intro to my romantic relationships, i guess?

Hi, I’m new and dramatic. You can call me Quirk.

This is my first thread in here, but I thought I should do an intro or something before I go ahead and start engaging with folks.

I’ve had quite a few relationships prior to my current situation, and I like talking about relationships. I think the ways that people can connect, whether it’s platonic or romantic or sexual whatever, is infinitely interesting. I may frequent this part of 7cups.

Anyway, my relationship challenges. That’s the prompt here, yes? I have a few. I’ll ramble.

My nesting partner and I have been together five(? sixish?) years. We act married, we feel married, we’ve given each other rings. But I don’t think we’d be considered engaged. Cool with us, we don’t really care. We started our polyam journey or whatever sometime around our second year of dating. I lived outside a the country for half a year and we “took a break”, and when I came back he suggested polyamory.

Due to how that came about, I sometimes have some anxiety about his desire to be in a polyam relationship. He has reassured me several times that it’s just the relationship style that makes sense for him. Anxiety brain still comes back to this though.

My nesting partner (let’s call him Bear) is the epitome of reserved. Some of this is, I think, personality. He doesn’t externally emote very often, and never for social norm reasons. He also doesn’t understand/recognize a lot of social norms. Which might be something else in the realm of mental health. Regardless this can put some stress on us both as I have Big Emotions™ and it’s difficult go to him for support with that. Bear doesn’t hug if I’m scared or anxious, doesn’t comfort in the ways I usually expect. He’s very calm and that helps when working through what I’m thinking, but… there’s a disconnect there that’s stressful.

I’m also seeing a man (let’s call him Bird). Bird is a completely different person, way more emotional, and more comfortable with queerness than Bear. It makes it easier to connect with him about that aspect of my life. The stress in this relationship being that our relationship is newer and I don’t want to make him feel like it is lesser. It’s not, just different. Again, this may be anxiety—he’s got his own nesting partner (the partner(s) you live with). So he probably understands what this is like. But we don’t see each other very often and it makes me worried that I’m not providing enough attention, care. But if I provide more, I’m worried that Bear will be negatively affective. It’s a stressful balancing act—but sometimes I feel like I’m the only one stressed about it.

Bear doesn’t have anyone else he’s seeing, though he’s close enough with his ex that they’ve ~had relations~ again. Sometimes she sleeps over. We’re all pretty close, but I’m not sexually attracted to her. Though I am. Attracted. So that’s a whole thing to untangle at some point.

Ugh. This has gotten long.

I’ll leave it here, I think. Yikes. Sorry I talk so much. And yeah. This is where I’m at and what I’m dealing with. We can chat about it if you want.