Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Sadly, I have broken up a relationship with a woman that I love.

M and I have known each other for about 12 years. She was my introduction to Polyamory, a good friend, an ally, a dear lover, a soulmate, and a human being that I genuinely feel love in my heart for. And I had to end it.

M was not my wife. I am still married happily to D and living a blissful life with her and that relationship is still strong and healthy. My relationship with M was always as live apart, occasional sleepover friends. We met years ago when I answered a Craigslist ad from M seeking a fuck buddy. At the time, I was single and unattached and M was a bisexual in a lesbian couple that lived together. We connected and hit it off, had great times together and grew closer than just being fuck buddies. We genuinely loved each other and expressed that to each other. It was polyamory heaven.

Then things changed. I met D and started dating her, and that was developing into a very special relationship. Shortly after that M was going through a breakup with her partner. M was also having difficulties in her work life and her world in general was becoming quite dramatic. She became jealous of the time I was spending with D and posed to me an ultimatum to choose between her and D. I chose the path of least drama and most potential for harmony. D and I wanted many of the same things in life, mostly to be able to buy a house together and plan for traveling adventures and living well into our golden years. Communication with D has always been relatively easy, open, and without drama.

So M and I stopped seeing each other for the most part while loosely keeping in touch. She moved a couple of hours drive away and we only saw each other or emailed sporadically, like once a year. I was building my life with D and by default living a monogamous heterosexual lifestyle, only living out my fantasies through Internet porn. During this period my sexual life with D became extremely vanilla and infrequent, as does with many married couples but my libido has always been rather high and creative. I dreamed about M and the sexual fun that we used to have, and fantasized about exploring more sexual realms with her.  

After D and I decided to open our marriage up I had put an ad out on bisexual.com and had very little luck in meeting people (most men I met were cheating on their wife or lived too far away). One fateful day I was headed into a store for grocery shopping and I ran into M. We chatted the usual awkward "Hey, long time no see, how are you doing?" kind of stuff and said let's get together socially (platonically) some time. We did, and it felt good. I enjoyed talking with her, being around her, the camaraderie of a fellow bisexual, and just looking at her turned me on. I've always found her to be a beautiful woman, in not just the classic "beautiful soul" kind of way but also in the lustful wanting to worship the sex goddess porn star kind of way. 

It was me who reached out and said to her that if she was ready and willing to have a sexual relationship again, I was wanting that. She replied that she wanted that too but wanted to make sure that everything was ok in my relationship with D and that she would consent to me and M getting together, knowing that this was not a emotionless fling. Kudos to M for that. I checked in with D and she consented albeit somewhat reluctantly, in a "lets see how it goes" way. 

So M and I were seeing each other again, having sex, reigniting our love for each other, and generally having a really good time together. Or so it seemed to me. M had changed from when I knew her earlier. Her attitudes towards life, people, etc had become darker and pessimistic, which is counter to my views of peace, love, and looking for the goodness in others. Her self-esteem became lower to the point of not wanting me to see her naked body despite my assurances that she looked extremely desirable to me. And I was not just feeding her a line to make her feel better, I really did see her body as beautiful and desirable. The erections proved it.

Over the next few years, M and I got together when our schedules allowed and I tried to make the relationship work for me. I saw M's pessimism and negativity and tried be be an advocate for optimism and positivity. I tried to help her see how she was holding her own self back in life with her already defeated attitudes. Of course I realize that you can't "make" anyone feel better and change their attitudes about life...that has to come from within...but I had hoped that I could be a positive influence and help her to facilitate self-improvement, growth, and happiness. Unfortunately, she continued to dwell in darkness, and every negative interaction that she had with people in her past and present manifested in dramatic turmoil that I sat there and patiently listened to. Where most people (myself included) would have said "fuck that asshole" and moved on, M was still feeling the feelings and not growing forward from past adversities. She had grown into being a different person, and I have to accept that people change. 

Then there was the sex. While in many ways the sex with M has always been great and almost every time I've felt that M was my sexual soulmate, I began to feel that we had become sexually stagnant with our sex acts becoming predictable, almost as if following a script; brush teeth, get naked and slide under the covers, have a condom ready on the bed stand, kiss and hug, switch back and forth between cunnilingus and fellatio, put the condom on, then missionary position until I cum or she gets sore, and then maybe some cuddling, then sleep. I tried several times to express my desire to do things differently, switch things up, get kinky. 

A big turning point came for me when it was my birthday and we were in bed doing the missionary position thing and I told her that I really enjoyed being "in" her and would very much enjoy it if she were "in" me (meaning I would like some anal satisfaction, please). She immediately said "no" and I felt that she didn't even know exactly what she was saying "no" to. I would have been happy with anything from full on strap-on ass pounding to finger prostate massage to even just holding a vibrator to my ass. I asker her "why? what's the problem?" and she just abruptly said "clean up". Of course I had prepared for the possibility of anal sex and had a plan for minimizing mess and easy clean up so I tried to convince her that it would not be a problem and then her mood suddenly changed to one of cold resentment. She insisted that I should have respected her first "no" and not have tried to convince her otherwise. I was feeling rejected and dismissed myself, as if her satisfaction was important to do things the way she wanted, but my satisfaction was not important. It wasn't as if I was asking her to do something that she hadn't done before, she had in the past worn a strap-on and fucked my ass quite delightfully, and this being my birthday I thought that "gee, maybe a little something for me?"We talked it over a week later and we didn't really resolve the "incident" but we expressed our feelings over it. 

M had repeatedly expressed that she wanted to feel like more of a "priority" in my life. She wanted to see me more regularly and have me set a schedule to drive up to stay at her place. She didn't want to come to my house and stay here (when D is out of town, I can have sleepover visitors). My work has me sometimes working weekends and odd hours, my social life happens on the weekends, D has weekends off, and sometimes I just need time for myself. As much as I would have liked to have spent time with M, sometimes I just had to spend it in other places in my life. 

So I have been coming around to the conclusion that I could not satisfy M's needs, M did not want to satisfy my needs, we have differing philosophies on life that are difficult to reconcile (for me at least),

and that this was not going to emotionally end well for her. Our problems were not Polyamory problems, we would be having these issues if we were a monogamous couple. Things came to a head a couple of weeks ago when I was suffering through my first migraine headache that I have ever had in my life (oh joy) and she called me up to talk about her latest drama with taking a former landlady to small claims court. I dutifully listened to her and supported her emotionally, meanwhile getting more and more tired and headachy. I told her what I was going through and didn't feel well. She then asks "So when are we going to see each other again?" and I told her that I had a lot on my plate with work and plans to do things with friends over then next few weeks. This then led to that same argument of how she needs to be a priority in my life and I just need to make that happen. I got testy, started talking loudly, shouting, swearing, etc. I knew that this wasn't the time to have a conversation, so we/I said we'll talk about this later and hung up. Over the next couple of days I thought my head was going to kill me until I was able to get some Excedrine Migraine pills...wonderful stuff... that knocked that migraine right out of my head. I was then able to reflect, think, and call M and talk.

I calmly told M that I thought it best that we stopped seeing each other, we had grown to have different needs and that I could not meet hers. She was upset, angry with me, and told me that I was not a real polyamorist. I did not argue with her for I knew that she was hurt and going to be hurt for a while and I did not want want to make it worse by arguing with her. I let her say her piece and all I could say was "go in peace" and we hung up. That was it. I felt like shit for doing it and would rather have had her dump me, but I could see that continuing on was just going to cause her more pain and make things even harder in the eventual end. I still love her and I still care about her , enough to let her go and hope that she can somehow find the joys in life that I experience. I'll always worry about her well-being and wonder how she is doing but I know that contacting her will just salt her wounds, and I am never really sure of how to say the right thing. Many times when I have spoken directly from the heart things get misconstrued and I think to myself later on "I should have said it this way".

So here I am at this point, feeling sad when I think about M, feeling good when I think about D, and feeling optimistic about future relationships that I may have. From my time with M I have have learned a few things about myself and what I want out of my polyamorous life, and while there will always be a special place in my heart and memories in my mind with M, there is plenty more space for others.