Just in case you need to catch up. James was a work colleague that Poly was able to connect with a deep level, but he was not being honest with his other partner Susan about his pretend polyamory and, well, Poly can’t stand lies. After the split, James is still trying to hook her into his intimate world. But the whole mess with James and his baiting behaviour just reminds Poly of another relationship that ended a few months beforehand…
A bit of background
Tim’s lives and works in two countries and he’s been around for a bit longer. For one out of every three months Tim would travel to where Poly lives for work. It was when Tim and Poly were seeing each other that I got to know Poly better. For several months, we’d meet and usually end up discussing what was going on with Tim, all the while discussing why her relationship with him had some problems.
Poly met Tim at the start of one of his Sydney months and from the first date they both felt an instant strong connection. The sex was great “…and I mean really great” was how she’d put it. On their first date they went out for lunch which soon turned into the afternoon which saw them “making out” for about an hour standing in the middle of her living room. Poly had to go pick up her daughter but her daughter was actually staying with her grandma that night so Tim suggested date 2 could start in about 3 hours. And so it did… Poly said they didn’t attempt to go to sleep until about 4am. The physical connection was amazing but as time went on they found there was also a strong intellectual one as well. Poly would pine over our coffees together, about how she was really addicted to being with him.
The relationship had problems from the beginning. They both had very young children from ex partners, Tim’s child was living in his home country and obviously, Poly’s was here. Neither could move so they would never be able to be together. Tim was also a workaholic, extremely successful and incredibly smart but not so much in the emotional intelligence department. Poly highly suspected the reason for his ex-wife cheating on him was due to being ignored for his career. But at the beginning it is easy to rationalise these incompatibilities and still strive to find a way to be together.
So when the first month ended and it was time for Tim to go home they said let’s be realistic and be fine with an open relationship while we are not together and then see how things are when you are back in two months. But no less than a week into Tim returning to his home he made strong indications that he was not cool with Poly dating anyone else and so she reluctantly agreed to wait till they could see each other again. She was struggling with the whole no sex thing for two months and Tim suggested they fly to meet each other in Hong Kong for a long weekend at the four week mark. Poly was delighted with this suggestion and agreed to the terms.
Poly now sees it was just the start of a man who wanted to have control. She should not have given in to what she wanted (an open relationship) just to satisfy his narcissist behaviour. Soon she would learn what a mistake it was.
As the Hong Kong weekend got closer and closer, Poly had to organise flights and most importantly ask her ex-partner to look after their daughter. As a parent she thought Tim would understand this better than most. Well as the date got closer and closer, Tim still wouldn’t confirm he had booked his flights and said he was trying to juggle work commitments for the two days he would have to take off. Flights for Poly were booking up so she just took a leap of faith and booked her flights. No less than 10 days out and even though he had promised he would be booking flights that weekend, he still had not and Poly was getting peeved. She felt he was being very dis-respectful to her time and more importantly her life. They had a massive argument, probably what Tim was hoping for so he could call off the whole thing. Poly was livid. They didn’t speak for two weeks, but they did start speaking again.
It’s not hard to guess that this was not an isolated incident and these types of things happened a few more times till eventually they separated, mostly to break the addiction it seems to me. He was extremely self-centred and their relationship seemed to revolve around what she was doing for him, what she was organising for him. It seemed like he did bugger all.
Now, after separating, and faced with the prospect of no longer “having access” to Poly (and I’m using this phrase deliberately in order to make a point that Tim was a bit of a misogynist), Tim decides to open up and talk about his new girlfriend in a nearby city. And he’s also talking about how she needs to meet his daughter. Tim then goes on to suggest that Poly should also being doing this, but Poly is wondering why all this stuff about other peoples’ families, all this forced intimacy, is being dumped on her now.
James is an echo of Tim because in the middle of their Poly affairs they try to sell themselves as open and sexually liberated males, however by sharing intimate details of their new/existing partners you can see it was just a show. They still want to ‘lock’ down the principle women in their life whilst also indulging in the temptation someone like Poly offers.
Now with the swingers party looming, James is earnestly trying to stay in Poly’s good books, and putting on a good show. However he still hasn’t told his main partner Susan that “oh, by the way, the person who put me onto this sex party is this woman I know from the building where I work, and oh, and we’ve been having lots of really good connected sex, oh and she’s also going to be at the party, and yeah, it’s completely ok that you will meet, because that won’t make me uncomfortable at all.”
Yeah, this won’t get said.
What Tim and now James show is that they are really just monogamous heterosexual males who manage to do a bit of cheating using the pretence of an open relationship. Not the same thing at all as a polyamorous mindset.
Put simply, if ALL your partners are not poly, then sorry, you’re not poly.
Nope, instead, you’re just lying.