Anxious Attachment and Polyamory

My partner and I have been open for about 5/6 months. We’ve been together for a little over a year. We met when she was poly with her ex husband. During the first part of our relationship we stayed close to build a solid base. However she identifies as nonmonog[amous] where as myself, I could take it or leave it.

As an anxious attacher I’ve been going through the ups and downs of this aspect of our relationship. We have rules and barriers to keep certain aspects of our relationship sacred.

My big thing is, she has this history with people from her time as poly whereas I do not. All my previous partners were monogamous so I’m feeling a little anxious about her ability to just jump back into these people where as I’m struggling to find

1. What I want out of this open aspect of our relationship
2. How I can support her best even if my desire for extracurricular activities is pretty low compared to her

I don’t know if there’s a straightforward question here for you , but I also don’t have many nonmonog[amous] friends to talk about this stuff with (other than my partner).

First and foremost, I would encourage you to stray away from labelling yourself an "anxious attacher". While I understand a lot of people get a lot from attachment theory, I personally believe it can do more harm than good to so heavily identify with attachment methods and your letter is one of the examples where I think attachment theory is kind of a misdirection from the issue.

You're in a new relationship with someone who was polyamorous with an ex husband who doesn't have a strong desire for non-monogamy and who may have had some period of being her only partner. While I don't understand what the context was of your partner's previous relationship, there is a narrative here that I think your anxiety is reacting to that has nothing to do with your anxiety. It is normal, especially within a short lived relationship to feel anxiety. That's not an anxious attachment necessarily, it's just a normal reaction to the situation, especially when trying a relationship style you have no cultural scripts or models for.

On top of that, you are with someone who had a previous hierarchy where she had a husband and from the sounds of what you're talking about, i.e. keeping "rules and barriers" to make your relationship "sacred", that hierarchy has continued within your relationship. I don't think hierarchy is inherently bad and I'd rather people be honest about it than pretend it doesn't exist.

But the thing is that, if there is a "husband" or "one most important partner" role available within your partner's life, you've seen yourself move from someone who is not "the husband" into an elevated position and the proof is right in front of you that this position is a place someone else could take. While I am not suggesting that you replaced her husband or that there was any intent for that to happen, when you apply the lens of a mono-centric society to it, that is something that could easily trigger additional anxiety.

While I absolutely understand wanting to keep certain aspects of your relationship sacred, I do wonder if some of the rules and barriers you put in place are actually feeding into your anxiety rather than your attachment style. The fact of the matter is no rule or boundary is going to prevent her from leaving you if she wants to, just the rule of monogamy doesn't prevent people from falling out of love with their partners and falling in love with other people. I can't say for sure without knowing what those rules and boundaries are, I think that you should make boundaries with each other based on your individual needs and desires, rather than an effort to save the relationship or keep it sacred.

When it comes to what you want out of polyamory, one of the first things I ask people is whether or not they are okay with not getting as much time with their partner as they would normally get within a monogamous relationship. For a lot of people, not wanting polyamory has nothing to do with their issues around jealousy or their partner seeing other people but that they don't want to miss out on the time. I assume if you began dating while she was with her husband, you were okay with the reduced time. I am a little bit concerned that you ended up getting more time when she broke up with her husband.

Quite often what can happen when someone has two partners (say partner A and partner B) and ends up leaving one (partner A), especially where partner A is a "primary", someone they live with or someone they spend a good deal of their time with, they end up basically shifting the time they spent with partner A to partner B instead. In not so many words, partner B replaces partner A in terms of time and partner B gets loads more time.

Then when the person finds another partner (partner C), they can either keep partner B in partner A's previous dominant time slot or they can suddenly decrease the time spent with partner B to balance out the time they have with both partners B and C. In this situation, partner B can either experience a lot of anxiety about partner B, even if they have a dominant time slot, or they can experience an understandable mourning of time lost after partner C comes into the mix.

So, it'd be worth thinking about, rather than the "sacredness" of your relationship – because, really, all relationships should be sacred and meaningful – you should instead be speaking to each other about the time you have for one another vs. other relationships. Is the situation that you now have the ex-husbands primary time slot with her?

Schedule your time together so it's intentional and meaningful and schedule time apart and spend that time apart right now, even if neither one of you have any other defined partners. If you are okay with getting reduced time and that's no issue for you, even if you have no real desire to seek other relationships, then it can still work just fine. But it's much harder on your anxiety if you have a bunch of time together and then suddenly it drops off. That's not really a product of being anxiously attached. That's just you being human.

When it comes to "supporting her", there is no requirement on your behalf to be thrilled about polyamory so that she feels better about going out on dates when you don't have dates yourself. Part of polyamory is sitting in the discomfort of disappointment. Both you and she, if you intend on having multiple partners, may end up in situations where you are double booked or you have to manage your calendar under the demands of multiple partners.

Owning your own choices, saying no and being comfortable with turning partners down when they ask to hang out with you so that you can ensure your needs are met and you stay true to your promises to others is going to be part of most people's experiences in polyamory, especially if one chooses to date someone who is new to polyamory or is not necessarily that interested in it.

Now, you can make sure that you have other sources of support so that you are not expecting her to basically provide constant emotional support for you because you may be experiencing some ups and downs around her dating. She can support you on a basic level as a partner would, but this is less about being happy for her sake and more about you having more of an ability to soothe yourself and seek out help and support that isn't just her. If you don't have non-monogamous friends, try to make some. Seek out a therapist you can talk with about these issues so that you have other sources of support. But please do this on your own behalf, not so you can be a polyamory Stepford husband for your partner.

I would invite you to search online polyam communities to find threads about what got people interested in polyamory and why they decided to try it or why they identify with it. I often have referenced a concept I created called an "anchor" which you can find in my polyamory 101 and polyamory 102 articles.

This is your personal interest in practicing non-monogamy that doesn't have to do with preserving an existing relationship. Explore that a bit for yourself. Another thing I would add is that you don't have to be interested in dating constantly for non-monogamy to work for you. If you're okay with getting reduced time, that can work just fine.

To sum up, I think you should focus more on the time you're spending with your partner to address some of the reasonable and understandable anxiety that you're going to feel when starting off in non-monogamy and when establishing trust in a newer relationship anyway. See if you can find your anchor and a personal reason for being interested in non-monogamy and see where that leads you. Focus more on this as a reason to get what you need rather than trying to make things better for your partner.

I hope this helps and good luck!