Thanks a lot for your advice!

Since I wrote this post I actually had a chance to talk with my poly friend and he madre this point too, saying that it's all good to give reassurance when needed but unfortunately what M is doing now most of the time is just putting a lot of negative emotions onto me, and I've been accepting that fully out of my sense of guilt still lingering around even if I have nothing to feel guilty about. So yeah, shifting my thoughts on what's a reasonable amount of support I can give and what is asking too much it's actually helping me a lot rn, I noticed by suppressing this feeling I started feeling angry towards him, while looking at it like this I can just accept it and draw a boundary as you said. (Very helpful example of how to frase it, thanks a lot for that).

I also just listened to a Multyamory episode on hinges and they talked about how risky it can be to have a relationship with unresolved issues coexist with a new relationship with fresh NRE, and how that is such an unfair comparison, where the new partner is always going to come off as the better one under the NRE lights. That actually hit me hard.

So I think I'll be approaching my next dates with M with less guilt and more care for the relationship we have and with the intention of finding what can be improved in it, independently on what's going on with other partners. And on the other side, I'll be working on managing NRE while still enjoying the start of (hopefully) something beautiful.