I remember what it was like.

Everything in your body is saying yes to what the person you're getting hot and heavy with wants to do next, but you pull back, take a breath, and say, "Uuugh! I want to, but I think I better hold off until I have a chance to talk to [my partner] about it first..."

You value trust. Safety. Honesty. Closeness. Connection.

Only, you haven't actually experienced the sense of freedom that you were hoping to feel when you decided to open up the relationship.

It feels like you spend five or more hours processing about something that wouldn't even take more than an hour to do.

You probably don't really think of it as settling or compromising on what you want, because hope that if you give them some more time they'll come around, so that (hopefully) you can do what you want WITHOUT negatively impacting them or the relationship.

But I'll bet it's feeling like a long time to wait...Especially for something with no guaranteed outcome. And in the meantime, it's all just triggering you more deeply than you expected with the pangs of jealousy and gut-wrenching visions in your head of your partner being with other people.

You probably feel guilty for being out on a date and genuinely enjoying yourself while your partner is home, anxious and potentially having a panic attack... But then when you're the one at home while they're out, it's not much easier for you either...

Maybe you talk about being "solo poly" like it's a threat, as a desperate plea for your partner to slow down, or speed up, or whatever it is that would need to happen for you two to be on the same page...

I know that's how it was for me, anyway.

On the bad days, I was sobbing and my partner was yelling.

On the awkward days, we were cuddled up in the hammock, feeling kind of disconnected because we were both lost in our dream-sequence playbacks of the night before that we'd each spent with other people, but were both afraid to tell each other too much or say the wrong thing.

On the good days, we'd make it through a difficult conversation, feeling closer for having talked it all through (and the making up was verrry pleasurable!)

Feeling like we could see and understand each other more clearly than at the beginning, and thinking we were on the same page again, inevitably, not too much later, one of us would want to do more than what the other was comfortable with and we'd be back in the pattern of upset again.

You know?

Maybe your specifics are a little different but I bet the sentiment is the same.