Feeling like I'm being forced into a more ktp/transparent version of poly than I want
So my partner and I are married and have been together for over a decade, we've been ENM in the swinger/party scenes on and off for over half of that time but have just stepped officially into poly in the last 6 weeks. They immediately took a friend up to the partner level while I have just been slowly starting to date.
The issue for me is that they insist they can't feel connected to me unless they are sharing all the feelings and activities they are doing with their new partner with me. I have said that I am not interested in any details that do not involve me or a change to our relationship or relationship agreement. But because they could just openly share everything they feel like they are keep secrets from me (even tho I know what type of places they are going on dates, have met their partner and meta, know they are growing feelings, and that they are getting sexual) and are therefore not able to connect with me. This has been framed more as my problem since I should want to hear all the details so I can have compersion for them. I have set this because I am self aware enough to know that knowing these details is likely to cause me to ruminate and pull away from them, not as much out of jealousy as much as just having the pictures of everything I was told running in my head when we are interacting and preventing me from connecting with them.
Last night I caved and let them share these secrets that they felt so desperately they had to share. The first was that they were saying I love you to the new partner, I had actually guessed this from just knowing them. The second was we both disclosed that we had in fact had sex with the other people we were seeing. Neither of these were really an issue for me as I had already assumed both and know that's what I signed up for. Where it got to be a problem for me was when they then went straight into over sharing about the type of sexual encounters they are having with this new partner and some private details around their physiology. This has then caused me (as I expected) to have images I don't want running thru my head and pretty much entirely turned me off from connecting with them the rest of the evening and today.
They are out on a date tonight so I haven't yet had a chance to share these feeling with them but first I was hoping to get a sanity check that my desire to only know the basic facts (date locations, if they have had sex as a status update, and the large emotional steps like the I love you) but not any details concerning sex acts, where the emotions come from, or really in depth details about their partners is something I should be working on or not. I will note that they do want me to share all these things with them (they find picturing me with others hot) which is clouding the conversation as it makes them feel like we should both be sharing at the same level.
Posted Nov 5, 2025, 1:42 AM UTC