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

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Podcast Transcript

I sent the question in recently that, does this heavy ever get easier? And I guess it's because my partner and I have been doing non Monogamy. I for seven years and off and on, we have had partners, but my partner was, was the one who initiated the opening of the relationship.

So my partner and I are married, but we also have a mutual partner that we're also in a triad with, but we also date this other partner separately. We've gone through some kinks with that (kinks as in hard things), but I guess my big question is, I'm it still feels like a big challenge a lot of the time. And it's it feels great too, lots of ups, but also the intensity of the hard times. You know, sometimes it's still there. And I'm wondering, is that just something to accept?

Response

So in your question, you don't really talk about—you said that your partner initiated the opening of the relationship. It's been going for seven years, off and on, which I don't know if that means that you've closed or opened your relationship, or if that just means you haven't necessarily been fully dating other people.

The biggest thing that I'm figuring out here, and that sticks out to me, is that you are married. So that does mean, anxiety-wise, that you have something very big to lose, even if you're not necessarily fully hierarchical. And you don't think hierarchically—I don't know if that's a word—even if you don't think that way.

Whenever you create a situation where somebody is essentially on a pedestal, more or less, or somebody is at the top, that means that there's one position, there's one married position. And that is also what monogamy teaches you. A mono-centric society teaches you this and reinforces this your entire life. So even if you don't operate it that way, you got this internal kind of cultural script going on in your head.

Marriage and polyamory

There is one throne and one person who can sit in that throne, and right now, that's you. But you can be replaced. You can be kicked out of that throne, and then somebody else is in the throne, and what then?

And even though you're in this sort of triad, and you kind of seem to date similar people or whatnot, I mean, in some ways, that's a little scarier, because you could do a bait and switch—switch flop. And I'm not saying that your partner's going to do that, but I'm saying this is the narrative that can go on in your mind, and this might be why it's still continuously, continuously hard, is because you have something to lose, right?

You are not this person who's dating both of you. I'm not saying that your triad or the person that you have a triad with, or any of the people that you date, are having a gay old time, and there's nothing wrong with them. But I'm saying that from their position—they've got a lot to lose too, again, not saying that—but you are married, so you have this whole life that you've built together, and then now there's all these other people.

And you grew up in a mono-centric society that's told you that love looks in a specific way, and that's the only way it looks. And so you've got this mono thing kind of going on with the marriage.

Opening a marriage

And you—I don't know—you said your partner initiated the opening up, so I don't know if you really wanted it, and you've still got something to lose. And that's the constant throughout these last seven years, or however long you've been married. You have—you're sitting in this throne, and you can be dethroned at any point in time, and somebody else can take your place.

And again, I'm not saying that this is what you're consciously thinking, but this is kind of part of—the up and down of having a hierarchical system is that sometimes it manifests a lot of anxiety, because if you have a hierarchy, only one person can be at the top. So I think that's worth acknowledging to yourself, and worth understanding that—okay, you have reasons to be really scared, because you have something big to lose, and that is the big challenge.

The other thing that I'm wondering is: Okay, so you've opened your relationship, you're in a triad with somebody, and then you have another partner that you both date, but you date separately. Have you guys ever sat down — when you opened your relationship, did you sit down and go, "Okay, we want to open this relationship”. Do you know how many people that your partner wants to date? How many partners your partner wants to have? Do you know the polyamory ideal situation that they have in their mind? What is your polyamory ideal situation that you have in mind?

Just because two people are polyamorous—and even if you weren't necessarily that interested in it when you started out—doesn't mean that you're necessarily compatible in terms of the life that you want to live together. Just like two people who are monogamous are not necessarily compatible. Two people can be monogamous, but one person wants to have children and have a big house, and another person wants to travel and be nomadic. There's lots of different ways to live.

So just because you're both polyamorous—or I don't know if you actually are, but you're certainly in an open or polyamorous-seeming relationship—doesn't mean you necessarily want the same things.

So you may not want to triad. It may have just ended up being that way, but that may not be your ideal. Some people—that is their ideal. That's their total ideal. Some people want kitchen table polyamory. Some people want parallel polyamory. People like me, I'm solo polyamory. I don't want to live with anybody. I want to have my own stuff, my own things going on, and I would never be compatible with somebody who wanted kitchen table polyamory. That's not my—well, if they wanted me to be in that kitchen table, that's not my gig.

So if you've never had that discussion, then essentially what's happened here is that you've had an established relationship that's followed the cultural script, and then you veered off the road of that cultural script into this brand new territory with no understanding or guidance of where the hell you're going. "Okay, now we're dating this one person together. Okay, we're dating this other person together."

Of course you're fucking scared. You've got—you're in a car that was on a road that you knew where that road ended, and now all of a sudden, you're off-road, and you have no idea where the hell this is going. From the sound of it, it doesn't sound like you've had this conversation, and it's really, really important.

Negotiating time in polyamory

Because yes, we can love—there's no boundary to love, and we can love as many people as our hearts desire. But there's 24 hours in a day, there's seven days in a week, and you can only spend so much time with so many damn people.

The day that some kind of time-whiney thing, any kind of time machine thing, will be very popular in the polyamory community. But at this point in time, we do not have that type of technology, and so you got to make decisions about how you're going to spend your time.

And we gotta work. Unfortunately, we must sell our labour to live. And we also have hobbies. We also have friends, we also have families. We go to the gym. There's lots of shit that we have to figure out in our calendars. That's why Google Calendar is so popular in the polyamory community. It involves planning and thinking about your time, how you're going to spend your time, and that's a lot.

And so if you have no idea—and it's especially true for people who live together, oh my god, I cannot emphasize this enough—even monogamous people, I think they need this shit. You need to have scheduled, dedicated time together, even if you live together. Time sharing the same physical space is not scheduled dedicated time. I'm going to tap the sign again vigorously.

So you really, really need to have a good idea of how much time you have with your partner that's yours. How much time you have with other partners, that's theirs. It's like The Goonies. It's like, "It's their time down there," or wrong. "It's our time down here." You know you're dealing with—this is Troy’s bucket situation. You are all over the place.

So if you have that idea, then you're way less—you know, I just alienated all of the Gen Z's with that Goonies reference. But if you haven't seen the Goonies, do it. Anyway, you need to figure out how much time you have with your partner, and that is going to be incredibly grounding.

Established, dedicated time

Because if you have—let's say you've got Tuesday nights as your nights, that's nobody else's time. You've got those nights unless somebody gets into a car accident or keels over or something. That's your time together, and that is going to be so super freaking grounding, and you can do fun stuff during that time, and you can have your relationship.

I don't advise using fun shared time together as relationship admin time. Don't think that’s exciting. But you have your time, and then they have their time with their other partner, and then as a triad, maybe you guys have time together. Work out this physical scheduling monstrosity so that you can feel a little bit more grounded and figure out where the hell this truck is going.

You know, you've got this other triad, which—wow, points to you, I must say. Please give yourself a pat on the back. The amount of people who open their relationships, who go into a triad and have everything blow up in their face—and you said that things are difficult, and you've had your ups and downs, but it seems like, more or less, things have been going okay.

And I really hate saying that triads are like "higher level polyamory." I fucking hate shit like that, because it just encourages the idea that relationships are skills that you beat or win, whatever. Anyway, this is a side point. Please give yourself some credit for being in what is kind of a difficult, complicated situation when you're just starting out. That's points to you.

Finding your polyamory ideal

But yeah, I think that having a good idea of where the hell this is going—do you want another triad? Do you want to be dating the same people? Is that causing issues? Should you have some time to go out and—are you interested in other dates? How many partners do you want? When will you be poly-saturated? When will you be—think about those things. What is your ideal?

You're not always necessarily going to get your ideal, right, because so many people's ideals are like, "Oh, I want five partners, and they all live with me, and I never have to—nobody ever gets jealous, and I never have to go and take time out." You're not going to have your full ideal, of course, but knowing what style of polyamory you want, how does this manifest in your life? Where do you see yourself? Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten years? All those annoying questions.

It's actually super helpful, because what if your partner wants—you got a triad now. What if they want the other person to move in and you don't want that? There's so many different ways that— you can organise your life in a million different ways. So knowing how it is that you both are interested in organising your life together, and what's going down with the triad—what's the ideal there? I think that would be so, so helpful, and that would help a lot with this anxiety.

Anxiety in polyamory

Because yeah, you're always going to have little ups and downs. Whenever your partner is dating somebody new, you might get that little like, "Oh, I'm scared," especially because—and like I said, please remember and tell your brain—you have a lot to lose. You're married, you have a little—even if you don't practice hierarchy, you still got a little bit of the sign of hierarchy there.

And I'm not saying that it's bad, and you do this whole thing where "hierarchy is bad"—I don't agree. If you want to stay married, there's lots of personal and individual reasons to be married, not all of them have to do with saying this person is better than everybody else. It's not what it's about.

But your brain has been steeped in mono-centric culture for the vast majority of your life, and marriage has a cultural meaning, even if you're defining it differently. And so you are going to have that little brain—your little brain is trying to keep you alive. Your little brain is like, "Oh, we can't lose our social groups. Our social group is how we've survived for ages and ages and ages. We must stay in our social group. You're doing something out of the social norm that we've been raised to accept. This means you're going to get kicked out of the social group. Don't do this."

Your brain is very, very smart, but also very, very stupid. And so you have to work with it, rather than against it. And I have a whole episode about anxiety—I think it's the childhood trauma and polyamory episode. Definitely check that out where I talk about working through your anxieties.

Compassion in anxiety

But I think if you can just see these ups and downs and these intensities and these feelings—it's your brain, sometimes it's going to be still there. I do think even if you iron things out, you get everything settled, your brain might occasionally go WOAH, because that's what brains do.

And I've more or less dealt with really bad anxiety, really bad generalized anxiety, OCD, really intense stuff, and I still occasionally have a little panic attack as a treat. It's just your brain goes UGHH and you're like, "Okay, listen, we're cool now. You can calm down. Everything's okay. We got this. We'll sort it out. Take a chill pill. Chill out. I hear that information”.

Think about it. If you get a bad review on your favourite restaurant, and somebody's like, "This place sucks," and you're just like, "Okay, I see that information. Thank you very much. I don't care, thanks." But I think you should be nicer to your brain, because your brain isn't actually trying to be a troll. It's genuinely trying to help.

This is just an example of how we work in certain environments for a very long time, and then our—if you think about it, our environment has rapidly changed. And so we're just trying to catch up a little bit.

So don't be so hard on yourself about it. It's not because you're secretly not polyamorous enough, or whatever the f*ck anybody else wants to say. I think, accept that there will be occasional moments of "UGH," but I think if you actually sat down with your partner and figured out what the ideal is, where's this truck going, that might help out a lot.

You still might be a little bit anxious, especially because you're married—you got a lot to lose. There's a lot of baggage on there, even if it's not your baggage, there's a lot of baggage on there. But overall, I think if you at least did that, that would probably help you out a lot. It would be very, very grounding.

And again, make sure you got that time—scheduled, dedicated, intentional time. I'm going to bang my head on the sign, because it's so important, especially if you live together, especially if you've been in a monogamous situation before. It's so easy to forget that it's not the same.

Yeah, obviously there's an aspect of living with a partner that makes things super easy versus somebody who lives further away, but it does not mean that it's scheduled, intentional time, and that is really, really important.

So yeah, I think I've covered what I've said and blabbered on enough, so I hope that helps and good luck.