u/FreyjasSpear

Everyone seems to concentrate on the children that were sacrificed. I think that’s the wrong focus; not because it was wrong or because it shouldn’t be set to rights, it should. What I think everyone keeps forgetting to ask is, what went on in that place that drove people to sacrifice their own children to begin with? Everyone keeps consenting on that - but what are they going to do to deal with whatever is so dangerous and frightening that it would drive people to sacrifice their own children in the first place?

Everyone seems to concentrate on the children that were sacrificed. I think that’s the wrong focus; not because it was wrong or because it shouldn’t be set to rights, it should. What I think everyone keeps forgetting to ask is, what went on in that place that drove people to sacrifice their own children to begin with? Everyone keeps consenting on that - but what are they going to do to deal with whatever is so dangerous and frightening that it would drive people to sacrifice their own children in the first place?

I just need to say this somewhere…. If I was in FROMville, and I was given the talisman to put on my door, and told to close all the windows and doors so as not to get the monsters to convince me to open it…. I know what I would really do…. I guarantee it…. There is absolutely no way I could resist this, call me the weakest link…. Call me what you will…

I’d look through the window and I’d go:

- na-na-na-na-na - oh, what’s the matter, baby? You wanna come in? ahhh…. Too bad, so sad, you f*cking piece of sh*t asshole, I guess you’re stuck outside. You limp d*ck, impotent little monster, I guess you’re f*cked now! Oh, so scary, still stuck on the other side.. look at those teeth - do you when a good dentist?

I’d be taunting them every single night. That would be my own mental stress relief. I’d be planning my tauntings ahead of time. I have an oppositionaly defiant personality, I’d literally use them as verbal target practice. My purpose in life would be to taunt them. If the talismans aren’t really keeping them out, we’d find out very soon…

TLDR:

I have been in a relationship with my husband for 10 years, we’re both poly. We opened our relationship for the first time in our marriage to my friend of 15 years who after 8 months of courting demanded to brake the boundary that I gave him, namely to not submit to anyone but him, which would include my husband, as there are BDSM components involved.  I have submitted to my husband on a limited basis, though there is no explicit dynamic to it. Man B (not my husband) discussed this in the beginning, and he put in black and white, in a contract to me, that he would not violate the boundaries of my marriage unless my psychological or physical safety was involved.  Suddenly, 8 months later, he asked me this. I felt he broke the only boundary I asked him to keep and broke off contact.  I’m wondering what I did wrong and have been grieving for months as this is someone who has been a good friend for 15 years.

Long version:

Hi,

I am in an incredibly complicated situation, and I am genuinely grieving so part of the reason I am posting this is because frankly I need some emotional support, and maybe some advice, if some may have it.

I am a 50 year old woman.  I’ve been with one man for 10 years, married to him for 6.  Since we met, we have both told each other that we were polyamorous.  He met me as I was recovering from a polyamorous power exchange relationship.  He is a dominant man, I am a submissive woman.  When I came into this relationship, he was already legally married to a woman, and he opened this marriage for me.  Obviously, we are not married by the laws of this country, but within the context of our religious community, we are married.

We were happy and we love each other very much.  All three of us live in the same house.  He was hoping that I would recover enough from my previous relationship at some point enough to again engage in a PE relationship, but the hurt of that breakup, a 5 year relationship with a man and a woman, was too much, and I kept that part of myself locked up.  He never budged on those locks, and we have recently talked about how maybe he should have, but things are too crazy for me now. 

Four years ago, I became a type of a field medic, and I spent over 2 years essentially assisting the injured, healing them, dragging them from the field of battle. I saw a great deal of death, those who were tortured, a great deal of what I would call horror that I never bargained on seeing before this happened. I ended up in a place where I was at the edge of a military conflict and I had a choice, and I chose to STAND.  I chose to forgo the horror, that smell of dust of the battlefield that is hard to impossible to forget, because I knew that I could help and I risked myself to deliver that help.  I did this for about 2 and a half years.  Then, I was sent home, away, that work had to stop because it was causing damage to me, psychologically.  I wanted to remain and help more, but I recognize that the decision was a correct one.

I have a friend of now 16 years.  He lives on the other side of the country.  I met him on accident, visiting a friend, just as my previous relationship started.  He was, what we call in that community, a Master.  He respected that I was, what we call in that community, “owned”.  I’m not sure how familiar anyone here is with the BDSM community, but to use the language of that community, I was an owned slave and he was a polyamorous Master.  We met, we had incredible chemistry together, but we never even touched except a hug good-bye.  He respected my collar.  I was very much committed to that relationship.  I ask those who have issues with these types of relationships not to judge.  We are who we are, and we all have different needs.  This isn’t about that. 

This man, lets call him man B, and I remained friends all through these years.  We called each other on the phone, and anytime I needed him, he was always there, to lend an ear, to listen and to give advise.  We never had a single argument, never had a disagreement, never had different views about anything.  I knew that I lived clear across the country and never allowed myself to ever think of him as an eligible potential partner.  When my previous relationship fell apart, I didn’t call him.  I think I was angry and blamed the dynamic for the fall out, so I wanted to leave all of it behind.  But we still kept in touch. 

As my life continued, so did his.  He got married to a monogamous woman who was also his full time 24/7 slave.  This was a complication for him, because the two terms contradict each other.  Within the context of that dynamic, a slave submits and surrenders to the Master’s needs and he is a polyamorous man, but her nature is monogamous.  Out of love for his slave, he remained monogamous, though I know that there were times where he laid down the law and basically told her, she needs to either accept him for who he is or stop wearing his collar.  I know there will be poly people right now scratching their heads saying how messed up this sounds, but honestly, she was his slave for I believe at least 3 years before they married, she came into his life as a slave, and those were the parameters that he laid down for her at the beginning, which she accepted. She was sick for a long time after they married, so he closed that part of himself off and focused on her, but once she recovered he reengaged the conversation. He is probably one of the most dominant men I have ever known, and this didn’t surprise me.  Since we talked during that time, I told him my opinion – monogamous and polyamorous people love differently.  Its unfair to ask her to love him as a monogamous woman while he is polyamorous, he will just end up hurting her no matter how much she leans into her slave role, but he disagreed with that.  He believed that anyone can learn to be polyamorous if only she worked on not being jealous.  That was the end of my advice to him – I said what I thought, the rest was his own affair.
 
For my part, my husband and I were happy.  We are part of the same religious community.  We share common interests in music, film and all sorts of hobbies.  We prefer wooded places to city spaces, we like the same things.  Our sex life is amazing. No matter what injuries I acquired during my time on the front lines, he always found me beautiful.  His eyes follow me everywhere I walk and I always felt his desire for me.  I shut down terribly after my return from the front. Its hard to explain, but its like I didn’t want to engage in things of life, things that made me feel alive.  I couldn’t come back to the things we both enjoyed, every time I looked at the things that I loved before, I remembered what the tranches looked like, and I could almost smell that dusty smoky scent after gunfire.
 
I called my friend, man B.  I called him because he is an ex vet, he is older then me, and he was a first responder, and a rescuer.  He rightly immediately pointed out that I had PTSD and that I had survivor’s guilt.  My husband said it, my friends said it, but it only registered when he said it.  He was right, every time I experienced something good, I felt guilty that there were others, left in the field, that I didn’t get to save.  I felt like I had no right to enjoy life because of those I didn’t get to save.  We started speaking more often in August of last year, and what he said helped a great deal.  He told me that I have done all I could, that I should think of all those I saved.  As he spoke more and more, I started to heal.  I started to look at my body not as something I dragged off the battlefield that functioned, but as a living person, a woman that was alive and I started to want to experience life again.  This helped me a great deal in my marriage as well.  The more I spoke to man B, the more I wanted to love my husband, to show him love, to do things with him that made us laugh. 
However, as we continued talking, I suddenly realized to my own shock and horror that I’ve been in love with man B, likely all of the 15 years (at the time) that I’ve known him. I realized that I knew the timbre of his voice, that I wanted to hug him, that I wanted to be with him. I realized that in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking and imagining him there always.  I even realized that I avoided ever being in his vicinity because I was subconsciously afraid of how I felt about him. 

This one goes out to those who say that you can’t love two people passionately at the same time.  I’m there.  I am shocked, and I am living proof. 

I took 2 weeks to process this, and then had a series of some very serious conversations with my husband.  He took it well.  We both affirmed many times that we are polyamorous, though it really never felt like we were even though he is also married to his first wife.  The problem started to emerge when the power exchange part of who I and man B are started to rub against the poly part of who we are.  I became an object as much as a subject.  This to some degree is expected in this kind of a dynamic.  Man B and I fell into a very natural M/s dynamic without even trying to be in one.  Our conversations, I suspect were always like this but it became more overt.  He said, and I followed.  I became concerned for the emotional well being of my husband, and asked man B to speak to him and develop a relationship with him.  My husband also said – well, now that the part of you that was “locked” is being unlocked, why don’t we also explore that, and I was happy to. I was genuinely happy to belong to both of them. 
Man B told his slave wife that things between him and me transitioned from friendship to more, and encouraged us to talk.  I am an incredibly committed person. I know there are all kinds of poly people out there.  I think I once heard someone use the word “polyfidelious” to describe me.  I sent her some websites to read, and I explained how I feel about poly, M/s, and what my ideas of it were.  I will do anything for those I love.  Love for me in an exhaustible thing, and I felt happier then I have in years, it was like each relationship fed the other, got better from the other.  Man B cured my locked “submissive” part, and I was able to finally share that with my husband.  My husband’s openness allowed me to love Man B, and I was in the flush of first love, except it was like uncorking a 15 year old Seltzer bottle and everything that I repressed just exploded.  I feel like I was 30.

I knew Man B’s wife would be a problem at some point, she was a monogamous woman, but I thought as long as I was open and honest with her, and kind, she would be ok.  At least, that’s what Man B told me.  She did something that as a woman, I am not very good at – she went passive aggressive.  She was in word completely ok with everything he wanted and did and proclaimed her love for me even, but in practice, there were passive aggressive things that she did that I now realize were quiet dishonest.  She would advise him on how to speak to me, and the man that made me feel good about myself and life closed that part of himself, locking it down.  She made sexual suggestions – as in, not to have any sexual conversations altogether – telling him that this could build up unhealthy expectations in me.  Yes, he believed her.  There were many many things like these, and looking back, I see that she used his insecurities to channel his behavior.  We talked a lot, and she told me that he would never allow his slave to be with another man. I balked at that, and said, look, you are his wife, but I know this man for 15 years, and he has always been poly and so were his slaves.

Then, the anvil fell.  He said, that if I ever became “his” – again, apologize to those in the poly community that are not into BDSM practices – I couldn’t submit to another man.  I was in shock.  I said to him – here, even in writing, you wrote down that you would not interfere in my marriage unless you thought that my physical and psychological state were in danger.  You said you would never interfere in my marriage. He argued that he wasn’t interfering with it, he just didn’t see what submission had to do with it.  I argued.  I said, I don’t even know where to draw the line in that.  Bondage? Sex?  Getting him a coke out of the fridge?  Finally, I realized that I could not meet that demand, not if I was honest with him and myself, because therein lay an open field of everything I am and it would be impossible for me to live up to it.  I also felt like he disrespected the boundaries of my marriage, and attempted to destroy my marriage with such a demand. I cried, said good bye and hung up the phone on him on March 15th.  I felt like he broke our agreement. When the first started talking, I told him that I was married and explained everything, so for him to make rules about what I do in my marriage to me is interference.

We stopped speaking. I was heartbroken.  I didn’t just lose him as a man, I lost a friend of 15 years.  Ironically, this would be the kind of a thing I’d call him to talk about and he would straighten my brain out and lay out what’s obvious to me.  I called him on May 2. I spent the entire time in depression, I didn’t realize how much he meant to me, how much I missed him, how tired I was being without him.  He was cold and aloof, something he never did even when we were friends. He said, well, I guess it didn’t work out, and that I made the right decision by ending our relationship before things went further.  I spent all those months, planning to move my husband and his other wife to be closer to him, I was dreaming of a life near him, with him. 

I am still heartbroken.  The part of me that he opened, the submissive part, is now more locked then ever.  I miss him in everything I do.   I want to share every good thing with him and wish he was here for me for the bad ones.  His lack is a physical thing.  I went there last September to visit him, and we spent time together, for the first time ever, and those memories are unerasable.  I think I spent 15 years dreaming of a man, had him for 8 months, had him in person for a few weeks, and now I’m a mess. 

I feel terrible for my husband, I think I am a horrible wife to him (he disagrees). My heart is broken and I don’t know what  to say.  He tried to insinuate the other day that he shouldn’t have made the poly “pact” with me and I almost slapped him. Instead I basically told him that if he wishes to redraw the parameters of our relationship, he would need to include me in it and I will not guarantee that he will get his wish.  After all, I swore I would not be involved in a monogamous relationship again since 2010.  Like I said, my boundaries went up more then ever, and that part of me that wanted to submit is taking a vacation somewhere away from me.  How do you recover from losing someone you knew and had a friendship with for 15 years?  Man B in some of our last conversations suddenly insisted to me that we were never truly friends.  How could a man who told me he loved me, and meant it (he is not a man of flowery words, we are talking about a strong silent type here) just disappear this way completely out of my life?   I thought for a while, maybe it was all a lie, but he is not like that.  Every day for those 8 months he told he that he loved me; that it was the happiest day in his life when I finally admitted that I felt the same way.  His biggest gripe was sharing me, that part of me, with another man.  He said that ordinarily, he wouldn’t share me with any man, ever, but he made that exception for me, but that was his boundary – submission.  Sometimes, speaking to him, I had this funny feeling that he imagined me chained to his bed for the first 6 months, lol. I let it go, imagining someone for 15 years must create some pretty crazy urges. And then – gone?  I wish I had more to give my husband right now, but all I feel is grief and loss, and he deserves more than that, especially since he was willing to be open to this relationship at all, that he was ok with sharing me, fully this way with another man.  I don’t know how to restore myself for him, and I am afraid that I will lose him, because I’m now broken.  Do you find that your primary relationships fall apart when you tertiary ones do?  How do you handle this kind of grief while sustaining it?  I knew Man B for 16 years, and honestly I have it under good authority that his marriage is going to fall apart – what do I do if he returns with “I’m sorry, I was wrong” and tries to make amends?  My husband said to me, when things broke, that the one thing he would have trouble forgiving him would be how much he hurt me.  I am a crazy emotional mess, so please be kind.