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

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Podcast Transcript

I’m (F) still fairly new to non-monogamy. I’ve developed feelings for someone that I met about 4 months ago and they know that I’m poly(am). (This might be a question inside of a question but I’ve read that non-monogamy and poly(amory) are different, but I’ve also read that someone people use it interchangeably just because the term poly(amory) is more widely known. Is it an accurate way to use both terms?)

I told him about 4 weeks ago that I really like him and he let me know that he’s A) not able to do long distance, and B) a serial monogamist. We’re still friends and I’ve been moving on from my feelings. In a turn of events, we had sex about 2 weeks later. I guess my question is: Do you have any advice for navigating this dynamic of a relationship? I think I’m ultimately okay with what happened, but I’m not sure how to move forward from the feeling of “if only our relationship styles matched, maybe then I could love you the way I really want to.”

Response

So firstly, non-monogamy is the umbrella that polyamory is under. Non-monogamy refers to any relationship style which is not monogamous, essentially, and that covers a wide array of things which are not polyamory.

So that covers swinging couples who are generally romantically monogamous with each other, but are sexually active with other people outside of their coupledom. That covers open relationships, which aren't always necessarily polyamorous. That also covers Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which some people definitely do not consider polyamory to encompass.

So non-monogamy is like the general umbrella, and then polyamory is specifically being interested and wanting to have more than one romantic relationship. And relationship anarchy kind of subverts all of it in a way, although some people consider relationship anarchy to be part of polyamory. Relationship anarchy instead suggests that we don't prioritise romantic relationships over other relationships, so relationship anarchy is also kind of sitting outside of that.

So those are the differences between non-monogamy. I think relationship anarchy would be considered a form of non-monogamy sometimes, but I think relationship anarchy kind of stands on its own. Because the point of that is to sort of say, "Well, I don't think that romantic relationships should automatically be prioritised, and I don't automatically prioritise them," whereas non-monogamy doesn't necessarily include that. But that's kind of the difference between those things.

I think that if you are intentionally wanting to have multiple romantic relationships, then you can call yourself polyamorous. I mean, I'm not the boss of who calls themselves polyamorous or not, but I think that it's perfectly possible for people who describe themselves as polyamorous to also be open to other forms of relationships. There might be a polyamorous person who dates someone who is a swinger, and they still consider themselves polyamorous, but they have a relationship with somebody who—it's a sexual relationship, and the other person considers themselves to be romantically monogamous to someone else.

So you can describe how you want to do things. I think if you want to use the word polyamory, I would advise doing that if you have an intention of having multiple romantic relationships in your life and not being romantically monogamous to one person. That's where I would use it.

I use them sometimes interchangeably. Definitely I do use them more or less interchangeably on the website. I try to when I'm talking about polyamory specifically to focus that on multiple romantic relationships rather than—but I give advice about swinging, about open relationships, about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I'm not only giving advice to polyamorous people, but polyamory is part of non-monogamy. That's the reason why it's Non-Monogamy Help, because I'm not only giving advice to polyamorous people. So I hope that explains that.

When it comes to this situation, it's so interesting, because I think a lot of people would tell you, "Don't go there. You know this person's a serial monogamist. You know that this relationship is destined to end." But all relationships are destined to end. All relationships will end at some point, either because you die, or because the other person dies, or because you break up. That is the ending of all relationships. All relationships end.

The difference in this case is that you have a better idea that this relationship, for sure, has an ending that you can expect, which isn't necessarily the case for a polyamorous relationship. You know this person's a serial monogamist. You know that they are at some point going to be interested in having a monogamous relationship with someone. I assume that by being a serial monogamist, or by being monogamous, they have some interest in a kind of relationship escalator type deal where they want to move in with somebody, marry them, etc.

So you know what it is that they're aiming for. You know that you're not aiming for that. I don't necessarily personally think that just because you are incompatible in terms of your long-term plans, that that necessarily means you can't have fun in the short term, as long as both of you are capable enough to understand that this is for the short term. And maybe you can set some ideas around that.

Yeah, if the way you really want to love this person is to have this as a long-term romantic relationship and to have other long-term romantic relationships, yeah, that's not going to work. But you can still have feelings for this person, and you can still have fun with this person, and you can still enjoy the relationship for what it is, knowing that it will end as all relationships end.

I personally feel like, you know what, life is short and yeah, it might hurt. It might hurt at some point. You can look down the line and say you might catch feelings. You probably might already have feelings. I don't think that you can necessarily fully control that, but you might have feelings. And when this guy decides, "Oh, I'm going to settle down with this other person. Bye." And maybe if he's like the traditional monogamist, he's not going to be able to be friends with you, or if he's friends with you—because that's the way, I assume this is a cis-het situation—you can't be friends with someone you've had sex with.

You might get that typical thing where he's going to distance himself because you've had sex, and his new wife is probably going to feel weird about you being friends since you had sex before, because that's not a thing that cishet people do. You might get that typical thing that happens, but that will suck. That will suck, that will make you sad, you'll be crying, and you'll eat some ice cream. Yeah, it's going to suck.

But there's all sorts of ways—there is a plethora, a buffet of ways that life can suck, which may be coming down the line for you. Not to be extremely pessimistic, but what I'm saying is that you could get hit by a car tomorrow, have a concussion, have a serious brain injury, and then be spending the next eight months in the hospital trying to recover.

Life is a smorgasbord of tragedy, but it is also a smorgasbord of fun and great, happy things. There's so many things that could happen to you. There's so many different ups and downs you really have no control over. You really have absolutely no idea what's around the corner for you, and that's quite scary and quite unpredictable.

But this situation, you know what's going to happen. And I just think, if you vibe, if you're having a good time now, personally, I think go for it. Look down the barrel of the gun of sadness and heartbreak and accept that. Yeah, it's going to hurt later on. It's going to hurt, but that's a problem for later you.

And unless you feel like—taking this with a grain of salt, if you have no support network, if you know that it's going to devastate you, if you know that you're the type of person where this would be a severe mental health blow, then obviously, yes, don't do it. Take care of yourself.

But I just think, if you feel like, "You know what? Yeah, I'm going to be a bit sad"—that's kind of how I feel about crushes sometimes. When I develop—I don't get attracted to people very often. And so when I get attracted to a person, first of all, I'm excited that I'm attracted to a person again, because there are times when I'm attracted to somebody and then it doesn't work out, or they turn out to be a dick, or whatever, I get really sad.

Because I'm like, "Great. I'm never going to be attracted to anyone else again." I feel for a little bit of time, I get kind of melodramatic, and I'm like, "I'm never going to be attracted to anyone else again. My life is over. I'm just going to keep thinking about this person that I'm attracted to and they're a dick, and I'm just going to be sad."

I think that way. And so it gets quite sad, and then when I'm attracted to somebody new, I'm like, "Oh, I'm attracted to somebody again." I get those fun, happy, butterfly, exciting feelings, and I love it. And I've been in positions where I don't have to have anything result from it.

I think societally, when we have feelings of attraction to people, there's this cultural expectation and this thing that's put on us that you have to resolve it somehow. It has to end in something, and if it doesn't end in something, there's a failure or whatever. And I don't feel that way, but I look realistically at my attraction and sometimes that person's monogamous. Sometimes that person is completely unavailable to me. Sometimes I know that I'm having this attraction because I'm getting one side of a person and I don't know who they are really. I really don't know who they are.

And I've had many, many cases where I have been attracted to people and they've turned out to be total dicks. It happens. But I could look at these feelings and I could go, "Oh no, I'm attracted to somebody again. It's going to—it's not going to turn out well." And I could make myself miserable about it.

And especially if it's an attraction to somebody who I have no real way—especially if they're monogamous, you know, and I know that it's not going to work, even though I think sometimes—I think if they did like me back and it was, you know, magically it worked out, I would be like, "Yeah, I'll do monogamy because I like you." So stupid.

But I could look at that, and I could be doomy about it, and I could be like, "Oh, it's never going to—” You know, I know how it's going to end. More or less, it's probably not going to work out. But I enjoy it in the moment when I have these feelings. They're fun, they're happy. They bring me joy. You fucking only live once. God damn. Why do I have to be—why does everything have to “work out” for it to be worth it?

And that's one thing—I've had my journey of being really annoyed with Dan Savage and being really dramatic about it, and I'm not so dramatic about it. I always really have admired his work over the years and been a little whiny about it now and then. But the thing that I've always consistently really loved in terms of the things that he said is this idea that why is a relationship only successful if one of the people in it doesn't make it out alive?

Why is it that we only define relationship success—and this is totally a carryover from monogamy that mono-centric societies that polyamorous people seem to super adopt. And it drives me absolutely nuts. Why is a relationship only successful if one of the people doesn't make it out alive? Why can't—why are short-term relationships bad? Why is a relationship with an expiry date bad? Yes, when things end, it's sad and it sucks, and we cry, but you know when you get a pet, that that pet's going to die.

You know that—unless you get a parrot, and you're 50, and that parrot's going to live 30 more years, and you think, "Well, I might not live 30 more years." You know that that pet is going to die. You know that that relationship will end. You know that that ending is going to fucking suck, and yet you still get a pet, because the life that you have with that pet is worth the sad parts.

Why can't we have that same perception of short-term relationships? Why does it always have to be that it has to have one specific ending to be successful? You can love this person if you want to. Just be a little bit wary.

Don't—I have been in that situation where I really, really like a monogamous person, and I'm like, "Maybe I could do monogamy." Don't sacrifice your own feelings and choices and what you want to keep the relationship 100%. But just because it's not going to happen long-term doesn't mean it's not worth it. Doesn't mean it might not be fun. Why can't you have—life is fucking short! I don't know.

I just think clearly you've got some chemistry going on. Maybe you can have something. Maybe it's not the relationship ideal you've dreamed of, and maybe it's not that you're going to get married and live a life on a farm and have a billion children or whatever the fuck you want. Maybe that's not the end goal of this. But that doesn't mean that you can't have fun or have some enjoyment.

Can you be a flexible person and see what this dynamic yields and can you—again, I'm not saying polyamory is an excuse to have multiple semi-sustaining relationships until you reach a level of permissible stasis. That is not what I'm saying. I'm not saying, "Okay, take a little bit of this one, and get a little bit from this relationship until you reach a whole person." That's not what I'm saying. And it's not like a Polymon "gotta catch them all" situation, right? I've got my fire Pokemon and my earth Pokemon and my metal—that's not what we're doing.

But be a little bit more flexible. See what kinds of things—examine your own expectations. If you think you're getting to a point where you're like, "I'm unhappy or I'm resentful because I'm wanting more from this connection than this connection can give me," then yeah, 100%—you can totally decide, "You know what, this isn't it. He can't do long distance. I want a little bit more than this connection can give me. So I'm going to out." That's fine. That's totally fine.

But I also think that sometimes we can look—and I've done this with friendships, to be honest. I had a really hard time in my life because I had an idea of what a good friendship was, a very specific idea in my head that a friendship needs to look like this, and we need to communicate this many times a week, and I need to be invited over to their house this many times a week.

And my inflexibility in the expectations of what a friendship, a close friendship, should look like, meant that I was actually ignoring a lot of the people who were being reciprocal and who were reaching out to me, but just weren't reaching out to me at the frequency that I thought a deep friendship should have.

And when I was able to challenge my expectations a little bit and go, "Actually, you know, maybe my friendship with this one person—our dynamic and our way of being and interacting is not super frequent, but that doesn't mean that person doesn't give a shit about me, and that doesn't mean I have to judge this connection and go, 'Well, this isn't worth having at all.'" It's like kind of an all-or-nothing thing like, "This has to look this way or I'm not going to even bother."

Don't get me wrong, I do care about reciprocal relationships, and I'm totally not saying to tolerate someone not giving you the time of fucking day. Absolutely not. But because of those structures and those ideas of "this is what an ideal relationship has looked like," I've stayed in non-reciprocal relationships, friendships, or otherwise, because I believed that, because everything else looked close and matched that definition, that we were close, even though consistently they weren't showing up for me.

So I think it's worth thinking about—what are your expectations? Are your expectations so rigid that you're not able to work with other people's capabilities, other people's schedules, other people's availabilities? Are you closing yourself off to other relationships and other ways that those relationships could flourish or manifest because you are deciding that a successful close relationship looks this one way, and if it doesn't look that one way, then it's not successful, or it's not a close relationship?

Because I've done that, and because I've been like, "Okay, let me redefine what this means, and let me think about how I look at this." And there are friends that I have, and they check in with me, and they talk to me and they reach out to me. Yeah, maybe it doesn't look exactly the way that I would ideally like to have this relationship. Maybe we don't have a scheduled call every week. I love that I have friends who I have a scheduled call every week with. I love me a scheduled regular event. Give me a ritual. I'm autistic. I'm happy.

Some people just aren't that way. And for a long time, I've been like, "Well, if somebody can't—" you get that attitude. And especially on social media, it's like, "If they wanted to, they would." And you get this kind of attitude that's sort of like, "Well, if people don't meet your exact specifications of every single thing you want, then they clearly don't care about you," and that's just not true.

And so readjusting those expectations, I allowed myself to be like, "Let me see if people are reciprocal. Let me see if they reach out. Let me see if they make an effort. And then let me see if I can work with that."

Because I almost lost—I had a very, very dear friend and I had a situation where I had one of the worst breakups in my life was actually a friendship breakup, not a romantic breakup. It was a devastating friendship breakup. Me and this person—I thought we would be friends forever, and literally, I could have never had another romantic relationship in my life, and just been friends with this person and been happy as fuck. I felt so close to this person.

We were on a train once, and we were just talking to each other, and somebody before they got off the train gave us the best, most nice compliment that I've ever gotten from a stranger. They said to us both, "You guys sound like really awesome friends, and I hope you stay friends forever." I loved this person with all of my heart, and we had a friendship breakup. It was devastating. It was really, really hard.

And so mentally, I was like, "Okay, I need a new replacement for this person." And I decided, without consulting anybody, that this other friend that I had was going to be the replacement for this best friend, and I set expectations in my mind of how frequently I wanted this person to communicate with me, how close I wanted to feel to them. I wanted them to do the exact same things that I did with this other friend with my new now-nominated best friend, right? I basically just was like, "Okay, best friend gone. Now you are the new best friend."

And I never consulted them about it. I never—but I built a lot of resentment. What ended up happening was I actually moved to be closer to this person, and I'd been friends with them for a long time. We were really good friends, but I had decided that our friendship was now—I escalated our friendship relationship without even consulting them, and I moved closer to them, and I decided, "Okay, we're going to be new best friends."

And when that didn't happen, when I was reaching out and I was asking for more of their time, and they couldn't give it to me, resentment grew. I grew a lot of frustration, a lot of anger. I assumed that they didn't care about me, that they didn't want me in their life, that they cared more about—I got really intensely jealous.

I think they had family visit, and they introduced their family to these other friends that they had, and I was so fucking jealous. I was like, "I'm not important enough to meet your family." All of this stuff just kind of just fucking marinated and congealed and rotted in my brain, and I grew very, very angry with them, to the point where I stopped talking to them.

I got pissed off. I got angry after another time of them not being able to meet up, or them rescheduling on me, I got pissed off. We didn't talk for like two years, three years, maybe two or three years. Can't remember. We didn't talk for a long-ass time. I didn't properly confront them about it. It was also a time when I was like, "I'm not good at confrontation. I'm good at completely cutting people out, but I'm not good at healthy confrontation. I'm not good at bringing up issues and resolving them." So that was a train wreck, and I almost lost this friend.

We ended up later on connecting, and I kind of explained, "Dude, I totally just made you my bestest, bestest mensch in my head, and never consulted you about it, and never talked to you about it, and never expressed it. I just had all these expectations, and I never communicated any of that to you, and then I got mad at you when you couldn't meet those expectations, and just assumed you didn't care." And I had to apologise for it, because that was a dickheaded thing to do, and it was the wrong thing to do, and I almost completely blew up our entire friendship because of the expectations that I had of it.

And what I learned from that is that, okay, I want reciprocal relationships. That's very, very important to me. I've had a lot of relationships that are not reciprocal. I grew up in a lot of neglect, and so I'm kind of used to people neglecting me, and it takes me a while to even notice it sometimes. So sometimes when you recover from something, the pendulum kind of over-corrects. You over-correct yourself. And so you're like, "Now I won't tolerate anything but everyone speaking to me every week." You over-correct a little bit, and I over-corrected.

And now I pay attention to the people who reach out to me. I pay attention to the people who make an effort. I pay attention to that. And instead of getting mad at the people who don't reach out to me, instead of getting mad at the people who don't reciprocate, I instead lean into those relationships that do offer me reciprocation.

And what ends up happening is, instead of spending more energy trying to get those people who don't reach out enough for me to reach out more, I then lean into relationships that actually do bear fruit—that's like the wrong way of saying it, but you know what I mean? You spend less time, wasting less time on people who just don't have the energy for you for whatever reason—it doesn't have to be personal—and you spend more time on those relationships that do.

That's a very long and long-winded way of saying, can you be that flexible? Can you accept what this can be for what it is? And understand that, yeah, you may be sad when it ends, but again, there's lots of different situations in our life where we enter into—all of your relationships are going to end one way or another, so you can't prevent that from happening, and you can't prevent heartache, and you can't—so can you in this situation enter into this dynamic and have it be an overwhelmingly positive temporarily for your life?

Maybe it'll be a little bit negative when it ends. But as I said, we get pets. Pets die. We know they're going to die. It doesn't mean you don't get a pet. When you watch a movie, you know the movie's going to end. Doesn't mean you never watch a movie. When you watch a TV show, you know the TV show can't go on forever. It's going to end at some point. You don't not get into any TV show because of it.

So can you approach it with an idea of, "Okay, this is going to end at some point. How can we—" and talk about it. Don't pretend like it's not going to happen. Talk about it with this person. Do you want to just hook up? Do you want to spend time together? What do you want to spend time doing? Can he let you know—does he know when he gets in a monogamous relationship with somebody else, is he going to be weird around you?

Is he not going to be able to talk to you because you've had sex? Ask those questions, figure that stuff out. Now, he might not necessarily know. He might not have any problem with staying friends with you, but his new partner might, because people are like that, and ask what would happen in that situation. Talk a little bit about it and see where you land.

But I don't think just because someone's a serial monogamist, as long as you're not sacrificing what you want, as long as you're not the type of person that's going to be like, "Okay, I'll be monogamous with you," and you know damn well that that's not what you freaking want. I'd say go for it, because you only live once. Why the fuck not?

Yeah, I hope that helps, and good luck.