u/abigailbee

Update post from the OP of this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/polyamory/s/WUUzdIZ5sH

Firstly, thank you so much to everyone who replied. I genuinely wasn’t expecting the level of response the post got and I’ve spent the last week slowly reading through everything. I had also expected a lot of people to tell me that I wasn’t doing polyamory properly or was being silly but…over 200 comments and not a single person said that! 🙃

What’s interesting me is that when I originally made the post, I thought the thing upsetting me most was the use of the house itself, the feeling of someone else “occupying” my space, leaving things around, etc. I honestly expected most people to tell me I was just anxious and territorial.

What I didn’t expect was how many comments focused on the level of involvement with my child. Weirdly, I don’t think I’d fully realised myself just how uncomfortable that aspect had been making me until I saw other people reflecting it back to me. The penny kind of dropped reading responses pointing out that this wasn’t just “parallel poly discomfort” but blurred parenting/family boundaries too.

I sat with it all before raising it in therapy yesterday with my husband and our therapist.

To his credit, my husband did acknowledge that if this is a boundary for me, then it is a boundary. We were able to agree some practical points in session, which already feels like a meaningful step forward.

Some of the points agreed were:

- No partner involvement in bedtime routine
- School involvement with a partner is fine once mutually agreed, but no solo drop-offs/pick-ups by a partner except in emergencies
- Multiple-night stay-overs are okay, but with morning calls/video calls maintained to reinforce connection with the family home

I think the session was emotionally difficult for both of us. Some parts were handled well, some less well. I was shaking like A LEAF but stayed calm. I still don’t think my feelings around this were fully understood in the moment, and he said he’s worried about how these changes will affect his other relationship too.

In short: ugh.

So thank you all again genuinely. A lot of the comments helped me articulate things I don’t think I’d properly admitted to myself yet ❤️

I’d really appreciate some perspective from people with experience of parallel poly setups. Please tell me if you feel I’m just being anxious and unreasonable, and I’m sorry if this post is structured messily (it reflects my headspace 😂)

My husband and I have been together ~12 years, married, with a child. He’s currently seeing someone monogamous (they’ve been together 6 months) who wants a fully parallel dynamic, they don’t want to know me or have any overlap. We met once and they had a panic attack immediately after. Unfortunately this is the second time he has had a relationship with this dynamic.

For context, my husband and I are in a fairly rocky place at the moment, and a lot of that has been tied up in how intense and fast this relationship of his has developed. I’m super aware that may be colouring my feelings here.

The part I’m struggling with is how this works in practice with our home.

We own the house together, and whenever I’m not there (even just out for the evening, staying elsewhere, or away for work), his partner is often in the house. In the 6 months him and meta have been together, there has never been an instance when I’ve been out overnight and they have not stayed over. They also sometimes come over during the week and work from there.

What’s making me uncomfortable isn’t only their presence, it’s how the space is being used, leaving laundry in our laundry basket, leaving dog bowls out, leaving hair in the shower. It doesn’t feel like a guest using the space, it feels like someone treating it as their own, without any direct relationship with me.

There’s also an emotional layer where I’ve started to feel uncomfortable leaving the house, because it feels like my absence is immediately “used” for their relationship to take over the space.

This sounds dumb but as I don’t feel overly secure in my relationship with husband, it feels like she’s physically occupying the space that’s meant to feel like mine.

I’m trying to respect a parallel setup, but I’m struggling with where the boundary is when it comes to a shared home.

My questions:
Is this kind of arrangement typical/considered reasonable in parallel poly?
How do people usually handle shared living spaces when one partner doesn’t want any interaction with the other?
Is it fair to want limits or agreements around how and when a shared home is used?

One added layer that makes this feel more complex…when she’s over, she helps with things like my child’s bedtime routine, so there is a degree of integration into family life. It feels like it’s a blended-family dynamic on his and their terms.

At the same time, I’m aware that my husband will sometimes call her while doing bedtime with our child, even when I’m in the house whereas he wouldn’t do the equivalent with me if she were present and I wasn’t.

That difference in how the two relationships are handled is part of what’s making this feel uneven and stressful and sad to me.

Edit: I just want to say thank you to everyone who’s replied, I’m massively overwhelmed by the replies and not least because I was 90% expecting to be told I’m overreacting and to be kindly told some coping techniques. I’ll try and reply to you all soon when I have processed 🩷 For context child is 5, meta was seeing child with me not in the house from 1 month into relationship. I’m still wondering if I’m the asshole here though as I was a complete dick to my partner in the first months of his relationship with meta…it moved so fast and terrified me, and I lashed out (including at one point telling him I couldn’t cope and wanted a divorce), so maybe he’s fair and within his rights to be doing this