Defining a Relationship

My husband and I have been together for about 8 years, 2.5 married, and have a 2yo daughter. We started off our relationship knowing that he leaned more towards non-monogamy and I consider myself bisexual with having attraction and sexual experiences with women in the past. We spent the majority of our relationship pursuing women together and did have fun experiences, but overall it seemed to fall a bit short for me and he can tell I'm not as interested or motivated to do it as he is.

Especially after having our daughter, I haven't even been hardly thinking about it. This has led to us recently deciding to have him try and pursue women on his own. I've come to feel that I lean much more heavily towards monogamy as I don't feel the drive to date or have sexual relationships with others. For me dating was always with the goal of finding my partner and growing closer to that partner - I've never gotten much out of casual dating and the idea of finding someone else that I feel emotionally attached to makes me unsettled.

Since the beginning I had always told him I would NEVER be interested in a relationship where we saw people separately, even though I think I may have always known deep down that he would eventually need that. I'm struggling with feeling like I'm going against my own boundaries but also feel it would be unfair to him if I don't at least try and see if I can handle the intense emotions and fears that come with it.

He has stated many times that if it's too hard for me or if I'm genuinely unhappy then our relationship is more important and he would be willing to stop pursuing women, which does comfort me. But I've also come to the conclusion that non-monogamy is simply his orientation and I feel if I don't try, he could very well end up unhappy or resenting me years down the line. I have struggled with jealous feelings since the beginning, especially when I see or know he's sexting or talking with someone a lot, and it feels amplified now that he's pursuing someone alone.

I have a hard time keeping myself from reading his messages with other girls (he's only had one real experience so far where he's actually gone to a girls house) but it always makes me feel worse. I know I can trust him logically, but I feel like I "have" to know what they talk about and what kind of relationship they have even though I know it hurts me. I find myself getting passive aggressive about things when I'm feeling uneasy and I know it takes away from his experience because he hates seeing me upset.

I've expressed some boundaries that I think will help, like not having a lot of PDA in public and not getting too intense with sexting, but he's an extremely sexual and touchy person (love language is physical touch) so I struggle with trusting that he will honor these to the extent that I'm hoping for. I also struggle with whether these are fair boundaries in the first place. I feel having a daughter makes this even more complicated as I don't know what the future will look like and how it might affect her mentally if she finds out when she's older. 

I've told him that I'm only open to him pursuing FWB situations because I won't be interested in having a true poly marriage where he has long term emotionally connected relationships with others. This completely rattles my idea of having a strong foundation both for us and our daughter. This is something he has expressed being fine with since he already has that with me, but I also know the lines can be easily blurred when you're having an ongoing intimate relationship with someone and I don't think he views things like "emotional connections", "dating", and "relationships" the same way I do in a monogamous sense.

I truly love our relationship and feel we have a LOT of good, healthy, happy parts that are worth fighting for and protecting - really in just about every area besides this we match up almost perfectly. We communicate the best we can and as often as we can. I feel the two biggest fears I have are that 1) he will find someone he's very into and I will start feeling that he's less interested in spending time with me and my daughter and/or having sex with me, and/or 2) that I will push myself too far and end up not wanting, or being able, to be intimate with him and losing the desire to be in this relationship with him.

I do see benefits to the situation when I'm in my logical brain - I enjoy having alone time and I have strangely felt more interested in sex with him in some ways. But at the same time I've had a harder time initiating intimacy with him because my instinct is to be distant from him to protect myself (or maybe punish him in a weird way?). Any advice on how to best navigate this situation is greatly appreciated.

First and foremost, I want to say that your feelings here are really understandable. There are a lot of complicated things going on that it sounds like are not being discussed in explicit and real terms that might be triggering some of this anxiety and there are definitely ways to address it.

It sounds like from the beginning, you both didn't have a fully polyamorous setup and you actually have not really been interested in polyamory (as in, having multiple romantic relationships where you see each other separately) from the start. It sounds like your partner could theoretically be interested in that, but it doesn't sound like he's so interested in that that it would become an obstacle in your relationship with each other.

The thing that is really hard to parse here that I don't think is actually very useful for you to parse, is what makes someone a relationship officially "a relationship". People can have very close, very intimate friends with benefits. What makes them FWBs instead of defined as a "relationship" is not necessarily the emotional depth but the physical time spent with that person.

Now, it may be that for many people, they do not feel as deeply for FWBs as they do for people they are in relationships with. And that's perfectly valid. But everyone experiences relationships in their own mind differently. Oftentimes, even in monogamy, where problems arise is when we assume we all make the same emotional meaning with the same words when we don't. This is one of the things I think you are experiencing when you talk about the way he views "emotional connections", "dating" and "relationships".

This has nothing to do with you being more monogamous and just about different personalities. I have had relationships where, if I were in the same situation as my partner, I would have called the people they were seeing "partners" and they didn't define them that way – so whenever they would complain about not being able to find other partners, my first reaction was, "What? You have partners!". We all define things and experience things differently in terms of emotion.

I think sometimes we try to push each other or want to be on the same emotional page with others when that just might be impossible. And this is where the feelings you're experiencing might be being triggered – and this happens a lot. Seeing a partner doing something with someone that we would define as "intimate" can trigger a lot of emotions in us, even if our partners do not find that activity as "intimate". And sometimes the response is to control that action.

But I think, rather than trying to get on the same emotional page as one another or limit his actions (e.g. no PDA, less sexting, etc.) for the avoiding the emotions that arise when you see those actions, what would help ground you in this situation would be to get on the same page when it comes to the actual time commitments you have. It's important for both you and your partner to recognise that going through a pregnancy has a real impact on your hormones, libido and life in a realistic way and now that you are both parents and directly responsible for a child, having clearly defined lines of time are even more important than they were before.

If I were to date someone who was a parent, I would understand their life as hierarchical because that child or their children are and should be their top priority over anything else. And as such I would expect a good deal of their time to be preoccupied with their child. What you and your partner need is a clearer understanding of what non-monogamy looks like in both of your ideal scenarios and how you can discuss that and come to a compromise.

Worry less about the emotional depth of his other relationships since you don't necessarily have the same understanding of that. How much time do you have to allocate to your child? Are domestic responsibilities divided equitably or in a way that actually gives you the physical energy you need? At times, domestic responsibilities can unfairly fall too heavily on women in relationships with men. How much time would he like to spend on other relationships? Does the time he has with other relationships equal the amount of time you have to yourself to pursue your own hobbies or hang out with your own friends?

Just because you may not be interested in dating does not mean you become the default babysitter and don't have any other hobbies and relationships you have the right to spend your own time on. Do you have the financial means to hire a babysitter or someone to watch your child so that you both can spend that independent time – him on another relationship or pursuing others and you on your own hobbies and interests? Can you come to some sort of agreement around this that works for the both of you?

Obviously, I feel like you know that it's not a good idea and also gravely unfair to the others your partner dates for you to read his messages. It's something that I would very much advise you get a therapist to work through. However, I don't think you're doing it out of an effort to control. Your desire to "know" comes from a fear of the unknown because it doesn't sound like you both have discussed what non-monogamy looks like with a child.

You see your relationship has changed since you had a child and you're scared of how it may change if he does develop a relationship but nothing has really been done to actively address that. By having a discussion about expectations of time and how you divide your schedules, I believe you will feel more grounded. Because then it doesn't matter how "deep" his other relationships get because you know that you will, pending any renegotiation, have the time you have set out.

Furthermore, I want to emphasise how important it is to make sure you schedule quality time together. Even though you live together and co-parenting, being in the same physical space does not count as quality time together. Schedule dates with one another that don't involve co-parenting. It may seem unnecessary but I would advise monogamous couples to do this as well. Intentional, quality time together gives you the space to grow your relationship and maintain it and, as you go forward with rebuilding trust with each other and rekindling your connection, it will be a vital part of that.

I want to also add that there are aspects of this that will involve sitting in discomfort. Your fear you have that he will basically replace you with someone else is not something that you can control. I go more into this in my polyamory 101 article, but even if you closed your relationship and he never pursued anyone else, he could STILL fall in love with someone else and become less interested in you and your family.

That happens in monogamous relationships. While it may feel like a more active threat when he is seeing other people, the truth is that it's always a risk in any style of relationship. Release yourself from the responsibility to "keep" him interested in you and embrace the idea that this is out of your control. You can make agreements about time which will help and obviously you could treat someone badly but outside of that ultimately you can't control if anyone loses interest in you. Review my 101 article for more on how to let go of that.

In terms of "pushing yourself too far", I think that the more you try to expose yourself to the details of his other relationships, the more you risk this happening. As I said, it's not fair to the other parties who did not agree to you seeing their sexts. It's private and it's reasonable to expect that privacy.

But it's also unnecessary information that will only just cause you more damage, especially if you both have different ideas of what emotional intimacy means and the way you behave in other relationships. All it will do is cause you to worry about that gap of understanding between the two of you and make you feel like this has to be resolved. Some differences of opinion and feeling in relationships don't need to be resolved for the relationship to work and for you to be close.

If you can, as I mentioned before, see a therapist about controlling this impulse to read his messages, that is crucial. I know that all of the other issues aside, I would actually really struggle to be intimate with someone who violated my trust in such a way. What would drive us apart in that scenario would not actually be their emotions or their jealousy – I could cope with that – but their violation of my privacy and feeling they are entitled to do so when they are upset.

It is going to make it harder for both you and your partner to grow your relationship and be close to one another and then, from the outside looking in, it looks like it's the non-monogamy that's causing it when really it's the erosion of the trust between you two. Rebuilding those foundations is totally possible. Figure out what the time split is, let go of the responsibility to try and "keep" your partner, and get some professional help on impulse control and I feel like this situation is very workable and negotiable between the two of you.

I think if you got past that, there might be some deeper positives to non-monogamy that may come out that have peeked out a little, such as you being more interested in being intimate despite the emotional difficulties. If you have more clarity on what time is yours together, equity in how you approach co-parenting responsibilities and a better understanding of what non-monogamy looks like for both of you, you will be in a better place.

Focus a little less on trying to define how his other relationships are defined. Maybe he will see them as other "partners". That may bring up anxiety for you, but I really believe that if you have the time you have together and you can agree on that, how other relationships are defined will become less of a scary issue.

I hope this helps and good luck!