Closing Because of Jealousy

My husband and I opened our relationship up last year. Over that year he’s dated a few women and I’ve only just recently started dating someone… He immediately started dealing with jealousy issues because there was a lot of sexting with this new partner. He’s had little issues ever since about me seeing someone; he keeps saying he wants equality with each relationship, he compares a lot.

He and his girlfriend see each other almost weekly and have known each other for years; whereas I only see my partner once a month (time and busy schedules) and met in December 2024.

He recently told me after a weekend of arguing about some of these issues he just wants to close it. I said we cannot just snap close the relationship because we both have other partners we need to consider.

We have continued to see these partners but have taken a step back from any sex when we are with them. I am trying to help my husband learn ways to dealing with the issues with jealousy and I believe there are some abandonment feelings. Any tips would be helpful.

Ultimately, as much as I understand you want to help your husband learn to deal with his own emotions, I think if anything there is too much involvement with each other's relationships and too much comparing and contrasting. Your partner's emotions are not yours to manage or improve by altering what's going on in your other relationships.

Because the decision to close other relationships because of these relationships is functionally not that different from you deciding to have less sex with other partners because of your partner's emotions. Even if you're not ending the relationship, you're still allowing your partner's emotions to dictate your actions.

It sounds like you haven't really discussed or gone through how non-monogamy actually impacts the time you have together. You're almost in a one-up type of approach or what I call polyamory chicken where you're directly comparing your relationships and trying to make things "equal" which is not really realistic and fair.

It seems like there is an unsolved issue here with your partner having more dates than you and being able to see his partner more while you cannot see yours as much. There are some aspects of these that you cannot really control. In almost every single situation in polyamory with a couple that opens up, one person will have more "luck" in dating than the other. I've experienced that even without being in a couple and opening up.

But what you can control is how much time you spend with each other. Do you have scheduled, intentional time with each other? Especially if you live together, it's very easy to assume that time you spend in the same vicinity is quality time, but it's not. Figure out for yourself what you want.

What is your ideal polyamorous situation outside of your partner's emotions or thoughts? What time would you have for yourself and what time would you spend with other partners? Then you both come together and decide how you negotiate that for yourselves. Decide how much intentional time you will have with each other and how much time you would be spending with others.

The other aspect of this is privacy. I don't know how your partner knows if you're sexting with someone else. It's not that I am suggesting that you hide it or that you pretend like you're not. But I do think that there might be too much information being exchanged between the two of you about what's going on in your relationships.

That may be from trying to play polyamory chicken and make things "equal" between the two of you. It's not really fair to the other people involved in your relationships to have their sex lives controlled or for other people to know about their sex lives if they have not personally consented to that. I understand that a lot of people really struggle and then really want to control all of the aspects of what is happening in order to make things feel more calm.

I think if you both actually figured out how non-monogamy works within your schedule and you both worked out intentional time together and then what time you will have for other relationships, that would help you immensely. There is an aspect to your relationship that involves trying to compare each other and make things equal and that is not helping either of you.

Let go of the expectation that both of you will be "equal" in terms of the amount of partners you have or how available those partners are. Neither one of you can control the availability of the people you date and you shouldn't try and alter your personal relationships to try and make things "equal" across the board.

The best you can give your partner in terms of managing his own emotions, you can suggest that he seek out therapy to address these emotions. I would also suggest you seek out therapy and also consider looking at some resources with the Gottman Institute and understand how to avoid these sorts of long weekends arguing and learn how to step away from each other when you're disagreeing or in conflict in a way that is not helping you come to a resolution.

But your partner has to manage his own emotions and sort that out himself. You can't control that and you shouldn't, again, alter your personal relationships in order to soothe your partner.

I hope this helps and good luck.