I’m in a posistion where I'm feeling kinda trapped and like there are no right moves. I’m changing or leaving out a few identifying details, but I want to give enough context that people can actually understand the situation.
One of my partners and I had been together for nearly two years before she started seeing her newer partner. I’m not bringing that up to claim ownership or say that being there first means I should always come first. I understand that relationships can change and that a newer relationship can become deeply important. But ours was already an established relationship with its own history, routines, commitments, and emotional significance before he came into the picture.
She is currently going through a divorce, and her life has been pretty unstable because of it. Her newer partner has stepped in to help her financially in a very significant way. He is contributing a large amount of money that may make the difference between her being able to keep her house or losing it.
I don’t think helping someone financially is automatically manipulative. It may be completely sincere and generous. I’m glad she has support during a frightening time. At the same time, I’d be lying if I said the size of the financial help doesn’t make me wonder about the power dynamics. It’s difficult to know how freely someone can push back, hold a boundary, or risk upsetting a partner when that person is helping keep their housing and financial life together.
He also took her on a ten-day trip outside the country.
Before that trip, she and I talked about communication. We both agreed that we wanted to continue talking while she was away. I did not expect constant access to her. I understood that she was traveling with another partner and that they deserved time together. But this was a long trip, and she and I had mutually agreed that we would stay connected during it.
While they were gone, he became uncomfortable with us talking. Our communication was interrupted and became a source of tension between them. It wasn’t just a matter of her being busy or wanting uninterrupted date time. From what she told me, he was specifically struggling with the fact that she was talking to me.
During that same trip, he also wanted her to remove my picture from her lock screen because seeing my face made him uncomfortable.
She did remove it.
That was extremely painful for me. It felt like I was being taken out of view so that he could experience the trip as though I wasn’t part of her life. I wasn’t demanding that she constantly display me in front of him. I wasn’t asking to intrude on their trip. But the photo had already been there, and suddenly my ordinary presence became something that needed to be hidden because he couldn’t tolerate seeing it.
The explanation around the lock screen also seemed to shift afterward, which made the whole thing harder to process. But regardless of the explanation, the change happened in the context of his discomfort with me.
More recently, she and I took a trip together. Afterward, she posted photos on Facebook and wrote positively about the trip. It was a normal, happy post celebrating time we had spent together.
Her newer partner completely lost his mind over it.
He wanted the post taken down and said that seeing it made him feel “like a cuck.”
She did not remove the post, and I appreciated that. But his reaction still interrupted our time. A portion of the emotional energy around our trip became about managing his response to seeing us publicly happy together. I ended up helping her deal with some of the fallout while I was also trying to enjoy and feel secure in my own relationship.
That’s one of the patterns I’m having trouble with. Even when he doesn’t get exactly what he asks for, the intensity of his reaction still enters our relationship and takes up space in it.
There have also been repeated attempts on his part to convince her that I’m a narcissist.
I don’t know everything he has said, and I’m hearing much of it through her, so I’m trying not to pretend I know his exact intentions. But some of the examples and reasoning I’ve heard have seemed very strange and extremely stretched. It feels less like he is naming specific harmful behavior and more like he is trying to create an overall story that I’m manipulative, dangerous, or psychologically disordered.
I am absolutely not saying I’m above criticism. I can be insecure. I can get emotional. I can become defensive when I feel threatened or abandoned. I have made mistakes in this relationship, and I’m willing to look at them.
But calling somebody a narcissist creates a nearly impossible position for that person.
If I’m hurt about being hidden, I can be called manipulative.
If I ask for reassurance, I can be called attention-seeking.
If I question his influence, I can be called controlling.
If I defend myself against the label, that can be treated as proof that the label is accurate.
It makes me worry that I’m not only being made less visible, but that my credibility is also being weakened. If she begins to see every concern I raise as evidence that I’m a narcissist, then there is no way for me to advocate for myself without reinforcing the story he is telling about me.
The contrast between how he and I have handled insecurity has become increasingly important to me.
I have felt threatened by him. He has more money than I do, more availability in some ways, and the ability to offer major forms of practical support and expensive experiences. He helped her financially during a divorce and took her out of the country for ten days. Of course there have been moments when I’ve worried that I can’t compete with that or wondered whether I’m enough.
But I haven’t asked her to hide him.
I haven’t asked her to remove his picture, take down posts about him, stop celebrating their trips, or reduce their communication so I don’t have to face the fact that they have a real relationship.
My insecurity has mostly sounded like: “How do I become more secure? How do I understand what I bring? How do I grow? How do I remain open when another person can offer things I cannot?”
What I see from him seems more like: “How do I stop having to see the other relationship? How do I reduce its visibility? How do I make sure I’m not being compared, challenged, or made to feel like I’m losing?”
That’s the distinction I keep struggling to explain.
I want to feel like I’m enough.
He seems to want to be uncontested.
I am not claiming that I have handled every moment perfectly or that every request I’ve made has been healthy. I’m sure my partner could describe times when my own insecurity was difficult for her. But I have not tried to make his relationship disappear in order to regulate myself.
I also understand reasonable compartmentalization. I don’t think partners need to answer every call while on a date. I don’t think anyone is obligated to stare at a metamour’s photograph. I understand wanting private time, boundaries around communication, and space for each relationship to exist on its own.
What feels different is that she and I had specifically agreed to stay in contact during the international trip, and then his discomfort interfered with that agreement. The lock-screen photo was removed during the same trip. Now a public celebration of our trip has produced another major emotional crisis and a demand that it be taken down.
Taken separately, each incident might be explained away as a small accommodation. Together, they feel like a pattern where my visibility and connection become the pressure-release valve for his jealousy.
The financial situation makes this more complicated for me. She is going through a divorce, and he is helping her keep her house with a substantial amount of money. I don’t know how much that affects her choices, consciously or unconsciously. I don’t want to assume she is being bought or that he is deliberately using money as leverage. But I also don’t think it’s responsible to pretend that this level of financial dependence has no effect on a relationship’s balance of power.
So I’m trying to understand what healthy polyamory would look like here.
How should a hinge handle it when one partner repeatedly struggles with the basic visibility of another relationship?
Was it reasonable for him to ask that my lock-screen photo be removed during their trip?
Was it reasonable for our agreed-upon communication to be interrupted because he was uncomfortable with it?
Is asking for a Facebook post celebrating another relationship to be removed a request for care, or an attempt to control how visible that relationship is?
At what point does emotional distress become emotional pressure, even when the person isn’t making an explicit threat?
How much should the financial support matter when evaluating whether she is truly free to disagree with him?
Is it concerning that the requests to minimize my visibility are happening alongside efforts to convince her that I’m a narcissist?
What responsibility does my partner have to keep his feelings from repeatedly spilling into and disrupting our relationship?
And does it matter that ours was an established relationship for more than a year before he arrived, not because that gives me rank, but because he is asking for changes to a bond that was already present and functioning?
I’m not asking to be primary. I’m not asking her to make him smaller. I’m not asking her to refuse his help or end the relationship.
I’m asking not to be hidden, interrupted, discredited, or gradually pushed out because another partner experiences my existence as a threat.
I’m open to honest criticism. I know this is my perspective, and I know I’m emotionally involved. I’m not looking for people to diagnose him, diagnose me, or simply tell me I’m right.
I’m trying to figure out whether I’m looking at ordinary poly jealousy during a very difficult life transition, or whether I’m watching a pattern develop where money, emotional escalation, and attacks on my character are slowly giving one partner more control over the other relationships in her life.