Dear Readers: I’m off this week. To tide you over until I’m back, the tech-savvy, at-risk youth pulled some classic “PUD” questions from the archives. A PUD, of course, is someone who is “poly under duress.” Because while some of us start out poly and some of us achieve poly, others have poly thrust upon ’em. These are their stories. — Dan
I’m a 25-year-old woman currently in a poly relationship with a married man roughly 20 years my senior. This has by far been the best relationship I’ve ever had. However, something has me a bit on edge. We went on a trip with friends to a brewery with a great restaurant. It was an amazing place, and I was sure his wife would enjoy it. He mentioned the place to her, and her response was NO, she didn’t want to go there because she didn’t want to have “sloppy seconds.” It made me feel dirty. Additionally, the way he brushed this off means this isn’t the first time. I go out of my way to show him places I think they would like to go together. I don’t know if my feelings are just hurt — if it’s as childish as I think it is — or if it’s a reminder of my very low place in their hierarchy. I hesitate to bring this up, because when I have needs or concerns, they label me as difficult or needy. Is this part of a bigger trend I’m missing? Should I do anything to address this or just continue to stay out of their business and go where I wish with my partner?
Treated With Outrage
I’m having a hard time reconciling these two statements: “This has by far been the best relationship I’ve ever had,” and, “When I have needs or concerns, they label me as difficult or needy.” I suppose it’s possible all your past relationships have been so bad that your best-relationship-ever bar is set tragically low. But taking a partner’s needs and concerns seriously is one of the hallmarks of a good relationship, to say nothing of a “best relationship ever.”
That said…
I don’t know you or how you are. It’s entirely possible that you share your needs and concerns in a way that comes across as — or actually is — needy and difficult. Our experience of interpersonal relationships, like our experience of anything and everything, is subjective. One person’s reasonable expression of needs/concerns is another person’s emotionally manipulative drama. I would need to depose your boyfriend and his wife, TWO, to make a determination and issue a ruling.
That said…
It’s a really bad sign that your boyfriend’s wife compared eating in a restaurant you visited with him to fucking a hole that someone else just fucked, i.e., “sloppy seconds.” It has me wondering whether your boyfriend’s wife is really into the poly thing. Some people are poly under duress (PUD), i.e., they agreed to open up a marriage or relationship not because it’s what they want, but because they were given an ultimatum: We’re open/poly or we’re over. In the best-case scenario, the PUD partner sees that their fears were overblown, discovers that poly/open works for them, embraces openness/polyamory, and is no longer a PUD. But PUDs who don’t come around (or haven’t come around yet) sometimes engage in small acts of sabotage to signal their unhappiness — their perfectly understandable unhappiness. They didn’t want to be open/poly in the first place and are determined to prove that open/poly was a mistake and/or punish their ultimatum-issuing partner for imposing poly on them. The most common form of PUD sabotage? Making their primary partner’s secondary partner(s) feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.
That said…
As you (probably) know (or about to find out), poly relationships have all kinds of (sometimes incredibly arbitrary but also incredibly important) rules. If one of their rules is, “My wife doesn’t want to hear about or from my girlfriend,” TWO, then your restaurant recommendations are going to fall flat. Being poly means navigating rules (and sometimes asking to renegotiate those rules) and juggling multiple people’s feelings, needs, and concerns. You have to show respect for their rules, TWO, as they are each other’s primary partners.
That said…
Your boyfriend and his wife have to show respect for you, too. Secondary though you may be, your needs, concerns, feelings, etc., have to be taken into consideration. And if their rules make you feel disrespected, unvalued, or too low on the hierarchical poly totem pole, you should dump them. (Originally published October 11, 2017.)
My wife “Bianca” and I opened our marriage six months ago. It’s safe to say our marriage “opened under duress.” She found out I was cheating. Then, after years of struggling with monogamy, I told her it was open our marriage or divorce. I’m dating the woman with whom Bianca caught me cheating, “Valerie.” I love both of them very much, and living a more honest version of my life has lifted a weight off of my shoulders. I’m worried I transferred that weight to Bianca, though.
She’s lonely and sad, and I don’t know how to fix that. I’m a doctor, so I have a busy schedule. Now that Valerie figures into that, Bianca and I can go several days without seeing each other. Sometimes, when I’m home, we have to focus on chores, or I’m exhausted, so she feels we don’t connect the way we used to. Any time I spend with Bianca is wonderful because I love her and she’s my best friend, but I can definitely understand why the same isn’t true for her. Bianca agrees that it’s important for me to have time with Valerie — she’s been incredibly benevolent and strong in that regard — and it pains me to know that the price for my happiness might come at the cost of the person I love most.
I’ve suggested Bianca spend more time with family and friends, that she try new hobbies, that she even seek a lover of her own. Her reply has been that she misses me, and what she thought our marriage was, and it’s harder to find a solution to that. I’m around less. Do you have any suggestions on how to help us?
Polyamorous Time Management
P.S. Before, Bianca and I would at most go two days without spending time together (time together meaning time when we’re both awake and in the same room and includes eating together, exercising together, going on a date. Now it’s more common for four days to pass before we’re able to spend time together.)
Here’s a suggestion for you: SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOUR FUCKING WIFE. Your marriage is open now, you’re happier now, but if your newly open marriage is making your wife miserable… you’re going to lose at least one of the women you claim to love, PTM, and you’ll deserve to lose her.
Right now, time spent with Valerie is all joy time, pleasure time, and sexy fun time. Because Valerie isn’t your spouse — so there are no chores you have to get done when you’re with Valerie, no bills you have to go over when you’re with Valerie, no collapsing on the couch in the vicinity of Valerie when you’re both exhausted. While time spent with Bianca can be pleasurable (if you made an effort), the grind of daily life is all on Bianca’s clock — a shared household to look after, living expenses to track, a mortgage to pay.
So, the time you spend with Bianca doing chores, paying bills, or zonked out on the couch shouldn’t “count against” her share of your time and attention. Meaning, you need to split whatever time is left after chores, bills, or zoning-out-like-zombies between Valerie and Bianca. If you spent Monday and Tuesday night with Bianca paying bills and cleaning the house — never fun, has to be done, often a source of conflict — Valerie can’t insist you spend the next two nights with her because you spent last two with Bianca. Time spent doing chores/bills/zonking needs to be subtracted from the total amount of your available time and the remainder split between your wife and your girlfriend.
And your wife, for the time being, should get more of your non-grind time and attention. You had an affair and gave her a choice between divorce and openness when she discovered it — if you value Bianca, if you value your marriage, you need to prioritize her now. If your response to her grief and loneliness is “Hey, why don’t you get a hobby?” you’re making poly people look terrible by being a terrible poly person. It’s understandable that you want to see your girlfriend as much as possible — NRE does that to a person — but you need to hold that in check. Your wife is not going to move from the PUD (“poly under duress”) column and into the formerly PUD and now happily open column if she only sees you three days a week and one or two of those days are consumed by chores, bills, and exhaustion. Your marriage won’t survive if Valerie gets your best and your wife gets your scraps. And while your wife feels sad right now, PTM, she’s going to get mad if you can’t do better than, “Hey, maybe you should go hang out with your mom while I bone my shiny new girlfriend?” (Originally published January 30, 2018.)
I understand that monogamy is not something people are good at — and that’s fine. In fact, most of the people I know are in healthy poly or monogamish relationships. Here’s the thing: I’m monogamous. Not the “I’m attracted to other people but won’t act on it because it makes me uncomfortable or believe it’s wrong” kind of monogamous, but the “I genuinely have ZERO desire to fuck anyone but my partner” kind of monogamous. Fantasizing about others is fun, so is looking, so is porn and role-play. There’s a world of deliciously kinky, weird, and wonderful sex stuff I’d LOVE to explore until my sexy bits fall off. But I want to do those things with one partner and one partner only in a monogamous, intimate relationship. Here’s the kicker: I’d like my partner to feel the same way. I don’t want someone to enter into a monogamous relationship with me if in their heart/groin they’d genuinely like to fuck other people. Am I a lost cause? Surely, I can’t be the only genuinely monogamous person there is? I’m 31 and still turn heads, but I worry my quest for a partner who feels as I do is impossible and a waste of my time.
One 4 One
You value monogamy, you want a monogamous commitment, and you want someone who feels and wants the same. That great, O4O, and you have my full support. And I think it’s great that you’re able to acknowledge that fantasies about others can be fun — as can looking at others, as can watching porn, as can pretending to be others.
If you’re having a hard time finding a partner who wants what you want — a monogamous commitment without the stress of maintaining the monogamous pretense/facade/fraud, i.e., pretending they don’t at least think about fucking other people — either you’re living in some sort of poly/PUD parallel universe where nonmonogamy is the default setting or you’re not giving others the same benefit of the doubt you’ve given yourself. You wanna fuck other people and you don’t seem to think that disqualifies you from making, honoring, and genuinely wanting both a monogamous commitment and a monogamous sex life. (The two don’t always go hand in hand.)
If you’re breaking up with people for admitting to the same things you’ve admitted to in your question — you might think about fucking other people, but you don’t want to actually fuck other people — then you’re the reason your quest to find a partner has been so frustrating. (Originally published January 20, 2016.)
I don’t know if I’m poly or not. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, this has been so difficult. How do I know when to go back to monogamy?
Pretty Over Lusty Yearnings
I don’t think anyone is poly, POLY, for the same reason I don’t think anyone is monogamous: polyamory and monogamy are relationship models, not sexual orientations. And if the polyamorous model is making you miserable, POLY, that could be a sign that polyamory isn’t right for you. But you should ask yourself whether polyamory is making you miserable or if it’s the people you’re doing it with or for that are making you miserable. (Are you PUD?) People in awful monogamous relationships rarely blame monogamy for their woes — even when monogamy is a factor — but the stigma against nontraditional relationship models is so great that even poly (or wannabe) people will blame polyamory for their misery when the actual cause isn’t the model, POLY, it’s the people. (Originally published October 11, 2017.)
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