Marriage is a mess

[Marriageblues]

How did you respond to your W when she went "ballistic" on you over this? If we can get some insight into how your fights go down we might be able to give you some pointers.

Her words to me went something like this: "He is biased. He doesn't believe in this kind of thing (polyamory). I had to spend half the day defending myself from him because he thinks I'm f***ed up!. I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to him at all about me and guy. Me and guy should be the only ones you talk to about this!" She said all this to me basically screaming, in my face, with that kind of look that she reserves for her worst enemies.

So I respond: "Ok. Ok. If that's the way you feel." When she's in that kind of mood, I know not to try to be logical with her. It just makes her that much more angry.

[MrBond]

"Ok. Ok. If that's the way you feel."

Wrong response. You have to validate why she feels that way. Instead you should have said. "I understand why you feel that way. I'm going to keep our private lives to ourselves." That's what you don't understand. It's not HER problem. YOU aren't giving her the support she needs. But you can learn to.

And BTW, she's right about your friend. According to you polyamory allows you to "love" different people at the same time. Swinging is different because there are no real 'feelings' involved. However, like I said before, the same problems apply. Women mostly will have a tendency to fall in love with OP because that's how many women are.

You aren't seeing to her needs for security. That's why you're in this mess right now.

[AnotherStander]

Her words to me went something like this: "He is biased. He doesn't believe in this kind of thing (polyamory). I had to spend half the day defending myself from him because he thinks I'm f***ed up!. I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to him at all about me and guy. Me and guy should be the only ones you talk to about this!" She said all this to me basically screaming, in my face, with that kind of look that she reserves for her worst enemies.

Wow. Clearly she was not happy about it. First let me just say that as I said before you do need a support person or group, but what I neglected to mention is it should not be someone that knows your W, and absolutely CANNOT be someone that talks to her. And the reason is what happened above. Anything you say to a mutual friend is going to find its way back to her and she will blame YOU for gathering people against her (even though it may be completely untrue, you will still get blamed). So don't discuss the sitch with mutual friends or with family. Find someone to talk to that doesn't even know your W.

So I respond: "Ok. Ok. If that's the way you feel." When she's in that kind of mood, I know not to try to be logical with her. It just makes her that much more angry.

Like MrBond said, that's not the proper way to deal with it. That was dismissive. You have to validate her emotions. One thing I've learned through DR, 5 Love Languages and RetroV is that this is not optional, it is CRITICAL. Unfortunately for us guys, we're taught the opposite of validation. We're taught to ignore, dismiss and run like a scalded dog from emotions. So the proper response when she was going through that tirade would have been something like "Wow, you sound extremely angry about this, is that how you feel?" And of course she'll say yes along with some four letter words, then you say "Yes I can yell you're angry, I can see why you would feel that way. I'm sorry, I will work on keeping this from happening again in the future" and to borrow MrBond's line "I'm going to keep our private lives to ourselves". You will be surprised at how much more effective this is. If you can manage to stay calm while saying it and also to use effective listening techniques (make lots of eye contact, no distractions, mirror back what she's saying, encourage further dialog, etc.) even while she's ranting, she will calm down pretty quickly.

[Marriageblues]

Well, we had our first MC session last night. It was via Skype, and we had some technical difficulties and couldn't get the video to start from our end (MC couldn't see us), but I think it was a good start. We both told MC we were committed to making this polyamorous situation work. We covered our back history, and covered some practical things we were wrestling with. We saved for later sessions W's affair, her discontent with the children, her bi-polar issues, and my communication issues. During the session I was very clear with the counsellor we had to get to a point where my emotional and sexual needs are getting met, so we'll see if we can make some progress in that area.

After session was over W headed to see her guy, I asked her not to stay too long, as she had to be at work at 7:30am. She gets back at about 4:00am, telling me they talked and talked about guy's mother's dementia for hours, etc. I was a little miffed that she is sacrificing her sleep to be with guy, and is something we'll definitely go over soon.

But she reached out and held my hand as we fell asleep, which is the first kind of contact like that she's initiated in weeks. It made me feel nice. When she left this morning she said she and guy are going to work on scheduling so we can figure out how to make this work.

[Marriageblues]

Well, things are a little better, I think. We've had 4 Skype counselling sessions now, and we're addressing some of our marriage issues head on. One of the biggest is how W never validates my feelings. Whenever I tell her something makes me uncomfortable, she starts arguing with me, trying to make me feel that my feelings are not valid, or that I shouldn't be feeling the way I do. This usually occurs when she is testing my limits, trying to get me to agree do to something like spend more than 24 hours with her guy, and agreeing to let her take a mini-vacation with her guy.

Still no loving though. We're going to address that a lot in tonight's session.