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

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Podcast Transcript

My partner and I have been together (not married) for 25 years, and have a 7 yo child. About a year ago we opened our relationship to sexual encounters with other people. We were both on board and had a great time the first 3-4 months. After that panic started to creep in on me. A fear of jeopardizing what I have (family, security, a home), of being abandoned, being replaced. I suffer from GAD and my nervous system is known to misifire when trying to protect me, but the last 6 months have been a real struggle, ripe with jealousy, resentment, fear, detachment from my partner. I'm in this because I want to find a freer, more independent, more purposeful way to be, but I'm not sure I can do it. How much time should I give this before I throw in the towel?

Response

First and foremost, I would really like to address the concept of "my nervous system is known to misfire," and the reason why I want to address this concept is because I have a whole episode which I really recommend you go back and listen to, called, I think, "Polyamory and Childhood Trauma."

But I really, really, really want to impress that I have had anxiety. I think I'm much better now, I still have occasional anxiety as a treat, but I don't have it as bad as I previously had it. I've had it really, really bad, having panic attacks every night, all night. And the number one thing that I think helped me come out of my anxiety and deal with it a lot better, to the point where I don't really feel like I have anxiety anymore, is self-compassion, and understanding why it is that I was doing what I was doing.

Not a failure, not a demon

When I first started off trying to deal with my anxiety, the first shift I made towards a better place was seeing my anxiety rather than seeing myself as almost like Sisyphus, pushing this boulder up, and every single time I had an anxiety attack, it was the boulder falling back down again, it was a failure, it was me failing to stop this from happening. The first shift in my anxiety was like, okay, I'm not failing, this is just something I have. It's like having a cold, it's not my fault, I didn't cause this to happen. When I have an anxiety attack, it's not because I failed myself in some way, and that was extraordinarily helpful.

But I still saw my anxiety as almost like it shifted to being this demon. I was like this haunted person all the time, like there was nothing I could do to get away from it, it was just going to come back again and again, and I just had to deal with it. It was this thing that I wished I could exorcise and get out of myself, because it was evil and it was plaguing me. You didn't literally think that, but that was how I pictured it in my head, this evil thing. There's a really brilliant comic, actually, that I wish I could find again, of this big smoke monster almost following this person saying, "You're worthless," and you learn to deal with it. It's just like, I've just got to learn to deal with this demon.

Seeing anxiety as a scared kid, not an enemy

The other shift that really helped is that instead of seeing this as this demon that I was plagued with, I saw this instead as the younger version of me, and that had a huge impact on how I dealt with anxiety. So this isn't an evil part of myself, this isn't a part of myself that is trying to sabotage my life and destroy my life, this isn't something bad in me. This is me as a kid. I picture my anxiety now as me as a kid, and I followed a lot of gentle parenting creators and authoritative parenting creators who talk about this, there are so many people I could recommend, gosh, I wish I had the whole list, there's a creator called Jon The Whole Parent, The Indominable Black Man and Mr. Katz. I do go through the list in the other episode, so please go back and listen to that one.

But there's a lot of gentle parenting creators I go through who have taught me that when you're a kid and your kid is having a tantrum, you can't reason with them, and you can't yell at them or shame them, none of these things actually help getting out of a tantrum. What helps is sitting down, getting down on their level, and going, "I understand the emotion that you're having, and I understand why you feel this way." A little bit of compassion helps in a lot of ways.

There are ways that becomes permissive parenting, which is another aspect I'll get into later, but that shift, instead of seeing my anxiety as this evil thing that I would try to reason with on occasion, which never worked, was seeing this kid as a tantruming kid in my head, who was scared, who doesn't know how to regulate their emotions, who doesn't know how to deal with this, and is scared because they think they have to protect me.

They think that— and because in the past they have had to protect me, in the past I have had to protect myself, I have not been given the tools for how to deal with this, and that little kid has had to step up.

A personal example: fear of allergic reactions

So now, rather than that kid stepping up, when I lean into my anxiety... A good example: I always had a lot of anxiety around health. I had this really big fixation for a long period of time about having an allergic reaction to something. I was convinced I was going to have an allergic reaction to something, and every time I ate something, I would start to feel like my throat was closing, and I was basically having a panic attack.

I could sit there and reason with it, I could logic with it, but that didn't really help. Really it was just this internal thing going, "Ahh! We have to protect ourselves, and I'm scared because I don't know what to do," and I just have to sit with it and go, "Hey, you know what, you don't have to do that anymore, it's fine, I got you."

The other thing that I learned from gentle parenting creators that helped me with this was that when a kid is freaking out, actually saying something like, "Don't worry, nothing bad is ever going to happen to you," doesn't really help the situation.

It's more about sitting with them and going, "I'll be here for you, I will be here for you no matter what happens." Because you can't promise that nothing bad will ever happen to them, and it's actually much better for them to learn that you will always be there for them. That's actually what they need.

Your fear makes sense given how you were raised

So when you say your nervous system is known to misfire when trying to protect you, your nervous system is not misfiring. I think that's really important to understand. You have grown up in a monocentric society. Unless you grew up in a different context, there are all sorts of different cultures, maybe I'm wrong, but the vast majority of people listening to this podcast have grown up in a society that has taught you that monogamy is the way to go, that that is how love happens, that is the context within which love happens.

This operates in a very specific way. You have not been given any examples of polyamory, you've not been shown any ways that this could work out. In fact, the very thing that you're doing, where your partner is allowed to sleep with other people, is the worst thing that could happen in monogamy. It's the worst thing. You have every reason to fear this happening. Your nervous system is not misfiring, it is firing accurately.

And fundamentally, what a monogamy-centric society has done is told you that if you get married, and if you have a kid, and if you have a house, if you have all of this, then your relationship is safe, then it is not going to end, it's protected, it's secure. And that's not necessarily true, and that's the rub. Sometimes, when you have a hierarchical situation like the one you have, it's not necessarily bad, but you do have a lot to lose.

You are married, and there is clearly only one person that gets to have that title, so there is a reasonable fear to have in this situation. It's fine for the honeymoon period, the first three to four months, it's fine, but then, yeah, you do have a reason to fear. But the truth is that you always have a reason to fear, technically, if you really want to get down to it.

There are plenty of stories of people who have been married for ages, who have kids, whose partners up and leave them, and you can't control that, and releasing yourself from the responsibility to control that will be a huge step forward.

Why the child inside you believes it can control things

So it's not that your nervous system is misfiring, it's that it's firing pretty appropriately. It's just that you are under the impression that you can control this, when you can't, because that's what anxiety does. It's this little kid inside me that's like, "Oh my God, I need to protect..." because this little kid thinks, and has thought, when you are a little kid, I don't know what your childhood was like, but I think it's very similar in a lot of ways: that little kid thinks, "Okay, my parents are fighting."

That little kid cannot leave that situation, that little kid relies on their parents to survive, cannot get out of any situation where they're not going to be taken care of. Facing the inevitable truth that they might have caregivers who don't actually care for them would be an enormous psychological wound, an enormous thing for a child to carry.

So it becomes easier for the child to believe, "When I spill my milk, my parents argue. If I don't spill my milk, they won't argue. If I behave like a very good child, they won’t fight. They won't break up. I can control this situation through my actions," because that, in the moment, is a far more empowering belief than the real situation, which is that they have absolutely, fundamentally no control of the situation.

In that moment that is a survival thing that you do, and you do it as an adult too, because it feels a lot better, it helps you live through that moment. You're like, "I can control this, I'm in charge of these situations, and therefore I don't have to be afraid." But you're not. And the problem with this thinking is that it's a double-edged sword. At the time, it helps you survive, but it becomes maladaptive, because you can't believe that you have the power to prevent your parents from divorcing by not spilling your milk, without also then, if they do divorce, thinking it's your fault.

And that's why you think it's your fault, because you think you can control it, because at that time, thinking you could control it made you feel better. In the exact same way, you can't believe that you have the power to keep people in your life, to keep your relationships, to prevent people from leaving you, without also blaming yourself for all the times that people did leave you, and that creates the anxiety.

Anxiety isn't about the thing itself

Because anxiety isn't really about the thing that you're anxious about. You're not really scared that you're going to lose your security, your family. You're afraid you can't deal with it. You are afraid that dealing with that situation will not be something that you can do. And you can deal with that situation, if that would happen, you can deal with it.

The problem is that the more you give the child inside of you the reins, the more you lean into that, the more you say, "Actually, I'm wrong, my nervous system is misfiring," and you say, "Okay, you're right, I need to be afraid of this," well, the more that I said, "I'm going to have an allergic reaction, and I can't deal with it," then I avoided foods, I started avoiding things that I thought I would have a reaction to, and my world got smaller and smaller and smaller, because the problem was never solved.

The initial belief that I couldn't handle the situation if I couldn't control it always drove me, rather than confidence in myself. In a way, it chips away at your own self-confidence and your own ability to trust yourself, because you continuously invest in the idea that "I can't control this, if it happens I won't be able to handle this, I can't handle it unless I can control it." And it feeds and feeds and feeds, and the anxiety just gets worse and worse.

Letting go and reparenting yourself

So letting go of that is a huge part of this. Seeing your anxiety as, okay, it's not misfiring, it's firing correctly, it's trying to protect me. Humans are social creatures, we rely on our social relationships, and have relied on our social relationships, that's been the edge that we've had. We're not apex predators, we're not amazing, well, we are pretty inventive and pretty cool, but it's our social relationships that has kept us alive. In the past, your ancestors, if they were kicked out of their social group, they would die.

So you have every reason to fear losing access to your social group. Understand that this isn't misfiring, this is your understandable anxiety reacting the way that it should. And rather than trying to logic your inner child out of a tantrum, going, "But our partner loves us," no, you say, "You know what, I see that you're afraid, I understand that you're afraid, and it is a scary situation, but I'm going to be here for you, and I will be there for you no matter what."

You can be that parent, that your parent, I don't know if you had parents that were… but you can step in and be that, rather than feeding into the child, going, "You know what, it is scary, and I'm scared too, and I don't know what's going to happen if this happens." You can be that for yourself. It's not an overnight thing, it takes time, it takes building that relationship with yourself and going, "Hey, I got this, it's going to be okay." That helps a lot more.

Fear that makes sense is not misfiring

So I think a combination of self-compassion, understanding and validating that you have a reason to fear, that this is not misfiring, this is the absolute correct firing, understanding that you live in a monocentric society, and that has taught you that what you're doing now is like the worst thing that could ever happen. So of course you're freaked out. If you were to go skydiving, would it be understandable for you to be afraid? Yes, it would.

And you've probably seen more media depictions of people going skydiving than you ever have, you probably know that if you pick a reputable operator, you probably will be safe, but you would still allow yourself to feel scared about it, it wouldn't be ridiculous for you to feel scared. You wouldn't think your nervous system was misfiring, you would be like, "No, I have legitimate reason to be scared." So give yourself that ability here.

Release the responsibility of keeping your partner around, because you cannot control that, and your desire to control that is understandable and reasonable, but it also is not possible. What you can control is how you treat yourself and being there for yourself, that is the thing you can control.

Have the bigger conversation with your partner

I also think, side note, it would be very beneficial for you and your partner to sit down and talk about what non-monogamy looks like in five years, in ten years. What happens if one of you does start to develop romantic feelings for somebody? What happens then? Because you said you've opened your relationship to sexual encounters, but feelings develop sometimes, and even as much as you may not want them, you can't control that either.

So have you talked about what happens if you develop romantic feelings for somebody else? How do you talk about that with one another? If you decide that you want to have more of a polyamorous focus, where you and your partner do have other partners, how do they fit into your life? Is there a balance in childcare right now, are you getting the support you need from your partner with childcare, how do you balance all of that?

I think you need to have those discussions, and that will also help a lot more with the anxiety, because right now it's like a guessing game. You know that you're married, you know that you hold that position, you know the other people don't, so what else is there to think about? You've not created any other girlfriend roles, or boyfriend roles, or they/them roles, you've not created any other partnership roles, so the only two options are casual partner or married partner.

So it stands to reason, and it's perfectly understandable, that you would think you could be dethroned, decrowned, kicked out of your position, basically. That's a possibility, because you've not talked about, or seemingly haven't talked about, any other positions that there could be outside of just this position of married or not married.

So maybe there's a need to talk about that a little bit more. What does that look like if you're even open to sexual encounters, that doesn't mean that you don't care about each other, so where does something like friends with benefits fit into that type of situation? What defines your marriage as separate from other relationships outside of just having a child together?

Have you really defined how much time you spend with each other versus how much time you spend with other people, how much time you spend on dates, how much time you spend on childcare, is it equal? Do you feel like you can come to your partner and be like, "Hey, I feel like I'm drowning here, I need help"? I think that would also help a lot to ground you.

Recap

So, to recap, please go back, there's the episode, I think it's called "Polyamory and Childhood Trauma," and I talk explicitly about my experience with anxiety and trauma recovery, and being able to deal with my anxiety in a much better way.

I haven't had a proper panic attack in ages, I get a little anxious occasionally, and I feel anxious in general, because anxiety is actually a normal human emotion, you're going to feel anxious normally, it's just that I don't feel it all the time anymore, and that's freaking great. I think it's possible for you too, and I go through a bit of my journey on that episode.

But to sum up here: a little self-compassion, releasing what you can't control, having that conversation with your partner about where your relationship is, where it could go, what it could look like in different phases, what happens if you do end up having romantic feelings for somebody else. I think that will probably help ground you a heck of a lot.

Okay, I hope that helps, and good luck.