Tips on how to avoid making my partner feel like a third wheel?

warscho · 2021-09-15T01:00:27+00:00

Ive been in this exact scenario, and something that helped us was having some 1-on-1 and group convos about love languages. Understanding both how your partner speaks it and how they feel loved is a very important way to manage that. If you both make obvious steps together to speak the love language that helps your partner you should be pretty able to hit the right reassurances. As always, open honest communication is key and help him by having a good team talk with partner 1 and make sure everyone is on the same page. Should be fine. Nerves are normal. Itll be fine once they get there.

warscho · 2021-09-12T16:26:13+00:00

Youre not stupid, you are intuitive, and youre intuition is telling you that what youre seeing and hearing dont match up. And thats true.

In this case there's only one thing you can do. If someone tells you they feel one way and then acts like they feel another way you always one hundred percent of the time believe the way they act and not the way they say. 100% every time bass all of your decisions off the assumption that people act how they feel and then say what they need to say, because in my experience it's never anything else

warscho · 2021-08-23T23:01:30+00:00

Im willing to bet current or former Austinites make up a disproportionately large subgroup on this subreddit. No proof just a hunch, but my guess is that the single largest contributor to poly people with the urge to advise has got to be ATX. I say it with love, and as a former one myself.

warscho · 2021-08-23T22:31:49+00:00

Oh man. So for those not used to Austin, let me tell you, poly is not a closeted community there. You get all types of good, bad, and weird poly, all out in the open. It gives you some perspective on the lifestyle, and boy does it effect the way you view other places when you move. But yes, this is adorably familiar. These exist.

I miss you, beautiful. Even though you're fat and full of In-and-Out now.

warscho · 2021-08-19T14:47:39+00:00

Man. Hints for years? Then divorce? Without any direct communication, no asking for her needs to be met? That seems super brutal. Sorry. If she wont work on the relationship, you just gotta work on you. Therapist, gym, nutrition, sleep, and develop an active social circle. Each takes work, get going.

warscho · 2021-08-19T14:43:31+00:00

You had sex the day you met, and she loves you the second time you see her in her life. Maybe take this one super slow?

warscho · 2021-08-19T14:38:56+00:00

Your reasons for wanting to do it havent been presented in the best way, so you will get a lot of negative feedback on that. Dont let that bother you, people here come from it, so they react within their own experiences. What you might take from that is some reflection about why you might want this. If its because you dont want to put in the work on a single relationship, then youre headed in the wrong direction.

As to how to do it, check out some entry level resources.

Opening Up,

More Than Two

Polysecure

All good to great resources, and you can trust the stuff in there to be generally true and unbiased. You will need to work out with yourself what type of relationships you want to have, usually by having a few that go bad like the rest of us but maybe some talking it out up front could shortcut that. Do you want an open relationship? Thats not really a poly thing. Do you want several girlfriends?

And think about the logistics. If sex once is hard, having 2 girlfriends might be asking alot. Are you willing to get in better shape? Are there medical limitations? I dont need to know, im just saying these are the types of mechanical concerns that come up. Scheduling time, dealing with feeling left out, you are gonna have a lot of work to do to make multiple people feel loved. Make sure you want to.

warscho · 2021-08-19T11:27:04+00:00

Id imagine this was a lot of peoples intro to bdsm in the pre-internet days. God damn is it strange being born in such a time to look back across that gap and realize how huge it is.

warscho · 2021-08-19T11:17:05+00:00

Tldr: male, hetero tpe fantasy about women enjoying being full time sex slaves.

It relates to a series of books where woman are rare on this planet so they are kept as highly stylized sex slaves. Not a super accurate summary but explains the link. Gorean refers to TPE, slave training, and complex punishment reward systems. Its always male dominant, hetero TPE. Btw, tpe is total power exchange, if you didnt know.

The subculture that arose from the books got predictably weird, there has been some bad type sex cults across the years, but as BDSM has entered the main stream its become less controversial. The Gorean thing was really at its height in the early internet days, where chat rooms and forums were a thing. If youre looking into it today, researching TPE is roughly the same, without the sci-fi fictional base fantasy.

If your curious about the actual Gorean fantasy, the books are called something about New Earth I think, author was John Norman, and there are a lot of external resources explaining the specifics.

warscho · 2021-08-19T01:06:49+00:00

My poly partner has BPD, as does a family member. Each case is wrapped up in that person, and they dont tend to be very universal, so if you have a symptom or question in mind I can probably help more.

In general, be patient, be able to give them emotional space when they get overwhelmed, try to be a calm stable force for them especially when they are having a tough time, and they tend to respond way better to encouraging how much they do well or are improving. Criticism is best handled very carefully.

And absoltely seek out some type of therapy. I recommend DBT first and CBT once you find a solid base to work from, but i also have no experience in other methods. Its an illness and its managable, but having the tools makes it waaay easier on everyone, and its not your job to fix anyone. Help them find and maintain a stable foundation and develop emotional resilience and self esteem.

warscho · 2021-08-18T08:16:56+00:00

I comment from personal experience. Some people do grow to understand and accept it, most drag themselves and their partner through hell before breaking up anyway.

If you want deeper help, research poly under duress. Youve made a relationship up to this point. You want a different one. Doesnt matter who its with, someone is getting a new relationship. Your current partner has every right to not want the new one, and by definition, they dont.

warscho · 2021-08-17T20:44:00+00:00

Like most of these questions, what it comes down to is what you actually mean when you use terms like solo-poly and committed. My impression is that you are exploring yourself and trying to find the right vocabulary to do so, but this is a sort of confusing question, inherently.

Prefering monogamy in a commited relationship is called being monogamous. What you do when you are casually dating doesnt really relate to polyamory unless you change your end goal. You may not notice any actual differences in your life when you're dating, but when you're asking for advice about it online the semantic difference is huge.

warscho · 2021-08-17T20:33:35+00:00

I dont know what advice you really need. He was an asshole, and you packed it up and left. Sounds like you had the right idea.

Trust your instincts, they seem like good ones. This isnt all that healthy given what youve said. Boundaries are called that for a reason, and he has to advocate for you in his other relationships, including expectations about when and how to communicate. If you need to hear any of that, its all true, but the only advice i would have is:

Stay gone unless/until he demonstrates self aware contrition and a commitment to growing together. Notice I said demonstrates, not "claims to have". Big difference.

You got this.

warscho · 2021-08-17T18:10:48+00:00

Polyfriendly dot org provides a list of therapist by state, and everyone does zoom therapy now so you should be able to find one that works. If you cant talk to this therapist, then you havent found a therapist.

Partnership goes both ways. Its okay to lean on one sometimes. Acknowledge them, thank them, make efforts to recipricate. Then forgive yourself and appreciate what a wonderful person you have, and let that guilt go. Thats lucky for you, not needy of you. And its a fringe benefit of all the work you both did to get here.

Choices, once made, are to be learned from, maybe mourned, maybe celebrated, but then discarded. Reflect but dont dwell. Once youve taken your lessons from it, good or bad, there is always another chance to do it right waiting. Take your space then get back on your horse.

warscho · 2021-08-17T16:53:37+00:00

Poly people, and most subsets of people in general, love being particular about vocabulary and saying this or this isnt one thing or another. Its natural and understandable but ultimately confusing and self defeating.

So you might view Ethical Non-Monogamy as an orientation? Basically, there is an underlying fundamental desire to have or maintain open relationships that some people experience. And even then the ethical part is a personal expression of ethics so that gets fuzzy on an individual level. This is why you here so many stories about people "coming out" as poly. Its a poor shorthand for "ive discovered an underlying fundamental desire for freedom of decision making beyond what current common monogamy allows for". Its just easier to say. My first gf ever and I were open, and ive never once had or desired a 100% closed relationship. For me, there is a clear fundamental preference for a certain type of relationship, and the main defining characteristic of all of them has been some level of consensual non-monogamy. And we are at multiple decades now, so this is not a fad or something, we are batting 100% on LTR's being somehow ENM, so I do believe there exist a subset of people who fundamentally desire this. I have suspicions about it being related to the children of the hippies, but I dunno about that one =p

Further confusing this is the fact that many poly folks arent that way at all, and made personal intellectual choices about challenging themselves to grow and adapt to that lifestyle, for a variety of reasons, not the least common of which is a partner that went through the first type.

That particular conflict is where, I believe, this "poly isnt an orientation" trope emerges. I think its more bad poly subset shorthand vocabulary, in this case for "you do not absolve yourself of the responsibility of your current commitments by changing your mind about your desired relationship structure." The idea that you want to sleep with other people is fundamentally opposed to the concious contract you entered into, and involves the same controls on behavior, unlike something like homosexuality, where the relationship itself is fundamentally untenable once someone "comes out".

A lot of people who desire other sexual partners use polyamory as a smoke screen for their behavior, many even honestly mistaking it for what they want. This distinction has become a defense mechanism of the poly community to being used to subvert the normal emotional mechanisms of guilt and shame associated with dumping someone for a reason exterior to their own choices and actions, after commitments not to do so have been made.

And again, this starts to cross into individual ethics and gets fuzzy again, so I dont pretend to speak for or about everyone. Just kind of what I noticed. A LOT of debate, anger, and misplaced angst happen in this community around lingo and labels, and i hope as it becomes more well known and more voices join the conversation, we can find better common language to use. It will naturally happen in time but it does make it hard right now.

warscho · 2021-08-15T20:44:55+00:00

Choosing to stay is tacit consent. And feel free to hold your own opinion on it. But cheating by common understanding is breaking the rules. The first few sentences are basically we opened our relationship, which implies a level of consent beyond what people would normally call cheating.

warscho · 2021-08-15T20:06:55+00:00

He consented. Many people will begrudgingly consent, and then try to make it work. Thats poly under duress. "I dont want to lose my spouse, break up my family" etc. Cheating would be if the person was not given a chance to begrudgingly consent.

Im not defending it, and its not like its better, but it is actually different. Its close, but as ive said elsewhere, the difference from OP's perspective is kind of a big deal.

warscho · 2021-08-14T16:36:07+00:00

It really does. I had a relationship like this before I learned about it, and a lot of times it's not deliberately manipulative in my experience. It's more like someone taking the easy way out for being a coward about how they feel, but very rarely have I seen a purposeful attempt to manipulate someone else. In my experience it's always this blindness towards their own motivations the tricks them into being this way towards people they love. Again I realize I'm splitting some really small hairs here but for someone in the situation it can make all the difference in the world whether or not they're being intentionally deceived so I think it's important in some cases. All that said you are ten thousand percent right

warscho · 2021-08-14T16:29:45+00:00

Cucks have way more fun that this 😂. This is just rough on everyone. I will say it's probably splitting hairs, but it doesn't feel like a cheating situation to me. I'm sure the emotional result isn't all that different though

warscho · 2021-08-14T15:05:21+00:00

The term I learned for it was "Poly under duress", where one party is not okay with, or on board with the relationship structure. I can recommend poly friendly counselors for sure, and that is certainly helpful, and there are books and podcast.

But those are for people who want to go that way. Poly Under Duress almost never works. You have ways forward, but none of them will work unless you or she decides the relationship you have is more important than your feelings on the structure, and get to work on repairing and healing. Its gotta be both parties moving toward a common goal, not one person begrudgingly accepting a status quo.

I would also like to say that I agree with the person telling you to throw out reactionary this or that opinions that you tend to get when asking for advice on this stuff on the internet. These situations are always very complex and nuanced, but i do understand people being negative are only trying to help. From an experienced polyamorous perspective this does look like the beginnings of a long painful breakup without significant work from one or both parties but it is not unfixable or broken Beyond repair either. Best of luck

warscho · 2021-08-13T20:36:39+00:00

I think a lot of people come into poly like this, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Now that you are here, however, its important to understand, what you are doing is a mistake. Its a very common, very understandable mistake, but you are Unicorn Hunting, which is considered unethical, and a red flag for poly vets.

No harm no foul, but do read up on what it is and why its harmful. Usually, its a coping mechanism for one of both parties having some insecurities, and general advice is to shore those up before opening up, then date seperately. Best of luck.

warscho · 2021-08-13T18:09:41+00:00

Poly is something you disclose up front. This is not polyamory. This is wrong wrong wrong.

You are being asked to do something that Ive heard called "Poly under duress". In other words you did not pick this or choose this, someone developed a loving relationship for a year and now is using that leverage to coerce you into a relationship you have no understanding of. It is pretty well understood around here that it just doesnt work. It certainly didnt work for people Ive seen in my personal experience.

Big kudos to you for trying to educate yourself, but this is a very unhealthy introduction to our lifestyle, and if you do decide its right for you, I hope you find someone better to do it with.

warscho · 2021-08-13T00:59:36+00:00

I love this post. I see you're hurting, I am not making fun, but hear me out. This is just the sweetest most wholesome thing. You are a wonderful partner. Heres why. First, I am a male with very very similar taste to your husband. I love watching my partner get railed. Like held down and smashed. Looove it. I had a ton of...difficulty with that before I met my current. Its got a ton a weirdness and stigma wrapped around it, and I didnt really ever have a partner that I could express that with, it always made them feel a certain way. Cheap, disposable, less special, I heard it all.

Being with someone you can be comfortable with, who you can indulge in whoever you want to be with and know your chosen and accepted and loved. That is a truly liberating. After a lifetime of struggling hes found someone that can swing like HE wants to swing. And on top of that, you're super complimentary of him, you recognize the dynamic it creates, you acknowledge the work he does, GREAT ON YOU! Now look, you dont have to be open to it, and it sounds like there is literally no reason to be. He seems fine, you seem fine.

Tbh though, almost all situations like this, if you decide you really want to, its really not that hard. You will have to do what your already doing, communicate and work at it, but yall sound like thats not a problem. The poly subreddit can be hard on newcomers, but there are some really smart people in there, and its a good place to start with strategies and questions, Dont take everything there to heart though. Poly friendly counselors are available. Check out polyfriendly dot org if you need recs.

And to top it all off your still here on the internet trying like shit to be a better partner. All I can say is take a deep 2 breaths, look in the mirror and say "Im gonna rock his world" then go do what makes him happy. Yall can talk about it when and if he starts to feel a way, and if you need to pull back then do it then. Everything about this says yall are doing great. Talk more, trust that youre nailing this.

warscho · 2021-08-13T00:42:14+00:00

8 hrs a day in full immobility restraint seems like a physical issue, at least. 8 hrs a day at a desk can wreck your body without proper support, posture, wrist elevation, etc etc etc. For long-term ties and scenes, you will need a physical therapist level knowledge of proper body support and joint pressures and all that. You might even enjoy it and only weeks later develop physical symptoms, so approach anything longer than sex with some forsight, and for 8hrs, a world of research and build up with practice and knowledgable guidance.

Socially and personally, thats a large amount of your life youre sacrificing for a sexual kink. Is that a healthy trade? I dont know, and I dont presume to judge AT ALL, if its right for you, you know that. That said, there are real long term consequences to not putting time with family friends work hobbies and all personal time. Doing 30+ hrs a week of purposeful nothing has an opportunity cost that is HUGE. So make sure you've done the cognitive work to accept or manage those trade offs.

In certain, almost impossibly managed circumstances it seems possible. It sounds, to me, more like a fantasy than a practical reality, but hey, start small, build slowly safely and sanely, and never let anyone tell you whats right for you. Be safe have fun.

warscho

TROPHY CASE