Was she disposable? No more than any lifelong friend that you love. Our marriage always came first and she knew that without having to discuss it. After the first 13 years she solved her desire for a security net and went online to find a guy who would be OK with her splitting her time between their marriage and our relationship. She found a doctor and we were only told that they had an arrangement and please do no ask any questions as she wanted to keep the two relationship separate, which she did to a large extent for the next 23 years.

Technically if it came down to her or our marriage, we would choose our marriage and eventually had to. We always thought that we would move and retire to grow old together. We went first and bought a retirement home. Our girlfriend followed and found a nice home a few blocks away from ours. Then one day she called to tell us that her husband had invested all of their funds, even the proceeds from the sale of his practice, in one of those highly publicized ponzi schemes that were exposed during the lat recession.

We already had moved and could not afford to move back. She wanted to come and live with us, leaving her husband behind as it was pretty much a marriage of convenience and we suspected he was bi but mostly gay. The problem was that she had a 35 year old son that had no mental or physical handicaps but was still supported and raised by her. She enabled him so that even if he got a job, he would quit the first time he was criticized or it got too hard. She provided him with everything. It may have to do with the fact that she was secondary in our life and married to someone she was fond of but did not love. Her son was the only thing she had all to herself but she ruined his life and did not see that. The guy never learned all the social and business skills that most of us learn over the years.

We refused to have a 35 year old man who is still reliant on his mommy, living in our home so we had to tell her no. Her husband was insisting that she give him her own nest egg from her inheritance to invest and she did not want to. In the end she gave in to her hubby because no one wanted her with her old son; not even her family. So we were willing to grow old and die together as we had always envisioned but when it came down to it, we chose our marriage and cut her loose. We would have gladly had her live with us without her son but she was not even willing to have him live in a nearby apartment. Weird relationship going on there.

So we had a great 40 years but are enjoying monogamy too. We did not realize how much our girlfriend fulfilled for each of us that we could not fulfill for each other. Her departure forced us to tell each other the hard stuff that we never said for fear of hurting each other’s feelings. Now we had to communicate and by doing that we adjusted our behavior and are finally “enough” for each other. We still would like another women to join us in bed since that was our normal sex for so long, but we would not want her in our life.

My wife and I had a secondary woman. Our marriage always came first and she had no say in anything. We loved her and she even lived with us for many years but she was always number 2 in our lives and had no ownership in our home and we did not financially support her.

Like you she got tired of that and got married but still kept her relationship with us. This way she had her own primary relationship that she could retreat too. We lasted 40 years like that.

Find a man who feels that you are enough for him. Why are you in a relationship where you are not “enough” for your partner but rather a play thing. That is what you are. You are his girl on the side and the only difference between that and an affair is that his wife/partner knows about it.

Now I read posts that disturb me. Seems that poly is being used as a mantle of respectability to cover people wanting their cake and eat it too. Most poly seems like an open relationship because there is a primary relationship and then the partners get to date others that never become part of the primary relationship. That id nothing new. Back in my day women and men did that all the time but it was not called so nice a name.

I read where husbands come home and tell their wives that they met someone and want to be poly. If the wife expresses fears they are made to feel like they are foolish and not evolved. Husbands and wives do not want to stop seeing other lovers even though their partner is uncomfortable with their “poly” life. I often hear that poly is natural and monogamy is not. Peeing and poop wherever you have to be is natural too and yet we do not do that either. We should rise above our nature or else we are no better than animals.

To be honest, all the couples we knew with some form of open relationship, did not last more than a few years and to date we have yet to meet any poly people who come close to our longevity. It was almost a cliche that a spouse would leave their marriage for a new and more exciting lover. We lost all of our friends like that and thereafter only socialized with monogamous couples who believe in long term relationships and sexual fidelity. We viewed ourselves as a normal family except there were three of us instead of two.

I may be wrong but to me, a relationship where all partners have lovers outside and separate from all their other relationships is just not being exclusive if date, or an open relationship if married. I dated several women at time since I was 12 years old. Yes, I started off young. I even dated other women when married and we never called it poly, just an open relationship. Now anyone who wants a safety net in case a new relationship does not work out, calls it poly. The worse are wives who have lovers and use their husbands as a source of income and safety net. We have a good friend who has a lover from before her marriage and through it. She married a guy with the knowledge that she was going to use him for financial support and that is just want she did. The poor sap married a woman he never would otherwise have a shot with and so he agreed to her terms. She quit work, had lovers and in private would trash talk her husband and call him a sucker and yet, her husband accepted their relationship because she called it poly and more natural than monogamy. He bought it because his first had an affair and when he found out she left him for her lover. What he is not realizing is that all his “poly” relationship is doing is having him give his wife permission to cheat. Knowing what she is doing does not change the fact that she is sharing intimacy, tenderness and love with other men.

While it is certainly true that you can love more than one person, isn’t a relationship finding those in it to be “enough” for you to be happy and sexually fulfilled. If not, why are you even in that relationship at all. Having more than one relationship is stressful, logistically a nightmare and an emotional rollercoaster. Every minute you spend with one person is a minute you cannot spend with another.