Hi Doc!
I am a 38 year old woman that has only participated in monogamous relationships in my life. Until D. D has been a friend of mine for about 5 years and 2 months ago we both admitted that we’ve had crushes on each other for years, but we both assumed the other wasn’t interested. We started dating and for the most part this is one of the healthiest relationships I’ve ever had. So there’s only one catch.
D is polyamorous. I knew this long before we started even thinking about dating and when we first began hooking up he already had two partners. His more recent partner, N, is also poly and she took the news of me becoming part of his polycule with minimal insecurities. His other partner, J, on the other hand…
J is not polyamorous and plays a lot of head games with D. She tells him that she doesn’t mind that he’s poly but when he started seeing N and me, she guilt tripped him by telling him “I just wish I was good enough for you.” When he and I started dating she completely freaked out and insisted he call it hanging out because dating was what they do, not he and I.
This was the point where I put my foot down. I made it very clear that if I’m taking a chance on being with someone who is poly, I refuse to be part of a situation where his other partner tries to diminish and erase me. D is very bad at standing up for things that he wants, but when it became clear that I was not going to stay in this relationship if he continued to allow her to try to make me gone, he talked to her and made it clear that we are both his girlfriends and she needs to accept it if she wants to be with him. And she’ll pretend to be fine for awhile, then have another freak out where he just has to take care of her, especially when she knows he and I or he and N are spending time together.
So at this point we have an ongoing pattern of her being emotionally manipulative and sometimes even abusive in order to try and get him away from me and N. And for me its beyond frustrating. I’ve legitimately reached the point where if he brings her up I mentally cringe because I don’t know if telling him he needs to get away from her is a line I can cross as his other girlfriend. I don’t think I’m jealous of her because it doesn’t bother me at all when he talks about or spends time with N. But when I know he’s gonna be with her I get angry and nauseous. She doesn’t have to be my friend, but I deserve better then J constantly ignoring or trying to erase my value to D.
Any thoughts or advice would be really appreciated.
Thanks!
Polyamory Is Confusing
