Scarleteen

for a while i've feeling bad about relationship with A, who i'm in a long-distance polyam relationship with. i feel invalidated because A is 18 and i'm around 3 months from that right now (she's six months older than me).
it hasn't been an issue until now, because A hasn't been sexually active, but lately she has been and i feel excluded because she has asked not to do sexual things with me until i turn 18, because of discomfort with legal stuff. literally everyone in our extended friend circle is horny for her, and i feel so much lesser than them because i can't be that for her, even though im ostensibly her partner.

she's also in a fwb-type relationship with someone that's in their early 20s; this has precipitated immense jealousy and self-hate on my part. it's utterly unfair that our age gap is so much smaller but we're the ones that would be legally categorized as abuse, when a relationship between a 18yo and a ~22yo is statistically far more likely to be abusive. this has gotten to the point where just seeing A's status change to 'online' makes me immediately anxious that i'm going to check social media and see affection between her and this older person.

how can i deal with this in a way that's actually productive? i know i need to talk to her about this at some point. i already talked to her about the envy. as a result, we tried quasi-breaking-up and just being friends until i'm 18 that didn't help at all, and we ended up renaming our relationship back to being partners.
what's really fucking me up is the jealousy, and i think we need to communicate about that; i'm just not sure what a solution, or even a mitigation, would look like.

additionally, i really can't be constantly feeling like utter garbage for these three months, since i'm doing undergraduate applications. people have suggested taking space from her for the duration. i'm so, so terrified that that i would lose her, though, and never get to be for her what other people can be right now, just by being lucky enough to be a little bit older. also, again, she's present in so many of my friendgroups that to take any significant distance would mean cutting myself off from basically my only support as a closeted queer trans girl.

Hi g4qumkmctb,

I'm sorry this is causing so much stress for you, especially at a time where you've got another big, stressful life thing you're trying to focus on (college applications are a headache all on their own). I agree that talking to her about this and figuring out how you two want to navigate this relationship over the next few months is important . To start out with, give these two articles a read (if you haven't already): http://www.scarleteen.com/relationship_ ... ationships
http://www.scarleteen.com/article/relat ... ed_monster
Are there things in those that you could see being helpful when addressing the issue of jealousy? Or how to navigate her having an additional partner?

You mention feeling like you can't be horny for her because of the limits you two have agreed on regarding your age. Do you mean you feel like you can't feel attraction to her in addition to not engaging in anything sexual?

i'm fine with her having additional partners; there's a combination of things in this particular situation that are making things difficult. she's affectionate, to the point of being intimate, with so many people, and doesn't make a super big distinction between 'definitely non-platonic friends' and Partners/{girl,boy,nb}friends. i would be fine with that if i could engage with her in the same way that basically everyone else can, but i can't, because it makes her anxious and uncomfortable (virginia and wisconsin both have age of consent at 18 and fairly severe laws around it).

that second article was wonderful, thank you.

as to your second point, i do feel like i can be. i'm extremely attracted to her. she's fucking beautiful and hot and everything i could hope for in a girlfriend. i am horny for her often. and i want to let her know that, but i can't express anything more than nonsexual attraction without hitting boundaries, even in _text_, and that hurts so so so so bad.

Since this is long-distance, I assume you are finding out about everything else she is doing with everyone else she is doing it with from her directly and via her social media?

If so, have you yet discussed putting some boundaries around that? Often, people in poly relationships need at least some limits and boundaries like that even when everyone in the relationship CAN be sexual in ways they want to with their partners, so this certainly wouldn't be just because of you two not yet being sexual together. In other words, it's pretty typical in poly/open relationships for people to limit what they tell one partner about sex and affection with others, and to limit some of how they are sexual or affectionate in public.