I (30M, bi) have been polyam since I was 20 and decided to open the relationship I was in at the time. In the 10 years since then, I've hardly been single, almost always dating at least one person at a time. I have honestly lost track of how many people I've dated, and most of my relationships have lasted less than a year. Many of them ended amicably, and I am still friends with a lot of my exes.
I have always wanted to be in a relationship that leads to living together and having kids. I know this is possible in a polyam relationship, but I kept dating people who I realized weren't compatible with me for that. I made the excuse that I could keep dating people who I wouldn't have that future with because being polyam meant that I wasn’t being held back from meeting the person who I could have that with.
Anyway, after my last relationship ended, I decided that I needed to be single, and I needed to go into my next relationship with more intention. I didn't want to commit to someone who I couldn't see myself moving in with and having kids together. I met an amazing woman (30F, straight) who lives in another city, and we started a long-distance relationship about 6 months ago. We've spent about 2 months together in total, with visits lasting from 5 days to 3 weeks. Our plan is for her to move to my city in about a year and move in with me (we'll have been together 1.5 years by then). We facetime every day and we’ve met each others’ family and friends.
When we met, she explicitly told me that she does not want to be polyamorous, but that she is happy to be in an open relationship where we both have casual sex with strangers and friends-with-benefits. Her only serious relationship was 6 years long, and they were monogamous and living together. I’ve only dated one person for longer than a year, and I’ve never lived with a partner.
We made some boundaries, such as no sex with exes, no going on dates, and telling each other after we have sex with someone else (and a heads up beforehand, if possible). She likes that I'm bi, “slutty”, and that I have sexual experiences with men. I'm on PreP and I get tested every 2-3 months. She’s interested in having MMF threesomes, but we haven’t done anything to seek them out.
But it's hard! She feels anxious when I go out without her, because she's thinking about if I'm gonna have sex with someone. After I have a hook-up and tell her about it, she tells me it turns her on to hear about it and acts very enthusiastic, but then afterwards she feels sad and insecure. In the whole span of our relationship, the only time she's hooked up with another person was while I was spending an afternoon with my friend-with-benefits, and the timing was not a coincidence.
I sort of had to force it out of her, but she confirmed what I suspected, which is that her first choice would to be monogamous with me. I feel like my first choice would be hierarchal polyamory, so this “open relationship” is a compromise between what we both want. I would definitely be amenable to closing the relationship temporarily during certain circumstances, like when we’re trying for a baby, and when we have a young child.
So I guess I’m coming to
r/polyamory to ask for advice, hopefully some validation of my choices, and some reassurance that this relationship has the potential to work out. 6 months in, I feel like she is the person who I want to spend forever with.
This is a good idea that will definitely work, right?"
