u/captainfreiheit

This piece on Substack is the very first time I've seen anyone write about a serious problem I've been facing for years.

I've been mostly lurking on r/polyamory, r/nonmonogamy, and r/queerpolyam since last year, looking for anyone posting their story, resource recommendations, or really anything at all relevant to the problems I've (41M) been having with my spouse (45F) since we decided to open up our marriage to polyamory in 2019. The Substack piece I linked to is the very first thing that's spoken to me, at all, and the author only even posted it in mid-May of this year.

That's not anyone's fault, because my situation is very weird; I feel confident saying this because I still haven't found anything here (or anywhere) describing anything like it. I'm being vague because this isn't the post where I actually tell my story. I'm not ready to write that yet, because whenever I start, I get too emotional to continue.

What this Substack article does cover, is the exact experience I've had, every single time I've ever tried speaking to her about blatant, repeated violations of my boundaries and consent. It's uncanny: this is the only writing I've ever seen that addresses any of the things she says & does when I bring this to her, and it gets into all of them. I found this completely by accident on Sunday. It feels like some kind of Rosetta Stone for something that I could describe parts of, but never name.

The author calls it "Weaponized Innocence." My one criticism is that it applies this very stark, rigid "friend/enemy" binary to partners who act this way, and is very ready to impute it all to malice/sadism. OTOH, it's meant for people in the early stages of a relationship, when it's crucial to identify red flags, and not so important to name the factors and motivations behind them.

It's worth mentioning that this is written by an autistic author, for an autistic audience, about communication with their autistic partners. My spouse was diagnosed with ASD last year. The jury's still out on where exactly I fall on the spectrum.

I hope that none of you are dealing with anything covered in this piece, but if you do, you're going to feel a lot less crazy after you read it.