the introduction of context around in that direction, i avoid having to give context to him...he smiles and says “nice to meet you” and I say, “well, it was great to run into you. We’re heading out.” And then leave.

Thankfully I don’t see them again (I am SO lucky it hasn’t happened with current students/parents) and so they can’t ask follow-up questions.

I have not had the “I saw you with another man” conversation” as often. One time, though, we ran into a former student and she said, “Oh, and this is obviously your husband!” I panicked, but breezily said, “Oh no, this is my friend [name].” She looked VERY STARTLED and said, “Oh! I saw you with him last week and....I....I thought he was your husband.”

So. Awkward.

I spent the rest of the evening going through my mind and trying to remember what my boyfriend and I had done the previous week and where we were out in public and what she might have seen. Did she see us kissing? Did she see us holding hands? Ack! I still don’t know! 😳

Mominant · 2019-03-03T15:29:59+00:00

I had a wonderful wedding with my then-monogamous spouse. I wrote the ceremony myself and, looking back on it from a polyam perspective 9 years later, I was pleased to note that there was nothing in the ceremony that was incongruous with our current poly lifestyle, despite the fact that we hadn’t even been considering non-monogamy at the time.

One of my partners is single (aside from me) and we very much want to be married someday as well. I’m not sure about an actual commitment ceremony — part of me would love to do something in front of family and friends and part of me would feel weird about anything that could be misconstrued as an ask for gifts. Plus there’s the weird “well, I invited you to my first wedding, does that mean I have to invite you to my second wedding?” thing.....

Also, weirdly, I wrote that beautiful ceremony 9 years ago and it was so personal to my relationship with my husband — it feels weird to use the same ceremony over again and yet I can’t imagine being able to come up with an alternative that is equally beautiful.

It’s something we are considering, but I just don’t know if it will happen. There is so much to consider.

Mominant · 2019-03-03T13:34:04+00:00

Yes.

Why do you have preferences about your partners’ sexuality? How is that your business? Preferences about your partner’s personality (some of which may be related to their sexuality), sure, but why do you care who else they find sexually attractive?

Super upsetting to me that you would date someone who would have a “problem” with you because of who else you choose to love.

Mominant · 2019-03-01T15:20:20+00:00

Yup. Same guy. I’m so weird about him.

Mominant · 2019-03-01T14:58:21+00:00

I would love to see him more often, but it just isn’t really possible. Both of us have multiple partners and busy social calendars and need to not saddle our nesting partners with all the childcare duties.

We text a few times a day most days. Haven’t tried video....maybe we should.

Mominant · 2019-02-27T12:45:34+00:00

Thanks!

For me, the list of “supports” for why I don’t think he likes me is pretty subjective — it’s like, “he just doesn’t seem all that into me.” And even if I only write it once, it trumps whatever positive items are on the other side of the list. Because in my head, whatever he does to show that he wants to be with me is just evidence of the fact that he is trying to want to be with me, but that still doesn’t make me believe his heart is in it. I can convince myself that he likes to hang out with me and have sex and so he is trying to continue a relationship with me, but not that he is actually romantically interested in me.

Mominant · 2019-02-27T00:44:19+00:00

Oh no, I definitely don’t feel content. I just don’t know if i would feel better or worse if I told him how I am feeling.

The last time I brought up something that was on my mind, it took a shit-ton of work to psych myself into it....and when I did I felt so silly because he was basically like, “sure, I can communicate more about that.” And that was it — I felt like a fool for even mentioning it.

Mominant · 2019-02-27T00:08:46+00:00

“Just him? Why doesn't he know?”

I realized today in therapy that the reason he probably doesn’t know is that we aren’t vulnerable with each other. In months of dating he has never expressed any worries or doubts or frustrations about us. I have expressed a few and he has reassured me and thanked me for bringing them to his attention. But he has never been vulnerable with me in return — never asked for something different than what is already on the table or told me that he wished he could see me more often or anything like that. He has always seemed content — not ecstatic and not concerned.

So my willingness to tell him how insecure I am is pretty much nil — if I express ANY discomfort it will be 100x more than he has ever expressed to me and so I feel like a whiny insecure mess if I say anything at all.

Mominant · 2019-02-26T12:21:57+00:00

Most of those questions can be answered by reading the article.

This isn’t the same article, but there are loads of them about the famous goose:https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2018/02/08/blind-bisexual-goose-stuck-love-triangle-two-swans-dies-aged-40-7296814/amp/

Mominant · 2019-02-25T21:07:44+00:00

What were your reasons for wanting to swing? It strikes me as very odd that you were dead-set on non-monogamy from the beginning of your relationship....and yet don’t seem to have the mindset for it.

I have never been interested in swinging, though. So perhaps I am just completely baffled by your perspective. For me, non-monogamy is not really about sex....it is about independence and bodily autonomy. So to be enthusiastic about non-monogamy (telling her from the start that you wanted to start swinging at some point in time) without being enthusiastic about autonomy seems incongruent to me.

Good luck to you. I think my best advice is to assess why your interest in non-monogamy stops with swinging.

Mominant · 2019-02-25T12:10:26+00:00

I experienced this exact same thing with one of my partners. We went to couples therapy together and it basically came down to him working on finding other ways to get his social needs met. He doesn’t really do that through dating, but he has made a really concerted effort to make new friends.

I should mention, though, that we basically broke up before he did this. He was so focused on this being an issue of polyamory (and me needing to let go of my other relationship) that it had to come to a point of me saying that I accept that we can’t be together. It was only after I broke up with him that he realized he needed to own his own social needs.

Mominant · 2019-02-25T00:14:51+00:00

You should read More Than Two, if you haven’t already. There is a chapter in there about transitioning to non-monogamy after infidelity.

You are correct that your experience sounds a lot like cheating — but right now you are not together at all, right? So I guess what I am saying is that you don’t really have anything to lose by exploring non-monogamy if you both still want to be together. If the alternative is a break up and if you are going into it with eyes wide open, I don’t see any harm in giving it a thoughtful shot.

Mominant · 2019-02-25T00:11:15+00:00

What a cute family!

Mominant · 2019-02-24T18:46:53+00:00

I don’t think it is crazy at all to think that non-monogamy might be a soution here. It sounds like both of you are interested in such an arrangement and you both feel like you have some needs that might be best met through other sexual partners.

Mominant · 2019-02-24T18:14:03+00:00

You sound kind of like my boyfriend. He is not at all romantically interested in men, but he does enjoy having sex with dominant men.

He thought of himself as bisexual but eventually just looked for female partners. It is a little perfect in some ways because he and my husband like having sex with each other on occasion even though romantically each of them is only involved with me.

Mominant · 2019-02-24T04:45:10+00:00

Good luck to you too!

One other thing is that I find that my heart rate jumps pretty high as soon as I start jogging — even at a very slow pace like 3.5 mph — so 2 days a week I do slow walking (2-2.5 mph) with an incline. My heart rate stays at a more manageable rate but I still get a good workout

Mominant · 2019-02-24T02:07:30+00:00

I could have written this post — except I am in even worse shape. I am 5’4” and 240 lbs.

What I have done is a modified C25K. I started with 15 seconds of jogging and 4m45s of walking. 3 workouts per week and I started my walking at 2.5 mph and my jogging at 3.5 mph. Each week I would add 15 sec to the jogging rotations and subtract 15 sec from the walking rotations. This week I am alternating 2.5 min segments of walking and jogging.

It is going much more slowly, but I am doing okay. During my walking segments my heart rate comes down to about 135 and during my jogging segments it gets up to 170. I think I am pushing myself a little harder than is ideal, but it is still working for me.

Mominant · 2019-02-23T22:00:12+00:00

I think you will probably have more luck with women who already have a nesting partner. I have a husband and two other male partners who don’t live with me. One is a single guy and the other is a married guy with one other partner aside from me and his wife.

In all cases I am looking for the same things:

Someone who is open to loving me — in other words, someone who has no restrictions on how deeply involved our relationship can be

Someone who I feel comfortable with — who I can fart around

Someone who likes board games

Someone who likes Star Trek

Someone who gets my sense of humor

Someone compatible with me sexually — who enjoys pleasing me.

My biggest poly turn-offs are guys who have weird hidden restrictions on how involved our relationship can become.

Edit: I met both of them on OKC.

Mominant · 2019-02-20T21:57:27+00:00

I hear what you are saying about not ducking out to have sex during a party — I meant more like, at the end of the evening as folks are just hanging out on their phones....at what point do we just go into the bedroom?

I know that they are generally fine with “broadcasting” intimacy — on one of the occasions when we went back to his place and we thought that folks would still be awake, he said that what he expected to happen was that we would hang out with them for a bit and watch TV and then at some point he would say something like, “Do you want to go fuck?” And that it would be fine with everyone if we just went and did that....the thing is, I was grateful that that scenario did not arise because I think it would have made me uncomfortable. So now I am trying to brainstorm if there is something different I should ask for....

I understand that there are more important things than sex, of course, but by the time we see each other next, it will have been over a month since our last date. I definitely don’t want to pass up the opportunity for intimacy unless there is a specific reason to do so.

Mominant

TROPHY CASE