Is it wrong to want to make sure my relationship with my primary partner is safe and secure before considering exploring polyamory? My partner is poly and I am willing to explore a poly dynamic but I would like to feel secure first. He has expressed he would rather just jump into our relationship being poly and work from there. Am I being unreasonable? I feel that if you transition to a non monogamous relationship, your relationship should be healthy and secure first?
The language here is way too vague, and I think you really need to figure out more of the specifics of what you want.
For one thing, feeling secure and being secure are not the same thing! It is possible that a person in a pretty secure relationship might feel insecure because of internal assumptions, fears, or baggage. While those feelings are real, they may not be an objective reflection of the relationship’s actual security. So if your goal is to feel secure, that may include some internal work as well as work on the relationship.
For another, there is no relationship measurement system that can tell you when a relationship is “healthy” or “secure” or “safe.” That goal is far too vague to ever determine whether it’s been met.
It’s important that you identify what concerns you have in your own relationship and how you want to work on them. Something like: “Right now, we have a pattern of not tolerating tension, and so when one of us is upset, we go cold on each other, stop talking, and get clipped and snippy. Involving other people in that dynamic would be unfair to them and probably exacerbate the issue if we end up triangulating through someone else. Let’s work on our conflict tolerance and communication skills and get this under control first.”
Or, “Right now, almost all of the domestic work, date planning, etc. falls on me, and I feel resentful and under-appreciated, which causes fights sometimes. It wouldn’t work for us to try and date anyone else - I worry you’d either lean too hard on me to manage the new complexity of our social life, or you’d be around even less to help out, or you’d suddenly be able and willing to plan things with your new partners, which would make me feel hurt and neglected. Lets get into a better balance of managing our lives together before we try out non-monogamy.”
I’d generally say that yes, when there are specific dynamics in a relationship that are “unhealthy” or “unsafe,” that is not an appropriate time to try out non-monogamy. It’s not fair to the other people who’d get involved, and it will exacerbate whatever unhealthy patterns exist. But if you decide that you can’t take that step until you’re at a point where you never ever feel insecure or unsafe, that might be too high a bar to clear.