575 - I’ll Never Be Their First Priority: Listener Q&A

Today’s listener question

This week we’re answering a listener question from one of our Supercast subscribers! If you want your own question answered on a future Q&A episode, visit www.multiamory.com/questions to submit one.

Today’s question is:

My partner (she/her) of two years is getting married, and though I’ve known about the engagement the entire time, I’m having a hard time reconciling my feelings around it. Because of her position in life (work family) she can’t be openly polyamorous to friends, family, or coworkers, and to make things more complicated we do work together as well. I do have another partner of five years, and his (he/him) advice is to break things off with my other partner (she/her) to limit my heartache around feeling like a huge secret in her life. I’ve listened to the pod for three years, read your book and many others, but still find myself struggling with the feeling of not being “important” in her life. At this point, my issues seem to be more internal. Though we’ve tried to have weekly check ins, there was so much anxiety on my end surrounding them, and separately my partner doesn’t seem to “remember” to work with me on them, and I’m almost too afraid to ask and start the day off badly when we do work together. She’s drawn clear boundaries that things that I may want like public hand holding are not on the table, and I did know this at the top. She’s also asked me to practice poly fidelity while we’re together, and said that if I’m not willing to do that than things have to be broken off. I feel like I don’t have any relationship power within the relationship, and that though I say the things I want or need, I feel met with an iron wall of “that’s just how it is”.  I feel like I’m a secret in her life, though she’s shown no signs of shame with me. It’s just hard when intimate or soft moments are abruptly ended because someone could see, someone calls, and then I’m reduced to being her “friend” or “best friend” in the eyes of those important to her. 

Wistful in Washington