Discussion: How M feels about being in a polyamorous relationship as a monogamous man
M and I have opened our relationship up many years ago (six now to be exact) but we are still to this day learning as we go along. Somethings work now for us that did not in the beginning, and those that worked in the beginning no longer. This kind of relationship is about growth, development, trust, communication, and emotional health. It isn’t always easy but it’s not always hard. There is a lot that we didn’t know when we first started, and as we have explored much has been shed light on. Issues we didn’t realize existed have been exposed and issues we had prior have been resolved.
Even after all these years with Mike, a naturally mono man, isn’t quite sure where he belongs. He doesn’t identify completely as mono, yet he doesn’t completely identify as poly either. He is in this “weird in-between land” as he calls it and has a rough time pinpointing it. Over time this has caused us great distress, him as not quite understanding himself and how he feels, and me because of the stress that has caused to me and my separate relationships. His emotions affect me, and mine affect him. Everything between us would feed periodically into outside relationships. Which is not good.
This relationship of ours has taught us what our fears are separately and together, and we have both had to figure out ways to process our emotions (and our lashing out at each other). Our relationship has awoken deep seeded and buried truths about ourselves, some incredibly bright, others the darkest of dark.
We have had to learn to compromise as best as we can, how to function and get all that we each need. Him leaning toward monogamous (although he absolutely went crazy loving it when I bought home a women who was interested in both of us) he was greatly insecure by me bring involved with a man that I was greatly interested in dating.
He wants me to be happy and loved, but he is scared to death of losing me at the same time. This being said it is only the men that he is scared of because he sees it as a failure on his part that he is incapable of fulfilling my every want, need, interest, and desire (although no one person will be everything at all times) yet at the same time he knows how incredibly different we are, and how we don’t have much in common.
This here has been our biggest challenge in our relationship because how do you continue building and moving forward together when one is scared and the other is not?
