My Misadventure in Polyamory (And What I Learned from It)

I caught feelings for an emotionally unavailable guy

My husband and I are polyamorous. And for the first 15 years of our relationship, that just felt like an abstract part of it.

Neither of us had the time or opportunity to really meet or date anyone, especially once kids came into the picture. We did have the occasional threesome but that’s a perfectly monogamous thing to do as far as we’re concerned (think of it as a couple’s activity). So, we kept the romance confined to our little dyad.

And then I met Rob.

Rob was someone I connected with online. First as a fan. Then as a friend. And then as something more.

Some of my readers have been following my experiences with Rob, but I’m afraid my story with him has officially ended.

I’m still processing everything that happened and how I feel about it, but it’s already taught me something about myself, my emotions, and my needs.

So, This Is What Emotional Unavailability Looks Like

My exchanges with Rob didn’t start off hot, but they got there quickly. He was sweet, considerate, and flirty at first, and then got progressively flirtier as we exchanged more correspondence.

He seemed like an interesting guy, and something about him put me at ease. I felt safe enough to flirt back. And I developed a genuine crush on him.

Things got sexual between us. About as much as they could be over email, anyway, which turned out to be very, very sexual.

Talking to Rob was the most fun I’d had in a long time, and it made me feel almost like a new person.

I’m prone to anxiety on my best days, but it’s worse when I’m on certain hormonal treatments. Because of that, I tend to second guess myself, I tend to over-analyze, and I have an anxious attachment style.

But lately, my anxiety has been a lot better. I don’t know if my hormones are getting better. Or maybe I’m just happier. But I think a big part of it was because I was having fun with someone.

And then the fun ended.

It unraveled slowly, and it started when I confessed to Rob that I have a crush on him. In response, he told me he had a complicated history with crushes but wasn’t ready to get into it at the moment.

I let a week go by before asking him again, even though I really wanted to ask sooner. I wondered if his flirty demeanor has led people on in the past, and I worried that this is what was happening with me.

When he finally explained this complicated history of his, he said that, yes, he is a flirty person in general and acts this way with everyone. He said a lot of things about not being ready for a relationship, about not trusting love, about not trusting himself.

I could have summed it all up in two words: emotionally unavailable

I was ready to accept that emotional unavailability. Except he kept leaving signs that he was open to seeing, maybe, if this thing between us could ever go somewhere. He admitted to having a crush on me, too, and spoke openly about us being friends and enjoying my friendship.

That was comforting. I would be happy with a friendship. And so that’s what it was. A flirty friendship, sure, but a friendship still.

From then on, I treated him like a friend. I tried to get to know him better. I told him about myself, about my life. I asked him personal questions so I’d get to know him as more than just a sexual person.

But getting to know anything other than his sexual side proved to be challenging. There was a lot of resistance. He shared very few personal details and when I asked him details about his life, he’d often skip those questions (though he never missed any of the ones about sex).

And when I shared details from my life, he’d either seem uncomfortable or completely ignore them.

I’m not sure what he thinks a friendship is, but that doesn’t match my definition of it.

So, now I was left with someone who didn’t want to be more than friends, but also didn’t really want to be friends either. Just an online fuckbuddy without the buddy part, maybe?

I know what the obvious course of action is in that case. I know what I should have done. It should have been so simple. Just move on. I should just let this non-friendship, non-romance go and just go back to living my life.

But it wasn’t that easy. The thing with Rob is that he was hot and cold. Sometimes, he’d express so little interest in me that I wondered if he even wanted to keep up the email exchange. I wondered if he was just doing it to be polite, or because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

And then other times, he would be all in. He was present, interested, and responsive. I would stay up way past my bedtime while my husband snored by my side just so I could be there to smile at his emails and then tap out replies on my phone.

We’d talk for hours and I felt a strong connection. I tried to hold on to it, but it kept slipping away. After getting into a fast rhythm with him, he’d go a day without responding.

I told myself he was just busy. He has a life outside of me, just like I have one outside of him (remember the snoring husband I mentioned a minute ago?). But then I started noticing a very clear pattern, and it all had to do with his libido.

He was horny, he was interested. When he wasn’t, he was barely there.

And when he was horny and interested, he was so flirty that I’d question if I was crazy for the way I read his behavior. Was he really hot and cold or did I just imagine it? He’d make comments that kind of implied he was feeling things he wasn’t ready to admit. I took it as a sign that he was starting to think of me as something other than just a horny pen pal.

But then he’d disappear again.

There’s only so much I can handle. It had started off being fun and exciting, but now I felt like I was riding a lot of ups and downs. I’d have a really amazing time writing back and forth with him when he was in a frisky mood, and then I’d spend the rest of the time wondering whether I was just being used for some sexual gratification and validation.

So, I decided to put my feelings out there. I told him I felt insecure about the things that were going on between us. I told him I was trying to be a friend but that I got the sense he didn’t want to connect in any way that had nothing to do with sex. And that I was having a lot of trouble flirting with him if there wasn’t even the tiniest little hope of it maybe someday turning into more.

Basically, I can’t be comfortable being somewhere I feel I’m not wanted. And the way he reacted to almost anything but my sexual banter or my (very rare) nudes always left me feeling unwanted.

None of the things I put out there were about sex. They were about my feelings. They were about my personal needs. They were about this friendship I had felt between us. So, of course, he ignored pretty much everything I said.

Instead, he told me it would be better for me, emotionally, if we just end it here.

I thanked him for his honesty. And I meant it. In that email, he was honest for the first time because by not addressing any of my concerns, I finally got proof of the thing he had outright denied: he isn’t even interested in having a friendship with me.

He told me we could stay friendly on social media, and then I woke up the next morning to find out I’d been unfollowed from his.

Once again, his actions spoke much louder than his words.

Polyamory — With Complications

I’ve been a mess of feelings since it happened. Not just about Rob, but about myself, too.

The whole experience made me realize that polyamory isn’t necessarily complicated, but it probably will always be for me.

First, I’m a demisexual through and through. I can find people attractive with a glance. I can get turned on by porn. I can fantasize about strangers or acquaintances I’d fuck. But I really can’t keep myself sexually interested in someone unless there’s a lot more there. I need to find them appealing as a person. I need to connect with them as a friend, not just as a body.

So, I can’t really do Tinder and I’m not looking for a casual fling. I’m even uncomfortable when someone comes on too strong.

On top of that, I’ve got social anxiety, so it’s hard for me to get close to people. I’m a jumble of worries whenever I meet anyone, and because of it I come off pretty standoffish. And I can’t get out of my own head long enough to actually figure out a way to initiate a conversation with someone. Because of that, I’m not exactly the most approachable person.

I have a hard time making friends, let alone finding romantic partners. And because I have to get to that first stage (friendship) before the second (sex and romance), or at least have them happening simultaneously, starting a new relationship feels so completely out of reach right now.

Plus, I love my kids, but they are major cock blocks.

I do better online, but even there, I haven’t really managed to make any close connections. I did meet Rob, but this is how it all turned out. And now that I write about sex, I’ve got a lot of men, usually about twice my age, sending me some very forward (too forward!) emails. I think they’re hoping I’ll send them racy photos or have cybersex with them. Little do they know I’ve got an anxious attachment style and I’m frankly a bit clingy, so even if I was interested, they would soon find out that they’re not.

So, living a polyamorous life is back to feeling like an abstract thing. Like something I’m very much open to but that just might never happen.

For now, it’s back to it just being me and my husband.

I wish that were enough, but no single person can be everything you need them to be. And that’s not just a poly thing — as Elle Beau’s writing shows, we all need to connect with more than one person, and to bond with them differently.

Losing a Friend Is What Hurt Most

And I guess that’s what hurts the most in all of this, losing that bond.

I won’t go so far as to saying I was in love with Rob. I was still just getting to know him, really. But I was definitely in like. And I liked him on many levels. The sexy stuff was fun. I already miss having someone else to flirt with. But it’s no longer having his friendship — if I ever really had it — that bothers me the most.

I loved having something to look forward to in my inbox. I loved feeling like I couldn’t wait to tell someone something. When my husband said something funny or did something sweet, I actually had someone I could share that with.

Now, things are back to feeling predictable and boring. I still look forward to stuff — the new season of Good Girls is on Netflix, my husband surprises me with poetry, and I can still end the night with some incredible sex. But I have an urge to connect with others that just isn’t being fulfilled anymore.

And I also worry about what I’m losing along with the friendship. Talking to Rob helped me come out of my shell a lot more. I started overcoming some of my anxieties and insecurities. I surprised myself by how confident I had become and how much I was willing to put out there.

I know it’s too soon to tell, but now that it’s ended, I worry that I’ll slide right back. That I will not only stop making progress but slide right back to being just as self-conscious as before.

Despite all that, I am grateful for some of it. I’m grateful for the fun I had. I’m grateful for the sexual gratification I got from it. I’m grateful for the validation it gave me at the time. I’m grateful for the ways it helped me get closer to my husband and how we both opened up more as a result. And I’m not going to lie, I’m grateful that it gave me some really good blog content.

So, I wish him well. I wasn’t the right person for Rob, and he wasn’t right for me, either. It was my fault, in a way. I do take some blame for how it all turned out. I should have listened to Tara Blair Ball and known better than to go looking for bread at the hardware store. Though I do wish the hardware store hadn’t advertised so many sales on bread.

In the end, things could be worse.

I miss the flirting and the late night sexy exchanges. But I have a husband who is kind to me and still very interested in me sexually.

I miss the friendship, but since I started blogging I’ve been getting to know some of the other writers a bit more and that’s been making me feel a little less isolated.

I miss feeling better about myself — happier, funnier, friskier — but I’m also making some promising developments in treating my chronic health issues. So hopefully some of that comes back.

And most of all, by getting and losing what I had with Rob, I realized just how much was missing from my life. Now, I know exactly what to look for and what kinds of connections I really need.

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