I am madly in love with one of my partners. We have been together for a year and a half. He has been married to a woman for 19 years whom I love dearly. They were not poly at the time. She had never been attracted to a woman at all until me but it happened. She fell in romantic love with me. I resisted for so long. Then under a drug induced time, due to surgery, decided I would go against my feelings and give it a go. I could love her. She is great. It will grow on me.
4 months passed. I still did not feel it. I did not feel comfortable about it and I finally spoke my truth as my partner has told me to do. So we were a triad transitioning into a poly V. What does that look like? Do you think that the friendship between me and her could work again? He loves us both, needs us both and we are important to him. He hates to see us both suffering but she is taking this very hard. I am not, perhaps it is because I was the one that broke it off. All of our mutual family time and such has stopped. I miss it.
Thanks for any advice. I would bring this up in my discussion group but she is there every month so I don’t feel comfortable bring it up.
Good for speaking up. I mean, I hope that in the future you recognize that big decisions are best not made under the influence of mind-altering substances, but since you can’t change the past, there’s nothing to do but let that go except as a learning experience.
Yes, friendships between people who are no longer romantically involved can certainly work. But, breakups hurt. She needs time to grieve, mourn and get over it. Not allowing someone that can cause some real problems, so patience is a good idea there.
Even in the face of that, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Look, I know not being romantic any more hurt and I am more sorry than I can say that I hurt you. I’m sorry because I care about you, and do value our friendship a lot. Of course I’ll leave it up to you, but I’m very interested in repairing our friendship, as I treasured the mutual family time together.”
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if you are thinking that, telling her that is a good thing. You know, communication and all that? Letting the people you value know what’s on your mind? That kind of thing is important, after all, and it’s rarely wrong to tell someone you care about you’re sorry when you hurt them.
After that, the ball is in her court. It would be impossible to predict a reaction after that. While one hopes the most negative thing you’ll get is, “Ouch! I feel hurt and need to back off and sort out my feelings,” there are no guarantees.