Doing Polyamory Just to Please A Partner

My sweetheart and I have been together for 7 years. I knew going into this relationship that he eventually wanted to integrate other relationships into his life. We opened up one year ago. I have read the books, been to workshops and weekend conferences. I have found ways of self soothing and I am even starting to find my way in the dating pool. I have one regular partner and I have my feelers out with a few more. I have had moments of compersion. I go on tea dates with my metamour, I engage in evenings with her other partners as well. I live separately from my partner, I have two kids with whom he is engaged, I am in grad school, I work full time, I love my friends, I spend time at the gym and birdwatching. 

After an extremely stimulating weekend of all things poly learning, a play party, so much extroverting, alcohol and traveling 6 hours home, I finally had an introvert meltdown. Like full on crying on the plane. My worry was that what IF I find the things that I like about poly but I am never ok with his autonomy? 

He keeps asking me. "Why does it matter what I do when you are not around?"

Some thoughts I have are about reasons for jealousy in general are; FOMO, in group/out group fear dying alone at the extreme end, comparison, and finally the big one my anxious attachment style and legitimate fears of abandonment and NRE disrupting my equilibrium (my mom was married 8 times, I have had 6 different step dads, my mom chose those relationships over her and I and she has molded and conformed to their identities from Latter day Saint to dominatrix im not kidding, to everything in between). 

My partner doesn't seem to have much tolerance for my discomfort. I have been trying these new ideas and the lifestyle for a year now. Each time I bring a new challenge he doesn't want me to suffer. Which I understand, I dont like feeling dysregulated either. He is disempowered and doesn't know how to support me in moments of rupture. And I do have ways of self soothing. As a new solution he suggested he can remain in my life but not be a primary partner. I do have my own positive experiences. 

My fears are, What IF I am just doing this for him? What IF I don't want to be the monogamous partner of a partner who deeply identifies as poly and queer? What work do I need to do, what do I need to understand about his autonomy? Help! I want to remain with him and I am deeply torn about how to get to a better place.

You didn't say in your letter if you started off being polyamorous or not or what motivated you to open your relationship up which I think might shed a little bit more light onto why it is that you are going through some of these feelings. It seems like you've tried your best to cope with the ups and downs of polyamory by using social interactions and immersing yourself in "the scene" in order to escape from your emotions a little bit.

I want to clarify -- and not to be pedantic -- but introversion is where people recharge themselves through being alone and extraversion is where people recharge themselves by being among people. You can be an outgoing introvert and a shy extrovert. It doesn't sound like you were "extroverting". It sounds like you were forcing yourself into a super polyamorous situation so that you can see yourself "being polyamorous". It's an almost "fake it until you make it" moment. It seems almost like if you've convinced yourself that if you can do polyamory externally, you can then somehow align it internally.

You don't really talk about whether or not you want to do all of these things. Do you want to date more people? Do you want to have tea dates with your metamour? Did you want to do the workshops? Did you want to attend the conferences? What do you get out of polyamory outside of continuing a relationship with your partner? Is there any specific benefit for you?

Sometimes jealousy is warranted and it has nothing to do with one's inability to feel happy for a partner and the solution isn't necessarily to stop feeling. It's to pay attention to the feeling. You can't therapise yourself into being polyamorous if it's not what you want any more than you could therapise yourself into wanting children if you didn't want to.

You're framing this as a lack on your behalf, that there is something that you need to do in order to get it to work for you. But that's really a truly self-sabotaging way to look at it. Because fundamentally your goal here is not to preserve your own happiness. It's to preserve your partner's happiness. And so long as you continue to prioritise someone else over yourself, your brain will scream out for relief, especially if it is for something you don't genuinely want.

I can't tell you whether or not you're doing polyamory (or from what it sounds like, being mostly monogamous to someone who is polyamorous) just to please your partner. But the way you solve that is by first asking yourself an initial question:

Could you be in a monogamous relationship with someone who had a time intensive hobby or career?

There are lots of ways to do polyamory that are incompatible with one another. Two people being polyamorous doesn't make their lifestyles compatible in the same way that two people being monogamous doesn't make their lifestyles compatible. But one thing that rings true throughout all forms of polyamory is that you generally get less time with a partner than you would get if you were in a typical monogamous relationship -- save for those who are in monogamous relationships with people who have a time intensive hobby or career that means they get less time with them.

So are you okay with less time? You don't live together and you do have children so you do have demands on your time. But is that what you want? Is that your ideal? If you weren't with your current partner, what type of relationship would you seek out on your own? It's critically important that you're able to separate your own wants and desires away from your partnership to figure out what it is that you want.

If it's not the time that's an issue for you, then it's important to figure out what your anchor and your ideal is. What is your personal reason for being interested in polyamory? Do you want to have multiple relationships? Do you enjoy dating? Do you want to have the freedom to explore relationships as a matter of principle? Are you super independent and wanting to live your own life without necessarily centering it around romantic relationships?

I think that for some people, they begin to try polyamory for the purposes of saving a relationship and not breaking up with someone. I think that it's very understandable for that to be an initial reason to try polyamory and for it to be one of the few reasons that stick out to people. And that isn't necessarily bad.

But foundationally if you are agreeing to a polyamorous relationship to save a monogamous one, you are essentially agreeing to a completely different style of relationship to save another one. It's like agreeing to a long distance relationship to preserve an in-person relationship. It can work for some people but only if long distance works for them in general. If long distance doesn't work for them, switching over to that may feel good in the short term but it ultimately doesn't work in the long term.

Once you figure out whether or not polyamory is something you see a direct benefit in for yourself, it may then be beneficial for you and your partner to actually discuss your ideals. What concerns me is less that your partner doesn't know how to address your anxiousness (a lot of people struggle with this) but that being in your life but not being a "primary partner" kind of seems to suggest that you both have been operating under assumptions rather than outright discussions of where you fit into each other's life as polyamorous partners.

It makes sense for you to feel scared, unmoored and anxious if your relationship has shifted on such a basic foundational level but you have never really discussed what it means for your relationship. You opened a year ago, but what did that actually mean for your relationship?

Have you ever discussed the time you're spending with each other and your children and other partners? Have you defined what types of polyamory seem appealing to you? What types don't? Where do both of your wants and needs meet? Where do they differ? What is comprisable and what isn't?

You're asking about his autonomy but it's almost as if you're not considering your own. And I can see why he might struggle to tolerate the discomfort of this situation because he can't essentially make you value your own autonomy in this way. The challenges you essentially bring him in a way is "how can I get over my emotions so that I can give you everything you want" which... if he is a decent partner, he wouldn't feel empowered to help you find a way to do that.

Again, I can't tell you if you're polyamorous or not or whether or not you're doing this for the purposes of just pleasing your partner. But I can tell you that I think so long as you base your entire life off of preventing something you can't control, you will likely be in a similar circle of self-sabotage as I was stuck in for a long period of time.

Right now, you are putting the responsibility of your partner sticking around on your own shoulders when you can't actually prevent that. Even if your partner was more than happy to return to monogamy with you and completely give polyamory up, you still would not be able to prevent your partner from falling out of love with you.

People fall out of love with people all of the time. Outside of being a decent person who tries to contribute to a relationship the way any kind adult would, you cannot keep your partner. This is something we often tell ourselves from childhood as a means of coping and adapting. Given what you described about your own childhood, it wouldn't surprise me.

As a child, we rely heavily on our caregivers for stability and love. When we experience instability, we often in order to avoid accepting the depressing, earth shattering reality that our caregivers are incapable of giving us love, we will tell ourselves that if we only just didn't spill our milk, then our parents will behave the way they should. At the time, this belief served us well. It helps us cope.

But as we get older, this idea is maladaptive. Believing that we can control the love that's given to us by our behaviour ends up betraying us in the end because we're constantly giving up our own power. As a child we could not walk away from situations that did not serve us.

As adults, we can. But when we still hold to this belief, we end up constantly giving and giving, trying to find the magical behaviour that gets us the love we desire instead of just walking away. I'm not saying the solution here is to walk away. But instead, accepting the fact that you do not control what other grown adults do is the first step towards recognising your own autonomy and wants.

The fact is that ultimately, you cannot control whether or not your partner stays in love with you – regardless of polyamory or monogamy. There is nothing that you can do to prevent someone from abandoning you. As terrifying as that is, when you actually are able to let go of that responsibility and give yourself the permission to just be without having to control everything around you, in my experience, it's absolutely a huge step towards freedom and autonomy.

If all you are ever doing is trying to control the uncontrollable, you will only temporarily be satisfied with the illusion of control rather than being able to truly step into the things you can control.

In summation, I think the work you need to do is less about understanding him and more about understanding yourself. My 101 and 102 articles might be helpful for you in unpacking some of this. Figure out whether or not this is something that you want for yourself for a personal reason and then figure out if your wants are actually compatible.

You may find throughout this process that there is a better alignment you can have as two people that means your anxiety lessens or you may figure out that you are not as compatible as you once thought. Polyamory is not a reason to avoid a breakup. It's not about filling your life with semi-sustaining relationships until you reach a level of permissible stasis. Even if you don't have to break up in polyamory doesn't mean that you should necessarily stay together.

Instead of trying to preserve the relationship you have with your partner, focus instead on trying to improve the relationship you have with yourself.

I hope this helps and good luck!