An upsetting state of affairs

Moon and D, her husband, have been wrestling with a week-long discussion/argument/fight (it varies between them) over Moon’s poly nature and how that fits within their marriage.  Do is monogamous, but for the last two years has consented to Moon exploring and expressing the poly part of herself.  Now, though, she’s feeling he hasn’t completely gotten on board with her being, and acting on being, poly.

The point most immediately at issue is whether Moon may invite her secondary(ies) to play at their house.  (Their “playroom” is the guest bedroom downstairs; all the family’s bedrooms are on the second floor.)  If she wants to spend non-platonic time with me, we have to go to a hotel, or go out of town, which is expensive.  (Moon is something of a tightwad, as I am; Do is more free-handed about money.)  Do said he’s not generally comfortable with Moon bringing partners to their home for play, but has made one significant exception, which Moon feels is being hypocritical—that it gives a subtextual message of “poly really isn’t OK after all, and you’re a bad person for wanting to do it.”

This isn’t all that’s going on, however.  I see another and more fundamental independence-and-control issue beneath the current discussion; if Moon were a man, I’d say she was having a mid-life crisis.  And that may be what she’s doing.  She’s in her mid-forties, has spent most of the last twenty years being a stay-at-home mom and homeschooler, doesn’t have current job skills that she could use if she decided to go back to work.  She says she doesn’t want to go back into the workforce, and I think it’s true—it’s that she doesn’t even have the option available in the abstract that galls her.

I’ve been talking with Moon about this, trying to offer the best advice I can without appearing partisan to one side or the other, and last night Do messaged me, asking if I could talk with him about the situation, as well, and offer him what insight and advice I can.  They’re handicapped by not knowing any other poly people in their community, so I’m the only resource either of them has.

And while all this is happening, I’m having to cope with my own fears that Do will decide he can’t deal with the reality of poly any more, and insist that Moon and I end at least the physical part of our relationship (I don’t believe he would insist that we break off contact completely, and I really don’t believe Moon would accede to him were he to try it).  If matters ever should come to that worst case, I’d have to honor his wishes and back my relationship with Moon down to a platonic level, but to have to do that—to have to hobble physical intimacy as an expression of my feelings for her (and of hers for me, for that matter) would be a misery.  I love Moon—love her as I haven’t loved anyone but my wife in years—and the feelings of loss would be a long time getting any less intense.

George Washington stomps the teddy bear.  Fnord.