A failed polyamory attempt and fallout
Looking for advice or affirmation, not quite sure.
My wife (32F) and I (33M) have been dating since college, and have been married since just out of college. Ours is the only relationship we have ever been in, and we have very much grown up together. Our relationship has had its ups and downs. We have always argued, communicated poorly, and she has a lot of relationship trauma from her parents. But, we have always cared very deeply for one another and been there through it all. In a lot of ways, we had a relationship like you have with the first person you ever date. We also have a 3 year old daughter that we love very much and is amazing. Our relationship was a comfortable one, though less passionate than I liked.
Over the last few years, my wife has fallen in love with her friend F (33M). They worked together in an office and got closer, spending time together watching shows and constantly texting. Eventually it was to the point where they would share about their sex lives and cuddle in bed. I was generally comfortable with their friendship, even if the cuddling became a tad uncomfortable (I am a very cuddly person too, just don’t have as many friends to cuddle with). A few months ago, they decided they wanted to try a polyamorous relationship.
I have always been ideologically aligned with polyamory. I believe it is possible to love more than one person, and that that love doesn’t necessarily take away from others. So, when my wife told me about this, I said it was ok. I was happy for her, though feeling a lot of FOMO.
Over the next few weeks, my wife would get together with F at his house while I was watching our daughter. They would cuddle intimately and watch things together. Nothing ever progressed to anything explicitly sexual. The feeling of FOMO started to grow, and I started to become uncomfortable with the arraignment. When I brought this up to my wife, she was pretty dismissive. I asked for us to spend a bit more energy on our relationship, like setting up a regular date night, but she replied that we already had a strong relationship, so it shouldn’t need work. We had talked about boundaries, but as those shifted, she clarified that those were her own boundaries to set, since she has autonomy over her body. I saw the eagerness that she had with F, for things like making out, and pointed out that wasn’t something she did with me (even though it is something I enjoyed and had asked for before all this started).
I started to feel very uncomfortable with the arrangement. At the start, I had felt strong compersion, but this stopped when my feelings were not handled. During this time, to everyone’s defense, I was very confusing. I would express that I wanted this for everyone, but that I needed it to slow down and that I wasn’t comfortable with how things were happening. A few times when I expressed to my wife that maybe we needed a break to figure things out, she expressed that wasn’t fair, and that she was trying to meet everyone’s needs, not just mine. I was struggling hard, and F started to reach out to me to try and help. He genuinely supported me, but I was feeling like I needed support from my wife, not F. Eventually, the whole situation broke down, and F called it off.
Since then, my wife has been distraught. She has expressed how part of her feels like it is missing now that she doesn’t have everyone. She has talked a lot about how much she misses F, and how she doesn’t see how she can be happy anymore without him. I have tried to be there for her, to console her, but she has been distant. It has been a few months since then, and that distance has worsened.
She has also recognized that she didn’t go about things in the right way. She has been trying to be understanding and sit with me to talk about my feelings more, though has difficulty communicating and validating. On my part, I have been textbook anxious attachment, constantly wanting to talk to her or get reassurance, talking about how I am feeling and what I need, to the point where my wife is feeling unsafe in the house because every slow moment without our daughter has been a hard and heavy conversation.
Slowly, my wife and F have been trying to re-build their friendship. They still work together, so see each other daily, and they text constantly. I have expressed that I want her to re-build her friendship, as I know how important it is to her, but that I am anxious about things happening the way they did. This was met with frustration, since to her it is mixed messages. I know the two of them care very much for each other, and are both hoping that some arrangement could work in the future if I became more comfortable with it.
Through individual therapy, I’ve realized that I should have taken a firmer stance earlier on. I am open to polyamory, but I realize now that I need support from those around me in order to be comfortable with it. I would also need my own experiences, but my social circle is small and I don’t see a path forward for me anytime soon. I kept on thinking that if only I had the support I needed from my wife, I could thrive in that arrangement. I still think that is true, but am accepting that my wife isn’t able to give that support. I told her recently that although she is hoping to be able to rekindle things with F if our relationship becomes more stable, I don’t think I would ever be comfortable with her having a relationship with both F and I. In truth, I see that as a possibility in the future, but not if that is my wife’s reason for re-building our relationship. This comment has completely shut her off. She has said that she chooses me, but has only been interacting with me in the day-to-day tasks we need to do for our household and our daughter.
I am not sure what to do. I would love to re-kindle a relationship with my wife, but she does not seem too interested. We are starting couples therapy, so hopefully that will help. I am also accepting that she has the option to be with F instead. What I am afraid of is her just sticking with our relationship, skating by on the day-to-day but being sad and unfulfilled.
Questions I am trying to answer:
- Am I being unfair to my wife and F by saying I don't think starting back up would ever work? I know the answer is no, I’m not asking anyone to be trapped, but thoughts would be appreciated.
- Trying to ask this gently, but is my wife being emotionally immature by saying that she needs F in order to be happy? It feels like this is less about polyamory as a relationship structure, and more about her wanting to be with F while also wanting to keep what we had.
- How can I be compassionate to my wife while not abandoning myself?
- Does it seem like I’m not cut out for polyamory? Was I relying too much on reassurance from my wife instead of handling my own insecurities?
EDIT
Thank you everyone for your thoughts and opinions. I appreciate your take on the situation.
Adding some additional information to address some questions in the comments:
My wife has been open with me about how her feelings for F have developed over the past year. I was understanding and supportive of how she was feeling. With that in mind, I'm hesitant to call this an affair or emotional cheating. What I am coming to understand is that we had completely different views on the matter. I had a understanding that they were friends, but they had a strong connection. I believe she started to form the idea of him being a true partner far before they started "dating". In that sense, maybe I had already opened our relationship with my support of those feelings, albeit not from a fully informed understanding of the nature of the open-ness.
There are a lot of questions about F's motives in supporting me. F and I were friends before this started, so I believe there was genuine concern there. F is also bisexual and had an interest in me. Towards the end, before the blow up and when I was feeling a lot of FOMO, there was talk about me being involved in the arrangement and us forming more of a triad. My wife and F were very interested in this idea, and I entertained it a bit. However, it never really felt right. I love the idea of a triad, but I've never identified as bisexual, my wife does. I also didn't feel like my wife's and my connection was going to be fostered within that dynamic. The idea of that triad forming is something my wife is stuck on. We cuddled all together a couple times, and she says she has never felt so whole. She has expressed that every time we cuddle now, she is missing those couple of times where we were all cuddling together (which I understand, I would love to be in the middle of a cuddle puddle, but at the same time I value individual connection, so it hurts a bit to hear).
There were also a lot of questions about my comments about our communication. We have learned a lot about attachment styles, and have realized we are stuck in an axious-avoidant cycle. She has a lot of trauma from her upbringing, which as affected our whole relationship. She tends to avoid conflict while I have trouble letting things go if we don't have an actionable solution. I am very focused on problem solving, while she feels like I bring up topics over and over. This whole thing has, predictably, ramped up these traits in both of these. That's my personal focus in the relationship right now, sitting with uncertainty more and leaving heavy conversations until we meet for therapy.
A few people have also mentioned that I need to focus more on myself and my growth. This I think is one of the key reasons this was so hard for me, and was probably doomed to fail. Being a great husband to my wife and dad to our daughter has been a huge part of my identity. The last couple of years, I have struggled a lot with depression due to a couple of deaths in my close family and isolation from being a psudo-stay-at-home-dad and working an isolating night shift. This has made my wife one of my only support structure. I am now trying to re-build a community around me to help support me.
With all that said, I a couple more questions I would appreciate peoples thoughts on:
People have mentioned "affair" a lot. Given what I said in the edit, would people still label this an affair? Why?
Why is starting poly for one particular person an inherently terrible idea? (I can probably answer that myself: Because if you want to be someone else, but aren't interested in poly for poly sake, you can always end your previous relationship to explore the new one, instead of stringing it along)
I'm realizing that in a sense, by acknowledge my wife's and F's romantic feelings, they have been in some form of relationship for a bit of time. Does that change the calculus on what is "fair"? My wife has recently expressed that I'm telling her I don't consent to her being in a relationship with F, but F isn't doing the same with me, so that sets a double standard. Is that a fair way to look at it, or is there some responsibility to our long term marriage to figure out opening, free of F being the focus and goal of that work to open up?