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

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Podcast Transcript

When I met my current "main" partner Astrid (2 years ago), we were both questioning monogamy and we decided that we were open. We both had another relationship which both ended for other reasons.

We were fast into fusion mode, very much in love (which we still are), and still considered in an open relationship.

For the first year or so, none of us had other partners. I admit that I was kind of avoidant, and my partner tried to talk more about her wanting to date others, but my insecurities and anxiety made me avoidant about this topic.

Then my partner kind of had it, she was really frustrated and exploded (it's an important matter for her in a relationship).

This major discussion happened at a particular time of our lives: I was finally getting top surgery, I'm trans and she was really taking care of me during my transition (beyond her capacities of caring). She told me about a crush she had, and that the person liked her back, and that they wanted to live this new relationship. There was no cheating involved, we always tell each other when we have a crush before anything more concrete happens.

I realized she's been really struggling to keep me feeling safe in our relationship, but she forgot herself. So I told her that after my surgery, we would talk about really opening our couple and concretely establish boundaries etc. I was overwhelmed and really anxious about the idea.

During my recovery, we decided that we both would have 1 night a week where we could date other people, but it was clear that it was more of sexual non-monogamy, not polyamory yet, and that was her conception of what she wanted. I also dated a bit but I think it was out of anxiety and not because I really wanted to.

While she and her new partner were exploring this new relationship. This period of time was very vulnerable for me since I just had a major change in my life (my identity, my body recovering, Astrid having another relationship etc), but she was still very there for me, and was with me through all the steps. However, I felt very anxious every day, lonely and felt like I was grieving many things.

Flash forward to now: we've been travelling together for 2 months now, and I've been feeling better about myself, my healing, we really reconnected, I've been feeling much more secure in our relationship and more comfortable talking about Pam, her other partner.

But at the beginning of our trip, she told me that they were beginning to have romantic feelings for each other. It was new information that I've had some difficulties to process, since Astrid was not really into polyamory to begin with.

I feel like I've had to adapt and adjust in a very short period of time and my journey is still at its beginning. I feel way better and secure but it's still fragile. And now Astrid asks for more time with her other loved one, and I feel like I can't move faster than I already am.

Everything is really great between us, we have a loving and caring relationship, but we move at different speeds on this topic and that causes a lot of pain and miscommunication. It often leaves us feeling bad and sad when we talk about it and we can't seem to find a solution, even though we both want it to be chill and safe in the end.

Also, we've been in a long distance relationship and I'm moving to her city in September, which I'm really happy about. Since we're spending our summer together, I told her that I was ready to have a conversation about changing the "rules" (I don't like to call it that but anyway), in September, to have more freedom on both sides, so that we both feel more comfortable.

She thinks it's a good compromise but still carries resentment because it feels like I'm preventing her from living her other relationship fully. I feel like I already did a lot in a place of major vulnerability, and want to take it more slowly to protect myself and my peace of mind for now. And when that hits us we have big difficulties to think about other things, and to reconnect.

What kind of advice would you have to give regarding my situation?

We really love each other and we are a good team. I'm new to polyamory so I'm struggling but I know that's what I want for myself. I know that when I get to meet somebody new, I'll be so happy that I can live this too.

I feel really shitty when I see that I'm making her sad, and I know she feels it too when she sees that she makes me feel sad. But we definitely want to find solutions.

Response

So I think it would be helpful for you to first kind of challenge yourself a little bit here. You weren't really in an open relationship from the start. You did what a lot of people kind of tend to do, which is you're kind of in open relationship, non-monogamy, polyamory—it's not really clearly defined. You end up both breaking up with your partners, and then you kind of revert back to monogamy, right?

The time that you had spent with the other people, you don't spend on your own, or you still don't spend apart. You kind of revert back to this social script of spending all your time together, and then that doesn't get interrupted until someone else finds another date.

The problem with that is that, on a basic level, agreeing to non-monogamy in many senses—not in every sense (in swinging) but definitely agreeing to polyamory—means that you will get less time with your partner than if you were in most monogamous relationships. Not all. Some monogamous relationships involve being with someone who has a time-intensive career or hobby which pulls them away from your time a lot, and some monogamous people don't want that. They want more time with their partner.

So because you kind of went back to this basic monogamy, you kind of went back to monogamy, your first experience is going to be losing time with your partner. That's going to happen. You're going to feel sad about that because you're getting less time with your partner.

And this is one of the reasons why I advise people, if they're in a monogamous relationship and they want to open that relationship, to immediately begin spending time apart, because to be also dealing with the complex feelings of your partner being into somebody else, while also dealing with the active mourning of losing the time that you get with them, is a really—it's a one-two punch. There's no sense in putting yourself through that kind of thing.

And now you've been long distance, so you have had that. But I'm really worried about the fact that if you move to her city, you're going to suddenly start getting back—or that your brain has this expectation that spending more time together equals safe, that equals good. Her time go away is bad. Brain panic, for lack of a better word.

And you're kind of continuously playing this polyamory chicken game, right? Asking each other for permission, which you don’t— a lot of people do when they open a relationship—they do this permission game thing, and it's actually, it makes sense at the time. Logically, it makes sense, but it puts both of you in a shitty position, because essentially, if you agree to an open relationship, definitely if you agree to polyamory—I guess it depends on the ways that you've agreed to an open relationship—but generally you're agreeing that your partner is already allowed. You've already given them permission to date outside, and you shouldn't have to keep giving permission.

And when you give permission as the permission giver, it's super uncomfortable. Basically, what is basically being asked is, "Are you going to freak out if I date this person?" And you're going, "Oh no, I'm not going to freak out." And then later on, you feel like you can't have a freak out, or you can't be upset. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work for the people involved. It just makes things worse.

And you guys haven't really sat down from the sound of it and talked about what you both actually want. You want polyamory, and then you've said that Astrid sort of doesn't want polyamory, but now she does, but—and you're confused about this kind of new relationship that Astrid has with Pam, because you're like, "Well, they're falling in love, but I thought this wasn't about love, but I thought we agreed about—" there's so much going on here to try and control the uncontrollable.

Astrid can fall in—let's understand this basic thing. You both could be like, "You know what? No more non-monogamy. We're going to be monogamous. That's it. Bye, Pam. We're fine." Yeah. And then Astrid could fall in love with somebody that Astrid meets at any other place and fall out of love with you. You cannot stop that from happening. You cannot control that. Astrid could just fall out of love with you, even if Astrid doesn't have any interest in anybody else. You literally can't control that.

And I get that you want safety, and I get that you want calm, and I get that you both want that. But there are emotional ups and downs to this that you're not going to be able to avoid. And in the process of trying to avoid emotional upset, you're creating more emotional upset.

What you guys need to do is you both need to decide, "Okay, I want polyamory. What does that look like for you? How many partners do you think that you might want?" You may not—the thing of it is, we spend our whole lives being told monogamy is the thing, and then we are like, "I want to get married. I want to have a husband. I want to live in this kind of house, and I want to drive this kind of car." We imagine this constantly. We don't really have that same constant thinking of how our lives might be in a polyamorous sense. We never really sit down and think about it, but we have thought about that super a lot when it comes to monogamy, most of us.

So you need to have that a little bit. You need to think about, "Okay, I want polyamory. What does that mean, physically, on a day-to-day basis? Do you want to live with partners? Do you want kitchen table polyamory? Do you want parallel polyamory? Are you a solo polyam person? Who do you want to live with?" All of these things are things that you need to sit down and think about realistically, what you might want.

You can change. Everyone can change. Plenty of people can change. It's not to say this is set in stone, like, "Oh, you agreed to kitchen table polyamory, and now you have to do it because you said that you wanted it." No, but it's just about having some rough idea. Because just as two people can be monogamous and not compatible, two people can be polyamorous and not compatible.

So you need to figure out if you and Astrid have the same or some type of way you can meet in the middle of what your ideals are. You need to figure out what kind of polyamory you both want to practice, how metamours are involved, how other partners are involved, and that's going to help you so much, because you can't go fast or slow. Nobody can control whether or not they are interested in somebody.

Yeah, physical actions—you can slow down the speed at which Astrid decides to sleep with somebody else. But of course, it's going to build resentment, because it's going to feel weirdly arbitrarily controlled for what reason? If you're waiting for the perfect day when you are not bothered at all by anything, you're going to be playing polyamory chicken forever. And I think it's an unrealistic expectation to have of yourself, and it's an unrealistic expectation for Astrid to have.

So both of you got to sit down. "Okay, these are generally the sort of safe terms." You kind of did that a little bit when you had that—you have one free night to date—but it was still kind of a chicken game because you didn't discuss, "Okay, this is just sexual," and I think it's a little bit unrealistic to be like, "We're only going to allow sex, no feelings." And that's, as if you can control that. You really can't always control that.

So rather than making a rule against it, you should have talked about what would happen if Astrid did develop or you did develop feelings. And like you said, you dated because you were anxious, not because you wanted to. Do you really want to date? Is this something—you think it will be nice, but how—is it really something you want? If you broke up with Astrid, would you pursue polyamorous relationships on your own? Would you pursue that? Would Astrid?

It sounds like Astrid would. It sounds like Astrid is already pretty clear about what she wants. I'm confused as to why you thought she wasn't into polyamory. It kind of seems like she was from the beginning, but that's something you guys need to discuss and figure out. Where are you both? And can you agree on some things, and stop trying to restrict the flow of how other relationships go?

You can't— it's understandable to believe that slowly introducing this is somehow going to make you more emotionally put together. And I get why you would think that, but really, what you're doing is just avoiding it. This is just more avoiding rather than actually dealing with the fact Astrid has feelings for somebody else. Astrid has feelings for Pam. They are in a relationship.

I get that there's this whole thing about living in the relationship and living authentically, blah, blah, blah, man, whatever. Astrid might be pretending that she's not as into Pam, so that you feel better. But that's—Astrid is into Pam, and you're going to have to accept that. There's no pretending that Astrid can do to make you feel better about that. Astrid has feelings for somebody else. That is the facts, and they might—those feelings can grow, and intimacy can grow between the two of them. But restricting their intimacy is not going to make Astrid stay with you.

And that's the thing that you have to kind of remind your brain of, because your brain is telling you a lie. It's trying to protect you. It cares about you. It's trying to keep you safe, but it's telling you a damn lie, which is that if we slow down this relationship, our relationship won't crash. Nah, that's not going to happen. There's nothing you can do—release yourself of the responsibility outside of just being a decent person to keep Astrid in your life.

There's nothing you can do to ensure that somebody never leaves you. There's nothing you can do about that. And I've written a lot about this. You might find it helpful in my 101 and 102 articles. But releasing yourself of that responsibility will help a lot here, because there's so much here that you and Astrid are trying to control that you cannot control.

And I don't think that there is such a thing as really going slow, because feelings aren't slow. Feelings happen and you can't really—some of us are kind of super emotionally aware, and we can go, "Mmm, seem to be feeling a little bit of a thing for this person. Maybe I can lean away instead of leaning in." Sometimes you can do that. But I don't think that's the case for most people, and I think that if we're trying to restrict Astrid—why? Why restrict Astrid and Pam's relationship?

You're going to have negative feelings. And that's not bad. Doesn't mean that you're not truly polyamorous. It's just that you were raised in a mono-centric society, and your brain has seen love operate in one specific way. It's going to be shouting at you because you're a social creature and you're scared of losing your relationships. Because all throughout mass and years and years and years, your ancestors relied on social relationships to keep themselves alive. If they were kicked out of their social group, they were dead.

So your brain is very invested in protecting your social relationships, and it's going to not want you to break up with people, even when you should. It's going to make you want to stay in friendships and other relationships that you should leave. It's going to make you super hypervigilant about losing relationships, because that's just kind of how things were.

But you need to tell your brain, "Hey, I can't control if Astrid decides that she doesn't like me anymore. I can't control that." You got to let that go, because trying to control that through all of these little, tiny means is making people resentful, and it's not fixing the situation, and it's giving you the false idea that if you can control this, then you will be safe. And the truth is that it's not safe.

Adult relationships involve risk. Adult relationships are inherently, to some extent, not secure. They're not secure in the same way that a child securely attaches to a parent. Adults don't securely attach to each other the same way that a child securely attaches to a parent. An adult doesn't have a responsibility to securely attach to you and nurture you—that's not what an adult relationship is going to be able to give you.

And yeah, you should feel comfortable with a partner. You should feel like you can trust them. You should have a secure attachment with each other. But I think sometimes we tend to expect a level of security that an adult relationship is not going to be able to offer us ever. Adults shouldn't have unconditional love for one another. You should be able to walk away from a relationship that isn't serving you.

You have to have an unconditional relationship for a child, because a child relies on you, because a child cannot walk out of a relationship that doesn't serve them. That needs to be a secure, unconditional love bond. That should be an unconditional love, because it's a different type of relationship. But adult relationships are conditional, and they should be conditional.

I know we're all kind of swayed by mythical representations of unconditional, passionate, everlasting love, but it's conditional, and it should be, because if we unconditionally love someone who treats us like shit, that's not a good thing. And I'm not saying Astrid is, but I'm just saying, abandon the idea of total safety within an adult relationship. There is risk. There always is going to be risk, and that's not your fault.

That's the other thing too. When you decide that you can control whether or not Astrid stays with you, then by default, you're also blaming yourself for any time a relationship didn't work out and someone didn't stay with you, and it may not have actually been your fault, and it kind of makes you going to feel shitty a little bit more if you blame yourself for that. So let go of that.

People can't put stoppers on their feelings. You got to make the move, or don't make the move. I think you both need to have a serious conversation about the structure of your relationship. Do polyamory or make a decision. Stop making decisions based off of trying to prevent emotions. Make a decision off of what you actually want. What do you want? What does Astrid want? Can you come together and agree on something?

Accept that if you're going to do polyamory, your partner is truly free to date anyone they want without your permission. They don't need your permission at each step, and it's an unfair pressure to put both on yourself and the other person. So if you're going to do it, do it.

And I think you should have this discussion before you decide to move your entire life and live in the same place, because it feels like what could happen is you move back in, you go back to pretending to be monogamous.

You don't really discuss time spent. Astrid slowly tries to—they're slowly trying to reach a position that you may never reach. Waiting for you to be perfectly happy about the situation and experience no negative emotions is totally unrealistic. Accept that you're going to feel some negative emotions. It might rock your socks and not in a fun way. That's part of life. You can't prevent that.

If you're moving to a new city, do you expect yourself to be 100% happy in this new city? If you completely move your life, we don't have this sort of expectation. We expect that we might mourn the kind of shift and change, that the new city won't offer us things the old city did, that we might feel sad. You would never expect yourself this level of constant happiness and constant okayness with everything about any other major life decision.

But yeah, in polyamory, there's this expectation that you ought to be happy with everything, that your partner should be able to go, "Are you okay with me doing this?" And you go, "Yes, totally, I'm fine, amazing. Go out, date everyone, sleep with everyone. I'm—I have no feeling about it but pure, unadulterated joy." That's not realistic and is an unfair burden to put yourself through and expect of yourself.

So yeah, I think if you can sit down and you can agree and understand how polyamory is going to change the time you spend together, and if you let go of the expectation to magically keep your partner there, let go of the idea that controlling Astrid's relationship with Pam is going to somehow make things safer between the two of you. It's not. And if you can figure out time spent apart, time spent with other people, and negotiate that, I think that would help out immensely.

But a lot of this is just—it's just going to be bumpy rides from trying new things, and that's to be expected. It's not because you're doing anything wrong. It's not because you're not really polyamorous. It's just because you're doing something that's off the cultural script. And your brain has had a cultural script for your whole life of how love should look, and part of that has been that your partner shouldn't be dating other people, and now that your partner's dating other people, your brain's like, "What the fuck, this isn't on the script. Man, what the hell, this is bad. Panic. Panic klaxon. Oh, my God, emergency fuuuu—"

That's normal. And just allow yourself to have feelings without them having to determine your actions all the time. And I think—yeah, read my 101 and 102 articles. Those will help out a lot. And I think that things will be a little bit easier. They won't be perfect. You're still going to freak out, you're still going to feel scared, you're still going to feel anxious. That's just part of it.

But I think if you can establish some understanding of how polyamory is actually going to work, rather than slowly trying to chicken your way into it—polyamory chicken. I don't even know if you know the game chicken. I might be making a reference that you have no idea. But anyway, I think if you can do that, it would be much, much more helpful for the situation.

I hope that helps, and good luck.