<seeking advice> partner wants to open relationship immediately, I need to take it slow. how to proceed?
I’m 30F, partner is 31F.
About a month ago, partner went to a party, met someone (I’ll refer to them as A). She and A instantly hit it off. She came home and pretty much immediately asked for an open relationship. I felt really destabilized and started crying, overwhelmed and flooded, I said I don’t want this right now, so she agreed to stick to pursuing a platonic friendship, albeit grudgingly.
In the first 5 days of meeting A, they met thrice, and would have met up a 4th time if A hadn’t been busy. When they met the 3rd time, they spent an evening together, during the course of which both people admitted finding each other attractive and of feeling attracted to each other. This information made me panic a lot, because it was coupled with my partner saying things to me like **for now** I won’t pursue anything with A.
This has been a huge struggle for me. I identify as monogamish (not 100% monogamous, and open to the concept of "hall passes" or things that are contained in time/space). I asked at the beginning about how she felt about being with me if she wouldn’t be able to date others, and she said she doesn’t need nonmonogamy to be happy, that she has everything she wants in this relationship to feel fulfilled. I took her at face value for that. I did say if things ever changed for her, I’d be open to a conversation, which she interpreted as a 100% guarantee to open the relationship if she ever wanted it.
The core issue here is that I have a TON of baggage and trauma from my past before her around ENM. The tl;dr is two defining relationships of mine were essentially me agreeing to poly under duress, which led to immense pain and heart break. I’ve always been vocal that I’m aware that I’m bringing unresolved trauma into the relationship (the type where I am so sick with point anxiety that I am fully disassociated and out of body and can’t see or hear anything - literally my vision goes blurry and the sound are going into the brain but nothing is being processed). I even told her that if I were to seriously think about the possibility of ENM again, I’d have to go through intense therapy.
I thought based on this she'd be understanding. However the way she has handled things since meeting A have been extremely unsettling for me. I’ll try to summarize them below:
--She’s not proactively doing any emotional labour: it’s been on me determine what sort of a dynamic she wants (hierarchical poly? Non hierarchical poly?What about social situations / vacations / holidays? After finally asking a ton of questions she was like “no I just want FWB, you’ll be my partner and others will just be friends that I fuck and hang out with occasionally." While knowing she wants FWB is a good starting point, I do need to have more convos around this to be on the same page, without having to be the one driving all of the conversations I also told her I’d like us to actually do the work together before opening up a relationship - eg read a book, have discussions: to which shelat out said she doesn’t wanna do any of the work and just wants it to be easy, and to do what she wants.
-- She’s often reluctant, or just flat out refuses to support me emotionally through this: I’ve been having really huge emotional reactions because of my trauma (and partly also due to how she reacts and escalates things when I’m just trying to share my feelings). And she’s telling me that I’m putting it all on her, I need to check in with her before bringing thing up with her. Attempts at conversation end up being postponed and if they happen, they end in explosion and lack of resolution, and tend to be centered around her needs/wants.
-- She’s bringing up her past behaviour as progression: she’s had a history of cheating in almost all of previous relationships. She thinks it’s great progression now that she’s not cheating and instead being transparent, and she believes that being transparent means that she shouldn’t have to deal with a huge emotional reactions from me. For me, transparency is a baseline expectation and not something I can applaud, though she views that she's paying a high cost to be transparent because now she has to actually wait, while before she could immediately pursue her desires.
-- There's too much pressure!: I need to take things slow, to actually feel stable before committing or consenting to anything, because in the past I was pressured and it didn’t end well for me. But my gf is making comments like how long is it gonna take, keeps repeatedly asking me to meet A, keeps repeatedly asking to invite A to things even when I say no. And it just feels manipulative. She also says things like “fine if you don’t want me to hang out with A I won’t, I’ll just live my life under your control and give up any and all feelings of joy and individuality.” It’s not fair. I’m genuinely doing my best to try and figure out if I am able to give her what she wants, and understand my own hard lines. But that really isn’t something I’m able to do overnight or even in a month.
I am begging her to go to couples therapy, but she’s refusing. The thing is that this open relationship convo has exacerbated our existing issues around communication. I consistently feel that our conflicts only resolve if I see things from her side, and my perspectives have no space. This is an emotionally lonely experience.
So where do we go from here? Some questions:
- Why is opening up for a specific person frowned upon?
- Is it possible to overcome trauma from poly under duress and be in a happy open relationship?
- What sorts of things are okay to ask for vs. not okay to ask for in a setting like this?
- What sort of work should two people put into their relationship before opening up?
- Also… in general what are your thoughts about this? I feel like maybe my partner is in the throes of the equivalent of NRE and is enamored with A, that’s why she’s rushing.
If anybody in this community has advice for me, I’m all ears. Thank you 💗