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

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Podcast Transcript

Hello. I'm kind of think I'm in love with a person who is a non-monogamous, and I have lots of questions in my mind, because I'm not used to it. So what do you… I don't know. I'm sorry. English is not my native language, so tell me what to do.

I know I love this guy, and I know a relationship is more than just having sex with one person and and I feel it, and I have been in a relationship that I had sex with another person, and I wasn't ashamed of it, and I never blamed myself.

So I know that he can do it too, but I don't know how to react when it is officially non-monogamy relationship, and I don't know how to not be jealous in that relationship. I think I'm kind of jealous, and I don't know what to do.

Response

So I do have an article at NonMonogamyHelp.com/101, which goes through some basic things for intro people about what you should think about. I think that primarily, this isn't about not being jealous. That's the one thing that people often assume when it comes to non-monogamy. It's like, "Oh, I can't do that. I'd be too jealous." That it's about not being jealous.

Jealousy is a human emotion that is sometimes very, very reasonable to have. People who are in non-monogamous relationships absolutely do get jealous. It's not about not being jealous. It's about: Is this a decision that you want to make for yourself?

That's kind of the first thing that I would ask yourself. I know you love this guy, I know you want to be in a relationship with him, but this needs to be a decision that you make because it's a decision that you want for yourself, not because you want to keep the relationship with this guy. I understand that as a motivation, and I'm not saying that it's a completely bad motivation to have, but it shouldn't be your only motivation.

Because here's the thing—when you agree to a non-monogamous relationship, in most cases—I'm not sure what kind of non-monogamy we're talking about, because there's different types of non-monogamy. There's polyamory, where you have multiple romantic relationships. There's swinging, where you have one romantic relationship, but you go to swinging events and you have sex with other people. There's an open relationship where it's very similar to swinging, but you don't necessarily do it as an event. You're just kind of allowed to have friends with benefits or other relationships that aren't romantic or aren't primarily romantic, and you prioritise one romantic relationship.

So there's lots of different ways to do non-monogamy, but for the most part, agreeing to non-monogamy means agreeing to a situation where your partner does not spend most of their time with you that you would typically get in a monogamous relationship.

And so the first question that I tend to encourage people to ask themselves, if they're monogamous is: Could I see myself in a monogamous relationship with somebody who has a time-intensive career, who has a time-intensive hobby, who basically I would not be able to see for long stretches of time, or wouldn't have the same amount of time with them as I would usually get in a monogamous relationship?

And the reason why this is important is because there are plenty of people who don't feel jealous at all, who don't necessarily have any problem with their partners having sex with somebody else, but they don't want to not have that time with their partner, and that's really important to them. And that's fine. That's absolutely—if you want that time, then a monogamous relationship where your partner has this time-intensive career or hobby where they spend lots of time away from you may not be what you want either, and that's okay.

If you're okay with getting less time, then that's kind of the first hurdle, right? Then, I think before you get into any emotions or anything you might feel about your partner being with somebody else, I think you need to ask yourself: Is there a personal reason—and I call this an anchor—is there a personal reason that you have to pursue polyamory?

And this can be, "Oh, because I want to have more sexual experiences." Can be because "I want to have more romantic experiences, and monogamy can't give me that." It can be as simple as—my reason, I am not the kind of person that's like, "Oh, I love everybody. Everybody's so attractive, I just want to date everybody." That's not me. I don't like dating. Hate dating, not interested. I'm not really that interested in casual hookups. It's not a thing. No offense. I'm not judging anybody, but it's just not my interest.

So my motivation for being polyamorous has nothing to do with wanting—I mean, yeah, it'd be nice, but that's not the primary motivator for me. For me, my anchor and the reason why I feel like it's a choice for me—not everybody feels like polyamory or non-monogamy are choices. I feel like it's a choice that I'm making because I value freedom and autonomy, and I identify as a relationship anarchist.

You can look up relationship anarchy, if you'd like, but particularly, I want the freedom to be able to pursue a romantic or sexual connection if I have it with somebody, whenever it shows up.
It may never show up. I could be interested in one person, and then I could never be interested in anybody else ever again. But for me, the freedom to have that is super important. I don't feel like there is any value for me in making the promise of only being sexual or romantic with one person. To me, that doesn't make much sense. It's not how I want to live my life. It's not something that I feel I need to do or should do or want to do.

So that is why I am polyamorous, because I value freedom and autonomy. And I'm not saying that monogamous people don't, but I'm just saying that that's my personal reason, that's my motivation, that's my anchor.

So whenever I'm having problems, or whenever I have feelings like jealousy, I can sort of go, "Okay, but this is an important decision to me." It's kind of like if you decided to move to a new town, or you decided to make any major life change like having a kid. I don't know for sure, because I've not had a kid, but this is—you have a reason, hopefully a good reason. I don't know what is a good reason. Anyway, you have a reason for doing what you did, and that reason is something—you don't expect that when you move to a new town, that everything's going to be fine and dandy, and you're always—you would never set that expectation.

You might be like, "I'm not having such a good time now. I miss my home, I miss where I used to live, and now I'm sad," but there might be a motivating factor in why you chose that. So you can go back to that whenever you're having those difficult feelings and go, "Ah, but I wanted to move here because of X, Y, Z," right? So it's really important to have an anchor, a personal anchor. I really feel strongly about this anchor not being keeping the other relationship. It has to be something personal to you.

And the reason for that, realistically, some people do try polyamory because they don't want to break up with somebody. That's fine. But the reason why I advise having a personal reason is because a lot of times when people choose to do polyamory or non-monogamy because they want to stay with someone who also wants it, what they think they're agreeing to is not what they're agreeing to.

So what they think they're agreeing to is, "I will say yes to polyamory." It's kind of like agreeing to a long-distance relationship to keep an in-person relationship alive. It can work, but it doesn't always work, because an in-person relationship is different to a long-distance relationship. And if you agree to a long-distance relationship just to keep that connection, but you don't actually want a long-distance relationship, it's not going to work because functionally, they're different.

Functionally, if you're agreeing to polyamory to stay with this guy, or agreeing to non-monogamy to stay with this guy, it's not about jealousy, it's not about sex. It's about your expectations. If you're agreeing to this relationship under the premise in your head that this will be like a monogamous relationship, and you will get the same amount of time, that it will be similar, that you'll be able to stay in this sort of liminal area that you're in now—then what you're essentially doing is kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

You're agreeing to a relationship that no longer exists. Because if you are in a polyamorous relationship, if it's a non-monogamous relationship, it's not a monogamous relationship. And you can't keep that—that's gone, that's dead and gone, and it's not something you're going to get.

So if you trick your brain into going, "Yeah, but I love him, and I don't want to say goodbye and I don't want to break up, and I feel like I'm never, ever going to love anyone this deep again. I'm going on new relationship energy, and I'm just going to say yes, because I don't want to say no." I get it. It's human, makes sense, but what you're agreeing to is not the thing you think you're agreeing to.

So that's why I really, really encourage people to have an anchor that isn't based off of keeping their relationship intact in the same way, because it's going to change. I mean, I don't know what kind of relationship you have with this guy. You didn't mention how long, if you've—you seem like you just started being together, but I don't know.

And I also don't know when he introduced non-monogamy to you. I would definitely say—there's never a perfect time, or never a specific, exact time when to introduce non-monogamy to someone. But I am highly, highly suspicious of any non-monogamous person who waits to tell you that they're non-monogamous and allows you to operate under the assumption, which most people have, which is fair, that this will be a monogamous relationship, and waits to tell you until you're emotionally invested.

So be very, very wary of this person if—you love this guy. So I don't know if you mean love, love, or if you're just—English is not your first language. So maybe this is the best way to convey. But if he was honest from the beginning—you went out on a date, I don't know how you met this person. If it was a casual thing that you met in a bar, or you met through friends, and there was no reason for him to disclose that he was non-monogamous.

I don't know if he has any other partners, but I will say, if you met this guy and you went out on three dates, or any more than three dates—I mean, I tell people right away, because there's no point. There's no point. It just hurts your feelings to get you emotionally invested in me, when I'm going to assume, if we haven't spoken, I'm going to assume that you're monogamous, or that you intend on monogamy. If I'm dating you, I would tell you right away.

And most non-monogamous people who are decent people would tell you right away, like, "Hey, this is a date. I am non-monogamous, just so you know." We would never go out on more than—I just feel like most decent people would not go out on more than one official date and not tell you.
And it concerns me a little bit that you have all of these feelings. I hope that he told you right away.

If he didn't tell you right away, and he waited—that's not a good sign. That's not a great sign of somebody who's good at communicating. Somebody who waits until you're emotionally invested before telling you this is not a good person, in my opinion. And I would not go there, even if you think you might be interested in polyamory. I wouldn't go there with that person, because that's not good in my opinion, not good at all.

And I've been in situations where I thought someone said they were non-monogamous, and they weren't, and that was horrible. So, but I get it. I've been in situations—it's so easy to say, right, when you're not dealing with these emotions and these feelings, "Oh, just say no and turn away." I get it. When you have these emotions and feelings, it's very hard to just turn that off, and especially hard to—you have that new relationship energy. That's where you meet someone new, and you're super excited, and, "Oh, it's this fun." It's hard to say no to that.

But definitely make sure you do some personal exploration. Yeah, that has nothing to do with—you're going to feel jealous. If you grew up in a mono-centric culture, monogamy-centric culture, which it sounds like you have, most people have, I'm unaware of any polyamory-centric societies at present—if you grew up in that kind of a society, you're going to have emotions. You're going to have feelings. You're going to feel jealous. That's not even the primary concern at this point.

Just accept the fact that if you pursue this, you're going against the cultural script that you've been given your entire life. You're going against everything that you've learned about how love is supposed to work. Your brain is going to go, "What the fuck is happening? I can't believe this. Oh my god. This isn't the way this is supposed to work. If your partner is sleeping with someone else, that is danger, danger, danger."

You're going to have feelings—that's just a given. So don't expect yourself not to have feelings, and don't make a decision based off whether or not you think you can purge jealousy from your system like it's a virus. It's not a virus, it's a normal human emotion.

Sometimes people in non-monogamous situations feel jealous for very good reason, and that's because they're not getting something that they really want and they haven't either asked for it or have asked for it and not gotten it. Sometimes jealousy is a very, very important context clue about how you're feeling, and things you should pay attention to, not just kind of get rid of. That's not how we should approach jealousy.

But yeah, to sum up, check out my 101 and 102 articles—that's at NonMonogamyHelp.com/101 and 102. Read through those, have a deep thought for yourself. No one's going to be able to tell you if you really want polyamory or not. No one can tell you if you really want kids or not. Nobody can tell you if you really want to live in a city or live in that place, or what you really want to do for a career. Those are things that you have to figure out yourself.

But really think about: Do you have a personal reason for this? Are you just doing this so you don't have to break up or say goodbye to this dude? Is there something you can personally get out of this? Would you be happy with less time?

Some people—I'm super independent. I love, you know, I'm solo polyam at this point. Love doing my own thing, and so I'm happy with not getting as much time. Doesn't bother me. There are kind of—I'm not even going to go into that, because there's no point. There's problematic reasons why I might not be bothered by it, but regardless, I am fine with that, and some people are not fine with that, and that doesn't mean that they're broken or bad. It just means that they want more time, and that's totally valid, and that's also fine.

So have a think about it. Really, really think if this is for you. And also, if this dude has not told you he is non-monogamous within—I'm going to give him a little bit of leeway and say three dates. But if you intentionally had a date—you both were like, "We're going out on a date. This is a romantic thing." Not like two friends hanging out, "Okay, we'll get to know each other. Have coffee, blah, blah, blah." Date date. If you've had date dates, and this guy has not told you that he's non-monogamous until you had more than—I'll give him three, three dates. If he told you on the third date, I'd still be super hesitant. Really, really be hesitant about that.

I don't think if someone has waited until you are emotionally invested in you to tell you they're non-monogamous, they are probably, at best, a really shit communicator, or at worst, an asshole. It's not cool. Most people are monogamous, and it's not cool at all for anybody to allow you to operate under the assumption that they are monogamous when they are not, and wait until you are emotionally invested in them to tell you that they have no interest—that's not fucking cool.

Sorry to use some language, but it really is a shitty thing to do, and I don't know about this guy, but if that is the case, I am—warning, warning, danger, Will Robinson—be wary as fuck about that.
There's sometimes, you know, people get anxious. Things happen. They avoid the conversation. But even so, even under the most charitable of interpretations, that means that this person avoids difficult conversations and that is also not good.

So if you did not get told this early on in your discussions and dates with this guy, I really would not advise trying polyamory with someone like that. That is seemingly a recipe for disaster. And really, really, really think about that. So yeah, I hope that helps, and good luck.