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

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Podcast Transcript

My wife came out as polygamous after I figured out she was getting close to another man and confronted her about the relationship. She fell pretty hard for him and when he found another woman for his girlfriend he stopped talking to her. She was hurt. I was hurt for her. This was about 3 years ago.

Since then I was struggling with coming to terms with compersion and she is now ready to have new experiences and relationships with others.

I want her to be happy and she wants me to be too........but I struggle as jealousy is a factor and I still hold anger to what felt like betrayal after being together for 18 years.

Any suggestions at all on how to accept what could be a wonderful new relationship?

Response

First, I want to clarify, not because I necessarily think that I'm trying to wag a finger at you or anything, but polygamy and polyamory are not the same thing. That is a really important distinction, just because I actually didn't know very much about polygamy and the practice within the cultures that do that sort of thing, and I still am a little bit unfamiliar with that.

But the more that I learn about the way that this practice happens, even today in lots of places, through analysis of certain reality shows, which, obviously I take with a grain of salt, but the more that I am kind of annoyed by—not annoyed by you, but frustrated with the comparison of polygamy and polyamory, which are very, very, very much not the same.

From what I gather, polygamy is not a situation—would not be the situation where your wife is able to have other partners. It would be a situation where only you are able to have other partners. And there's a lot that goes into that that is unacceptable. And polyamory is really about you also having the freedom to have other partners. I think it would be polyandry. There's another word.

I don't know what the word is. I'm not interested in inequitable systems, so I'm not that invested in looking up what that is. But you should also be free to have other relationships in this agreement, if that is what you're agreeing to. Now you may not be interested in finding other relationships, and that's fine, but the freedom should theoretically at least exist for you too.

Did you really talk about what happened?

I wonder if you've really worked out and talked about with each other this issue of—it doesn't sound like she was fully cheating, and it doesn't even sound like she necessarily could control it, because we don't necessarily control who we fall in love with, and I think quite often, a lot of people are not in touch with their feelings and don't really know how to communicate these sorts of things to partners. And then what ends up happening is that they have these feelings, and then they don't know how to communicate this to their partner. Things kind of escalate, because everyone's kind of too scared to communicate anything.

And the sort of romantic picture that we're given in films and a lot of things is that these sorts of things are never talked about, and people just end up together, and nobody ever has a freaking conversation about anything, right? So I think that kind of drives people into situations that are really crappy for everyone involved, because they don't have those conversations, and they let relationships kind of move forward on inertia, and they aren't trying to push them forward, but because they're not having these conversations, they're also not holding themselves back. So it sounds like that's kind of what happened to your wife. I don't really know for sure, because you don't put a lot of detail in this.

But have you really discussed this? Because, first of all, you don't have to have compersion, especially if you were cheated on, or especially if you felt cheated on, even if there was no actual romantic interaction. Or if you define cheating as only having sex with somebody else or doing something sexual with somebody else, even if that wasn't the case. And I'm very hesitant—I feel like there's a big jump and move somewhat culturally, for people to sort of define as their partner liking a picture on Instagram of somebody else as cheating. People can define cheating however they want. And I don't know if you've ever had a conversation with your wife about that, and that's also another kind of inertia, unspoken thing that people do. They don't talk about what cheating actually means. And then you get in this nebulous grey area of, "Is this cheating? Is this not cheating? I feel betrayed, but can I not call this cheating?" sort of thing. And that really doesn't help.

Has she apologised?

But have you talked about it? Has she apologised for not being fully honest about the situation? Obviously you had to confront her. And that is a big difference between—it's one thing if somebody cheats and they come forward, or does anything that's kind of reminiscent of cheating, any sort of thing like that, however wide you want to define that. It's one thing if they do that and then they come forward and then they say, "You know what? I messed up. This is something that I've done, and I want to be honest with you." If you catch them, or you have to, or they're sort of forced, either by the person they're cheating with threatening to tell you, or if they're not going through their confession through honest means—I think that also can compound the feelings of betrayal. Because how long would that have gone on? How far would it have gone if you had never confronted the situation, right?

And I think that that is a really, really critical issue to explore, and I think that you need to be less concerned about, "I want to be the most best partner in the world, and feel compersion," and jealousy is the factor here. Jealousy is not the factor here.

The real factor is: can she be honest with you?

The factor might actually be, in my opinion, from what little I see, that you haven't really talked about this as much. Have you sat down with a couple's therapist? Have you sat down with somebody and talked through why didn't she tell you about this? Because that is the critical key here—you're going about wanting to go down this different path that you have no cultural scripts for, that you have no model for, with a partner who has already demonstrated to you that they are not capable of being honest with you if they're too scared. So how do you know that that won't happen again? You don't really, and I mean, you never really know that regardless, but I think that that needs to be the first step that you talk about.

It's great that she's ready to have new experiences and relationships with others, but is she ready to be in a situation—is she ready, in terms of, is she ready to tell you a truth that you don't want to hear? Is she comfortable and capable, if you make a plan with her and she gets double-booked, is she ready to sit in the discomfort of having to say no to you or having to say no to somebody else? Because that is a huge skill that you need in polyamory, especially if you're going to be a hinge, which is somebody who's dating two people. You need to be able to be comfortable with disappointing people and saying no to people, and if you're not capable, if you avoid conversations, or you avoid situations where you have to tell somebody something that they don't want to hear, that is not going to work very well in general, and that is something that I think that you need to actually work on.

You're not the problem here

You're approaching this—the verbiage that you use, "jealousy is a factor," "I still hold on to the anger," "How do I accept what could be a wonderful new relationship," almost as if you're the problem here, and that the obstacle in both of your ways is your inability to accept that this is this wonderful new thing that you're just being a wet blanket about. I really don't think that that's fair on you, and I really don't think that that's—yes, you're going to have jealousy and you're going to have these feelings. That is perfectly normal.

But also that is compounded by the fact that unless you have resolved, unless she's worked on some things with some therapists, about how to not be a people pleaser in a way, or how to—I don't know what her deal is. I don't know why she didn't tell you. I don't know why you had to confront her, but if she can't, and she hasn't done any work on how to tell you things that you may not want to hear, or how to be honest with you, about how to ask for things, about how to recognise when she is feeling feelings for someone, and then be able to come to you before you have to confront her—if she hasn't worked on that, then that is actually the thing that needs to be talked about.

Start with practical steps

There are some first steps that I generally advise people that I cover in my course, which is called Fast Track Your Polyamory. I know the name for my own course, which you can go to polyamoryfasttrack.com to get more information on, and that kind of sets you up for those physical practicalities. But I would genuinely, if you haven't worked on this issue, if you haven't talked about the problem that you had to confront her—why did you have to confront her? And you really have to be able to work that out. And she really has to be more comfortable with talking about uncomfortable things, and to recognise and—like I said, I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Sometimes people are in denial

Sometimes we deny when we're super interested in people, and especially if it's a taboo, and we're not supposed to be because we're married and been married for 18 years, it can be very, very easy to deny that to yourself. And I do think that happens to a lot of people. They're in their own personal self-denial, and they don't want to admit it, and then it gets to a point where other people see it more than they do, because they're denying it to themselves so badly.

And I don't fault anybody for that. I don't think we live in a culture that allows us and teaches us how to acknowledge and process our feelings properly. So it's totally understandable that this would have happened, but she needs to be aware of that, and she needs to be like, "Ah, okay, I see where I've messed up. I need to work on actually recognising my emotions."

Does she see the point where she could have talked to you about it? Has she modelled that conversation in her head with you, and have you really discussed that? Because I don't know if you had—it was three years ago. Maybe you have, maybe you've been in therapy for the past three years, and you've talked about it to death, and now it's just about you holding on to that anger, and that is something also you were working with a therapist about.

This can easily become a tit-for-tat situation

Because it can very quickly, easily—I think the Gottman Institute talks about the four relationship apocalypse—I'm not phrasing this correctly—the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse. Or the four things that cause relationships to end. And one of them, if I remember correctly, is resentment, or that is at least part of one of them, and that type of resentment can easily—I can easily see that escalating into a situation where you have a partner, she's unhappy with it, she wants you to break up with that partner, and you're like, "What? I allowed you— you cheated on me," and then you bring it back. If you can't, if that's not resolved, I think that can easily come up again in that kind of a way. And so I really think that that needs to be discussed and talked about.

If you haven't spent the last three years in therapy talking about it, I think that that's really, really important, because if you're still holding on to that, it can easily become a tit-for-tat situation. That's not helpful for anybody.

Check out my resources

But in general, you can also check out my NonMonogamyHelp.com/101 and 102 articles that can help you in working through things and starting out. The Anxious Person's Guide is also really helpful. It's not necessarily a starter book in the way that my course is specifically for people starting out, but it might also be helpful.

But I do think overall, to sum up, this whole kind of Balrog that's haunting the mines of your relationship kind of needs to be faced, and that needs to be addressed, definitely in therapy. Or, if you're finding a mediator, please try to find a polyamory-friendly therapist. Because I could easily see an anti-polyamory therapist being like, "Oh, well, she's just doing this to," or "You're just wanting to get back at her," or whatever. I can see this not working very well, but try to find a polyamory-friendly couple's therapist who can help you both talk about what happened, figure out how it happened, why it happened.

I don't think it's impossible to go from any sort of type of cheating situation into a healthy relationship, but I think that the work that you do afterward is definitely part of what makes it more successful and what makes it less successful in terms of how it progresses.

So yeah, I hope that helps, and good luck.