What i wish you understood

I never thought we'd be all you needed. I never thought you didn't need things elsewhere. I was not upset that you found these things in him. For the most part I was really happy and I tried to be quiet about how it hurt to know that I had wanted to have many of those things with you, had tried and failed. It wasn't your fault you didn't feel the same and you didn't owe it to me to do that.

I was upset that you weren't honest about where the relationship was when talking us. I was upset that the two of you had all these plans that moved him into our relationship and home without is having met him. I was upset that he was always present but you wouldn't try things to let is interact with him early on, like speakphone or sharing the text conversation. I was upset that you disappeared into him when i needed help, that I was more alone than I needed to be during my pregnancy and maternity leave because you refused to come back. I was upset that you told me things i didn't realize you weren't telling our partner, only to have him get mad at me. i am upset that i get punished for having any response except the exact one you want to everything but everyone also gets to get angry at me for having emotions and that is also considered ok. I am upset that "i dont particularly like him or want to hang out with him" has translated into "everything must be a secret", since I had tried to listen to you and be supportive of things and tried to recognize and verbalize and correct them when it was me having issues, especially since things being secret only add to my anxiety and detract from the reasons I had an open relationship to begin with.

I am disappointed for everyone's sake that because of personalities and how everything happened we do not particularly like each other in a way that would foster adding him to the family because I do see what he gives to you and I do want you to have that. And if it didn't mean leaving our child, soon to be children, I'd even leave, just see our partner when we had free time, so you could do that. Gods know he could keep your house as well as I. (Except for maybe the laundry, but you could teach him to do that.) I just can't find a way to keep our shared partner's family together without being here.

Disappearing

So i wrote what is below on talk to text on my way to work today. Then i read something she wrote. And i just can't anymore. So tired of being a problem. So tired of being caught in the middle of people who won't deal with each other or themselves, much less me. So tired of feeling like every emotion and word and action outside of robotic everyday is wrong. So tired of having to be self-sacrificing to feel like i deserve anything from people who are so incredibly selfish. So tired of doing so much only to keep being told that I'm a problem. So tired of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. So tired of feeling like disappearing is what would make everyone's lives so much better. So tired of only being able to hold on because of my own selfish desire for what he gives me that i cant get anywhere else, that ability he has to know me in ways no one else does and to feed that. But tonight I'm alone and so fucking done with being what they want me to be.

******

I tried to open up a little. I've been holding back for so long, in the name of keeping the peace. Or maybe really in the name of protecting myself.

So i opened up just a little, I thought that sharing feelings that knew she had felt or maybe even did feel currently how I felt would be a way for us to find a way back in. But really shortly I saw that look on her face, that look that tells me she just can't wait for me to stop talking, can't wait for this conversation to be over.

And so I shut myself down again. I went upstairs and cried by myself as I got ready but you can't cry after you put your makeup on. You can't cry when you're at work. So I had to shut that off too.

I know she's working really hard on allowing herself to feel her emotions again, especially after my childhood and teenage years where she was told she didn't feel those things end an adult relationship in which her feelings were used against her. I realized that what I'm feeling is only a fraction of what she felt and any of those times.

I had hoped that when we'd transition from what i thought was someday going to be a romance into a friendship. Most of my bestfriends are exes. But it's hard to get over a breakup when you no one sees it that way. When you can't really tell people outside because of how it reflects on all of you and they don't acknowledge that it is a breakup, that it does hurt you, that it is something you can or should feel sad about.

Then again,  maybe she is treating me like a friend. How many of my friends have i distanced myself from when I needed to work on myself and/or focus on my life and my family? Almost all of them, at one point or another. Maybe it's just harder when you live with that person.

But I am starting to feel myself disappearing. So that they aren't angry with me, or at best cooly distant, when i have feelings or desires, I turn in on myself, pull back. I wonder if they feel it too. I wonder if one day they will look up and wonder where I went. They will wonder when it was exactly that I left. The answer will be little by little by little.

Then someone I hadn't seen in a long time came back to me today. That part of me that has all the good qualities. That part of me that is stronger and wiser. And as I said in the bottom of the tub and cried, she came to me, petted my hair caress my cheek and told me it was going to be ok. We had been here before. Many times. And we knew we could do this together.

In many of the poly forums recently I have seen people say that they consider themselves to be their own primary. While I can understand that I also felt that it denigrated any large especially entangled relationship they may have. But when she came to me today, I told myself that I was going to work on that again. Right now he is my primary. But I don't know how long that will last. I don't know if we'll be able to continue to be this close. And I know he will leave my life much sooner than I would wish. I have to work on reestablishing that relationship I had with that other me. I don't want to disappear on myself, even if they want me, the real me, to disappear from them.