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

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Podcast Transcript

I am female, currently in a monogamous relationship with my husband of 13 years. We have a 7-year-old son and own a home together. My husband travels a lot for work, so I have some level of independence. I identify as queer and have dated an equal number of men and women. I have been faithful and committed to my husband for the whole course of our relationship.

Back in January, I was introduced to a close friend of my best friend. I found this new person, let's call them J, very attractive. We spoke very briefly, but I felt an instant connection. J is non-binary and very androgynous, presenting slightly more masculine than feminine. I told my best friend about the attraction, and she told me that J said they were attracted to me too. I told my husband about the crush, and he did not seem to mind.

I did not see J again until June when they came to stay at my house for one night with my best friend. The attraction was still there, and I felt even more drawn to them. My husband was with us and I openly flirted with J, thinking that my husband did not mind. He later told me that it made him uncomfortable, to see me so attracted to someone else, especially someone who presents masculine.

I saw J a few weeks later when we stayed at a house for 2 nights that we had rented with a group of mutual friends. Over the course of that weekend, I grew closer to J, spending a lot of our time together, often choosing to spend time with each other over the group. Nothing romantic happened between us, but we had a conversation at the end of the weekend where we acknowledged the attraction and agreed that we would not act on it.

When I got home from that weekend, I opened up to my husband about the extent of my attraction and asked him if he would consider opening up our marriage so I could explore my feelings for J. He had a very hard time hearing this and over the course of the next few weeks, we had many emotional conversations, some good, some bad. We have also spoken with a therapist who has helped us with these conversations. We have seen her in the past and she overall feels like a good fit for us, but I worry that she is biased against polyamory.

As it stands, my husband and I have agreed that we will be open on his side (he is allowed to see other people), and I will stay closed for the foreseeable future. This arrangement was my idea, as I see this is the fair way for us to explore ENM, since I am the one who wants it and should be the first person to be confronted with the feelings of jealousy, etc.

In terms of having a relationship with J, my husband says he is not saying no, but he needs time and he wants our relationship to be in a better place before we can even discuss me having something with J. My husband does not want me to contact them, or be friends with them, but he accepts that I will see them in group settings, when I am with my best friend.

This weekend my husband and son were out of town and 3 friends came to stay at my house including J. My husband was not happy about this, but he agreed to trust me. Again, nothing happened, but the attraction felt very strong. J and I did not have any discussions about our attraction, and acted appropriately, but the romantic connection was there.

They left yesterday, and I feel really sad. I miss J and do not know when I will see them again. My husband wants me to take a break from seeing them after this weekend. I told my husband I will give it a year before I ask to explore a relationship with J again. To further complicate things, J has told me that they want to date me, but that they are not comfortable being the first person that I date when my husband and I do open up. They worry about wrecking my marriage, especially since we have a child.

I am extremely attracted to my husband, our sex life is amazing and I know I want to be with him, but at the same time I feel so pulled towards J. In an ideal world, I would be able to love both of them, and my husband and J would be friends. I could see myself and J both being comfortable in this scenario, but my husband is pretty traditional and it feels like a real stretch for someone like him.

But even separate from J, I do feel an open marriage would be great for us. Having these conversations has made me feel so much closer to my husband and has made our sex even better. My husband is open to me dating "fem" women, but I usually do not find feminine women attractive. I guess my question is in part, do I go on the apps/ out to bars seeking a feminine woman to date? so that I can #1, test the waters with my husband, and #2, date someone else before J, so that J feels comfortable?

One last complication is that my husband is very much a "one penis policy" person, and J has confided in me that they were born male. They transitioned to female about 10 years ago, and I believe they are still taking female hormones, but they are currently gender non-conforming.

They prefer people to think they were born female, and no one in their current social circle knows about this besides me. I see them as female/ non-binary, but I worry that if I were to date them in the future & my husband found out they were born male, he would say I broke our rule of not dating men. I do not know if J has had surgery, and I do not think that is anyone's business, including mine. If I do end up dating J, am I required to tell my husband that J was born male, even though this is not my "secret" to share?

I am also curious about your thoughts on whether or not I should avoid seeing J altogether for my emotional health? I end up crying after I see them because I miss them, and being just friends with them feels almost impossible. I trust myself not to cheat, but when we are together, it feels like we are dating.

Response

That is a lot of stuff going on. I will say first and foremost—firstly, I want to say that the idea that he is allowed to have other partners and you aren't in order so that you're the first person to experience jealousy—the cat's already out of the bag. That ain't no Etch A Sketch. This one doodle that can't be undid, homeskillet. He's already jealous of J, so that's not what's happening. So whatever—I see why you tried to do that, but really that's already happened. So I would give up on that perception that you're going to expand.

And also, if he's not actually interested in dating other people, it's functionally useless. It's like if your partner really liked skydiving, and your partner was terrified of you skydiving because they thought it was super dangerous—I don't know how dangerous that actually is, probably isn't—and then you were like, "But you can go skydiving too." That's irrelevant, because they don't want to go skydiving. It's not the equality/equity thing, whatever the word is. It's not what you think it is in terms of actually trying to build trust.

Because if he is already super busy, and the reason why you have so much independence is because he has a time-intensive career, then it—if he has no interest in dating other people, and he's super busy and he has a child, it's functionally useless.

J has already told you they're not interested

I think that J has already told you that they are not interested in being the first person that you date, and I understand why that is, because in a way, this does have the potential to—it wouldn't be J causing that. And I feel really sad that J thinks that this would be their fault. It wouldn't be their fault if you're fundamentally incompatible with your husband in terms of your desire to explore non-monogamy. That is not J's fault.

However, it could very well mean that your husband ends up blaming J for it, and that does happen, and I totally understand why J doesn't want to be that scapegoat. 100% get it, especially given the position J is in as a trans person. I don't know if J specifically identifies as trans, but given their specific position, I can understand why they would be even more uninterested in being the scapegoat for this—breaking up this beautiful heterosexual family. "Look at what those people have done, ruining lives with their perversity." I get that narrative, and I get why J would be uninterested in being that, because this could very easily blow up into some sort of family scandal where all of your husband's family know about J and hate J for being the other person who's come in and ruined your precious family.

So I would really consider giving up on the idea that you're going to be able to date J, because I think even if it turns out that you had these discussions with your husband and you found out that you were inherently incompatible in terms of non-monogamy, and non-monogamy was something you wanted to pursue so badly that you couldn't end up staying with your husband, I think J would still feel a bit of a way about it. So I would kind of give up on that idea a little bit.

Take care of your emotional health

And whatever you need to secure your own emotional health, maybe do that. I do think eventually you are kind of in a bit of the throes of new relationship energy, a little bit. Crushes are intense. And I do think that that will eventually fade and you'll kind of get over it. But if it's causing you a lot of emotional distress, and you feel like distance would help you, you doing that for you, then definitely consider that. But I would really hesitate to continuously and mentally engage in the idea that you're going to be able to date J, because I kind of don't know if that ship is going to be seaworthy.

You're betraying your own needs

The other thing I want to say is that there's a lot in this letter of you, for understandable reasons, betraying your own needs and wants for the sake of keeping peace within your relationship. And I get why you're doing that. You have a child, you have a house, you have this long-established relationship which has no problems in it. You're not seeking out other relationships to fill a gap that's in your current relationship.

However, I really want you to put yourself in the position of a femme woman who's going to a bar or is on dating apps to find a partner that genuinely is interested in them, only to come across you who's really just basically messing around with femme women for the purposes of pleasing your husband or using someone as a guinea pig so that you can tick this box off and say to your husband, "Okay, I've dated someone now," or tick the box off for J and please—please your husband.

Not that you're trying to please your husband, like he's like, "Oh, date femme women, because I think it's hot." But you're not being honest with what you're truly attracted to, and in the process, that could hurt somebody. A femme woman doesn't deserve—how would you feel being that woman who's just being basically used? And I think that this is the problem with what you're doing throughout this—you're constantly kind of betraying your own needs and your own wants to please the people around you, which isn't really a good setup for any kind of relationship, and it's leading you to not—you can't even date people who look masc.

I get why people feel OPP

I get it. OPP. I get why people feel that way. And men, usually men who—it's usually men who want the one-penis policies. I get why men feel that way. I think I used to be very, very antagonistic about OPP and the way that a lot of people in the polyam community are for understandable reasons, right? Because it devalues—exactly for the reason that you're seeing here with J. It gender-essentialises people to the point of being transphobic. It devalues the relationships between women as non-threatening in comparison to a heterosexual relationship. There's all sorts of reasons why a lot of people react very antagonistically towards one-penis policies.

I will say that when I have been in relationships with people and they have dated people whom I could compare myself directly to because we shared physical characteristics, that has drawn up a lot more anxiety in me than when they dated people who I couldn't compare myself directly to because we didn't share the same physical characteristics.

So I can understand, on an emotional level, being scared of your partner dating somebody who shares some physical similarities to you, because you're worried that they might be better, that you can directly compare yourself to them in a way that feels more emotionally threatening than when they're so different that it's almost like apples and oranges. It's not necessarily that you find it less threatening or that you think those relationships don't matter. It's that because they're so different—my feelings around this were very much, had a lot to do with gender. I was basically afraid that if my partner dated women, then my fakeness, my non-womanness, or my inability—I have had problems in the past seeing my non-binary identity, rather, instead of being just a non-binary identity, as being a failed woman, right? That has been an issue for me throughout life.

And that's been a problem. So I can easily get emotionally triggered by my partners dating women. Because I can feel like, "Oh shit, I'm going to be found out. I'm going to be rumbled, and they're going to find out that, 'Oh, wait, actually, I don't need you, diet woman, because I can go date the real thing.'" Do you know what I mean? I've had those comparisons. I've felt that comparison, and felt more emotionally triggered by that.

You've got to piss or get off the pot

Now, just because I'm emotionally triggered by that doesn't give me the right to control who my partners date, and that is really the problem here—there has to be a better way of saying this, but I feel like you've got to piss or get off the pot. You know, this sort of dipping your toe into non-monogamy by, "Oh, I'm going to date femme women because my partner is okay with it. Are you okay with this? Are you okay with that?"

Allowing your partner's anxieties to control your behaviour is not only unfair to you, but it's unfair to the people that you date. And I mean, think about it—think about it in terms of monogamous relationships. What if your partner was like, "Oh, I'm not comfortable with you having male friends." I think I would hope that you would push back on that. I would hope that you would be like, "Okay, I get why you might emotionally be afraid, but I'm not comfortable with your emotions and your feelings and your fears controlling what I do." That would not be acceptable. I would genuinely hope.

In that same vein, I don't think it's acceptable for your partner—your partner may have feelings about you dating somebody with a penis, that's something for him to work out. And you can be supportive of that, and he could talk with you about that, but definitely don't out J to your husband. Please do not do that in any circumstances.

Push back on OPP in general

But I think that you should push back in general about this OPP rule, not just because of J—which I said that maybe you should think about that ship as having sailed, and maybe you could meet up with that ship later on—but you should push back on that in general. If you're going to have polyamory, if you're going to be able to date people, then you need to be able to date who you want to date, including masc-presenting women. If that's who you want to date, don't go out and seek out relationships with people that you have no interest in, that you're not attracted to, just because of your husband's discomfort.

Either this is something that you want, and he's going to have to deal with that, and you're going to have to have a discussion about whether or not non-monogamy for you is a deal-breaker—and not just because of J, but because in general, do you want to have the freedom, and does he also want to have the freedom to date who you want to date, and to allow relationships to progress how they progress?

Is this an incompatibility?

Or is that the sort of incompatibility here? Because your husband may not be polyamorous. The one-penis policy—I'm not going to go on and play, "Oh, he's misogynistic," blah, blah, whatever. I'm not going to get into that. But he may not genuinely want polyamory. That may not be something that he wants and that's okay. It's not that he doesn't want you to be happy. It's not that he wants to control what you're doing with other people.

But he may be conceding to allow you to date femme women, which sounds awful—hate that—but he may also be really bad. He may also be doing things that he doesn't want to do, purely for the sake of your feelings, and he shouldn't do that either. He should not be like, "Okay, you can date people, but only femme women," because he's uncomfortable with it.

I don't know—if you and J are kind of naturally flirty, I don't think it was necessarily the best introduction to kind of this setup for him to see you be super flirty with somebody else. But at the same time, that eventually, at some point may happen.

Have a big discussion about non-monogamy

So I think you guys need to have a really big discussion about non-monogamy. Does he want non-monogamy? This isn't about allowing you to date J. This is about, do you actually want non-monogamy in your relationship? How does that look with a child, with his busy work schedule? Does he have time for other partners? Does he want other partners? How many other partners do you want? What does your schedule look like? What will that involve? The physicality of those situations is really important.

This isn't about J, and don't make it about J, because it's not fair to J. But make it about what you actually want, and you need to make that clear. You need to say to him, "Listen, if this is true about you, I am interested in non-monogamy, and I'm interested in all kinds of people. I am queer, I am not heterosexual, so I'm interested in all kinds of people. And the types of women that I tend to be interested in tend to be masc-presenting people. The types of non-binary people that I tend to be interested in tend to be masc-presenting people. I am not attracted to feminine women. I will not be dating feminine women…

!Maybe there might be a woman that comes across, but I certainly won't be seeking feminine women to date. So if we're going to do this, you need to be aware that these are the types of people that I'm going to date, and I'm not going to restrict people based off of what genitals they have. That's not something that I do, and it wouldn't be something that I do outside of this relationship. So it's not going to be something that I do inside of this relationship."

And if he doesn't want polyamory, or doesn't want any form of non-monogamy, then ultimately you have a disagreement with each other. You have an incompatibility, and then you have to then decide, is non-monogamy something that's so important to you that you are willing to—it's not worth the price? Losing that is not worth the price of admission for this relationship.

Are you ambiamorous?

There are some people who are—I think it's ambiamorous. I think I'm saying that correctly. Who could be polyamorous, or could be monogamous, and not particularly wedded to either. Is that you, or is this something that is inherent about you?

Now, there are other ways, if you're interested—if you're queer and you're interested in having experiences with masc women, there are other ways that you could potentially do that, either through, if it's legal where you are, hiring a sex worker, or going on dates, or going on dating sites and making it clear that you're looking for hookups with masc women. But that's something he's going to have to deal with.

Even if this is—you're not having full-on relationships with other people—you're not attracted to femme women, and he should know that about you. You should not, under any circumstances, pretend to be—go out and date people that you're not attracted to. That's not fair on you and it's not fair on them.

Do not out J

And just to reiterate the last point, please, under no circumstances tell anyone what J has told you about their current status of their genitals. Please do not tell anyone about this unless J has given you explicit permission to do so, because at the end of the day, this one-penis policy is something you should be fighting in general, not for the sake of J. And please do not disclose that to your husband unless J has given you explicit permission to do so.

Fight the one-penis policy rule in general. But it is absolutely not your husband's business what genitals J has, and that's a good reason to not support OPP, because it basically means that you're going to have to report on the genitals of who your partners have. So it's none of—please.

Please also, if you're going to fight this with your husband—I probably shouldn't say fight this, because you're not enemies. If you're going to push back on this with your husband, please don't create a scenario where then it's obvious that you're talking about J. So don't accidentally out J, either. Don't be like, "What if I date someone who's super masc and also has a penis?" Please don't do that. If there's anything that you could say that would accidentally out J, please do not do that.

So please, if you're going to argue about this, if you're going to push back against it, then it needs to be from the standpoint that, "Hey, I'm queer and I'm open to dating all sorts of people, and I don't want to be restricted. It's not fair to restrict—I understand that you might feel nervous about comparing yourself to other people," exactly the things that I've said already, "but I'm not okay with being restricted in that way."

Make it about the rule in general

Just make it about that, because that is—for all sorts of reasons outside of J—a rule that you should push back on, and it's also kind of pointless, because women can use toys, and you could compare—a man could compare themselves to a toy, and feel inadequate in a lot of ways, because there are things that toys can do that he can't do. So, yeah, whatever.

I understand it. I'm not quite as antagonistic towards it as some other people are, but I absolutely understand the antagonism people have towards it and the criticisms people have of it, and precisely for the reasons that you're seeing right now.

To sum it up

So yeah, to sum it up, it's kind of too late. The cat's already out of the bag in terms of jealousy. So I don't think that that rule that you've created, that scenario you've created, makes any sense.

I would really consider basically hanging up the idea that you might be able to date J—maybe in five years. And if you and your husband have decided that you're both okay with polyamory, and you've worked on some stuff, will you be able to pick up that thread again? But certainly not any time soon.

And if being around J is causing you emotional distress—I also don't think that your husband should be dictating who you're allowed to be friends with and who you're allowed to see based on their comfort. So that's out of—that's a no for me. But if you personally are feeling emotionally upset by seeing J and you feel like some distance would help you with that, then that's okay for you, for your reasons, for your emotions.

Please don't go out and date femme women that you're actually not attracted to for the sake of ticking off a box for J. I don't think that J would be okay with that. And I actually think if you told J that you were willing to do that, they would probably be less attracted to you, maybe, or they certainly wouldn't be happy with that kind of situation. So please don't do that.

Stop agreeing to stuff you don't want

You need to have a discussion with your partner about polyamory, about what this looks like, about whether or not your partner is actually interested in it for themselves, whether or not it's actually a deal-breaker, and both of you need to stop agreeing to stuff that you don't want for the sake of—I get that compromise is a thing. I'm not saying never compromise on anything.

But these need to be compromises in terms of setting up time, dedicated time that you have with each other, dedicated time that you have as a family, time that you have with other people, that can be clearly spelt out, and that can be a compromise. But other people shouldn't be the victims of the compromises that you make with each other to please one another, because the more that you give anxiety an inch, the more it takes a mile. The more that you lean into the idea that people with penises are something that your partner should fear, the more it validates the fear inside him that he should be afraid of that.

So yeah, I would push back on OPP for the reasons that I explained. In terms of polyamory, it's kind of a piss-or-get-off-the-pot thing, even though that's a horrible way of putting it. But you do need to—these sorts of compromises and ways that you're sacrificing things make other people into collateral, and it's not really fair.

I would lie to protect someone

And last, but not least, please, please, please, please, do not out J to anybody. It seems like you know that, but I'm just reaffirming that. I can easily see a situation where you create this imaginary scenario for your husband to push back on OPP that makes it—that makes him draw, connect the dots, and then he figures out, and then he asks you directly, "Does J have these genitals?" And no, don't. Don't do that. Please, please, don't.

And I think personally, it's up to people's individual ethics, but I think it's absolutely for the sake of avoiding outing someone—I would totally lie about something like that, even to my partner, if it meant not outing someone and not—especially if I felt like my partner was going to do something, or if I felt like my partner would out them to other people, I would absolutely lie to protect a trans person or a non-binary person. I don't know, actually—I keep saying—I'm sorry. I don't know if J actually identifies as trans, but I would certainly lie to not out someone for the purposes of protecting them. That's my personal opinion about that.

You'll get through this

So yeah, that was a lot to go through. Hopefully it all made sense. It's a complicated situation, and it can be emotionally upsetting. But the crush feelings that you have—you're kind of swept up a little bit in new relationship energy, even if it's not full relationship, and that will eventually die down. It's fine. I think you'll get to a point where you can just be friends with J.

But I think it's something that you really need to actually discuss and actually make agreements about and actually work towards. It has to be something that he's actually interested in, not just something he's giving into because he doesn't know how to say no, because you both have a house and a kid and a marriage and been together for a long time and have a good relationship, and you don't want to lose that. You kind of have to figure out if you're fundamentally compatible in that way.

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