Bitterness Over Flourishing Partner

I’ve been listening to your podcast for more than a year and first wanted to say thank you, it is one of the main reasons that me and my first partner, lets call her Coconut, managed to open up our long term relationship a year ago, and that I am now in a year-long committed relationship to my second partner, Birch. Now that I’m polyamorous, I feel much more unconditionally loved and able to be myself in both my relationships, and I think your podcast really helped me to get here.

I’m writing to you about some incredibly difficult emotions I’ve had in my newer relationship. These emotions began a month ago when Birch started casually sleeping with two other men. Previously, when Coconut entered a committed relationship with another woman my emotions were much more manageable and the comparison between my two emotional responses led me to ask some difficult questions about why it is so different this time around.

I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s because of some internalised misogyny, prejudice, or my difficult relationship with my own masculinity and sexuality (queer and incredibly inexperienced). I’m working hard on myself and still have a fair bit of improvement to do, but I suspect there is another, more obvious reason that I’ve been reluctant to acknowledge, because it seems much more unsolvable.

Four months ago, I met someone at a work conference and hit it off. We ended up seeing each other every couple of weeks until about a month ago. For Birch, this was incredibly difficult, she went through a kind of emotional agony that seemed as intense as anything I’ve ever seen a partner live through. She tried her best but could never come to terms with me dating someone new and only got any kind of relief when I stopped seeing this person.

Along the way, I experienced a lot of her pain second hand and crossed all kinds of soft boundaries and pain thresholds of mine to try and help her. I exhausted myself emotionally being with her, helping her process her feelings and letting her be angry at me for hours on end. This last one was especially difficult as I have OCD and am terrified of being a bad person or hurting people.

Birch made all kinds of requests she later took back, including asking me to limit how much I see this new person, to move slowly while dating her, and even to never see her again. I’m a people pleaser, and even though I refused and she took her requests back, I still had a very strong impulse to do what she wanted. I also found that once I realised how much my actions were hurting my partner, I automatically stopped seeing this new person so much, and actually got very little joy from these occasional meetings.

It felt like my short term pleasure was going to cause both me and Birch more emotional pain than it could possibly be worth. Ultimately this new person stopped seeing me because I wasn’t available enough, and I had been planning to end it with her anyway, partly because we were ultimately incompatible and partly because I just wasn’t enjoying the experience. I didn’t really have time to process any of this with Birch, because she started dating just a few days later.

I now have the feeling that since she has started dating, Birch is experiencing what I always wanted most out of polyamory: a sense of lightness, possibility and adventure, of sex without shame, feeling attractive and finding connection with all kinds of people. Instead of being happy for her, I can’t help but feel that this was something that was actively taken away from me, and that I may never be able to have so long as our relationship continues.

To make matters worse, one of her new partners, let’s call him Archer, is incredibly sociable and outgoing, a hobby musician who throws parties. I’m an extrovert who has been very lonely since the pandemic, and who really misses playing music with other people, so I’m swimming in envy of Birch, that she was suddenly whisked away by a partner, and is casually on the brink of being given so many of the things that I have wanted for myself so badly. It sounds pointlessly dramatic, but while Birch and Archer are at a party, I spent Friday evening cleaning my kitchen – again.

Archer also drinks regularly, which I never do. My partner has a complicated history with alcohol and for much of our relationship I thought she was an ex alcoholic. She really values that I don’t drink, sometimes going so far as to pressure me not to start (especially when I had a glass of wine with the conference person and she was worried that I was changing as a person), but seems very happy to drink and party with Archer. I feel pigeonholed into a role as safe, cozy, emotional support partner, but really miss parties, socialising, and having a large social circle. I moved cities for Coconut, never fully managed to establish myself here, and since the pandemic have been especially lonely.

My partner is on the fringe of a very active social group of musicians, one of whom was her last boyfriend. They are frequently going to concerts, playing music, hanging out and having parties every once in a while. I tried to integrate with them once at a charity gig they played, but had the feeling that absolutely no-one was even slightly interested in getting to know me, to the point where it was honestly pretty rude. My partner, being on the fringe of the group and uncertain of her position within it, is also reserved about having someone tag along to events, and I would need some encouragement to feel comfortable to do so.

Archer is very much a part of this group and someone she met at one of their parties, so since Archer has no interest in me or polyamory, I now feel completely shut out of this social group. It already honestly felt a little high school and cliquey 6 months ago, but now that she is dating someone from the group it is starting to feel very much so. I’m not sure I’d want to be a part of this group if I wasn’t feeling so excluded from it.

As an aside, my high school experience was one full of exclusion and bullying, which may be making me extra sensitive. Birch is organising more and more events with this group, now meeting almost weekly instead of every couple of months, and she is now saying that she likes this being something just for her, and that even without Archer she would be reluctant to share it, which I understand, but struggle to accept emotionally.

Overall I am just swimming in bitterness and resentment. I know it is not my partner’s fault that she couldn’t handle me dating someone else, but I am seeing her have so many things that I have wanted for so long, from this light polyamory spirit of possibility to socialising, parties and casual sex. I know she didn’t take these things away from me, but I feel like our relationship together has really stood in the way of me having these things, and I am such a long way away from being ok with her having them, that I suspect I may even start trying to sabotage her if it keeps going like this.

As an aside, she doesn’t come across so well in this letter, but is actually a very kind and moral person, just one who is a lot more introverted and independent than me. If possible, I would love to keep her in my life, in the context of just the two of us, this relationship is one of the most healthy and nurturing I have ever had.

I feel I need to put this bitterness aside before it destroys this relationship and possibly turns me off polyamory altogether, but I have no idea how to do so. Time isn’t really helping. Trying dating again feels like the obvious solution, but being full of all of these negative emotions, I feel incredibly undesirable and really don’t particularly want to date. I also think I’m still carrying a lot of baggage from my last attempt at dating while in a relationship with Birch.

Because of what we went through, on some level I still think of dating new people as something dirty, selfish or shameful; something that hurts the people I care about, fills them with anger and contempt for me, and risks destroying the relationships I value. (Since that narrative was established in my relationship with her, I guess that is also part of what makes it so hard to watch Birch date.)

Establishing an independent friend group would also be a great idea, but takes time, and honestly I just haven’t managed it so far. I have some friends I meet one on one, but definitely don’t know enough people to even think about throwing a party. I also feel worried that my bitterness will only increase as I watch Birch have more and more of what I want, and I wonder if it’s time to end the relationship before I resent her so much that there isn’t space for her in my life at all.

She means a lot to me, and at my current level of bitterness, a friendship in a few months would still be a possibility. Also, if you have any advice for how to put emotions aside late at night in order to be able to sleep, I’d love to hear it too. Birch is currently at a party with Archer and I’ve been unable to sleep the whole night long.

In general, I would say there are three issues going on here: your expectations of polyamory, your own social support network, and how much information you know.

To start off, I'm very much hoping reading my articles or listening to my podcasts never gave you the view that polyamory would give you all of these things you specified: lightness, possibility, adventure, sex without shame, finding connection or feeling attractive because all of these things are fully possible both with monogamy both with and without a current partner. Polyamory is merely a style of doing relationships -- that's it. Just like having children isn't inherently going to give you a sense of purpose, even if that's what many people find when they do have children.

There is a sense of mourning I feel you will have to do of mismatched expectations. There was no promise within polyamory that you would inherently find all of this stuff. In fact, polyamory tends to make one's dating pool much smaller as the vast majority of people out there are looking for monogamy, not polyamory. It's not to say all of the things you outlined are impossible for you to achieve, but you need to let go of the idea that polyamory promises any of these things.

As you have indicated, you need to establish your own social network. If I were Zach, I would find it weird to have my metamour trying to fit into my social group and honestly wouldn't want that. While I can't say for sure what their motivations were for their behaviour, I see a slight attempt to have the same thing Bea has by sticking yourself within her social group and... that's not going to be effective. This is Bea's group which she has likely had her own journey into. You need to find your own.

This doesn't have to be around dating. You're an extrovert so there are plenty of options. Join an exercise based group if you like exercise. Sign up for a cooking class. Go to an improv group. Step outside of your comfort zone and push yourself to go to things and meet new people you can find a group within. You could even try going to local polyamory groups and see if they have speed dating. Go to club nights. Get out there and try and establish those groups because the moments you spend feeling sorry for yourself are the moments you're not working towards building those connections.

It's also worth remembering that our perception of other people's social circles is not as accurate as we may think. I had a friend who was very, very popular. Everyone loved them and had so many positive things to say about them. But I know based off of visiting them a few times and because they occasionally dip out of contact that they are actually pretty intensely lonely. I have felt such envy for their social popularity all the while assuming that them being liked by others made them happy... and it didn't. The grass is always greener.

When it comes to how much you know, I think that it might be worth asking Bea to give you less information about your metamours if possible, especially until you build up your own social network that doesn't involve her metamaours. You may have an opinion about Bea's drinking, but ultimately she is an adult who needs to make her own decisions around that and around Zach. Unless she explicitly asks for help, pushing the issue won't solve it even if she is floating a bit close to having an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. The best thing to do in that case is to ask for a little distance there, and then let her know you are there if there is an issue.

Lastly, having moved countries twice and in one case to a city I had never even visited before, I get the struggle of trying to establish new friends in a new place. It's easy to forget you have friends who still care when you don't see them physically. I would encourage you to temper some of your loneliness by finding friends who will regularly and reliably communicate with you and leaning into those friendships. I have a friend who lives in a different country and we have a weekly Discord call. With other friends, we have a weekly practice of sending short little videos to each other about how our week went.

In the past, I have assumed knowing someone longer made them safer even if they rarely ever reached out to me to communicate. But now, I tend to notice the people who take it upon themselves to reach out to me and I offer more reciprocation with those people, even if we haven't known each other for that long. For years, I spent time resenting the "close" friends I had who never spoke to me until I learned to let go of the expectation I had of them to step up to a role that, in fairness, I placed on them that they never asked me for or indicated.

So what friends or connections do you have in your life that you can nurture? Who shows reciprocation to you regardless of how "close" you think you are? Who puts in the effort? Lean into those friendships and see if you can schedule regular time or regular updates with each other. It may be "weird" to some people, but I have found this has been critical in times when I have been lonely and has helped me remember how many people do care for me. This isn't about cutting people out but learning how to disengage your expectations from people who show you, whether intentional or not, they don't have the time to give to you and engage those who do. You spend way less time in resentment that way.

I hope this helps and good luck!