That’s what’s on this week’s episode of Non-Monogamy Help.

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Podcast Transcript

The big issue my partner and I are having right now is that, basically, I didn't realize what it meant when we said we were each other's primary partners back in November. I know it's naive, but I didn’t realize he was coming into our relationship with some pre-established dynamics.

For example, he has someone he considers a friend with benefits—he sees her about once a month. But in reality, she’s a primary partner. They have a specific thing they do together: they “unicorn hunt.” (His words, not mine—I’m not a fan of that term.) He has been honest with me about it, but only after I saw some text messages light up his phone. I was like, Excuse me, do we need to talk about this? That’s what you get for having a giant iPhone 16 Plus or whatever it's called.

I identify as pansexual. He identifies as straight, though he's trying to figure out if he might identify as queer because of his interest in being with more than one person. But he's not attracted to men and doesn’t want relationships with them. So anyway, I’m attracted to people regardless of gender—but within limits, of course.

From the start, I’ve told him that I’m open to threesomes if they happen organically. We've had a couple of situations where we met a woman who seemed attracted to both of us, and we ended up giving each other fully clothed or semi-clothed massages, kissing, that sort of thing. But it didn’t lead to sex in the bedroom—just public, flirty, sweet interactions. I’ve even told him I’m open to hiring a sex worker because I fully support sex work and believe in women getting paid for their labor safely.

So yes, I’m open to threesomes. But I don’t want them to become the primary focus of our relationship—especially because that seems to be his entire focus with this other person. Their once-a-month meetup is only about that. And I believe him when he says that’s all it is. He actually has OCD, so we both relate to each other in terms of having certain compulsions.

But he’s made it clear that fulfilling this fantasy—being with more than one woman at a time—is so important to him that he doesn’t want to let go of this arrangement with his friend-with-benefits. And I don’t want him to let go of it either—it wouldn’t feel fair to me. But at the same time, I feel frustrated.

I have a lot going on. I have a full-time job. I’m in a graduate program. I’m an artist on the side. I perform my creative work publicly. I have a lot of friends. I barely have time for my primary relationship, let alone anything secondary. He, on the other hand, has a more freelance-type job, keeps to himself more, and finds a lot of his social interaction through online dating.

What really bothers me is that I didn’t realize I was getting involved with someone who already had a pre-established secondary relationship. And I feel like I’ve accidentally ended up in a mono/poly dynamic. Theoretically, I’m open—but in reality, I haven’t done anything one-on-one with anyone. Any experience I’ve had has been with him and another person. Meanwhile, he has this whole separate thing that we’re still trying to navigate. Are we doing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Is he telling me everything?

I just feel frustrated that I didn’t realize, when we started dating, that he was already bringing this into our relationship. And I think what bothers me most is that I had this naive idea that we were starting an open relationship together—from the same place. I thought we’d be making dating profiles together, listing each other as primary partners, and looking for other connections as a team. Instead, it feels like I’m joining something that already exists, and it’s causing friction.

For example, in January, I suggested, Why don’t we have a threesome—you, me, and your friend with benefits? And he was appalled by the idea. He said he didn’t want to combine these two parts of his life because he “puts me on a pedestal” and is “in love” with me (his words). Meanwhile, his dynamic with her is, in his mind, purely functional—just two people looking for a third to share an experience with.

So he doesn’t want to involve me in that. And that makes me feel left out—even though I was being open and vulnerable about the idea. Now, he’s suggested that I meet her platonically, and I’m open to it, but I’m also nervous.

I guess my frustration is that I feel like I’m willing to give so much to this relationship, but I also feel like he’s on this fast track to getting threesomes “out of his system.” (Which, honestly, I think is BS—because dude, you don’t know you’re going to get it out of your system. You might like it more.)

So I just feel like we’re not on the same page. It’s a small incompatibility, but it’s taking up a lot of my mental space.

Response

There's a kind of big thing here that has gone a little bit unaddressed that is kind of the seed of a lot of this doubt, and I'm surprised by how much you kind of skip over it. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you've said, but if I understand the process of events: you met this person, you wanted to be in an open relationship.

It doesn't sound like you started monogamous at all. You both wanted to be in an open relationship because of the issues that you specified in the last episode—you know, you've had a history of cheating, blah, blah. So you thought, "Yes, let's try an open relationship with this person."

You didn't know that he already had a "secondary partner." And you didn't find out about this until you looked at his phone, probably because it came out—you weren't like trying to snoop. It sounds like it just, you know, when bright light comes on, our eyes go toward it. What's that?

And he has a big phone screen, so you saw a text message, and that's when he decided to tell you that he has another partner. And he knows—he sounds like he's been in monogamous relationships in the past, and now is not wanting to be in them. And he knows enough about polyamory that he knows what a unicorn hunter is, but he doesn't know that he should have told you that he has another partner from the start.

That is a huge problem. That's a huge, huge problem. I'm very concerned with the fact that, especially when you kind of decided that you wanted to be primary partners—which I'll talk a little bit more about in a bit—he didn't tell you that he has another partner. He lied to you. This is, in many ways, in many people's definitions, cheating. It's my definition. It would be cheating.

I mean, I am totally open to the idea that people can define what cheating is, and that it may be different from relationship to relationship. But if he knows what a unicorn hunter is enough to use that to describe himself—and I'll that— it's neither here nor there about whether or not one should use that term, or whether or not people who are unicorn hunters are bad. I'm kind of more concerned with the fact that he didn't tell you and then you found out about it.

What does he have to say about that? Did he apologise for lying? Why did he lie? Why did he hide this from you? I'm very, very, very, very concerned about that, because there's a lot going on here. But if you started a relationship with this person already based off of a lie, is the problem that you aren't on the same page about what "primary" means, or that you feel kind of left out of these experiences, or is it that he lied and you're not really addressing it?

I don't know why it is that you weren't more angry about this, and maybe that's because in the past you have cheated on people. But that doesn't mean that it's okay for you to be cheated on, and that doesn't mean it's okay for people to hide things from you. Are you okay with that? Are you okay with him having not told you this from the beginning? That's a really big thing to leave out.

It would be one thing if he was monogamous and he had like a friend with benefits, because some people kind of do practice a little bit of non-monogamy without knowing that they are doing it. They kind of, you know, a lot of people do that. A lot of people during their "dating phase" before they "settle down" or get serious with anyone, might sleep with a couple of different people. And it's technically kind of non-monogamy, but they don't really see it that way.

So it'd be one thing if he was kind of monogamously oriented, but then had this friends with benefits and didn't tell you, because maybe he was figuring it out within the first couple of months—like, he didn't know if he still wanted to see this person.

And sometimes, there are a lot of cases where people, when they're first trying out non-monogamy, they don't know how to tell their partner about something, so they kind of put it off, and they kind of delay it, delay it, and then it becomes a secret, and then becomes something that they're hiding. But they never really meant to hide it. They just don't know how to have that conversation, and they're really scared to lose this relationship.

But he knows well enough to call himself a unicorn hunter, so it's not like he's unfamiliar with these concepts. So I'm very, very concerned about that, and I think that you need to think about whether that's okay with you.

You said you're six months into this relationship—let me just double check for a second—six months. Yes, okay, yes, I double checked, and it's been six months since your first date. And that's a very short period of time to already be having this like... Why hide it from you?

I just don't know why it is that you're not curious about that or more upset about that. I think you're deferring your upsetment—wow, I do have an English degree—you're deferring your upset to this other stuff, and not really addressing the kind of big-ass elephant in the room.

The combination—the other thing that's really concerning about this—the combination of lying to you, feeling like he has to get threesomes “out of his system”, him kind of devaluing his other partnership, and then putting you on a pedestal. This is a big, big concern for me.

It's okay if we have different relationships for different functions, and it's okay if we say, like, you know—When I had a partner, and I've said before on the podcast—I'm not a party person. I don't like parties. I don't like going out late and staying up late at clubs.

And I did have partners where, you know, my partner would go out clubbing, and they would have like partners that they went out clubbing with, and I wouldn't go out. And that's okay. Different people like different things. And so sometimes, you know, maybe one partner is really into going to the movies, and another partner doesn't like movies, so you go to—that's okay.

But this whole idea of he can't have threesomes with you because that's what he does with this other partner, and he's in love with you, but he... I don't think that that's a good thing, especially six months. Six months, and he's already in love, and already thinks that you're on this pedestal, and that he doesn't want to do any... He equates sex with purity in this weird way. I don't think that that is a good thing, and that really, really throws me off.

Because if you're on such a pedestal, then why did he lie to you? Why did he lie to you? If he really loved you, why did he lie to you about it? It sounds like he has some stuff to work out around that, and I don't know if I would personally feel comfortable with somebody putting me on a pedestal in that way.

When I had partners where they went out, it wasn't that they saw the people that they went out clubbing with as less than—they didn't. It wasn't that they couldn't go out clubbing with me. It was just that I wasn't interested in that. And as you said, you are interested in this.

So it's not that you're not interested. You may not be interested in "unicorn hunting," but you are interested in this thing. So now he's kind of basically been like, "Oh no, you're..." He's doing this madonna-whore thing. I don't think that that is a good thing, and I would personally not feel very comfortable about being put on a pedestal.

That's my own personal thing. I feel very uncomfortable—that's one of the reasons why all the time I'm telling people, "Please don't call me a guru, please don't call me an expert." That's my own personal hang-ups, my own personal psychological hang-ups. I don't like it when people put me on pedestals. But on a bigger level, I just feel like maybe you need to think about that a little bit.

Someone not wanting to do something sexual—it would be one thing, like some BDSM things as well. Some people have a kind of relationship with someone that leans more towards a dynamic that they feel comfortable in, and they wouldn't feel comfortable applying that dynamic to another relationship, and that's fine. That's okay, but that's not because one person is better than the other. The fact that he's creating a hierarchy of sexuality and emotion is a concern.

Now, you decided that you wanted to be primary partners. And I think in whatever you decide to do with this situation in terms of how you feel about him lying to you, this whole pedestal thing, I think that going forward, rather than relying on a sort of non-understanding of what "primary" means to both of you or to any other partner that you have, I think you need to get better acquainted with what "primary" actually means to you.

Because "primary," you know, a lot of people use hierarchical language without really talking about what it means, and assuming that everyone is on the same page, and you're clearly not on the same page in lots of different ways.

But one of the ways that you're not really on the same page is the time that you have. It doesn't sound like you've had the basic discussions of time. How much time do you spend with each other, how much time do you spend apart? And that also has to work in with your work schedule and all the other commitments that you have.

And I will say, in his defence, it's not really his fault that you are super busy, and he is not. It's not really his fault that he has a lot of spare time to go out dating and doing all these other things and you don't. And while it's very valid that you may feel frustrated by the fact that you have less time, and therefore less time to date and devote to other relationships, that is something that you have to sort out yourself.

You have to decide within your schedule if you're going to do your hobbies a little less, devote more time to other things. That is a problem that you kind of have to sort out yourself, because this isn't about him necessarily. This is something that you may see in other partners who have way more time than you and can go out on more dates. You may experience the same feeling.

And I feel like your application of the word "naive" to yourself is misplaced in some ways. It's not naive to expect someone to tell you if they have another relationship when they're starting a relationship with you, and for you to not have to find that out by looking at their phone and seeing a text message on their phone by accident. That's not naive. That's a normal expectation, and that is something which I think you have to address.

I think it's understandable for you to have hoped that you would have more emotional support in a new journey of non-monogamy. Because the reality of this situation, from what I can see, is that you're brand new to non-monogamy. You thought that he was brand new to non-monogamy. He's clearly not.

He knows what a unicorn hunter is. He has a partner who has other partners. He's not new to non-monogamy, and maybe that was something you just assumed, and he never said it, and that's fine. Maybe you assumed he was new, and that was wrong. There have been cases in my personal experience where I assume someone was non-monogamous when they weren't, or I misremembered them telling me.

However, even if you assumed that, he should have still told you he had another partner. You shouldn't have had to have found that out. So I don't think that you were completely naive in kind of this idea that you had of like, "Oh, we're both new to this. We're both going to be trying out, we're both going to be going through this together."

I don't necessarily think that's a good thing for you to want. I understand why you want it. There's lots of problems with that approach. But it's not naive of you to think that, because he kind of lied about not having another partner, and it seemed like he—I mean, I don't know what discussions you had. It sounds like you didn't know about it, and it kind of seemed like he allowed you to believe that he was brand new to non-monogamy, and he's clearly not.

So I feel like now you're kind of trying to make up with it by, you know, he has another partner, even if she's "secondary," even if she has, another “primary partner”. He has a history with another person, so you and he's lied to you about it, which I don't think helps the situation. But you're trying to reckon with this situation. And this situation will happen in a lot of cases.

It’s understandable to feel intimidated or scared when you're dating someone, then they've had—they have a partner who they've been with for a long time, regardless of whether you class that as a primary or secondary relationship.

Again, this is using labels to try and convey something that those labels don't convey. It's a longstanding relationship that has been built over time, regardless of how he devalues it and kind of puts you on a pedestal. It's still a long-term relationship.

It's the same if you move to a new place and you try to make friends with people, and people have like a best friend that they've been best friends with since they were two. It's going to feel intimidating, and that's okay, but I don't think that that is the issue.

The issue is that you were not told the truth about this. And I feel like, before you get into the nitty-gritty of how do you deal with the jealous feelings of being with someone who has another partnership that they've had for a long time, I think you need to address the massive elephant in the room of the fact that you weren't told about this beforehand.

And I feel like you're kind of suppressing that and going, "Oh no, but I guess it's because of the threesome thing. He's having threesomes with her. We just need to have threesomes and then everything will be all right."

Even if he didn't have that—regardless of the whole Madonna-whore thing he clearly has going on, which I've said my piece about—even if he didn't have that, and you were having more threesomes with other people, the fact that he didn't tell you about this other partnership is a problem that really needs to be addressed, and really is probably going to be the biggest thing that's coming up, I think, going forward, regardless of what you do about this.

Like I said, you need to talk about the time that you have spent, stop relying on the labels of primary and secondary. Because I think the biggest mistake that people make when they go into hierarchical polyamory and when they communicate about this is that people—and this isn't just hierarchical people. I think it's also part of the problem with the discussion that people have when they talk about hierarchical polyamory being a bad thing, or that these couples that hurt other, you know, hurt the “thirds”, in their life, things like that.

I think that the problem is that there is a kind of disconnect between an emotional hierarchy and a time hierarchy. And what I mean by that is that I think that as humans, we develop relationships with people. When we have a long-term relationship with somebody, whether it's a friendship or romantic relationship or a family member or anything like that, we have invested emotional time and energy into that person, but we don't mentally think of people in a hierarchy.

Even though we're socially kind of conditioned to see romantic relationships as more important than friendships, it's the fact that that isn't explicitly said, and that's not what people explicitly do or think about that makes it the problem, right? They automatically sort of shift to it, shift their time and their energy without verbally saying it, which makes people emotionally feel like they care more about the romantic relationships than their friends.

People don't, unless there's kind of like a bad situation where they're being forced to choose between family or friends or a partner, they don't mentally think "I love this person the most, I love that person the most." We may say things like, "Oh, you're my other half. You're my soulmate," we may say things like that, but we don't literally think that.

And the problem is that when couples, especially people who begin monogamously and open their relationship, they initially go—they see all this kind of talk about couples basically burning through other people or hurting other people, or hierarchical polyamory being bad.

And they know that emotionally they have this relationship that they've invested a lot of time in, that they might share property with, they might have children with. They have physical ties that mean that their time is taken up more. They feel bad about it. But then at the same time, they think, "Well, I'm not going to love another person less than I love my partner. I don't literally think that."

And so they say, "Oh, we don't have a hierarchy. I don't have a hierarchy. There isn't any hierarchy." What they mean by that is that "I don't mentally think that I'm gonna love my partner more than I love anybody else that I date." And they don't. I don't genuinely think that people do.

I think that it makes sense logically for you to be more emotionally invested in a relationship that you've spent years cultivating than somebody that you've just met. And I think we're all hierarchical when it comes to that. Yeah, we're gonna probably pay more attention and be more secure in relationships that we've built over time. Sometimes it comes back to bite you in the ass, but that makes sense.

What needs to be discussed is the hierarchy of time, and that's where I think people need to get real about the time that they spend with their partners and the time that they have with other people. And just because you spend more time doesn't mean that you love them more. And I think that's where people get really confused.

If you have a child, let's say you have two children, one child is an infant, one child is a teenager. You're going to spend way more time with that infant than you are with that teenager, because that infant needs you more. It doesn't mean that you love the infant more than you love the teen.

And it may look like that—you cuddle with the infant. You're all kind and cutesy with the infant, and the teen is like, "Get out of my face. I don't want to talk to you." It may appear like that or feel like that sometimes, but your time spent isn't necessarily a reflection of the depth of your love.

And where a lot of people end up with these kind of hierarchical terms and hierarchical polyamory is that they don't really think about the time that they spend. They kind of continue on. A lot of people, especially when they open a relationship, they kind of act like they're monogamous couples still. They don't really think about the time they spend apart from one another, they also mistake that the time they spend in the same household when they live together is automatically quality time, and it's not.

So using these shorthands of "primary" and "secondary," without clarifying what this means in terms of time spent is really one of the biggest pitfalls that I think a lot of people fall into. So instead of going forward, instead of being like, "we're primary partners," you need to explicitly talk about what that means. What does that mean in terms of your time? What does that mean in terms of their time? How does polyamory fit into your life? How many partners do you want? How many partners can you realistically fit in your schedule?

Do you need to take an honest look at your schedule and assess whether or not you actually have the time for multiple partners? That is a legitimate question to ask some people. I have talked with people about polyamory, and they've been like, "I don't even have the time to exercise, let alone have multiple partners." That is a thing, and that is a thing I've talked about in terms of the ability to have more time is often connected with economic privilege as well. That's a whole separate can of worms. But really look at your schedule and really see, is this something that you have time for?

I would also work on—we didn't really discuss this in your first question, but I think, you know, if you have a therapist, I would also work out, what was the motivation behind you cheating? What was the motivation there? Was it about, you know, you just kind of went with things as they came up, and you want to have that freedom and independence?

It may be very likely—I am a person who I don't like dating. I fucking hate dating. I have no interest in it. So I have been in many situations where, from the outside, it might have looked like mono-poly, because I had partners who were super into dating, had dates every week. That's what they enjoyed.

I didn't. My reason for being polyamorous and wanting polyamory was so that I could have the freedom and independence to go with situations as they came in my life, not because I love to be going out and hooking up. That's just not me. You know, no judgment to people who are, but that's like, I want that freedom and independence. That freedom and independence is really important for me, regardless of my time schedule. I want that option.

And even now, as someone who's more solo polyamorous and more independent, I definitely am not interested in the things that most monogamous people are interested in terms of living together with someone, in terms of having a kid, in terms of sharing finances. Not interested in that at all. So now I even more want that independence, regardless of how much time I have to spend dating other people, or even if I do date other people.

So you need to get a better understanding for yourself of how much time you want to spend. Is this about freedom? Because in the past, you've cheated because you've not had that freedom, and you've felt restricted by monogamy?

If you've cheated in the past because it's like secret and hidden, and there was that kind of a forbidden aspect to it. I think that's something that's different, which you might still need to talk about with a therapist. But figuring out your own schedule and how much time you have is really, really important. And don't rely on these shorthands of primary and secondary to communicate that.

I think it's understandable if you go into another relationship where somebody has a longstanding relationship with someone else, regardless of whether you class it as a primary or secondary relationship, you're going to have feelings about that, and that's okay. But I think the feelings you have around not being on the same page in this relationship have less to do with some of those typical things that would come up, and more to do with the fact that:

A) He didn't tell you about this other relationship. You found out. He lied to you.

B) He is basically doing a Madonna-whore complex, where he's fine with these other relationships, but he can't have threesomes with you because he loves you. That is a massive incompatibility that I think you're kind of glazing over and not really honestly looking at as a problem.

And it's a problem for a lot of reasons, but I won't go into those. It's a problem in this relationship, because you're clearly not going to get what you want. And what you want is understandable. You don't want that to become the center of your relationship. You don't want that to become the activity you do with each other, but you want it as an option. He doesn't want it as an option because, for whatever reasons that I think are very problematic, he doesn't want it as an option with you.

So you need to think about, what does that say about—are you willing to forego ever being in a threesome with somebody else because he loves you? And then I think this idea of feeling he has to get threesomes out of his system, that is the other big concern, because, again, it's an incompatibility thing. You have very different beliefs about what primary and secondary means. You have very different beliefs about what you want out of relationships.

Just because you're both willing to do non-monogamy doesn't mean you're compatible. You both clearly want different things, and you need to discuss that. You need to figure out what you actually want out of non-monogamy, figure out what you have time for, and then discuss the lying and this Madonna-whore thing going on, because I think that that needs to be addressed. And you really need to think about if that's something—six months is not a lot of time.

And if it were me in the situation, I think I would cut my losses and consider sorting out, going with somebody else who was more aligned with what I wanted out of a relationship, and didn't lie to me. That's just personally, that's what I would consider.

So yeah, hopefully I summarized that well enough. There's a lot of things going on here. I think that, like I said, in the future, if you do end up dating someone who had an—and even in this situation, if you decide to stay, I don't think necessarily meeting his "secondary" is going to solve the problem. I think that there is a basic incompatibility that I don't know—you have to resolve within each other if you want to invest that time.

But I don't think you should feel surprised by the fact that you feel jealous or feel—not even jealous, but you just feel a way about—you feel disconnected from and kind of put off a little bit by the fact that he had this long-term relationship, regardless of whether it's classed as secondary or not, that he didn't tell you about.

But that also that he has a history with someone else, and you can't catch up to that history. It's just going to be—you're going to have those kind of feelings going forward. But I don't know if those feelings are the crux of the problem here.

So yeah, I hope that helps, and good luck.