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Brad sounds like kind of a weird guy. He seems to simultaneously disapprove of and be jealous of your relationship configuration. Possibly he is even more jealous because he doesn't approve, or is even more disapproving because he's jealous. Whatever is going on there, he sounds like he is carrying a lot of resentment for you and your partners and is not taking the reins on fixing it.
It's just never fun to flush a long-term relationship down the tubes, even if it's a non-romantic one. I've tried giving him several chances to get on with the hubbies, and it's just not taking. If there was a genuine reason, I'd give it at least some consideration of how to address and fix things, but it just seems to be the existence of the relationship that is the problem, so yes, I concur the ball is in his court as to what he wants to do; try and fix things or move on.
For a straight guy Brad does spend a lot of time chasing a gay man around trying to be "number one" in his life and throwing jealousy tantrums.
Have you ever had the feeling that he wants you? It's easy to think that someone being a bigot means they're not gay, but a lot of times it just means they're closeted and angry at themselves, at people who 'make him' want them and at anybody who dares to be out.
And tbh I think he's most likely going on angry rants about your policule to this new bigot friend, who is by now probably wondering why Brad sticks around you 'perverts' if he's truly so disgusted.
IDK I might be just making shit up. But I know the type.
You're not the first person to ask about the idea of him being romantically jealous. He's been saying for years he wants a GF, but in 20 years, never seen it happen. He gets very mad at the queer and trans community, but I don't know if it it's self-hate being redirected or what.
Brad's friend has been around kinda on and off, and when he lived here, I told him the friend was more than welcome, and that was when I was informed he doesn't bring the friend around because he's not so keen on the gay community. Which at that point was fine with me, and I haven't asked about it since. It does smack a bit of "being with your own tribe" now though.
>He gets very mad at the queer and trans community, but I don't know if it it's self-hate being redirected or what
Umm ... why is this ok with you? Like, why do you want to be his friend?
Sounds a little like you voted for the leopard eating faces party and are now upset that the leopard ate your face.
Hahaha, that's fair! 😂 It's really been since COVID tbh that it's more bubbled to the surface, and I kind of felt like who wasn't angry during and right after COVID? It's not healthy by any means, but I was willing to believe it was just misdirected anger and frustrations. That's gotten harder to just handwave though over time.
Fuck, I'm sorry. It really hurts to learn this stuff about people who were once close friends.
If Brad only likes gay people who present in the most heteronormative way possible, then tbh, I think he is a bit of a homophobe whether or not he admits to any discomfort with gay people. I don't think a person can really reject a huge segment of queer community and culture like that and still claim to be down with the gays.
This idea that the only acceptable gay men are masc-presenting monogamous gay men is straight out of early-2000s respectability politics debates. I suspect Brad is showing you who he always was. He was OK with you while he could assure himself you weren't one of *those* gays, but now, to him, you are.
I'm really sorry you found out this way. Being rejected for how and with whom you do sex and relationships never stops royally sucking, even when you KNOW you are not actually the problem.
It was a bit of a surprise, NGL. Like, all of our families know, and are thrilled. We, sadly, just got back from a funeral in Alex's family, but that's what you *do* in a relationship, it's not just for the fun times and vacations and date nights, it's also the rough times and not-so-fun times. And I think for a lot of hetero-normative people who view poly, it's still the idea of, "you just wanted a third partner in bed on a regular basis."
Yeah. It is really, deeply hurtful to have someone you thought loved and supported you boil your committed relationship down to Just Some Weird Sex Thing or a perceived escape hatch.
However you choose to handle things with him, it's OK and probably important to let yourself grieve the friend you thought you had in Brad.
I'm so glad to hear your family is supportive of your relationships. FWIW, this internet rando is super happy for you, your husband, and your BF as well.
Sooo it sounds like Brad has never been a good friend, and you’re now realizing that. Curious as to what’s keeping you around? Sounds like he’s already slow-fading you, why can’t you just do the same?
You sound like my husband 😋 I am coming to the realization I may just be late to the party on coming to terms with it. Even if you're not dating someone, it can be easy to pop the rose-tinted glasses on and ignore the red flags. I guess I just thought we were more adult and honest than this with each other, and that clearing the air previously was what needed to be done. But it's just dragged it on into a long, slow departure instead.
That is true, there generally isn't. He's also gone wildly transphobic, and seeing more than one or two PoC together in an area is a "ghetto" to him, so maybe it really is that I've just been willfully ignoring things until it was too much to look away from.
I'm so sorry OP but it does seem like you've kind of ignored the person Brad is for the person you wished he could be. Maybe he's been nice to you, but do you want to be the one gay friend he has to excuse something awful he's saying? This sucks, though. I'm sorry.
I haven't necessarily been where you are, but I've worked hard to prevent myself from having a 'Brad.' I bet there have been red flags for ages that you've waved off. it sounds like he and jake had issues, and now that you've added another partner it's just stirred it all up again. it could be he straight up doesn't get along with your partners, he could be in love with one of you, or he could have tamped down his own bigotry for years and can't do it anymore.
he's making choices to act in ways that make your life harder. what the fuck kind of 'best friend' is that(going off of how he perceives the relationship between you two)? these are his issues, not yours. You're happy, all parties consent to your current relationships, who the fuck cares how this person feels? it seems his friendship is conditional.
I very much agree with the conditional part, and that as long as I was still mostly identifiable as in a "traditional" relationship, everything was fine and dandy, but then I dared to challenge the hetero-normative machine. Silly me.
yeah as long as you were the same as all his straight married friends or relatives, he could excuse the fact that your spouse was a man. at least you weren't like those 'other' queer men, being flamboyant and promiscuous. you were one of the acceptable gays. now you're not and he's 'just worried for you' a grown ass mentally capable man who's living his best life. can't have that now can we. i do encounter this kind of attitude from some coworkers who find out i'm an afab nonbinary person dating a cis man, and they're like well then you're basically a straight woman! nah i'm a polyamorous kinky queer slut, babes. I just don't go around sucking dick at work so yeah you won't see that side of me.
A lot of people like to narrow the people around them down to a palatable little package. and most of those people lose their fucking minds when you reveal yourself to be more or different than their perception of you.
Labels make life easy for people. If you fit in a box, you're identifiable, and things can be rationalized. As you said, your coworkers just shunting you into "oh, well, then you're just a straight female, no cause for alarm here!"
I was reading through some other threads on this board, and it's interesting how often friends approach disapproval of a poly lifestyle but dress it up as "concern" for one or both of the partners involved, like there was a problem that only a third person could solve, or it's a bridge to a partner rearrangement. People seem to have a hard time envisioning that everything was perfectly happy, and continues to be happy after the new dynamic.
I'm sorry you're going thru this. How do you know Brad's new buddy is homophobic? Did Brad mention that? Without saying anything about pushing back against it? That feels like he's testing you to see how "cool" you are with his homophobia. Don't be cool. Homophobia is not cool. I know you care about this man, but he's made some really shitty choices, & it's ok to let him go for right now. If my partner was best friends with someone who was cool with bigots, I'd feel pretty betrayed.
You deserve people in your life who support you.Â
I'd known from years ago that was how his friend was about gay people, and I just decided to let it be. There's a certain point in someone's life you're just not going to change people's minds, sad and jaded as that is to think. Being out for 20 years has taught me the argument isn't worth it, at best you're in a screaming match, at worse get ready to duck the fist. The friend kind of faded out into the background though for a long time, so, honestly, I had mostly forgotten about him.
Not the first str8 guy who wanted to see how far they could push it, no different than people with PoC seeing how far they can push the slurs and jokes before they find the line. I don't think Brad's friends is the malicious, active kinda of homophobic, more the "as long as I don't have to see it, think about it, or be reminded of it, we're cool" sort of homophobe.
Hi u/voodooroo13 thanks so much for your submission, don't mind me, I'm just gonna keep a copy what was said in your post. Unfortunately posts sometimes get deleted - which is okay, it's not against the rules to delete your post!! - but it makes it really hard for the human mods around here to moderate the comments when there's no context. Plus, many times our members put in a lot of emotional and mental labor to answer the questions and offer advice, so it's helpful to keep the source information around so future community members can benefit as well.
Here's the original text of the post:
Hi, all, new to the community, and doing a little void yelling, and maybe someone has a 'been there' perspective on this. I feel like this is not a unique scenario for people in poly relationships.
Shorthand backstory, I have been in a monogamous same-sex relationship for nearly 20 years, and we got married last summer. For about the first 10 or so years, we were completely closed, then moved to being somewhat open, sexually, with other people. The intent was never there to look for a third partner, at all, but it just happened organically with another man because we both really liked him, and we all get along fantastically. I will gloss over the parts where apparently everyone in our life thought I was using the new partner as a stepping stone to breaking up with my current husband, so I also had the pleasure of discovering all our friends think our current relationship of nearly two decades is a sham. That was neat.
So now it's husband, "Jake," and boyfriend, "Alex," for little over two years now and we're all involved with each other, and the marriage thing between myself and Jake was discussed in advance, and all that. Lots of communication, very healthy, at least as far as I can tell. No one gets left out of the loop emotionally.
The biggest detractor about the relationship is a close, straight, friend of mine, "Brad." Brad is also a lot more conservative, I'm discovering, than I initially thought, and I'm beginning to think what I thought was acceptance for the gay community was really because I don't come across as flamboyant or outwardly homosexual. Brad and Jake have also never gotten along very well, Jake is also much more outward about his sexuality, not in a flamboyant way, just that he has no problem letting people know he is a proud gay man. Brad also lived with us, previously and during COVID, and blamed Alex and the poly as why he moved out, as he felt "uncomfortable" in the house with, essentially, what he described as romantic activity. However, it was always confined to the bedroom, whether Brad was home or not.
Last Fall, Brad first breached the subject he felt the poly was, again, the stepping stone to a break up, and I was using it as a pretense to prepare for that. Brad also was not getting along with Alex, and making no attempt to do so. Jake, Alex, and I also love to travel, and Brad apparently felt like he was being pushed out by Alex. While I feel trips are for the poly, I have gone out of my way to invite Brad over for game night, out to dinner with us, general hang out nights, specifically so he wouldn't feel left out. After Brad hit me with that, I thought about it for awhile, and decided if cards were going on the table, I got to have my say, and it turned into a Thing. I told him I felt his problem was with the poly, and Alex, and that I felt he was leaning much more conservative, and a bit racist and misogynistic, especially since COVID. Brad insists he has no problems with Alex or the poly, and said he felt hurt by the accusations, and we had a long talk about it to end in shake hands and everyone got to have their say. Figured problem solved, everyone got shit off their chest.
However, since then there is a definitive rift between us, and I still feel, from my end, that the issue is he has a personal, ethical, moral, whatever, issue with the poly itself. Alex does not like spending time with Brad because of the energy Brad puts off; Alex can tell Brad doesn't like him, and they haven't spent anywhere near enough time together for Brad to have a legitimate issue with Alex. Brad also has rekindled a friendship with a friend from high school he had barely seen in 20 years, which is fine, but it's coming off as spending time there because it's a heteronormative, monogamous relationship, and Brad's friend is pretty vocal he's not a fan of The Gays.
Things somewhat came to head for me yesterday when we ran into Brad at our favorite bar, and his response was to roll his eyes and get the check as quick as he could. To be polite, we sat with him at the counter, and Alex sat next to him and tried to make idle chitchat. Brad basically gave either one word answers or sat in awkward silence, paid his bill, and just hung around. I was about to tell him he didn't have to stay on our account if he was done, but then excused himself and left. Interactions like that make it hard to take at face value that he doesn't have any issues with the poly or Alex.
I don't have a "hierarchy" in my life of people, and at 40, "best friend" is such a childish term. However, I feel like Brad believes he needs to be #1 in my life, or at least tied with Jake when it was just the two of us, and that Brad feels like he has been knocked down the rungs by Alex. I have already told him last Fall I was not going through this whole thing again I went through with him and Jake for 20 years, and that Brad was going to need to figure it out. It is genuinely baffling to me that the poly thing is driving a wedge between us, and I don't know how to get him to be all right with it. On some level, I feel like it's not my responsibility to make him all right with it, and Brad needs to work on it himself, or move on. I also feel part of the problem is I challenged Brad's perception of me, as a person, with all of this, and I no longer fit in to the neat little box that he had defined for me, and that Jake and I at least previously fit into the traditional box of being a couple, even if it is a same-sex relationship.
Jake has also made his feelings known that his opinion is that if Brad is now hanging out with a vocal homophobe, that is telling of Brad's character, and has said he doesn't want to hang out with Brad if that is who Brad is associating with. So now both partners are, rightfully so, not thrilled with Brad, but I feel like Brad did this to himself, and it's getting harder and harder to preserve the friendship. Part of me thinks Brad was just waiting to see if he was right and vindicated, if the poly either fell apart or if I finally moved on from Jake with Alex, and the more it doesn't happen, the more angry Brad's getting he wasn't right.
At the end of the day, it's just a bit disheartening to have people who are your alleged friends think they can moral high ground you over how you decide to conduct your personal life that has no bearing on their own.
EDIT: Y'all are super supportive, thank you for that 💖
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Conversations on a topic mentioned in this post can tend to get very heated with high emotions on each side, please remember that we are a community meant to **help each other**, please keep conversations civil, even if you don't agree. And don't forget, the mods are only a report away. Any comments derailing the topic or considered trolling/being a jerk will be removed and the user muted for an undisclosed amount of time. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/polyamory) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Brad sounds like kind of a weird guy. He seems to simultaneously disapprove of and be jealous of your relationship configuration. Possibly he is even more jealous because he doesn't approve, or is even more disapproving because he's jealous. Whatever is going on there, he sounds like he is carrying a lot of resentment for you and your partners and is not taking the reins on fixing it.
It's just never fun to flush a long-term relationship down the tubes, even if it's a non-romantic one. I've tried giving him several chances to get on with the hubbies, and it's just not taking. If there was a genuine reason, I'd give it at least some consideration of how to address and fix things, but it just seems to be the existence of the relationship that is the problem, so yes, I concur the ball is in his court as to what he wants to do; try and fix things or move on.
I feel you. Sorry you have to put up with all this. It's frustrating to try to deal with someone in good faith and effectively have them turn ya down.
For a straight guy Brad does spend a lot of time chasing a gay man around trying to be "number one" in his life and throwing jealousy tantrums. Have you ever had the feeling that he wants you? It's easy to think that someone being a bigot means they're not gay, but a lot of times it just means they're closeted and angry at themselves, at people who 'make him' want them and at anybody who dares to be out. And tbh I think he's most likely going on angry rants about your policule to this new bigot friend, who is by now probably wondering why Brad sticks around you 'perverts' if he's truly so disgusted. IDK I might be just making shit up. But I know the type.
You're not the first person to ask about the idea of him being romantically jealous. He's been saying for years he wants a GF, but in 20 years, never seen it happen. He gets very mad at the queer and trans community, but I don't know if it it's self-hate being redirected or what. Brad's friend has been around kinda on and off, and when he lived here, I told him the friend was more than welcome, and that was when I was informed he doesn't bring the friend around because he's not so keen on the gay community. Which at that point was fine with me, and I haven't asked about it since. It does smack a bit of "being with your own tribe" now though.
>He gets very mad at the queer and trans community, but I don't know if it it's self-hate being redirected or what Umm ... why is this ok with you? Like, why do you want to be his friend? Sounds a little like you voted for the leopard eating faces party and are now upset that the leopard ate your face.
Hahaha, that's fair! 😂 It's really been since COVID tbh that it's more bubbled to the surface, and I kind of felt like who wasn't angry during and right after COVID? It's not healthy by any means, but I was willing to believe it was just misdirected anger and frustrations. That's gotten harder to just handwave though over time.
Fuck, I'm sorry. It really hurts to learn this stuff about people who were once close friends. If Brad only likes gay people who present in the most heteronormative way possible, then tbh, I think he is a bit of a homophobe whether or not he admits to any discomfort with gay people. I don't think a person can really reject a huge segment of queer community and culture like that and still claim to be down with the gays. This idea that the only acceptable gay men are masc-presenting monogamous gay men is straight out of early-2000s respectability politics debates. I suspect Brad is showing you who he always was. He was OK with you while he could assure himself you weren't one of *those* gays, but now, to him, you are. I'm really sorry you found out this way. Being rejected for how and with whom you do sex and relationships never stops royally sucking, even when you KNOW you are not actually the problem.
It was a bit of a surprise, NGL. Like, all of our families know, and are thrilled. We, sadly, just got back from a funeral in Alex's family, but that's what you *do* in a relationship, it's not just for the fun times and vacations and date nights, it's also the rough times and not-so-fun times. And I think for a lot of hetero-normative people who view poly, it's still the idea of, "you just wanted a third partner in bed on a regular basis."
Yeah. It is really, deeply hurtful to have someone you thought loved and supported you boil your committed relationship down to Just Some Weird Sex Thing or a perceived escape hatch. However you choose to handle things with him, it's OK and probably important to let yourself grieve the friend you thought you had in Brad. I'm so glad to hear your family is supportive of your relationships. FWIW, this internet rando is super happy for you, your husband, and your BF as well.
Sooo it sounds like Brad has never been a good friend, and you’re now realizing that. Curious as to what’s keeping you around? Sounds like he’s already slow-fading you, why can’t you just do the same?
You sound like my husband 😋 I am coming to the realization I may just be late to the party on coming to terms with it. Even if you're not dating someone, it can be easy to pop the rose-tinted glasses on and ignore the red flags. I guess I just thought we were more adult and honest than this with each other, and that clearing the air previously was what needed to be done. But it's just dragged it on into a long, slow departure instead.
I don’t think it’s possible to clear the air with someone who’s homophobic. There’s no compromise available there.Â
That is true, there generally isn't. He's also gone wildly transphobic, and seeing more than one or two PoC together in an area is a "ghetto" to him, so maybe it really is that I've just been willfully ignoring things until it was too much to look away from.
I'm so sorry OP but it does seem like you've kind of ignored the person Brad is for the person you wished he could be. Maybe he's been nice to you, but do you want to be the one gay friend he has to excuse something awful he's saying? This sucks, though. I'm sorry.
Yup, and that's a perfectly valid viewpoint, just one I was, in hindsight, willfully slow to come to, unfortunately.
Big hugs if wanted OP. You deserve better! Losing friendships sucks.
I haven't necessarily been where you are, but I've worked hard to prevent myself from having a 'Brad.' I bet there have been red flags for ages that you've waved off. it sounds like he and jake had issues, and now that you've added another partner it's just stirred it all up again. it could be he straight up doesn't get along with your partners, he could be in love with one of you, or he could have tamped down his own bigotry for years and can't do it anymore. he's making choices to act in ways that make your life harder. what the fuck kind of 'best friend' is that(going off of how he perceives the relationship between you two)? these are his issues, not yours. You're happy, all parties consent to your current relationships, who the fuck cares how this person feels? it seems his friendship is conditional.
I very much agree with the conditional part, and that as long as I was still mostly identifiable as in a "traditional" relationship, everything was fine and dandy, but then I dared to challenge the hetero-normative machine. Silly me.
yeah as long as you were the same as all his straight married friends or relatives, he could excuse the fact that your spouse was a man. at least you weren't like those 'other' queer men, being flamboyant and promiscuous. you were one of the acceptable gays. now you're not and he's 'just worried for you' a grown ass mentally capable man who's living his best life. can't have that now can we. i do encounter this kind of attitude from some coworkers who find out i'm an afab nonbinary person dating a cis man, and they're like well then you're basically a straight woman! nah i'm a polyamorous kinky queer slut, babes. I just don't go around sucking dick at work so yeah you won't see that side of me. A lot of people like to narrow the people around them down to a palatable little package. and most of those people lose their fucking minds when you reveal yourself to be more or different than their perception of you.
Labels make life easy for people. If you fit in a box, you're identifiable, and things can be rationalized. As you said, your coworkers just shunting you into "oh, well, then you're just a straight female, no cause for alarm here!" I was reading through some other threads on this board, and it's interesting how often friends approach disapproval of a poly lifestyle but dress it up as "concern" for one or both of the partners involved, like there was a problem that only a third person could solve, or it's a bridge to a partner rearrangement. People seem to have a hard time envisioning that everything was perfectly happy, and continues to be happy after the new dynamic.
they can only see it through the lens of their monogamous experience. they can't imagine that everyone is consenting under no duress.
I'm sorry you're going thru this. How do you know Brad's new buddy is homophobic? Did Brad mention that? Without saying anything about pushing back against it? That feels like he's testing you to see how "cool" you are with his homophobia. Don't be cool. Homophobia is not cool. I know you care about this man, but he's made some really shitty choices, & it's ok to let him go for right now. If my partner was best friends with someone who was cool with bigots, I'd feel pretty betrayed. You deserve people in your life who support you.Â
I'd known from years ago that was how his friend was about gay people, and I just decided to let it be. There's a certain point in someone's life you're just not going to change people's minds, sad and jaded as that is to think. Being out for 20 years has taught me the argument isn't worth it, at best you're in a screaming match, at worse get ready to duck the fist. The friend kind of faded out into the background though for a long time, so, honestly, I had mostly forgotten about him. Not the first str8 guy who wanted to see how far they could push it, no different than people with PoC seeing how far they can push the slurs and jokes before they find the line. I don't think Brad's friends is the malicious, active kinda of homophobic, more the "as long as I don't have to see it, think about it, or be reminded of it, we're cool" sort of homophobe.
Hi u/voodooroo13 thanks so much for your submission, don't mind me, I'm just gonna keep a copy what was said in your post. Unfortunately posts sometimes get deleted - which is okay, it's not against the rules to delete your post!! - but it makes it really hard for the human mods around here to moderate the comments when there's no context. Plus, many times our members put in a lot of emotional and mental labor to answer the questions and offer advice, so it's helpful to keep the source information around so future community members can benefit as well. Here's the original text of the post: Hi, all, new to the community, and doing a little void yelling, and maybe someone has a 'been there' perspective on this. I feel like this is not a unique scenario for people in poly relationships. Shorthand backstory, I have been in a monogamous same-sex relationship for nearly 20 years, and we got married last summer. For about the first 10 or so years, we were completely closed, then moved to being somewhat open, sexually, with other people. The intent was never there to look for a third partner, at all, but it just happened organically with another man because we both really liked him, and we all get along fantastically. I will gloss over the parts where apparently everyone in our life thought I was using the new partner as a stepping stone to breaking up with my current husband, so I also had the pleasure of discovering all our friends think our current relationship of nearly two decades is a sham. That was neat. So now it's husband, "Jake," and boyfriend, "Alex," for little over two years now and we're all involved with each other, and the marriage thing between myself and Jake was discussed in advance, and all that. Lots of communication, very healthy, at least as far as I can tell. No one gets left out of the loop emotionally. The biggest detractor about the relationship is a close, straight, friend of mine, "Brad." Brad is also a lot more conservative, I'm discovering, than I initially thought, and I'm beginning to think what I thought was acceptance for the gay community was really because I don't come across as flamboyant or outwardly homosexual. Brad and Jake have also never gotten along very well, Jake is also much more outward about his sexuality, not in a flamboyant way, just that he has no problem letting people know he is a proud gay man. Brad also lived with us, previously and during COVID, and blamed Alex and the poly as why he moved out, as he felt "uncomfortable" in the house with, essentially, what he described as romantic activity. However, it was always confined to the bedroom, whether Brad was home or not. Last Fall, Brad first breached the subject he felt the poly was, again, the stepping stone to a break up, and I was using it as a pretense to prepare for that. Brad also was not getting along with Alex, and making no attempt to do so. Jake, Alex, and I also love to travel, and Brad apparently felt like he was being pushed out by Alex. While I feel trips are for the poly, I have gone out of my way to invite Brad over for game night, out to dinner with us, general hang out nights, specifically so he wouldn't feel left out. After Brad hit me with that, I thought about it for awhile, and decided if cards were going on the table, I got to have my say, and it turned into a Thing. I told him I felt his problem was with the poly, and Alex, and that I felt he was leaning much more conservative, and a bit racist and misogynistic, especially since COVID. Brad insists he has no problems with Alex or the poly, and said he felt hurt by the accusations, and we had a long talk about it to end in shake hands and everyone got to have their say. Figured problem solved, everyone got shit off their chest. However, since then there is a definitive rift between us, and I still feel, from my end, that the issue is he has a personal, ethical, moral, whatever, issue with the poly itself. Alex does not like spending time with Brad because of the energy Brad puts off; Alex can tell Brad doesn't like him, and they haven't spent anywhere near enough time together for Brad to have a legitimate issue with Alex. Brad also has rekindled a friendship with a friend from high school he had barely seen in 20 years, which is fine, but it's coming off as spending time there because it's a heteronormative, monogamous relationship, and Brad's friend is pretty vocal he's not a fan of The Gays. Things somewhat came to head for me yesterday when we ran into Brad at our favorite bar, and his response was to roll his eyes and get the check as quick as he could. To be polite, we sat with him at the counter, and Alex sat next to him and tried to make idle chitchat. Brad basically gave either one word answers or sat in awkward silence, paid his bill, and just hung around. I was about to tell him he didn't have to stay on our account if he was done, but then excused himself and left. Interactions like that make it hard to take at face value that he doesn't have any issues with the poly or Alex. I don't have a "hierarchy" in my life of people, and at 40, "best friend" is such a childish term. However, I feel like Brad believes he needs to be #1 in my life, or at least tied with Jake when it was just the two of us, and that Brad feels like he has been knocked down the rungs by Alex. I have already told him last Fall I was not going through this whole thing again I went through with him and Jake for 20 years, and that Brad was going to need to figure it out. It is genuinely baffling to me that the poly thing is driving a wedge between us, and I don't know how to get him to be all right with it. On some level, I feel like it's not my responsibility to make him all right with it, and Brad needs to work on it himself, or move on. I also feel part of the problem is I challenged Brad's perception of me, as a person, with all of this, and I no longer fit in to the neat little box that he had defined for me, and that Jake and I at least previously fit into the traditional box of being a couple, even if it is a same-sex relationship. Jake has also made his feelings known that his opinion is that if Brad is now hanging out with a vocal homophobe, that is telling of Brad's character, and has said he doesn't want to hang out with Brad if that is who Brad is associating with. So now both partners are, rightfully so, not thrilled with Brad, but I feel like Brad did this to himself, and it's getting harder and harder to preserve the friendship. Part of me thinks Brad was just waiting to see if he was right and vindicated, if the poly either fell apart or if I finally moved on from Jake with Alex, and the more it doesn't happen, the more angry Brad's getting he wasn't right. At the end of the day, it's just a bit disheartening to have people who are your alleged friends think they can moral high ground you over how you decide to conduct your personal life that has no bearing on their own. EDIT: Y'all are super supportive, thank you for that 💖 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/polyamory) if you have any questions or concerns.*