hey I’m a bi (cis) guy and I’ve been dating a gay man and a straight woman (we’re poly) for two years now. Overtime I’ve started to feel like this man is my soulmate and I no longer want to divide my attention from him at all. I have no idea how to break things of with this woman who’s very important to me without losing her altogether and I’m wondering if I should take that step at all. Would it be a bad idea to keep the poly dynamic if I want monogamy?

If you don’t want to be in a relationship, don’t stay in the relationship. It is okay to learn more about yourself or realize that your desires have changed over time! That’s what dating is all about - learning what works for you and what you want.

As for whether you can break up with someone without losing her entirely: some relationships take well to a shifting of gears from romantic to platonic; others don’t. You can’t control the outcome. Be honest, gentle, clear, and sensitive, and then accept her response with grace. 

I’m currently in the most amazing relationship of my life and I adore my partner deeply. We are poly, and he’s having some difficultly finding a secondary. We have tried triads and whatnot and it just doesn’t work well. I find it works better for me to have a secondary and have him as my primary, but it really gets him down when he has little to no luck with the girls he’s going for. It’s mainly because he’s poly. They get a little weirded out or don’t believe him. What should we do?

It is common for people to be weirded out about polyamory. I would say that I strike out about 60-75% of the time with people I’m interested in because they get spooked by the fact that I’m poly. The keys are:

-Patience. Dating is hard even when you’re monogamous! You’ll meet plenty of people who don’t want to date you. You gotta be patient and have a good sense of humor and resilience about all the rejection.

-Strategy. How is your partner telling people that he’s poly? Maybe his go-to coming out strategy is just not working. Don’t tell people too early, or too late. Don’t dump it on them like you’re confessing a dark secret, but don’t be too flippant either. Be upbeat and open and willing to answer questions. This is a trial-and-error thing - he needs to keep trying and find a pattern of disclosure that works for him and the kind of person he’s into. 

-Location. Where is he meeting these women who get squicked out that he has a partner? Some social settings are more closed-off about non monogamy, and he’ll have better luck looking for people where they’re more likely to be found. Local poly meetups and an OKC profile that’s open about his polyamory are good places to start.

hello! so i broke it off with my ex bc i just wasn’t ready and starting college. i still truly like them tho, but they r dating someone else now. they have also said they are open to a poly relationship but i’m not sure if their partner is. should i be open and tell them i still like them and feel ready for a relationship now? or should i just leave it alone and attempt to move on?

Better an “oops” than a “what if.” Bring it up and see what he says! Either it works out or it doesn’t, but since the “worst case scenario” for Choice A is basically the outcome of Choice B, it makes sense to at least give it a shot!

This is nearly exactly the same situation I found myself in over eight years ago: I had broken up with my high school boyfriend because I wanted freedom to date in college. I missed him terribly, but was not ready for a long distance relationship when starting college. Then I learned about polyamory. I reached back out to him and said hey, I miss you and would love to get back with you, but on these terms. He could have said no, but it turned out that he was interested in poly dating. We have been poly and together ever since!

findingb:

polyadvice:

allerleirauhh:

rairun:

polyadvice:

I explained to him that i cannot stop. He just tends to suck it up and sulk, so it makes me feel like crap. But i cannot leave him. I love him. Am I in the wrong?

I believe this is a follow-up to this message. The thing is, sometimes “love” isn’t enough for a relationship to work out. If he has a tendency to sulk and guilt you about your own feelings, and if his method of dealing with issues is to be this immature and make you “feel like crap,” that is a huge problem.  

It’s not about who is “in the wrong” - it’s about what you’re willing to tolerate in a relationship. There is no magical, Correct Poly Procedure you can take to solve this situation. You have not somehow failed to do the right thing and therefore caused his behavior. He has made the choice to demand that you “stop” being poly and to sulk and make you “feel like crap” when you don’t meet that demand. Your choice is: do you want to be with someone who makes you feel like this? 

Hi Zinnia, first I wanted to say that I like reading your blog. I really appreciate how you always give matter-of-fact advice, and I agree with you most of the time. What I don’t always agree with is that I don’t think that we as a community - we as a society - should necessarily look at people’s behavior and just say, “Well, that’s what they want, so you have to take it or leave it.” Let me try to explain.

Imagine a man whose dream is to have a stay-at-home wife with three children. Now let’s say that, after five years and two children, his wife wants to go back to university, or resume her career, or maybe she no longer thinks having a third child would be a good idea. Would it be okay for the man to say, “Well, that was never what I wanted out of a relationship, so goodbye”?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that he shouldn’t be allowed to leave. At the end of the day, it is his choice. But I think we can all agree that he is at the very least a bit of an asshole? And we can criticize the relationship model he subscribes to, where he sees people more as instruments to achieve his ideal life than living, breathing individuals with their own hopes and dreams?

What first got me thinking about this was this post of yours. I’m just going to quote it here:

Me & my husband have been together for 4 years & when I first got with him he was in a poly relationship with someone else. I allow him to date other girls & I know that I can date other girls too. Idk if I can date other guys tho & that’s not fair.

If you don’t know, the solution is to ask him! Ask whether he would be okay with you dating men as well as women. If he is, problem solved!

If he’s not, and you feel that’s unfair, there’s more talking to do. Ask him why he feels that way, and see if together you two can get to the bottom of his discomfort and find a way to help him work through it.

If he absolutely will not budge, and you think those terms are unfair, you have a decision to make: stay in a relationship under terms you find unfair, or don’t.

I agree that if he won’t bulge, those are her only real options. But even then, I would find it hard to tell her to make that decision and live with it. I do believe in being a little more judgemental and adding, “You are right that this is not fair. You are right that your relationship is not symmetrical, and it shouldn’t have to be this way.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that no, he shouldn’t be coerced into a type of relationship he doesn’t want. Ultimately he will do what he has to do. But it still feels weird to allow him to believe that the type of relationship he wants is perfectly okay and fair just in virtue of him wanting it. He can date girls. What makes him think it’s reasonable not to let her date guys? Shouldn’t we be encouraging guys to see this as an issue they have to work on rather than a simple matter of preference? Shouldn’t we as a society be saying, “Not cool, man”?

totally agree with above commentary. I rly want to emphasise the point that relationships can’t be build around a mentality of ‘this is my Relationship Format and i will only stick to this’. Everyone has their boundaries and expectations and that’s totally fine and healthy, but yeah if you are thinking in terms of relationship structures and not thinking in terms of individual people with unique needs, then it’s not going to work. A big problem in mono/poly combo relationships seems to be more often than not that the mono person wants the poly partner to ‘try’ being mono with them but the poly partner usually sticks hard to wanting to only be poly. That’s absolutely fine, but if you’re trying to stay in a relationship where your partner isn’t happy then you’re definitely in the wrong. You can’t say ‘i love him and don’t want to leave him’ but also say you can’t stop being poly with him because what you’re saying is that you’re fine with staying in a relationship with someone who is deeply unhappy with your behaviour- that is literally abuse. Staying with a girlfriend who wanted to be in a poly relationship with her was horrendous for me because she knew that it was tearing me up and she was regularly making both me and one of her other partners cry, but she made no effort to change her behaviour. Obviously she wasn’t happy making me cry either, and to get around this she would hide details of her other partners from me and I ended up being largely kept in the dark and misled. 

Also the pattern of men demanding that their female partners don’t date other men (/can only date women) whilst they can date other women is a MASSIVE problem in the poly community and is a product of misogyny and lesbian erasure (eg. men often don’t see lesbian relationships as a threat as they don’t believe it to be as valid as a hetero pairing, therefore they say their female partners can engage in same sex relationships) and we can’t gloss over it like it’s totally normal and healthy. You can’t demand that monogamous partners critique their relationship procedures without examining your own once in a while. 

Okay, I have a personal policy not to reply to or get into arguments with people who take issue with my advice, but these comments really bothered me and I think that I have an opportunity here to clarify two things - the limits of my personal definition of abuse, and the philosophy that sets the foundation for how I give advice here in a way I think is healthy and appropriate.

On abuse: I believe that simply doing something your partner doesn’t want you to do is not abuse. Do not cheapen the concept of abuse by equating it to “not obeying every single request from your partner” or “doing or being anything that your partner doesn’t like.”

If my boyfriend decided to become vegan, and wanted me to become vegan too, he has the right to ask that of me, but I have the right to say no. He can say that he only wants to date vegans, and he wants to date me, therefore I have to become a vegan - but that does not obligate me to change my diet. Me continuing to eat meat and dairy does not constitute abuse. If my partner decides that omnivorousness is a dealbreaker in a relationship, he can leave it. If I decide that my partner constantly pressuring me and guilting me about my diet is a dealbreaker, I can leave. Something being a dealbreaker or a catalyst for a breakup is NOT synonymous with abuse.

Forcing someone to stay with you - threats, coercion, manipulation, blackmail, isolation - that is abuse. Simply staying with someone despite unresolved conflict in a relationship is not abuse. Trying to find a way to work things out while recognizing your non-negotiable boundaries is not abuse. It is up to each individual to decide when it’s no longer worth it to try reconciling needs that seem irreconcilable. Someone not following your suggested timeline on making that decision is not abuse. 

On my advice philosophy: In the “don’t date other men” letter, I did suggest that the letter writer start by trying to work through their partner’s issues with them seeing other men. I have covered this type of issue elsewhere in my blog as well, and people are welcome to look for resources. True, I could have done more to point the letter writer to articles about how to talk to their partner about men wanting their partners to only date women - but I get lots of repetitive questions on this blog despite my FAQ, I try to update daily, and sometimes answers are less comprehensive than they could me. Remember that this blog is entirely free and written in my spare time.

I think it is unfair and out of line to tell someone to try and change their partner’s behavior and stay in a relationship on unfair terms. This is an advice column. I advise the people who write to me. I do not think it is remotely okay to tell someone that society as a whole is negatively impacted if they can’t change someone else’s mind. If the guy himself had written to me, I would have told him “not cool, man!” But making that someone else’s responsibility? No. Accepting that we cannot change other people’s behavior and we are not responsible for other people’s feelings or choices is a major part of emotional health, and I try to promote that. I will never tell a letter writer that they have some kind of moral obligation to get someone else to think differently.

I try in my personal life and in my non-advice writing to be critical of gender roles, patriarchy, etc. - but when a specific individual in a difficult situation asks me for specific advice, I try not to put the pressure on them to “turn the personal political” when that is not what they asked. I do believe that I make a good faith effort to discuss larger-scale issues in my answers where appropriate. You are welcome to feel that I am obligated to do more, and we can disagree on the most healthy way to give advice. As my mother says: “that’s what makes horse races!” You are welcome to start your own advice blog where you give answers that do more to take a stand on who is in the right and infuse critiques of gender, politics, etc. and it sounds like you would have an audience - we may just be serving different niches.

I also try not to act as an arbiter of emotions or a validator of feelings here. I try not to position myself as someone who can say “how you feel is normal” or “you are definitely in the right” or “that demand is unilaterally unfair” unless I really believe it’s crucial to say that, like when the situation actually is abusive. Two people having different preferences or boundaries and struggling to reconcile them is not inherently an abusive situation. Instead, I advise people to leave relationships that are not working for them without making a sweeping claim that said relationship would be unhealthy for anyone ever. That is how I prefer to run my free online advice column, and if you think there are better ways to give relationship advice, you are free to start your own!

Given that this was about my advice question given my mono straight boyfriend and poly queer me, i’m going to respond.

> I agree with Zinnia that his way of handling things is not okay. This is NOT saying that my partner’s feelings do not matter. This is saying that the way he chooses to handle his feelings can be laced with toxicity.
> I appreciate the line “do you want to be with someone who makes you feel like this?”

>@allerleirauhh
“A big problem in mono/poly combo relationships seems to be more often than not that the mono person wants the poly partner to ‘try’ being mono with them but the poly partner usually sticks hard to wanting to only be poly. That’s absolutely fine, but if you’re trying to stay in a relationship where your partner isn’t happy then you’re definitely in the wrong. You can’t say ‘i love him and don’t want to leave him’ but also say you can’t stop being poly with him because what you’re saying is that you’re fine with staying in a relationship with someone who is deeply unhappy with your behaviour- that is literally abuse”

I don’t know if I am misunderstanding your point, or you’re just not understanding my situation because things are put into two sentences rather than the whole situation. Are you trying to say I should just “try” being mono and that i’m abusive or that he is?

I have “tried” being mono, but you know what that comes down to? Not being myself. People who make compromises against who they are as a person end up in toxic relationships or end up resenting their partner. Based on your personal experience you have a bias about this type of situation without even knowing the full detail.

I am not your ex girlfriend. I am not sitting around while my partners cry nor am I hiding anything from either one of them. What truly is abusive is staying in a poly relationship and demanding that they change who they are because it does not suit your romantic needs. Would you make an FTM partner go by female pronouns and go as “your girlfriend” because you didn’t want to be in a “straight” partnership? No. Because it is horribly wrong. Gender. Sexuality. Sexual Preference. These are innate. Anyone in this position has the ability to leave their partner versus being toxic.

As Zinn put it “ Simply staying with someone despite unresolved conflict in a relationship is not abuse.” and it should not be treated as such.

(If I misunderstood you, please let me know)

> HOWEVER, I 100% agree that men saying to poly/open/etc partners that they can only be with women is product of misogyny and lesbian erasure. And it needs to change.


Thank you all for your comments~ I have begun to discuss things even deeper with my significant other(s) and we have been finding a way that works for us.

thank you so much for chiming in, @findingb! An important reminder that behind every question I get is a real person with a real and complete story. I do my best to honor and respect that in this column and make as few assumptions or prescriptions as possible. I am so glad that you found something helpful in my column and that you’re working toward a healthy and happy path for everyone. 

And to everyone else: if ever one of your anonymous letters becomes a flash point for discussion on my blog in a way that makes you uncomfortable, please let me know! If I give you advice that doesn’t work for you, please feel free to reject it! And if I or my readers make assumptions about you that aren’t okay with you, I deeply apologize and will do my best to correct the record on your behalf.

<3

allerleirauhh:

rairun:

polyadvice:

I explained to him that i cannot stop. He just tends to suck it up and sulk, so it makes me feel like crap. But i cannot leave him. I love him. Am I in the wrong?

I believe this is a follow-up to this message. The thing is, sometimes “love” isn’t enough for a relationship to work out. If he has a tendency to sulk and guilt you about your own feelings, and if his method of dealing with issues is to be this immature and make you “feel like crap,” that is a huge problem.  

It’s not about who is “in the wrong” - it’s about what you’re willing to tolerate in a relationship. There is no magical, Correct Poly Procedure you can take to solve this situation. You have not somehow failed to do the right thing and therefore caused his behavior. He has made the choice to demand that you “stop” being poly and to sulk and make you “feel like crap” when you don’t meet that demand. Your choice is: do you want to be with someone who makes you feel like this? 

Hi Zinnia, first I wanted to say that I like reading your blog. I really appreciate how you always give matter-of-fact advice, and I agree with you most of the time. What I don’t always agree with is that I don’t think that we as a community - we as a society - should necessarily look at people’s behavior and just say, “Well, that’s what they want, so you have to take it or leave it.” Let me try to explain.

Imagine a man whose dream is to have a stay-at-home wife with three children. Now let’s say that, after five years and two children, his wife wants to go back to university, or resume her career, or maybe she no longer thinks having a third child would be a good idea. Would it be okay for the man to say, “Well, that was never what I wanted out of a relationship, so goodbye”?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that he shouldn’t be allowed to leave. At the end of the day, it is his choice. But I think we can all agree that he is at the very least a bit of an asshole? And we can criticize the relationship model he subscribes to, where he sees people more as instruments to achieve his ideal life than living, breathing individuals with their own hopes and dreams?

What first got me thinking about this was this post of yours. I’m just going to quote it here:

Me & my husband have been together for 4 years & when I first got with him he was in a poly relationship with someone else. I allow him to date other girls & I know that I can date other girls too. Idk if I can date other guys tho & that’s not fair.

If you don’t know, the solution is to ask him! Ask whether he would be okay with you dating men as well as women. If he is, problem solved!

If he’s not, and you feel that’s unfair, there’s more talking to do. Ask him why he feels that way, and see if together you two can get to the bottom of his discomfort and find a way to help him work through it.

If he absolutely will not budge, and you think those terms are unfair, you have a decision to make: stay in a relationship under terms you find unfair, or don’t.

I agree that if he won’t bulge, those are her only real options. But even then, I would find it hard to tell her to make that decision and live with it. I do believe in being a little more judgemental and adding, “You are right that this is not fair. You are right that your relationship is not symmetrical, and it shouldn’t have to be this way.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that no, he shouldn’t be coerced into a type of relationship he doesn’t want. Ultimately he will do what he has to do. But it still feels weird to allow him to believe that the type of relationship he wants is perfectly okay and fair just in virtue of him wanting it. He can date girls. What makes him think it’s reasonable not to let her date guys? Shouldn’t we be encouraging guys to see this as an issue they have to work on rather than a simple matter of preference? Shouldn’t we as a society be saying, “Not cool, man”?

totally agree with above commentary. I rly want to emphasise the point that relationships can’t be build around a mentality of ‘this is my Relationship Format and i will only stick to this’. Everyone has their boundaries and expectations and that’s totally fine and healthy, but yeah if you are thinking in terms of relationship structures and not thinking in terms of individual people with unique needs, then it’s not going to work. A big problem in mono/poly combo relationships seems to be more often than not that the mono person wants the poly partner to ‘try’ being mono with them but the poly partner usually sticks hard to wanting to only be poly. That’s absolutely fine, but if you’re trying to stay in a relationship where your partner isn’t happy then you’re definitely in the wrong. You can’t say ‘i love him and don’t want to leave him’ but also say you can’t stop being poly with him because what you’re saying is that you’re fine with staying in a relationship with someone who is deeply unhappy with your behaviour- that is literally abuse. Staying with a girlfriend who wanted to be in a poly relationship with her was horrendous for me because she knew that it was tearing me up and she was regularly making both me and one of her other partners cry, but she made no effort to change her behaviour. Obviously she wasn’t happy making me cry either, and to get around this she would hide details of her other partners from me and I ended up being largely kept in the dark and misled. 

Also the pattern of men demanding that their female partners don’t date other men (/can only date women) whilst they can date other women is a MASSIVE problem in the poly community and is a product of misogyny and lesbian erasure (eg. men often don’t see lesbian relationships as a threat as they don’t believe it to be as valid as a hetero pairing, therefore they say their female partners can engage in same sex relationships) and we can’t gloss over it like it’s totally normal and healthy. You can’t demand that monogamous partners critique their relationship procedures without examining your own once in a while. 

Okay, I have a personal policy not to reply to or get into arguments with people who take issue with my advice, but these comments really bothered me and I think that I have an opportunity here to clarify two things - the limits of my personal definition of abuse, and the philosophy that sets the foundation for how I give advice here in a way I think is healthy and appropriate.

On abuse: I believe that simply doing something your partner doesn’t want you to do is not abuse. Do not cheapen the concept of abuse by equating it to “not obeying every single request from your partner” or “doing or being anything that your partner doesn’t like.”

If my boyfriend decided to become vegan, and wanted me to become vegan too, he has the right to ask that of me, but I have the right to say no. He can say that he only wants to date vegans, and he wants to date me, therefore I have to become a vegan - but that does not obligate me to change my diet. Me continuing to eat meat and dairy does not constitute abuse. If my partner decides that omnivorousness is a dealbreaker in a relationship, he can leave it. If I decide that my partner constantly pressuring me and guilting me about my diet is a dealbreaker, I can leave. Something being a dealbreaker or a catalyst for a breakup is NOT synonymous with abuse.

Forcing someone to stay with you - threats, coercion, manipulation, blackmail, isolation - that is abuse. Simply staying with someone despite unresolved conflict in a relationship is not abuse. Trying to find a way to work things out while recognizing your non-negotiable boundaries is not abuse. It is up to each individual to decide when it’s no longer worth it to try reconciling needs that seem irreconcilable. Someone not following your suggested timeline on making that decision is not abuse. 

On my advice philosophy: In the “don’t date other men” letter, I did suggest that the letter writer start by trying to work through their partner’s issues with them seeing other men. I have covered this type of issue elsewhere in my blog as well, and people are welcome to look for resources. True, I could have done more to point the letter writer to articles about how to talk to their partner about men wanting their partners to only date women - but I get lots of repetitive questions on this blog despite my FAQ, I try to update daily, and sometimes answers are less comprehensive than they could me. Remember that this blog is entirely free and written in my spare time.

I think it is unfair and out of line to tell someone to try and change their partner’s behavior and stay in a relationship on unfair terms. This is an advice column. I advise the people who write to me. I do not think it is remotely okay to tell someone that society as a whole is negatively impacted if they can’t change someone else’s mind. If the guy himself had written to me, I would have told him “not cool, man!” But making that someone else’s responsibility? No. Accepting that we cannot change other people’s behavior and we are not responsible for other people’s feelings or choices is a major part of emotional health, and I try to promote that. I will never tell a letter writer that they have some kind of moral obligation to get someone else to think differently.

I try in my personal life and in my non-advice writing to be critical of gender roles, patriarchy, etc. - but when a specific individual in a difficult situation asks me for specific advice, I try not to put the pressure on them to “turn the personal political” when that is not what they asked. I do believe that I make a good faith effort to discuss larger-scale issues in my answers where appropriate. You are welcome to feel that I am obligated to do more, and we can disagree on the most healthy way to give advice. As my mother says: “that’s what makes horse races!” You are welcome to start your own advice blog where you give answers that do more to take a stand on who is in the right and infuse critiques of gender, politics, etc. and it sounds like you would have an audience - we may just be serving different niches.

I also try not to act as an arbiter of emotions or a validator of feelings here. I try not to position myself as someone who can say “how you feel is normal” or “you are definitely in the right” or “that demand is unilaterally unfair” unless I really believe it’s crucial to say that, like when the situation actually is abusive. Two people having different preferences or boundaries and struggling to reconcile them is not inherently an abusive situation. Instead, I advise people to leave relationships that are not working for them without making a sweeping claim that said relationship would be unhealthy for anyone ever. That is how I prefer to run my free online advice column, and if you think there are better ways to give relationship advice, you are free to start your own!

I explained to him that i cannot stop. He just tends to suck it up and sulk, so it makes me feel like crap. But i cannot leave him. I love him. Am I in the wrong?

I believe this is a follow-up to this message. The thing is, sometimes “love” isn’t enough for a relationship to work out. If he has a tendency to sulk and guilt you about your own feelings, and if his method of dealing with issues is to be this immature and make you “feel like crap,” that is a huge problem.  

It’s not about who is “in the wrong” - it’s about what you’re willing to tolerate in a relationship. There is no magical, Correct Poly Procedure you can take to solve this situation. You have not somehow failed to do the right thing and therefore caused his behavior. He has made the choice to demand that you “stop” being poly and to sulk and make you “feel like crap” when you don’t meet that demand. Your choice is: do you want to be with someone who makes you feel like this? 

I recently started seeing someone who’s poly, which is new for me but not a problem. But he’s been flirting with a close friend of mine lately who’s the the one person I’d be uncomfortable with him dating. I told the friend early on that I wouldn’t want anything to happen there and they said they’d respect that, but have been flirting back anyway, which I feel a little betrayed by. I haven’t told my partner about this but he’s said he doesn’t believe in vetoing things. How should I handle this?

You say you haven’t told your partner about this - you need to do that!!! You can’t make huge assumptions about how he’d respond based on what he’s said in the abstract.

There is a difference between having a “veto” rule vs. responding with grace and sensitivity to your partner saying “this makes me uncomfortable.” You aren’t telling him that you forbid him from dating this person, just that you’d strongly prefer that he not do that.

Let him know how you feel, that you know he doesn’t believe in vetoing, but that this specific situation really bothers you and you want to find a solution. Then, if he decides to go ahead and date your friend anyway, you decide whether you want to stay in the relationship. But first, you need to talk this out with him.

I have borderline personality disorder with a lot of commitment & abandonment issues. I’m in a relationship with a man I love but who has depression & all those years of negativity are really starting to drain me. I feel stuck. Recently I met a guy who’s adventurous & fun & passionate & says he loves me & wants to make me see the world & I don’t know if I like him or just the attention or the wild & free person he wants me to be. I feel lost & horrible for both of them. I don’t want to hurt them.

First, bpd is incredibly tough and you have my respect and support for working on it. I am not a mental health professional, and since you know your problem is partly informed by your bpd, you really should talk this out with a therapist or someone who’s helping you work with your bpd.

If you are feeling drained by your current relationship, that’s a problem. Have you talked to your partner about this? Have you worked with him on ways to shift some of the burden of negativity off of you? Is he working on his depression with a therapist, medication, or other things? If this is something you haven’t worked on addressing, definitely do that. If you have tried to alleviate this problem but still feel drained and dragged down, consider that maybe this relationship isn’t healthy for you.

This new person may be helping you realize that you’re not happy in your current relationship - that you want fun, and adventure, and positivity - and that’s actually pretty normal. But be careful of idealizing this new person. New people often seem more exciting and interesting than current partners just because of the novelty and the fact that you can’t take their affections for granted. Dating him will not solve all your problems - eventually you will settle into his habits too. It’s possible that he’s just generally a better person for you to date, but it’s also very possible that the real issue is the boredom and negativity in your current relationship.

Try taking this as a signal that you’re unhappy and need something to change. Maybe that change means working with your current partner to improve things. Maybe it means leaving him to try and find who you are without that relationship. Maybe it does mean dating this new guy. But be introspective and intentional when working out what you really need in this scenario vs. what you may be idealizing or projecting onto.

I’m dating a cis dude and when I brought up poly he accepted it but now he’s asking if I couldn’t just “stop”? I can’t and I don’t know how to go about this.

If your partner wants you to “stop” being or doing something that you can not or will not stop, you two are at an impasse. 

Explain to him that polyamory is important to you, and dating you means accepting those terms. If he decides not to date you because he realized he doesn’t want to date on those terms, that’s his informed choice.

Just because someone said they were okay with something in the beginning doesn’t mean they aren’t allowed to change their minds. That’s what dating is all about: you spend time with someone and get to know them so you can figure out whether you want to commit to them long-term. It sounds like he gave it a try and doesn’t like it. That’s his right. But him realizing that means he has the choice to end the relationship now that he realizes it isn’t working for him - not that he gets to demand major changes from you.

My ‘partner’ has recently decided he needs to work things out with his wife after several months of us being together and him telling me they were divorcing. Now, I don’t see how our relationship will work because we both worked up this image of how it would end up and it’s not happening that way at all. I feel I want a very different outcome than he’s able to give me and I’m not sure what to do. I really love him and don’t want to lose him but I don’t know how to make it work?

It sounds like there is not much you can do here to “make it work.” If you want something that he can’t give you, there isn’t necessarily a solution for that. Sometimes in life we don’t get what we want. Sometimes our expectations are not met. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we planned. It’s not always solvable, but it is always survivable.

This might be a situation where you need the “serenity to accept the things you cannot change.” When relationships don’t work out, it sucks and it hurts, but it isn’t always something we can fix. Let yourself grieve the loss of the future you planned. Eat ice cream. Reactivate your tinder. Take a day off work to watch Netflix. You’ll get through this.

P.S. Since this is a poly blog, I’m assuming your partner’s wife was aware of and okay with you dating him, and he’s now decided to close off the open relationship. But given the use of scare quotes around ‘partner’ and your point that him not divorcing spells the end of your relationship, that may not be the case. My advice to you in the future is: do not have affairs with married men who promise you they will divorce their wife so you can be together. There’s a reason this situation is a trope, and it’s because it rarely ends well. 

Im alright with my partner having other romantic relationships, but I’m not fond of the idea of him having sex with other people. Is that wrong? I’m worried I’m being manipulative.. but he seems ok with it.

If he says he’s okay with it and you don’t believe him, dig into why. Is it because he has a habit of saying he’s okay with things, but really not being okay with them, which can lead to passive-aggression and resentment? If so, you need to talk this out with him and try to find a safe way for him to be open and honest with you, or reconsider whether you can be poly with someone who doesn’t tell you the truth about how he feels.

Or is it because you are having a hard time believing him despite no evidence that he’s not actually okay with it? If so, you need to do some introspection and figure out why you don’t trust him when he says he’s okay with it. Did you have a previous partner who wasn’t honest about their feelings? Are you projecting your own discomfort and assuming he shares it? 

Or, if your goal is to get past this and be okay with him having sex with other people, that will take some self-work as well. Why are you not comfortable with it? What is your worst-case scenario? Best case scenario? What are your fears and concerns? What can he do to help alleviate those? 

But ultimately, if both of you are okay with a situation, and you’re both being honest with yourselves and each other, it’s not wrong or manipulative. Don’t feel like you need to change something about your relationship if it’s working for all parties involved.

Me & my husband have been together for 4 years & when I first got with him he was in a poly relationship with someone else. I allow him to date other girls & I know that I can date other girls too. Idk if I can date other guys tho & that’s not fair.

If you don’t know, the solution is to ask him! Ask whether he would be okay with you dating men as well as women. If he is, problem solved!

If he’s not, and you feel that’s unfair, there’s more talking to do. Ask him why he feels that way, and see if together you two can get to the bottom of his discomfort and find a way to help him work through it.

If he absolutely will not budge, and you think those terms are unfair, you have a decision to make: stay in a relationship under terms you find unfair, or don’t. 

My girlfriend has previously taken place in poly relationships and had crushes on multiple people at once, but that was a few years ago and we’ve been monogamous since. However, now that I’m considering my own polyamory, she seems to consider being poly a sign of immaturity or lack of true love in a relationship? I don’t understand how she could have changed so drastically and it makes me feel ashamed of my feelings.

It sounds like she didn’t necessarily change, but that was her experience of polyamory all along. She was able to engage in poly relationships and multiple crushes because she saw it as less serious. This is actually pretty common - people ‘date around’ until they’re ready to ‘go steady’ with one person. (I would argue that’s not necessarily polyamory, just dating, but the past few generations put such a premium on monogamy even by elementary school that the concept of being someone who dates multiple people but expects to settle into a mono relationship is somehow less common, in my estimation.) Now that she’s gotten older and met someone she feels more deeply for, that phase in her life is over.

But while it’s totally fine that that’s her experience of polyamory, no one’s experience is universal. “I can’t do that” is not the same as “that’s impossible” and “this is how it feels for me” is a far cry from “this is how it is.” Unfortunately, very few people realize that, and most people extrapolate from their own experiences to generalize about what the world must be like, how feelings inherently work, what goes on in other people’s heads, etc.

There is nothing to be ashamed of - it’s fine to be poly, and it’s fine to be mono. Let your girlfriend know that while her dalliances with polyamory may have felt possible because of a lack of commitment or a casual, youthful experimentation, there are other ways to be poly. Maybe she can hear you, and is able to understand that your polyamory doesn’t mean you love her less or are less committed to her. But, maybe she won’t. It’s never possible to adjust someone else’s perspective through sheer force of will, and if she sees polyamory as inherently immature or requiring the absence of true love, that may or may not change.

Is it alright that I’m not comfortable with my partners dating specific people? I told my partner that I was not comfortable with it and they were fine with that, but the person interested in dating them has recently started throwing a tantrum about how they’ve never wanted anything more than to date my partner and it is making me feel like some kind of mustache-twisting villain.

It’s alright if it works for you and your partner. Some people in poly relationships find that it works well to give their partners ‘veto power’ over people they date - and if someone makes you feel unsafe, has a history of abuse, won’t adhere to safe sex standards, etc. - then you have very solid ground for saying that you’d prefer not to date someone who’s dating that person.

For other people, it does not work to have their partner approve of or screen or have any kind of input on new partners. I can’t tell you what’s universally okay - I can just say that if it works for you, it works for you. It sounds like your partner is okay with not dating this person for your sake, so between the two of you, things seem fine.

If this person is throwing a tantrum over this, it seems like maybe you were onto something when you felt like they weren’t someone you wanted to be involved in a poly network with. They’re showing themselves to be immature and manipulative, so take solace in being proven right. And if they are making you feel guilty, try to let that go. You don’t owe it to people to give them what they want. You did right by yourself and by your partner. You are not a villain.

Your partner is choosing not to date this person based on your input. It’s your right to give that input and it’s their right to act on it. This person needs to recognize and accept the agency of all people involved. Sometimes we want things that we don’t get. Sometimes we want to date people who don’t want to date us. Sometimes we don’t like their reasons. Being a healthy, mature person means learning how to handle those situations with grace and respect. If someone can’t or won’t behave that way, that’s their problem, not yours.

My husband and I opened to poly 3 months ago and he quickly fell into a couple relationships. I have just found someone that I’m exploring with. Hubby just blew up both of his relationships with drama and says he’s “done with poly” and wants me to drop my new love interest under threat of divorce. I, of course, feel this is unfair to me and my boyfriend. I don’t know how to handle this and I’m looking for advice.

My general advice to people in situations like this is: if someone is making you choose between two people, choose the person who isn’t making you choose.

The first thing to do is talk this out with your husband and see if a compromise can be reached. It sounds like your husband is operating under the assumption that your marriage is the 'sun’ relationship in this solar system, central to everything and not up for negotiation. Are these the terms you “opened up” under, or was this an assumption on his part? Was it framed as an ‘experiment’ when you started, with the implication that you’d quit as soon as it didn’t seem to be working out? Did you agree to each hold unilateral ‘veto power’ to cut it off? Leveling out all those expectations can go a long way toward figuring out where you two are and where to go from here.

But if his position doesn’t change, you have a choice to make. If you prioritize your marriage over all else, then the answer is to break off this new relationship and revisit the question of polyamory between the two of you. But if you don’t - if you would rather be a bunch of stars making up a constellation rather than a tiered system with moons orbiting planets orbiting a star - then staying with your husband is less conducive to this.

Just because you’re married to your husband, because you’ve been with him longer, does not obligate you to always choose him, or to give him veto power over your relationships. Some people may see it as absurd to even consider leaving an established marriage for a new love interest of less than 3 months, but the choice isn’t between two people: it’s between two lives; between monogamy and polyamory. 

When do you think is a safe time to give a partner your phone number when you’ve had an ldr? My partner and I have been together for several months but I still don’t have their phone number or even have them on any social media accounts anymore because the one they had was deleted. We don’t skype either because I’m never really able to but we send photos back and forth but I feel really weird about only sending skype messages? Is this normal or what do you think?

There are plenty of reasons someone might not want to use a phone to chat. Anything from the innocuous (maybe they can’t afford a monthly phone bill, maybe they just prefer skype and don’t realize you want their number) to the sad but understandable (maybe they are hiding from a stalker/abuser) to the sketchy (maybe they are catfishing you, maybe they are doing this with multiple people and don’t want to get caught).

Your best bet is to just ask them: can I have your number? Can we talk over phone call or text? If not, why not? If they give you a reason and it’s believable, great! With a skype app on your phone, it’s basically the same as texting. If you have lingering questions, though, or feel uncomfortable, it’s okay to press for more details: when will you be able to use something besides skype? why was their old social media deleted? 

Be careful about people who are so locked down with their availability - usually, it means they’re hiding something. Be clear with them that this is a situation that makes you feel concerned. Someone who’s healthy to be in a relationship with will be honest and understanding. If they get defensive or aggressive, take some distance. Your safety is the priority. 

Hey, I’m a girl crushing on this boy in my class. But I’m not really sure if likes me back. Every day I see him, all he does is stare, does that mean something.

Maybe he’s staring because he thinks you’re pretty. Maybe you’re conveniently in his “doze off in class while daydreaming” line of sight. Maybe he’s an alien anthropologist secretly doing a case study on you. I don’t know what it means. But you know who does? Him.

Better an “oops” than a “what if.” Talk to him. Invite him to collaborate on a class project. Sit with him at lunch. Ask for his phone number or kik or whatsapp or whatever you kids use to chat these days. Either he’s into you, or he’s not. Either way, you’ll get an answer!

A girl and i have become pretty close, enough that people think we’re in a relationship but recently i found out she likes my friend and my friend also likes her. Idk what to do. Should i leave it and move on or pursue it?

If she likes your friend and he likes her back, it sounds like they should take a shot at dating each other. There is very little to “pursue” if she isn’t interested in you. Don’t pressure her change the terms of your relationship if you have no reason to believe she wants that.