I feel like I am being pressured into polyamory and I'm also blaming myself for it? help?
I'm in a tricky situation. I unexpectedly fell in love with someone and we have been together for a little over a year now. The relationship he was in before me was monogamous. A few months into being together he told me he is interested in us being polyamorous. I was struggling with things in my life at the time and it wasn't something I had any capacity to explore, so we tabled the discussion. He told me that he would be okay with a monogamous relationship as long as we worked hard to challenge toxic monogamy. I took that as some reassurance that we could be creative in figuring out something in the middle ground that worked for both of us. Meanwhile I kept falling deeper in love.
A few months after that, he told me that he wont be in a relationship that doesn't involve polyamory. I kind of started breaking down at that point -I'm super anxious and jealous, I just really worry that I am not someone who can do polyamory. I have been in therapy for decades working through my own issues, and hope to continue to do so, but I just don't know if I can do it.
The problem for me lies in the fact that the power dynamic we have is set so that he has a lot of the power in the relationship. We also live in his house. I'm pretty easy going, I have my limits/opinions and I'll express them.. but overall it doesn't feel like I have equal say very often in things from small to big.
I told him that I might be open to polyamory if it could be something we experiment while knowing that we are each other's primary partners, if I could get some reassuring structure to it that we are priorities. He dismissed that, saying that would be unethical - that all relationships have to be equal of importance and priority and without limitations on how they develop otherwise they aren't true partnerships.
Our conversations I feel like have been framed around me needing to get more on board. Me needing to address my anxieties. Me needing to educate myself more about it. But there are also real issues in our relationship that I dont feel like we spend time working on, issues with the power dynamic itself. It feels very much like I need to just get on board with this type of polyamory because it will be happening whether you are here or not. I'm terrified of losing him so I am worried that I will convince myself to accept something I don't want.. I feel like this relationship is not tenable.
Is this all my fault? Am I in the wrong for not knowing enough about polyamory or being too anxious?