I wanted to message you (as I’m sure most people who message you do) about a poly/open relationship I’m in. As for the background, I’ve been separated for about 11 months and have been seeing someone for the last two and a half. He is also divorced and on the third night that he stayed over, I told him that I was not interested in an exclusive relationship. He said he felt the same and we agreed on condoms with others. I told him I wanted to know what was going on with him and that I was potentially interested in meeting, hanging out with or even being involved with other women he dated. He said he wasn’t sure what he wanted regarding my dalliances, so we agreed to play it by ear. First time try at poly/open for both of us.
Recently, he went on a dinner date with another woman without telling me. He later texted me what happened after he went AWOL and I didn’t anticipate how insecure I would feel after finding out. I decided, though, that I wanted to be open because I wanted to know that our time spent together was because we *wanted* to be together, and not because exclusivity made each of us our only options.
But then he brought his “date” to a party that he had invited me to. He didn’t tell me she was coming and when I arrived she was clinging to him in that tell-tale way that women in the early stages of an exclusive relationship do.
I would like to say that I flipped out, but instead I bit my tongue and ignored the two of them until such time as it was no longer socially awkward to leave. And then I cried my eyes out.
I know that part of my hurt was because I got blindsided. I also felt betrayed because I was honest with him about my intentions, and I was honest with my secondary about my intentions, but because he was not honest with his date about *me,* I suddenly felt like a mistress or a dog eating the leftover scraps.
In all your entries (well, the ones I’ve read at least), I’ve never read your stance on information sharing and honesty with the “others.” Why is it that when I imagine him with other women, I see myself meeting them, laughing, chatting about our time with him, and just generally getting along and being friends, but now that I see it actually happening, the very fact that I know what’s going on and she doesn’t just boils my insides?
I updated our contract and told him that my new conditions were that he be honest with the women he sees as well. I told him I’m out if he doesn’t. Is this unreasonable? Uncommon?
Thanks for being out there!
I think that asking your partner to explain why he didn’t want to give you what you asked for in terms of disclosure specifics would be an excellent start. Note the way I phrased that: “ask your partner”. Be open to an explanation rather than make an accusation. However, if I’d outlined something that specifically and had gotten a yes to the request (I’m presuming you got on here. Did you?) I would feel pretty insecure, myself. Habits of evasiveness or concealment can come from a lot of places and many of them aren’t necessarily teh ebbil, but they’re not very trust-building. This is a bit of rules-lawyering, but if you didn’t specifically say, “I want to know about dates before they happen” then he can very legitimately point out that he did volunteer the information about the date to you.
The party incident? That was pretty insensitive, if nothing else. Asking your partner if he’d explain the choice not to tell you that his other romantic interest was going to be there would be a good way to open some communication. Again, ask. While I’m having a hard time thinking of a good reason he would have neglected to convey the information, there are people in this world who are emotionally clueless on occasion, and direct and explicit dialog about what you want can be a real help here.
I have no idea in the world why you say you would have preferred to flip out about the zinger you got at the party. I think it’s perfectly okay not to make a scene at a party and wait until a more appropriate time to display/discuss your feelings. Wait, go cry one’s eyes out, then get a bit of equilibrium and talk about what you want strikes me as a good way to handle intense emotions. By the way, calmly stating, “I felt hurt” is expressing the emotion, too, as well as giving some information. We’re presuming the man cares whether or not you’re hurt so saying how you feel is a good idea. It’s not necessarily a command to him to make it all better, mind, but information is good.
I also think that not wanting to be a dirty little secret is a pretty common desire among poly people. It is not unreasonable or uncommon for this to be a pretty hard boundary with many polys. I would say that among the poly people I know, it’s more common than not. That’s the way I like to do things, myself. If you think about it, not telling someone something that they would end the relationship if they knew means that you’re coercing the person to have a relationship with you. I’m into freely-chosen relationships, myself.
I hope this works out for you.
Addendum: Now that I’ve made this blanket statement about whether or not it’s common to agree to be someone’s secret, I gotta ask you that have been poly awhile, would you be someone’s secret? Never. Sometimes? Under what conditions?
Be someone’s secret ?
Nope, never.
But I do have a question for the person involved here…
Ok, she was hanging on him at the party.
That’s something you can observe.
But “in that tell-tale way that women in the early stages of an exclusive relationship do” is just your guess at WHY she was behaving this way!
Maybe he didn’t tell her, maybe he did and she’s decided she has a shot at staking her claim.
Maybe he wondered why you ignored him all night – is he thinking ” are you punishing him for seeing others???”.
He can’t read your mind any more than you can read hers…
So when you approach this guy, it might go better for you to express your surprise at her presence, and how you felt uncomfortable with her clinginess .
It’s ok to ask for events for which the two of you have made plans together to be events at which you ARE ‘together’, that this is ‘your’ time. That you don’t wish to share ‘your’ date at some events, and that you want to know whether a date is a single date or a group date.
And you have every right to ask that he be open and honest with women he is seeing about how many women he is seeing.
If he didn’t tell her, and she thinks she’s in a monogamous relationship?
Well- congratulations – this is a very short time in which to learn that the guy isn’t worth your time.
But give him a fair chance to be heard, first.
I’m just as clingy when I’m in the early stages of a non-exclusive relationship as I am in an exclusive one! I like touching, *especially* during NRE.
That doesn’t mean I think it was cool for him to bring someone else to the same party *without telling her,* though.
Someone’s secret?
In general, no I’m not willing to be. I’ve been there, and I didn’t like it.
In the special case — with someone who is fairly new to the idea of poly, and about being open to it, I’m ok with things being secret if we’re in the early dating stages, and we’re not sure whether things will work out as a relationship or not. But, as things become established as likely to work for the longer term, I’m not willing to continue with things as a secret.
A partner of one of my sweeties thought that I was “staking my claim” with him because I was cuddly and affectionate with him when she was there also. I never had that intention. I just was really happy to see him and was expressing my fondness for him. I certainly wouldn’t have objected if she had been affectionate with him also.
So, I definitely would agree that your questioner might be causing pain where there isn’t any. Your recommendation of asking for clarification is a good one.
There are circumstances under which I have agreed to be a secret. If my partner and I are in a “secondary” level relationship and he doesn’t wish to tell his family (parents/siblings, NOT wife) about me, I’d understand that, especially if he’s married. It might bother me if we were seeing each other for a decade, but it didn’t bother me at all for the 3-year relationship I was in. We both had other primaries for holidays and family occasions, so neither of us was waiting at home during those times.
I think the questioner was more upset about the social-context of the other woman. She did not discuss if they present socially as a couple. If not, she may be wanting to be a couple, even one with open boundaries.
She went to a party, expecting to be there with her boyfriend, as a couple. When she got there, he was socially bound to another, and she didn’t have any place in the arrangement.
I think she may need some more structure to the relationship, where she is defined as his girlfriend. They may not define themselves as a couple, but she sounds like she’d like to be involved socially with the metamors (not sure if I’m using that correctly) as an explicit girlfriend. But, they need to work out how they are going to present in various social contexts as part of the expectations.
LOL – you never run out of things to discuss in poly relationships.
My wife and I are open about my other relationship, and she’s open with a limited few, but in reality we live a mostly secret life. Our circumstances require that we be incredibly circumspect and keep to the social closet. It’s useful that my other partner lives in another state, and we don’t see each other much. When we do, if nobody we know is around,or those who know about us, we are open and out. Otherwise, even in foreign towns, we can’t touch publicly for fear of being caught.
It really fucking sucks for both of us. But what we get while hiding, the intensity of our many-hearses relationship, I can hide in order to have that.
Also,since we aren’t looking to date others, the people who need to know – our spouses – already know. So we’re not secret to the people who matter the most.
Many-hearses?! F’ing autocorrect and bad reader-before-submitting….
Many-years… That what it should have said. Sorry.
For many years i had a very rigid idea of what polyamory needed to look like. i mean, some of my ideas were very fluid (as some folks reading this will no doubt recall) and some were more rigid. i thought i needed a lot of rules, and a lot of control that is, in all honesty, only a fantasy of control. After nearly 30 years of nonmonogamy, informed and transformed by my political and social opinions, i found that very few rules were required once i let go of the need to control the course of any relationship. i don’t police my lovers’ other relationships. However, if i’m in a relationship that has to be kept very secret it is unlikely to last very long, become very emotionally intimate, or both. i do ask that i be informed if my lovers are in a relationship with someone else in my social circles, just to avoid those “staking the claim” moments as Laura mentioned. i don’t need any details, just identities.
i have been a “dirty little secret” as a lover and as a sex worker. i have also been a “clean little secret” – keeping the relationship secret was less hurtful for all involved.
I’ve been somebody else’s secret, to the point where my best friends weren’t aware of the situation. My then-partner gave reasons that seemed solid enough; after the breakup, I found out that they weren’t the real reasons. There was also some other ugliness that I won’t go into here…
I won’t say “never again”, but I would be a lot more cautious going into that arrangement next time around.
So what do you do when you want to cuddle up to person #1 in public but they already have person #2 glommed on to them? And you don’t particularly want to get up close and personal with #2?
@Suzanne, asking for what you want is often a good idea.
Hi Ms Java and all who commented,
You’re never too late to learn! I was thinking poly peeps were so damn full of themselves I was about to write you all off when it turns out that you’re actually a pretty helpful and non-judgmental group. Whoops.
Anyway, to respond to Ms. Java’s question: I wished I had flipped out because he took my restraint as a sign that I wasn’t emotionally invested. The result? When the other woman learned the truth she flipped out and I got dumped. I saw it coming, but it doesn’t hurt less.
To Michael, you’re right. A lot of thinking and the conclusion was: I wanted to be acknowledged, if not as a “girlfriend” but at least as someone special. I spent long years being shat on as a wife and while I’m still not sure how I want to define my relationships going forward, I am certain I will NOT be someone’s dirty little secret.
Thanks all!
@Questioner:
I’m really sorry you got dumped. As painful as that was, you were being done a favor. People who expect dramatic reaction as proof of reality of emotion or intensity of feeling often make incredibly poor partners long-term.
At the moment I sort of AM a “secret”. Well, not so much a secret as the metaphorical elephant in the corner.
I have a long-distance married partner I see about half a dozen times a year. We allways sleep together on a double inflatable mattress when I’m there, that the husband inflates before I arrive. He’s seen us cuddled up on the sofa several times and cuddled up in bed at least once, but nothing has actually been discussed between us. It’s like they have an unspoken DADT agreement, which in some ways make it seem OK (I know they don’t have sex together at all any more) but in other makes it very awkward indeed. The situation clearly isn’t ideal but I also don’t want to keep seeing my long-distance love either.
@David I’d call that less a secret and more a lack of communication. You could ask your love about it if you want to open lines of communication.
I’m not comfortable being a secret with lovers or partners – definitely not with my contractual spouse – but bits of fun on the side? Well there was a time when those sorts of very brief associations met certain needs – and sometimes a level of discretion was required, and I was flexible about it for their benefit, but honest with my own partners/lovers. It worked, but it isn’t where I am now. It’s open, honest, and full disclosure at this point in my life, no exceptions – but I also don’t play with strangers, people who are in monogamous relationships, or other people’s lovers/partners/playmates in any sort of relationship without those lovers/partners/playmates being aware and ok with it. I just don’t like the pain and drama of ugly surprises. lol
I’m in a funny place, secrecy-wise. My lover’s wife knows about me and he is openly poly, but he hedges about how much time he spends with me. He isn’t as open with her as I’d like, so I feel like an “open-secret”. His reasoning? She’s not really okay with him having other relationships but won’t force the issue; choosing instead a policy of hurt feelings and moments of rage. Because he won’t change who he is, on a fundamental level.
Straight up, sugar, ain’t seeing a happy ending to that…