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

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Podcast Transcript

I'm writing because my therapist, friends, and myself have generally fallen short here and I'm not sure what the right thing to do is.

My boyfriend, M, is married to E. M is 12 years older than me, E is near double my age.

It was me who originally asked about polyamory, and it was me that suggested we give it a try. Now, M and I caught on quickly and E has always had some pause about the whole thing.

E has done things like ignore me when I speak directly to him via text and in person, mock me after I express a feeling, and refuse to actively get to know me better. Refusing to grab coffee or whatever was one thing, but then the three of us did have a therapy appointment together in which I told him it is not within my values to do what I can to help him to feel loved, respected, and celebrated.

He then told me it was a demand to get closer, and I told him I meant it to be a very positive thing and not some ultimatum. M agreed that E's interpretation had merit, but I remain to believe that the prevailing interpretation of what I meant should go to me - that I was trying to ask how E could feel honored and respected.

So, fast forward about a month. Its M's birthday, and E tells M a few days ahead of schedule that E is going camping with his father and his father will be there that night to pick E up. The trip is to last 5 days, eclipsing M's birthday.

M is extremely upset. I've never seen him that upset. M and I generally agreed that E's description of events didn't make sense, that E knew about the trip well in advance and tried to make the fault his father's advanced age and inability to recall dates or communicate with complex details at hand, as memory symptoms have begun to take shape. E originally described it as a day or so ahead of the trip he knew.

M, M's Mom, and I all agreed that it was too complex and camping trip to be thrown together last minute. This thing was catered and involved rafting from campsite to campsite, this required multiple reservations, and it just made no sense at all that E only had a few days of advanced warning.

Fast forward, they've both been talking about it and M has generally asked me to keep out of it. I respected that, and I was mindful that M was deeply upset. I asked M what the latest resolution was, and M told me E had only had a few weeks of notice about the trip, and that it had been deeply important to him.

I think it was at least 9 months that E had warming up to the camping trip. I think E put off telling M abort it, then tried making it about his father's going memory (a symptom I think was exaggerated to take away M's permission to hold E accountable).

My question is pretty difficult for me to discuss with them, either one M or E. If I see their current situation as saturated with dysfunction, if I don't believe honesty has a safe home in their house, should I just walk away or what kinds of boundaries should I be placing if I stay with M?

This is a closed hinge relationship, E is allowed to play with anyone he wants but M and I have a closed agreement and that works for us.

Response

I'm going to say this as gently as possible, because I understand that this is a tricky situation, and that you probably seem like you want a kitchen table style situation, which is not bad and it's not the wrong thing to want. However, I think you are entirely too involved in what is going on between M and E.

And while I do not condone E mocking you at all, E is not required to form any kind of relationship with you. And quite often, especially if the suggestion of polyamory came from you, M decided to open up their relationship, and you have no idea what kind of situation went on between the two of them. I mean, you may know, you may not know, but we don't know that.

And E is already feeling super reluctant about polyamory, and then on top of that, feels like his arm is being twisted into being close with you, or being friends with you, when he might resent this entire thing altogether. That's really super unfair to E, actually.

I don't know if M and E have actually discussed what opening their relationship means to them. Has E agreed to a kitchen table style setup? Like I said, I don't condone E mocking you. However, I know that when I've been put in situations where I felt like I had to befriend my metamour, and we had nothing in common, and it was just an awkward situation—I have, with a lack of ability to describe it any other way, been a massive bitch. I have said mean things that I regret and wish I hadn't said purely because the pressure of the situation was so great and I resented it so much, because I don't like being forced to be friends.

In other situations, I don't like being forced to be friends with my coworkers if I'm not friends with them. I don't like to be forced to be in a relationship with anybody by circumstance. I deeply resent that kind of thing. And when I'm forced to be in positions where I have to pretend like I'm okay with shit that I'm not okay with, or that I have to befriend people that I just genuinely don't get along with—and it's not anything that they've done, it's not that my metamours in those situations were actively harmful or even bad people. It's just being forced into a situation where you have to be friends with somebody creates resentment.

I mean, think about it. If you were in a monogamous relationship and your partner was like, "This person is my best friend, and it is very important that they are also your best friend, and that you get along and you like each other," that would be intense. We would not see that as normal behaviour or behaviour that we would understand, right?

Yeah, it's great if you get along with your partner's friends. It's great if your partner's friends like you, but we in no way in monogamy have this expectation that you will be best friends or even close to your partner's friends. So why is it in polyamory the expectation that E ought to be close to you and meet up with you and go to—they don't have to do anything. He doesn't have to do anything. He doesn't have to go to coffee with you. He doesn't have to get along with you. Would it be great? Yeah, it would be great. But it doesn't have to happen.

And forcing the situation—E is telling you and telling M as well that he feels forced in that situation. And you're going, "But I intend it to be good," and you're ignoring the fact that E is telling you that it doesn't feel good.

Think about this in any other context, mate. I'm really—I totally understand where you're coming from, and I totally understand why you would want to have a good relationship with E, and why that is important to you. But really think about it in any other context. If E is saying, "I don't want to have this friendship with you," and you're going, "But I intend for it to be good, and therefore my attempts to connect with you and my attempts to find out what would make you feel loved"—maybe E doesn't want to feel loved and respected by you. Maybe E doesn't care, and it's not a personal thing.

It's just that being forced to be in a friendship with you is not something E has the emotional capacity to do or want to do right now, especially if E didn't really know about this open relationship stuff, and then basically felt like their only other option was to agree to it so that they didn't lose M. And now, not only are they having to deal with all of that, and I'm sure that most likely the case that E and M did not discuss what happens to their relationship—E used to be in a monogamous relationship with M, E had all of M's time, and now all of a sudden, E gets less of M's time, and now E has to also be friends with you. It's a lot. It's a lot to put on E's plate.

I know that you want to be—I don't think you're coming at it from a bad place, and I don't think you're trying to come at it from a bad place, but that's the first thing that needs to stop here. In my opinion, I've been in situations where I have felt like metamours who really wanted to be friends with me—and that had nothing to do with me. Actually, they wanted to be friends with me so that they could feel less anxious.

Is your desire to be friends with E out of a genuine desire to get to know E, or does it just make you feel better because it makes you feel safer, which is not E's responsibility to do? It's not E's responsibility to make you feel safe about their relationship. E and M's relationship is technically none of your business. They don't have to prove that they're super stable to make you feel better. It shouldn't have anything to do with your relationship with M, with all due respect.

So please just let E be E and stop being involved. Clearly E does not want a kitchen table style relationship. Clearly E does not want to be your friend. And it's not a personal thing. It doesn't have to be personal. But the more that E feels strong-armed into that situation, I'm not really surprised if E ends up being a little bit bitchy, because that's what happened to me.

I do think E should apologise to you for being mocking or being bitchy, but I think let's prioritse right now making the situation a little bit easier and just letting E be. Stop trying to be friends, just let it go. It's not in the cards right now. Maybe it will be later on down the future. Who knows. But for right now, it's not in the cards. Leave E alone and let E be E and just stop trying to make that work, because that's not helping the situation, in my opinion.

Second thing, whatever's going on—M needs to stop telling you about what's going on between M and E, especially if M wants you to stay out of it, because that's not really fair. All right, you want to know what's going down because you care about M. M seems sad. You want to be there for M. So naturally, you're like, "Hey, what's going on? I want to know." You know, you're curious. We're all curious human beings. A little bit of drama, not going to lie, it's interesting, but it's going to be difficult.

Why are you and M's mom having discussions about the validity of E's reasoning? That is so—if I was E, I would be so angry that my partner and my partner's mom and my metamour were having discussions about the validity of my—I would be so angry. That would be such a violation. I would feel like a violation of my privacy. I would be so mad if that happened.

And yeah, maybe E's full of shit. Maybe he's totally making it up. This was planned a long time ago, and maybe he didn't want to tell M because he didn't want to have to deal with the drama. But it's none of your business, all due respect. I really am not trying to say that with any form of disrespect. What goes on between M and E is not your responsibility to facilitate, and it's not M's mom's responsibility either.

Y'all need to—I am, I'm trying not to be—I'm trying so hard. But please, y'all got to step back. If M can't manage, M needs to find a therapist to talk to about this stuff. M needs to stop giving you details, especially if M doesn't want you to be involved. M can say, "Oh, I'm having this little thing with E, we're having a little bit of a disagreement. I'm a little upset with it. I'd like to be cheered up." That's fine. That's fine.

But all these details—half of this letter is shit that you do not need to know. How can you reasonably help in that situation with all this information? You're a biased party. M needs to find a therapist to discuss this stuff with, and you need to let M manage his own relationships and deal with that.

And if any boundaries—by the way, just to clarify the difference between a boundary and a rule, and I'm not being pedantic, I just want to be clear, because a rule is something like, "I don't like drinking and I don't like drunk people, so you're not allowed to get drunk and come home drunk." That's a rule. A boundary is, "If you come home drunk, I'm going to go in a different room. We're not going to sleep in the same room." That's a boundary.

A boundary within it is about facilitating a relationship. You can't dictate to your partner whether or not they come home drunk, really. You can't, because they're a grown-ass adult human. It's their body. They do what they want with it. You can eventually decide that this isn't the kind of relationship you want to be in 100%, but you can't—I guess if you agree to something together, if a person, you're like, "Oh, I'm not comfortable with being around drunk people," and your partner goes, "Okay, well, I will keep that in mind, and we will agree that I will avoid coming home drunk," you can do that.

That's fine, but you can't dictate to other people what they can do. But you can set boundaries so that you don't have to break up. And you can say, "Hey, look, I want to stay with you, but I can't be around drunk people. I don't like it. So if you come home drunk, this is what I'm going to do." So a boundary within it contains what you do in response to a situation that you don't want to be involved in, right?

So what you can do going forward, I really, really want to stress—I don't think you're the bad guy, and I don't think that you're trying to be too involved. I really don't think that this is your intent. I think you genuinely care. You genuinely want to help. And unfortunately, we kind of are given these cultural scripts with how to deal with relationships naturally. And I think it's a great thing, actually, to have problems in your relationship and go to your friends and talk to your friends about them. I'm not one to advocate this idea that everyone's this island and you should just shut up and never talk to anybody about any problems that you have.

So it makes total sense that M confides in people about the things going on between M and E. Makes total sense. The problem is that you are not an objective third party in the way that a friend who is not involved is. M's mom is not an objective third party. I mean, a friend isn't totally an objective third party—the friend is obviously going to be biased a little bit toward M—but friends offer some objectivity when they're not romantically involved in a situation that you're not able to give M, and that M's mom really isn't.

Even though there's no romance there, there's a close relationship. M needs somebody who's not directly involved in that situation to provide support and to provide advice. You can provide emotional support. Like I said, M can come to you and say, "I'm not feeling so great because some stuff happened with me and E, and I'm just feeling a little down. Can we have a good time?" You can do that, or if it feels super tense in the household, what you can decide is, "You know what, I don't need to know what's going on between you and E. But if I come in the house and it seems like there's some tension there, let's meet somewhere else. Let's not go there."

And I think also, if you lay off trying to make E your new best friend—and again, I understand you're coming from a good place. I totally understand, but I also understand E's perspective. Not completely, because I didn't start off in a relationship that was monogamous and then had my partner basically want to open it while I didn't, but I can easily understand how E would feel super resentful about feeling forced to be friends with you, even if you mean it coming from a good place.

It doesn't—intent isn’t always impact. Intent doesn't make up for how—your intent doesn't override E's feelings. So just give E some distance. Be like, "Hey, you know, it'd be great if we were friends one day. If that happens, I'm open to it. If you ever want to go grab a coffee and have a chat, I'd love to get to know you more. But if you want your space, totally respect that, and I'm not going to pressure you. I just want to make sure you know that I'm open to that," and that's it.

I think a lot of tension will cease if there is some tension around E and M when you kind of take a step back. But this situation—I don't care. He said, she said, what said—this is between E and M, and they need to work that out. They need to go to a couples therapist. They need to talk to each other. They need to figure it out. This doesn't have to have anything to do with you.

And I don't think that you need to be the judge of whether or not honesty has a safe home in their house. What goes on between them is their issue to solve. Whether or not E is telling the truth about this has nothing to do with M's relationship with you.

Now, there may actually be a situation where you're like, "Hmm, it seems like M is not very good at navigating this conflict between E and M, or it feels like I have to step up, or it feels like M involves me a little bit too much in this and can't manage the conflict in other relationships, and I wonder what that means for our conflict." Because what if you have a conflict? How would you feel about E and E's mum and M all discussing whether or not your reasons are valid or not? How would you feel about that? I don't think you would feel super great about that.

Maybe you would, I don't know. I just think you're judging their relationship as it has to pertain to you, and it doesn't have to pertain to you. So I think that you need to tell M, "I know you're having a hard time with E, but I don't need to know these details, because it makes me feel a certain type of way, and I feel like I need to get involved. And you told me that you want me to stay out of it. If you want me to stay out of it, then keep me out of it.

Don't give me details about these things. I'm not going to have any more discussions with you and your mom about E. We're not going to do that anymore. I'm going to stay away. I'm going to respect E's request to not be friends at this point. Maybe I'd love to be friends with them eventually, but at this point, I will respect that request and whatever goes on goes on." I get that you and M have a closed agreement—that's between you and M, and that's for you to negotiate. That doesn't have anything to do with what goes on between E and M. They need to sort that out.

You need to step way, way, way, way, way back and just let them sort their shit out. Maybe one day you'll have kitchen table polyamory. But it's not this day. This day is parallel day, and you need to get a little bit more parallel, step a little bit back, and let people be adults and manage their own life, and tell them to stop including you with too much detail.

I totally get it. I totally get why M would give you details. I totally get—I'm not saying M is trying to get you involved, but step back and be like, "Nah, this is too much detail, mate. I need to not know this stuff, because I can't fix the situation. I might feel too involved, and I'm not an objective third party, and actually, E might feel super violated." If I found out that my partner and my partner's mother and my metamour were discussing the validity of my—I would be so mad. I'd be so mad. I'd totally feel violated.

Please respect E's privacy a little bit more here and just figure it—get M a therapist. Look on BetterHelp. I'm not trying to plug it, but for fuck's sake. Anyway, yeah, I think I've summed up—sorry, there's a lot going on here, but I genuinely hope, please, if you step back, I think it would be a lot better for the whole situation.

I get that you want to solve it. Believe me, I'm a problem solver. I give advice, right? And on a day-to-day basis, I have to actively remember not to give people advice that they've not asked for, because I'm such a nosy bitch, so I totally get it. But just step back. Genuinely, I think that is the best thing you can do to help the situation.

Support M where you can. Have fun times together. Have a great birthday. If whatever happens between them, if M's not going to spend it with E, have a great birthday with M. Plan something fun with M. Offer that. But step back. You can't mediate the situation. You're not the right person to mediate the situation, and I think your mental health will be a lot better for it.

I hope that helps, and good luck.