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

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Podcast Transcript

I have been polyamorous for about 5 1/2 years now. My husband and I have been married for 14 years (together for a total of 19) and made the transition together. While that was not without it's challenges, that is not where my question comes from. I have been seeing my boyfriend for 2 years now. Everything has felt natural and wonderful since the beginning. My husband and boyfriend get along really well and it enabled my boyfriend to move in with us about 6 months ago. That has been going well for the most part. I love being able to see and spend time with both of them everyday.

My boyfriend has never had another partner the entire time we have been together. He (my boyfriend) did some dating earlier this year and it triggered my anxiety really bad. I was an absolute mess. I was afraid, sad, jealous, comparing myself to the person he was talking to, dwelling on horrible potential outcomes like him leaving me...the whole nine yards. I wanted him to stop talking to the other person. I didn't feel good enough. I always panicked and spiralled whenever they would be together.

My boyfriend and I talked extensively about my struggles and concerns throughout the entire process. He was very reassuring, always willing to talk and answer questions. He always made me feel like a priority, however it never squashed my anxiety and dread. Things with this other person did not work out for a number of reasons and he decided to take a break from dating as he had some big changes coming up in his life (including moving) that he wanted to focus on. Fast forward to this summer and he mentions to me that he is talking to someone. With very little information, my anxiety was automatically triggered. I found out that he is talking to this person as a friend, and there is not currently any intention for anything romantic (though I know time could change that). This additional detail gave me a little bit of peace, but I am still worried. I don't really understand why though.

The entire time that I've been polyamorous, I have never had a response/emotional reaction like this to my husband or another partner dating. I was honestly scared by my reaction earlier this year. I cried a lot and was looking for anything to help. That's actually how I stumbled on the Non-Monogamy Help Podcast and your book.

I don't know if this emotional response has to do with the fact that all of my previous partners have had other partners when I started seeing them or not. Am I just so afraid of the unknown because I've never known my boyfriend with another partner? Am I just more insecure with him or our relationship even though it has been the most natural and comfortable? I feel horrible for being so upset by this. I just want to understand or figure out how to better manage these emotions. My boyfriend has never given me any reason to doubt him or his love for me. I can't seem to stop my anxiety from spiralling when I think of him with someone else though. I want to be supportive. I just want him to be happy. I don't want to limit him in any way or make him feel like he has to limit himself for me. I'm very confused and lost in all of this.

I am currently in therapy and have brought it up in there as well. My therapist is poly friendly, but doesn't have much knowledge about it, so our talks haven't really helped me with any break throughs on this topic.  Any help or advice is appreciated.

Response

I feel like you've hit the nail on the head a little bit. This is new territory for you.

You've been in a situation starting out where you were with somebody for a good long while. So even though I say that when people are going from a monogamous relationship to a polyamorous one, they do kind of have to start over in terms of rebuilding trust with one another. But if you've already had a decade together, then you already do have kind of a well established kind of means of trust with each other, and I think that helps a lot.

And then, as you said, both of your partners, or anyone that you've dated, or it seems like many of the situations that you've entered into, those people have already had other partners, and so this is a little bit of a new territory, and I think that there's also an aspect of this in that. And I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad that you did this.

But there is a kind of, you know, cultural script that I talk about when it comes to monogamy, of relationship escalation that we think about so people, you know, you meet somebody, you date, then you move in together, then you get married, blah, blah, blah, that kind of social script that we have. And you followed this social script with your boyfriend, you know, you've developed a relationship. He's moved in, and that has a kind of background symbolic meaning, in a way that reaffirms the idea that comes along with the social script, right?

You have had the vast majority of your life, even if you've been polyamorous for a while, for the vast majority of your life, you've lived in a society that's told you specific things about love, specific things about how love works, specific things about the loss of, you know, when something escalates, when somebody's in a position where they mean more, and I don't think that that's necessarily exactly what you or your boyfriend think.

But when somebody is put in a way on a pedestal, you can be removed from that pedestal, right? So you've had these situations where you've had a husband, where you've already been together, so that's kind of a pedestal type of situation. And then you have your boyfriend, and then he's moved in, and that's created a little bit of a pedestal in a way, or a little bit of a hierarchy, or a little bit of an escalation, and that is something to lose.

He could move out, things could change, but you have more to lose now in that relationship than you had before. So there is more of a reason for your anxiety to kick off. There's more of a reason for you to be afraid and reaffirming that cultural script, like it's not a bad thing.

I don't think that people should never move in or get married or do any of that. A lot of people like these steps and they're meaningful to them, and that's fine. Like, I'm not saying don't do that, but I'm saying that when you kind of reaffirm this cultural script, sometimes the background, kind of radiation of all these other things that, like, Oh, I'm the only one for you.

Or, you know, the idea that you have to be competitive with other people gets a little bit reaffirmed as well. Or that can, like, not be effectively challenged because your brain is still within this context, right, like your brain is trying to keep you safe, as much as it feels like it's your worst enemy right now. It's really, really trying to make sure that you're okay. And it's using what it knows to keep you safe.

And it's using, you know, it's assessing the environment. We have brains that do that thanks to the way that we have evolved over years and years. So your brain is assessing the situation. It's figuring out, okay, we have this partner. They're living with us, so they're well established. We have that connection, but, oh no, they have another person. And I think you're exactly right. You've not had this situation happen before. So this is something new.

This is also something new to you culturally, as much as you may have thought, Okay, I'm polyamorous, I'm polyamorous, I'm polyamorous. You haven't necessarily had that input from the cultural script that's around you, and so this is something new. This is something you don't necessarily have the exact same social models for you know, you've been exposed your whole life to the idea of successful monogamy, non successful monogamy, all of these sorts of things.

You haven't really had those same social models for non monogamy. So it makes sense. Your brain is going like, Ah, this is a really dangerous situation. This is something to be afraid of. That makes total sense. So I think you need to, like, understand that your brain isn't trying to cause you harm, and it's not trying to ruin the situation that it's it's just scared, and it's scared for understandable reasons.

I'm also wondering if you've had any of these kind of foundational discussions that I encourage people to have when they open up or when they are polyamorous, I think that it makes perfect sense to be afraid of the escalation of other relationships, and what that means like, there's an aspect of that that's rooted sometimes in just, you know, monocentric thinking and being told that there's only one love and all that. But there's also a very practical and realistic part of it, because when you agree to polyamory, you agree to the fact that your partners are not going to be spending as much time with you as you would typically get from one person in a monogamous relationship. So the thing that I really encourage people to do is to think about how much time they have for each partner and have scheduled, dedicated, intentional time.

And I do think when you live together, oftentimes people don't have that scheduled, dedicated time. Sometimes, even though people kind of act like living together. Living Together does give you access to a partner that you don't have that is easier than if you don't live together, but living together can sometimes mean that, not that you're necessarily easier to take advantage of, but that you don't realize that the time spent shared in the same household is not dedicated, intentional time, and you need dedicated intentional time, even when you live together.

So have you had that discussion yet with your husband and with your boyfriend? Do you know, and understandably, you may not know all of this right away, but do you know, like, how much time you get with your boyfriend, how much time you get with your husband, how much time you have with yourself? Do you have that intentionally scheduled?

Because at the end of the day, if you know your boyfriend is like, Okay, I want two partners. I want to spend this amount of time with one and this amount of time with the other. And if your boyfriend can clarify for you how much time that you will get from him, then it really doesn't matter how much other relationships escalate, or the pace at which they escalate, or if he has another one, or if he doesn't, I think sometimes where, especially when people live together, or they get really comfortable around each other, sometimes what happens is that they kind of default to hanging out with each other all the time, or it becomes a thing where you have all of this time with this partner, And then when they start seeing somebody else, then you lose all that time.

And so then you're experiencing an understandable feeling, you know, the normal feelings of like, oh jealousy, oh comparing myself. But then you're also feeling that mourning, understandable mourning, for the loss of time you have with them. So it's really, really important, especially if you live together, to have scheduled, intentional, dedicated time with one another, and that will help ground you a little bit better, because you do have something to lose. If you have not had this discussion with your boyfriend, and because he has no other partners, he's been spending a lot of time with you, you will lose that time with him.

You will and that makes sense to be afraid, and that makes sense to mourn and be sad about. So if he can schedule that time and begin spending time apart with you, like the time he would have for a date, he should spend, like, intentionally apart, even if it means taking himself on a date, going to see other friends, like it doesn't have to be a date, but that time apart should happen now so that you can get used to the time that you will actually have together, and that can become normal.

And that can become something, you know, you can deal with those feelings now, instead of having to deal with both, okay, I'm comparing myself to this other person, which I think is pretty typical and normal, and then also the sadness of missing that time. I think also, you're being really hard on yourself to be honest. Like you say you want to be supportive, but you are supportive.

You are just because you're having these up and down emotional kind of journeys, and just because you're having this reaction doesn't mean that you're not supportive. These are not mutually exclusive things. You aren't trying to control your partner. You may have felt like, oh, I want him to stop. That's not the same as trying to control him. You're not trying to doubt his love for you.

You're not trying to affect his life. You're not trying to do any of this. Just because you have emotions. Emotions are not commands to other people, and I understand why people feel that way, because a lot of manipulative and not so great people do that, right?

They'll control other people through their outbursts and reactions. And if you've had a childhood where that has happened to you, where a grown adult has kind of made you responsible for basically managing their own emotions, because they can't manage their emotions, and you've said, Oh, if I do this, then somebody's going to flip out, and then you think you're responsible for other people's emotions and you and in a way, it's factually true sometimes.

Sometimes you can prevent a kind of meltdown or a blow up or some type of emotional upheaval in an adult by avoiding certain actions. But the truth of the matter is, is that that wasn't yours to control as a kid, especially because you were a kid. But now understand that you know you have these feelings. You have these emotions. It's not that you can't talk to your partner about them, but just having them in and of themselves. It doesn't define who you are. It doesn't define your intent. It doesn't define what you want out of the relationship.

It's just a feeling. So give yourself a little bit of a permission to have these feelings without it having to define the entirety of who you are, the entirety of what your intentions are, and just everything like these are just feelings. They're just feelings. They're anxiousness because your brain is trying to protect itself. That is all it is. It's not a reflection of your inner character or your intent, or your ability to do polyamory, any of that.

And I think that if you go a little bit easier on yourself, because right now, you're creating the situation in your brain where, if you have any of these emotions, it's a failure. And that is making it worse, right? Because, on top of you already experiencing this anxiety, which is trying to protect you, you're also telling yourself that you trying to protect you is bad. You trying to protect you is something to be punished.

And then now your brain is like, well, where the hell do I go? I can't freak out and try to protect myself, and when I protect myself, that's also a failure. So it's making it more intense and it's making it worse. So give yourself permission to have these feelings and allow yourself to experience them. Don't try to control them with logic like this isn't about your boyfriend reassuring you. This isn't about whether or not your boyfriend's given you cause to doubt him or not.

That's not what this is about at all. Your brain is trying to help you survive. That's all this is. And there's a way to work with that, which I'll talk about in a second. But it's not any kind of thing that it's about your boyfriend telling you that he loves you so much and that will magically Stop it, because that's not what this is about. Because the truth of the matter is that people fall out of love all the time. The inherent fear here of losing your partner, which is understandable and reasonable. We are social creatures. I said it many, many times in the podcast, in the column before.

There's a reason why you know, many, many governmental bodies consider solitary confinement to be torture. It's because human beings are social creatures, even a sort of Hobgoblin like myself. We are social creatures, and our ancestors have been surviving because of our social connections.

We're not apex predators, you know, yes, we use tools and we're very smart, but our intelligence and all of this has come from our social connections. Like it's because we are socially connected that we have survived for eons. And I don't actually know how long an eon is so maybe I'm wrong, but for a very, very long time, if your ancestors were excluded by their social group, they would die.

So you have an inherent part of your survival instinct and your brain that wants you to stay in social connection, that fears social rejection, that is panicked by the idea of social rejection. So it makes sense that you would fear losing a relationship, especially one so close, especially one that means a lot to you. So that is a perfectly normal and understandable response.

And unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that I think even deep down inside your brain knows that you have no control over whether or not your boyfriend continues to be interested in you, continues to love you. Yes, you can be a good partner. You can be a bad partner.

You can, you know, ignore your partner. You can call them names and be terrible, and then that's probably going to make it more likely that they're going to leave you. I'm not saying that you have no impact on that, but ultimately, you can't really control that, and your brain is trying to — at some point, maybe you learned, or you know, through culture, I think we kind of encourage this as well, that you can control whether or not someone stays by doing XYZ.

And if you think about it, that's a lot more of an empowering narrative, especially when we're children, and especially when we rely on caregivers to give us the things that we need to give us social connection. You know, a little kid thinking, well, if I don't spill my milk, my my mom and dad won't be mad. That is not true, but it makes you feel more empowered in that situation when you're a little kid, because if there's really nothing you can do that leads to hopelessness, that leads to despair.

So in a way, what your brain is doing is going okay, I can keep my boyfriend. If I do x, y and z, then they'll never leave. And that's an understandable defensive reaction to the situation. But actually it ends up causing you way, way more anxiety. And in a way, your boyfriend by reaffirming that, Oh, I love you. You're this you’re that is not actually solving that problem, because by reaffirming that, it's just saying, like, Okay, this situation is secure for now.

Like, I mean, people promise that all the time. It's big thing in monogamy, like, I'll love you forever. I'll never stop loving you, etc and so forth. People promise that, but they can't really, technically promise that. And so what ends up happening is, you go, Okay, I'm doing everything right for right now, and I'm safe and I'm comfortable. But then when something comes along, like meeting a new person, like doing something else, your brain goes, I've done something wrong.

There's something I need to do. I am still responsible for keeping my partner around by doing a thing, there's a sign that they might be losing interest, so I must do some things. Oh, what do I do? There's nothing to do. Oh, I'll panic. That's what I'll do.

Like this is a very understandable defensive reaction that your brain is having to trying to protect you, to trying to save a situation. But actually, what's a lot more empowering, even though it doesn't seem empowering, is understanding that you really ultimately, outside of doing your best to be a kind person, doing your best to work on communication skills, like just the things you would do all around whether or not you had this relationship or not, that's the only thing that you can do. You ultimately can't control what goes on in other relationships, whether or not your partner stays in love with you, whether or not your husband stays in love with you.

I think you don't feel anxiety over that, because you have the social scripts that reaffirm this. And the social script has reaffirmed your relationship with your boyfriend when you moved in or when he moved in, and now that script is kind of being challenged by this other thing that you haven't really had to face before. So your brain is like, Oh, we've gotta, we've gotta secure this.

We've gotta, but it's not your responsibility to secure it. And when you honestly look at it and you go, okay, I can only do so much. And you let go of that responsibility, and you allow yourself to just have these feelings like, Okay, I've got these feelings.

And you look at these feelings that you're having, not as your enemy, not as things you have to reason with, not as things that you have to you know, break down the argument and challenge, not as things that I'm not getting. My boyfriend isn't telling you that he loves me enough, so I've got to get reassurance. It's none of that.

If you can look at these feelings and go, Okay, I understand you're afraid. I understand you're trying to protect me, but I've got this. Because, at the end of the day, I think one thing that you can always control, or you know to a certain extent, well, one thing that's way, way, way more within your control than other people's feelings about you is your own feeling about yourself. Is how much you take care of yourself.

You know, if you did end up losing this relationship for whatever reason, you will be there for yourself. You will be able to overcome that situation. You will be able, you know it'll hurt, but you will be able to recover.

Because what a lot of anxiety is about, and what I've written in my book about this, is that it's about feeling like you can't handle it. It's not actually about the thing that you're anxious about, whatever you're anxious about, whether it's losing a partner, whether it's, you know, I'm going to have an allergic reaction, which was a big thing that I was anxious about for years and years and years.

The deep down feeling is like, I'm going to have this. This is going to happen, and I won't be able to deal with it. But you can deal with it. You can be there for yourself. You can heal. And when you look at that little voice like that little voice is just trying to protect you, and it's trying to protect you by controlling things it can't control because that's the only thing that it knows how to do. So if you look at that little voice and go, Hey, I got this.

We got this. I understand you're trying to protect me. I understand that you're scared, but it's okay. And we got this. We totally got this. You don't have to protect me right now. I respect that you're trying to protect me, and I love you for it, but I don't need that right now. I got me It's okay. And just allow yourself to have some of this anxiety. Try not to like, argue with it, reason with it. Beat yourself up for having it. It is what it is.

These are — some of these feelings just come from the fact that, like, you've never had to deal with this before. It's new territory. I mean, think about like if you had to speak, do a speech in public, or, you know, at a wedding, or at a presentation, or anything like that.

You know, we in polyamory. We put so much emphasis on what our feelings define about whether or not we can do polyamory, and who we are and the type of partner we are. But if you were, if you were giving a speech, as I said, if you were going skydiving, you would be scared. You would be very, very scared. And you wouldn't be like, Oh, I'm a wimp for being scared. I mean, some people probably would be, and I am pretty sure that these people are deeply unhappy, and that it's not helping them at all.

But you wouldn't approach the situation of like, going skydiving, experiencing that fear that you know in your body, that a lot of that terror and like, oh my god, I'm you know, because you know why you're scared to jump out of a plane, even if you have a parachute, even if, logically, you know you'll probably be fine. You give yourself permission to have that fear, you would give yourself permission, and you wouldn't be like, Oh, you're stupid. You're stupid for having that fear.

You're stupid. You know, you wouldn't try to reason with it. Maybe you would, but you see what I'm saying? Like, we don't, because we have no kind of cultural script for polyamory. We often end up thinking, Oh, this means I'm a bad partner. This means I'm I'm not good. You know, this means I'm trying to control my you're not doing any of that. You're just having feelings. So let yourself have those feelings and try to let yourself have these feelings without judging yourself for it.

Because even though you don't seem too harsh on yourself here. I do think that a lot of this is judgment, and that's making it harder for you to deal with the anxiety. On top of dealing with the fear and the panic and trying to protect yourself, you're also judging yourself for protecting yourself and punishing yourself for protecting yourself, and that is making it 10 times harder, I think.

So, yeah, to sum up, I think, you know, you've hit the nail on the head. This is new territory. I think in some ways, it doesn't help, and it's not a bad thing. But you've by your boyfriend moving in, it's kind of reaffirmed a social script that kind of backs up some of these inherent kind of fears based off of the culture that you've been raised in and the society that you've been around.

I think you should have a discussion with your boyfriend about how much time you're actually getting together. Can you firm up that time, and can he begin spending that time apart that he would normally spend, so that you can kind of get used to not having so much of his time. In a way, moving in together sometimes creates more of a problem when it comes to scheduled, dedicated time, both because people don't realize that being in the same house together is not scheduled dedicated time.

And also because it kind of, you know, you sometimes end up hanging out more than you would, and then you end up losing that time when somebody dates somebody else. Also give yourself credit. You are supportive. You are not trying to control anything, all of these things that you want to be you already are. You having feelings is not you know and you being supportive are not mutually exclusive things.

Give yourself permission to have your feelings. Your feelings are not who you are. They are just feelings. You're gonna have this anxiety because your brain is trying to protect yourself, allow yourself to have it. Learn how to approach it less with a judgmental and trying to like, fight it with facts, or fight it with reassurance, and learn how to fight it with your own personal self reassurance and reaffirm to yourself that you're going to be okay, even if you do lose this relationship, and you could lose it for any number of reasons, any number of reasons that you can't control, but you can control how much you're there for yourself, and you will be there for yourself. I'm sure you have been there for yourself in situations where you've lost relationships. It is survivable.

You will deal with that if it comes. But for now, your brain just needs a little bit of love, to be honest, a little bit of caring, a little bit of compassion, a little bit of reassuring that you've got this and you know it's gonna take time. That's not just a one and done process. The more you kind of are able to see that you're there for yourself, the you know, your brain even — I haven't had constant panic attacks for a long time, but occasionally I still get a little whiff of that, like anxiety, and then I'm able to go, okay, hey, I got this.

Don't worry, we're all right. And that, you know that does get better the more you practice that skill, the more you get your brain used to that new pathway, the more you reaffirm to yourself that you got this. And you see that even in the biggest thing for me has been realizing in the moment that I have a choice to be panicked about a situation, or I have a choice to approach it with like kindness and enjoy the moment, be in the happiness in the present moment, because I don't know what's going to happen, and then when something bad did happen, I was like, actually, do you know what?

I'm glad that I was happy in that moment, because I could have been miserable then and I'm a little bit unhappy now. So you know, you can't control things, living in the moment, really realizing that there's only so much that you can control, and you can be miserable now and miserable later, or you can be happy now and then, maybe a little bit miserable later, but the only thing constant is change, and the thing that you can rely on the most is you taking care of you, and I'm sure that you can take care of yourself because you already have so I hope that helps and good luck.