Dear Daddy Advice Column February 2025: How to Navigate Ethical Non-Monogamy and Polyamory
Our advice columnist on why ENM and poly relationships are hard but doable
Dear Daddy,
My spouse (we’ve been together about 13 years) and I are working on opening up our marriage into an ethical non-monogamy/polyamory arrangement where we are still each other’s primary partner, but we date separately. My spouse is a cis man and I’m a nonbinary person that usually presents as femme. We are both bisexual.
About three years ago, I was more fully exploring my bisexuality and talking to people online, including a man from another country, which included sexting. I had thought that this was okay with my spouse, since I had told him about doing more sexy things online, but unfortunately I had misunderstood; he had a very bad reaction, as if I’d been cheating.
I explained to the online guy that I could no longer talk to him, and he understood. It took a long, lonely time to get through that emotional breakup without anyone to talk to about it, while my spouse eventually forgave me.
But in the meantime, I was so low that my depression and anxiety made me paranoid and imagine every nightmare scenario about husbands killing or hurting their cheating wives; I cried for days, was suicidal, and even now it is difficult to think about. My spouse has never ever threatened me or turned violent; it was more like he was disappointed and angry and hurt so I made things worse on myself because I felt so guilty. Thankfully I am in counseling again although it’s been off and on.
Fast forward to now. Over the summer my spouse, who also struggles with mental health conditions, had a big change to his medication regimen (under the supervision of his psychiatrist and counselor) that has also affected his personality. Overall he is doing better but it is also like I’m just getting to know him all over again, especially since one of the medications he stopped influenced impulse control.
We had a conversation around Thanksgiving where he said that he had accepted that he was poly after all and that kicked things off again. I was very surprised due to our history with it, and he was anticipating that it might be a dealbreaker for me given the experience from three years ago. However, I am interested in continuing to do the communication work and try this. I read The Ethical Slut and talked to another poly friend for support and that has been really helpful as a start, although I know the process is ongoing.
What I wonder now is if there could be any benefit to reconnecting with the man I talked to three years ago or not. I did enjoy talking to him, but wanted to respect my spouse’s wishes at the time.
Now that things are different, I double-checked directly with my spouse and he claims that this time if I wanted to reconnect with this person, he would be okay with it. But I’m not sure if I should take him at face value or if it’s better to just completely start with new potential partners.
My spouse has already had more luck in finding new potential partners than I have and had also floated the idea of trying to reconnect with an ex, which I okayed but then nothing came of it. So I also wonder if I am only wanting to try reconnecting with this person because my new attempts haven’t had much happen yet. I don’t know if he’d be interested in talking again or not, because a lot could have happened for him in three years as well. And I also wonder if the stress of how it ended the first time means things are already tainted and ruined there so it would be hard to try again.
It’s also just been more difficult in general to find non cis men to talk to, so I also wonder if I’m taking the easy way out by not putting in more of the effort to take the time to find more people since I do genuinely want to date more than just cis men.
Thanks,
Open in Ohio
Hello, Open.
This is a very long letter, and while I did edit and condense it a bit (while doing my best to retain the spirit), I wanted to make sure to leave some meat on the bone, because there’s a lot to unpack here.
I’m going to start with this: the poly/ENM lifestyle is hard. Harder than you think it’s going to be. And I wonder if you two are suited for it.
Actually, let’s back this up for a second. Let me tell you a story. I was once with a woman who told me that if we were going to be in a committed relationship, I needed to accept that she identified as poly. Let’s call her Josephine.
It took me some time to get on board with that. We read books like The Ethical Slut. We talked about it, a lot. We started couples therapy to prepare ourselves.
Then the time came. We opened up. I slept with a woman while on a business trip. Navigating that was mostly smooth. Soon after, I connected with a woman on a social media app. We went on a date. We kissed. We made plans to see each other again. Let’s call her Lucinda.
Josephine decided that things were moving too fast, and she needed to pull back on the poly thing for a little while. I was disappointed. I had a conversation with Lucinda, explaining the situation (she had been aware I was partnered, going into the date). She understood, and from the way she tells it, never expected to hear from me again.
Months later, Josephine and I re-opened our relationship. I had felt a connection with Lucinda, and thought Josephine would connect with her too. With Josephine’s blessing, I reached out.
Lucinda and I reconnected. We had dinner. We slept together. Josephine was out of the country at the time. When she returned, I introduced them, knowing the two of them had a lot in common. They hit it off, and the three of us began dating.
Things got hard.
While I allow that there were misinterpretations and misunderstandings on my end, I also got conflicting information from Josephine. Sometimes, unbridled enthusiasm for my connection with Lucinda, and sometimes, searing jealousy.
A few times, consent was withdrawn after the fact. It created an environment of fear—a constant anxiety over whether something deemed okay was actually okay.
Long story short, Josephine broke up with us, in a mostly amicable way. I’m still with Lucinda. We’re still, in theory, poly/ENM (and I’m going to have her read this just to ensure my understanding squares with hers).
While I’ve fooled around a little while traveling, with her blessing, we haven’t actively sought connections with other people at home. In large part, we’re both parents and self-employed artists and generally constantly fucking exhausted, all the time, so it’s not a priority.
But I think, too, after the ups and downs we went through during out throuple-dom, it feels nice to take a breath.
Back to your letter. A few things jumped out at me. The first is that you both struggle with mental health issues. I commend you both for seeking out support structures like counseling. But beside the roadblocks that can add to this journey, I’m sensing a little bit of… hesitancy, over whether the boundary lines are clear.
In relation to the man from another country you connected with (I’ll call him Klaus)—it seems like there was a lack of communication with your spouse, as to whether sexting was okay. If your spouse (running out of names here… uh, Gandalf), knew about it and gave you the all-clear and then changed his mind—that’s not great. If you two didn’t have that conversation, about what was permissible and what wasn’t… also not great.
But hey, it’s a process. You learned from it.
I can tell you right from the jump—and you’ll know this given that you’ve done some research and reading too—is that the most fundamental requirement of successful poly/ENM is clear communication and boundaries. More than that, while jealousy is always going to be present in a poly/ENM lifestyle, there should also be some form of compersion, meaning your partner deriving pleasure from your pleasure.
And that’s not what happened with Klaus. Gandalf reacted poorly. That’s not a good sign. I’m glad Gandalf says he’s okay with you reconnecting with Klaus… but the question is, will he be?
Because there’s a gulf between saying something and doing something. And I think that’s where most people in the poly lifestyle find issue—the point where rubber meets road (i.e. genital meets genital).
I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue this. I’m not saying you two are making a mistake. And I don’t share my own story to dissuade you—only for you to know that I’ve been there, and I am seeing a lot of potential fracture points. I know you see them, too.
So I’m going to suggest a few things:
Go sloooooooow. Talk about everything. Keep each other informed as much as is necessary for both of you to feel comfortable (while respecting the feelings of your primary partner, and the boundaries/privacies of secondary partners).
And I’m going to strongly recommend you two find a kink-friendly couples therapist. Someone you can both talk to, who can guide you in establishing the clarity you need to do this successfully.
Once you’ve firmed up the support structures—reach out to Klaus. Maybe there’s something there worth exploring, and it’s better for him to say “no thanks” than for you to wonder. But make sure he knows and understands the circumstances.
This might be a good chance to stress-test Gandalf’s reaction. Because the rubber will meet the road, and it’ll be another good data point, for whether this is going to work.
I wish you the best of luck, in whichever path you choose.
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