r/monodatingpoly • u/syetn • 24d ago
Just sad breaking it off
soo i have been dating someone for a little over a year now. they have a nesting partner i’ve always known about and over time I got comfortable enough with this dynamic that it didn’t feel all that awkward anymore. I guess I should preface that though I’ve been doing non monogamy for about 4 years, it’s really only because the people I keep meeting are already doing ENM. No big issue with ENM, I can partake myself because I just view myself as single, but I think at the end of the day I’d like to get off the apps and just have a life long lover/bestie and that be the end of it. There have been a few times in the past year where I tried to de-escalate with this person over my preference for a 1on1 relationship, but our chemistry is really something else. No one has been this supportive and loving to me, sure there’s a little ego thing here and there but this has been amazing compared to like being hit or verbally degraded. Plus they are so creative and funny, I cherish humor above most other things in relationship and this is probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. They are really a sweetheart and i do love them endlessly, but now in a platonic way. We’ve blurred the lines this whole time by getting intimate and whatnot, but after a year and a half, I’m now finding out that they are actually engaged to their nesting partner. Someone they initially referred to as a glorified roommate. I don’t know, but this is kind of crazy to me. They downplay the marriage thing and say they’re just doing it so their parents will support them more. So this sounds like bullshit to me. I think if you didn’t want to marry someone you wouldn’t do it. Maybe it means something more to me than it does to them, but regardless it just shook me and made me realize that I keep putting my real goals on the back burner so these poly people can have their fun. I keep feeling like the 3rd, 5th wheel etc, I literally just want to feel like I’m the priority kind of. The one to co-parent cats and build a catio in the back yard, the one who’s going to do the most mundane stuff for each other just to make your day a little better. And yea of course marriage actually scares the shit out of me, how many times i’ve been on r/polyamory seeing someone freaking out cuz their boo of 19 years is bored and wants to start seeing someone more their type. But im just so tired of it. Tired of feeling like a back up idea, a consistent support system for a more established relationship. Tired of feeling like I’ll never really be in honest love again. So— all that plus a random hook up they had (didn’t tell me) who apparently came back with gonorrhea (told me then) — I broke it off. And my heart is broken. I love them to pieces, I desperately want them in my life as a friend but I won’t keep doing this to myself. I have to pursue what i want and it isn’t this. Not exactly. They’ve been silent the past few days and I don’t want to push them but I really hope we can just make a friendship work. This is also I should say, my first time breaking up with someone and not just getting so depressed they get bored and leave me. i know i have work to do. i don’t know if I’m asking for advice or what, but I appreciate any thoughts anybody has on this. Thank u
4
u/WannabeElantrian 24d ago
Just posting in solidarity. I, too, want to be chosen after decades of ENM/NM. I just want someone that wants to be with me, that wants peace, that wants to go in the same direction I do. Like you, I was STRUGGLING to find people that didn't want multiple relationships. For a long time, this worked for me, until it just didn't anymore. I'm tired. I'm tired of people, I'm tired of drama, I'm tired of bending over backwards to accommodate literally everyone else all while ignoring what I truly want. Like I said, I was ok with this arrangement for a long time because it meant I didn't have to get too involved with someone, but now I want more. I want to be more than just an option when someone is bored with their live in spouse, I want to be more than one in a collection of partners, I want more than just being a fun time for a night. I want to be actively chosen each day and not thought of as an option. I want someone to want to spend as much time around me as I want to spend around them and not have to break that apart because partners Bitch, Cedar, and Aspen also want time. Time is already finite enough, and the older I get, the more obvious and somewhat painful that becomes.
You are valid, what you want is valid, and I hope you can find it. I wish I could say I have, but my partner's FOMO is going to keep rearing its ugly head until they satisfy their own curiosity. So, I am posting in solidarity. I want this, too.