Your partner doesn’t seem to mind dating monogamous people but you feel it’s not right. Can you actually change it?

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

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Podcast Transcript

My primary partner and I are poly(am) and live together. Throughout our relationship we have run into some stressful situations where girls he goes out with only disclose they’re not actually poly(am) or are only checking out (ethical non-monogamy) to see if it’s something they’re interested once they’re out together.

My partner is a loving person who thrives off meeting new people, all kind[s], so they are most likely to give someone the benefit of the doubt and go with it. I am not comfortable with them pursuing people who are monogamous but just passing time or who don’t really understand non-monogamy “but I like you”.

This comes from person past experiences as well as the collapse of strong long term relationships of close loved ones around someone monogamous becoming involved and changing the dynamic. Despite many conversations around this my partner continues to come to me to say it turns out someone he’s been talking to or went out with falls into one of those categories but they don’t see the harm in it.

I often feel like the bad guy where my partner feels like I’m trying to restrict them or I’m acting out of jealousy which I really don’t think I am. I trust my partner I know everything they say is what they mean in that moment but I also feel like I need to stick up for my own boundaries and triggers and feel like this one is an ongoing point of contention. I don’t see many other people openly dealing with as often as we are.

Response

I want to say this in the most polite way possible, because I do understand that you've got a lot of feelings around this, that you've had some bad experiences in the past, and I totally understand where you're coming from. But in not so many words, it's technically not any of your business who your partner chooses to date.

Now, you may want a more kitchen table style – if you're not sure what that is, kitchen table polyamory is where people are friends with their metamours and super involved with them, and they have a family-style situation. Maybe they even live together. I'm not really sure if that's what you're aiming for here, but I tend to think that. But I think that actually you don't necessarily have to be as involved as you're being.

There are lots of situations where our partners are interested in people that we don't think are particularly good people, that we don't like or disagree with. I've been in that situation plenty of times, and just like in friendship – we have friends that are interested in people we don't like or disagree with.

It doesn't necessarily have to always be abusive, but we have had friends in the past that tend to date certain types of people that don't tend to work out. And unfortunately, as is the case in friendship and for your partner, your partner has to learn the hard way. You can't help your partner learn this lesson. If they are too nice or unable to put down their own boundaries...

To be honest with you, I'm not sure what your partner's looking for, because there's an aspect of this which I'm going to address as a point 2. Maybe your partner doesn't necessarily mind. Not every single person is super interested in having relationships that last until they die. They may enjoy these relationships. They don't have to be long-term to be good relationships, and your partner may be comfortable with the fact that these people are briefly interested in non-monogamy and may not be people that they end up dating long-term.

I'm not sure; you don't really specify that in the letter, like whether or not this is actually causing your partner distress. But if it is causing your partner distress, honestly, it's their distress, and you can put boundaries around your own personal exposure to that, but you can't force your partner to only date people who are exclusively interested in non-monogamy.

As much as I totally understand that you are hesitant about this because of a specific past situation that happened, and this is obviously a trigger for you, this can still happen. People can still go into it being full gung-ho about non-monogamy and then change their minds. I've heard of this many times on the column, on the podcast, just individual experiences where people decide, "You know what, polyamory, non-monogamy, not for me. I want to be monogamous."

Even if your partner dates somebody who is gung-ho about non-monogamy, even if they're "safe" because they've had a lot of "experience" , that is absolutely no guarantee that they may not decide it's not for them, and you may have the exact same experience again. As much as I understand that you want to prevent that from happening, and that makes total sense, your partner only dating people who are for sure interested in non-monogamy is not necessarily going to protect you from that.

Now, the second point here, the reason why I tend to have this "It's none of your business" approach is not to be mean. It's not because I think that parallel polyamory is the only way to do polyamory. You can be super involved with your metamours, in terms of being friends with them, in terms of what's now called "garden party polyamory" (we're getting new words, and I think it's great). This style is basically not where you're super involved, but you still have friendly conversations and maybe see each other on a more frequent basis than you would if you were strictly parallel and didn't "cross the streams", so to speak.

I think you can still be involved, but the reason why I say it's none of your business is not to be rude. It's because I really, really believe that one of the foundational conversations that you should have if you're starting out in polyamory, if you're starting a new relationship, is to have a very clear understanding (as much as you possibly can, because this can change) of how many partners you want to have and how those partners fit into your lives. That is the crucial discussion that I think a lot of people just don't have or forget to have when they're starting out, or even people who are "experienced" don't have these conversations.

So if your partner has a good idea of how many partners they want to have, how those partners fit into their life, how much time they're going to spend - like, actual physical time, scheduled time (love is infinite, we can love as many people as we want, but there's only 24 hours in a day) - figure that out. How much time are you going to give this relationship, and how much time are you going to give other relationships?

Because once that's agreed, and once you know that, with an understanding that it could change. If you decide to have a child, obviously that's going to change. If they decide to have a child with somebody else, that will change. If you decide to adopt a dog, that might change. If one of you gets laid off, that might change - there's lots of ways that will change, but having that discussion is crucial.

Once you have that, then it doesn't really matter how many other relationships your partner has. It doesn't really matter what the status of those relationships are. It doesn't really matter whether or not other people are interested in non-monogamy, because you have your set time together, and that's decided, unless there are some sort of major life changes that alter that.

Now, if you have that discussion, and then sometimes this happens, people get new relationships, they get new relationship energy, they start kind of neglecting one partner that they have for other partners (which happens, to be honest, in monogamous situations, when people get a new date and they start neglecting their friends).

But that is a bigger issue, or that's a separate issue from whether or not the person they're dating is interested in non-monogamy. That's an issue of boundaries, and that's an issue of someone being self-aware and able to say no or able to set clear guidelines for themselves and for other people about where their time is spent and how.

But once you have that discussion – and if you haven't had that discussion, I think you should definitely have it – then it doesn't really matter what goes on, and that's why it can be none of your business. This isn't to say you're a bad person for caring. This is to say that you are burdening yourself right now with the details of someone else's relationship issues that you don't need to burden yourself with.

Obviously, you care about your partner. You don't want to watch them get upset. You don't want to watch them get their heart broken. But on a basic level, they have to learn that lesson themselves, and you can't protect them from that pain. You can't protect them from the ups and downs of whatever situations they want to get themselves into.

I get that it might seem a little bit heartless, but it's not really, because if you continue to try and protect... if you did say, have total control over who your partner dates or doesn't date, then they may not learn the lessons that they need to learn. They need to learn this lesson. They need to, you know, if it's a lesson for them.

Because as I said, if your partner decides that, "Hey, actually, I want our relationship to be somewhat sort of established and that we live together. Other people I don't plan on moving them in with us. I don't plan on those relationships necessarily, they don't have to be long-term relationships". Not every relationship has to be a long-term relationship to be a successful relationship or to be a relationship that's worth having. So they may not mind being someone's sort of short pit stop in between figuring out what they want to do with their lives. They may not mind being someone's rebound, for lack of a better word, and if they don't mind that, then that's their business to deal with.

Also, there are some other boundaries here that you can put up. To make it clear, because I think we get a little bit confused about what a rule is and what a boundary is, and people kind of use those words interchangeably. If you haven't checked out, Chill Polyamory did a really good video about the difference, but I'm going to summarise it here.

Basically, a boundary is about what you will do if a situation occurs. And generally speaking, we put boundaries down in order to facilitate the continuing of a relationship. We don't put boundaries down to punish people for their behaviour. Rules are telling someone else what they can and can't do.

For example, if let's say I feel really uncomfortable around drunk people, or I have bad experiences with alcohol and I don't want to be around alcohol. I can't tell my partner "You're not allowed to drink," or "You're not allowed to come home drunk," or "You're not allowed to do XYZ around alcohol because I'm uncomfortable." That's not a boundary. That's me trying to enact a rule on their behaviour.

Now, what I can do – I mean, you can't put down a rule, I guess, but I don't think that you should try to control another grown adult's behaviour. I can say, "I'm very uncomfortable around alcohol. So what I'm going to do, because I don't want to break up just because you drink, is I'm not going to go to events with you that are in places like pubs or bars. If you come home drunk, then I'm going to go sleep in a separate room, or sleep on the couch. Or I would ask that you sleep on the couch, because I don't want to be around drunk people."

And you can have that agreement. "I am going to agree that in our shared spaces, I don't want alcohol stored in our communal spaces, but if you have separate rooms, then maybe you can say, only store alcohol in your room." So that's an example. Your boundaries around this situation – Again, you can't control who your partner decides to date. You can't really. I mean, you guys can try to do that, but I don't think that generally makes for a good rule, because when you agree to polyamory, you agree to a situation, in my opinion, where your partner is allowed to date other people and you don't get to approve the people they date.

You don't get to sign off on them. As much as that may soothe anxieties, and many people do do permission-based rules because it soothes their anxieties. But on a basic level, just as in monogamy, you don't get to approve other people's friendships. I also don't think that you get to approve other relationships, but you're welcome to have your feelings about it, and you're welcome to have boundaries around your shared spaces, and you're welcome, just as you would with roommates...

If your roommate, you know, had a boyfriend who you didn't like, you can't tell your roommate, "Oh, you can't bring your boyfriend around anymore," but you can say, "Hey, can you give me a heads up when your boyfriend's gonna come over because I'd rather not be around them." You can make your own kind of... you can make the situation work in some ways. But as I said, a boundary is about trying to facilitate the relationship. You want to facilitate your relationship. But it seems like being told the details about your partner's love life is stressing you out.

So an easy boundary you can have around this, because you can't control, or shouldn't control, in my opinion, who your partner dates is, you can say, "Can you not tell me these details?" Because it really doesn't help you. If your partner needs someone to talk about the struggles of other relationships, that really shouldn't be you anyway, because it puts you in a weird position. They need to go find a therapist. They need to go talk to, you know, join a polyamory community where they can make polyamorous friends who they can talk to about it, but this should not be a concern that you are basically witnessing in such a way.

I'm not saying they have to pretend to be okay if they're not okay. If they're upset, they can tell you that they're upset. They can say, "Oh, it's stuff going on in my other relationships." That's absolutely fine, but you're not their counsellor for their other relationships, and it puts you in a weird position. So you know what?

If it stresses you out to know that they are dating someone who is not non-monogamous, and that makes them worried - they're valid to be worried about that, but they need to deal with that somewhere else, and you're allowed to put up boundaries that say, "Please don't tell me the details about your love life with other people, because it's stressing me out." And you can be honest, you can say, "Look, I have a specific trigger around this situation, because it's something that's happened to me in the past, and I would prefer not to know about this."

You don't need to know about this situation. You say you trust your partner, and they say what they mean, and that's fine, but you have to be able to trust that they're going to make the right decisions or the decision that's best for them. And I think that if you are finding yourself stressed out about this, then you can ask to not know these things. And if your ideal is to get to know your metamours, or get involved with them, and have a more kitchen table style, as I said, then you may need to reassess whether or not that's possible in this situation.

I think kitchen table polyamory is a lovely thing for people to want, an understandable thing. But I also think that any kind of co-living or co-op situation always sounds really awesome and great, but the reality is that human beings sometimes don't get along, and it's not necessarily anyone's fault. It's not necessarily because anyone's a jerk or that anyone's bad in that situation, but sometimes people just don't get along.

And I think it's a little bit unrealistic, just as I think in a monogamous relationship, it's very unrealistic to expect that you might really like or really get along with all of your partner's friends. We don't have that expectation. But for some reason in polyamory, there's this kind of hidden or not-so-outspoken expectation that the ideal that everyone should be trying to reach for is that we all love our metamours, and that we're all super involved, super friends, and we never have any trauma, we never have any jealousy.

I get it, it's nice. It's nice to have, but I think it's unrealistic, and not necessarily because of polyamory, but because of humans. Humans don't always get along with each other, and that's okay. And it doesn't have to be because there's something wrong with you, or that there's some deep, dark thing that you have to explore within yourself. Sometimes you just don't get along, and that's okay.

So if you need to put up that sort of boundary around hearing those details, then place it. Maybe as your relationship develops (you don't really say how long you've been together and how long you've necessarily been polyamorous, and if you were polyamorous from the start), but maybe as you spend more time with each other, your kind of anxieties from the previous situation will die down a little bit, and you'll be able to hear this sort of thing without it making you go, "Ah, that's not good."

I think reaffirming to yourself that even if your partner... I know this seems really dire and really morose, and I'm not trying to make you think a morose thought, but it's more about you're placing the burden of responsibility on yourself to prevent the situation that happened to you from happening again.

You don't realise it, but you're actually saying, "Okay, I had this past terrible experience. I need to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And the best way I can make sure that this doesn't happen again is by making sure that my partner only dates people who are for sure non-monogamous." And I get why your brain is telling you to do that, and it makes a lot of sense, but realistically, you cannot control who your partner dates. You can't control if someone is very non-monogamous and decides to change their mind.

This situation didn't happen because you failed to protect yourself, and unfortunately, when you place this responsibility on your own shoulders, what you're also saying to yourself is that it happened to you because you failed to protect yourself, and that's not true. You didn't deserve that past experience happening to you. You didn't cause it. It's not your fault. It happened. Sometimes things like that happen unfortunately, and you can't prevent it from happening. You will not be able to prevent it from happening again by controlling who it is that your partner decides to date, unfortunately.

But what you can do, is you can tell yourself when you have this sort of anxiety bubbling up, when you're thinking, "Oh my god, this is going to happen to me again," that no matter what situation happens to you, no matter what relationship ends or continues, no matter how relationships change, you can be sure that you can be there for yourself. That is the kind of reassurance you should give yourself.

Instead of saying, "Okay, we will prevent this from happening by my partner is dating someone who's definitely non-monogamous, whew okay, we're fine," that's a false sense of security. It's not real. The only real sense of security you can give yourself when dealing with situations completely out of your control is that you will always be there for yourself. You will always take care of yourself.

You can't fully protect yourself from any bad thing happening in this world, but you can always be there for yourself. You can learn to trust yourself, that you will be able to get out of any situation, even if everyone you're ever in a relationship with dumps you all on the same day. As terrible as that would be, you can take care of yourself. Reaffirming this to yourself will lead you to a better sense of grounding than trying to control who your partner is interested in or who they date.

To sum up, in the most polite way possible: it's not any of your business, because your partner has to learn the hard way. You can't help them learn that lesson. Have those conversations with your partner about how many partners they want to have, how many partners you want to have, and how much time you have together. Schedule time together that can't be cancelled unless it's an emergency. Once you have that, it will anchor you better, and it doesn't really matter what goes on in their other relationships.

Have that discussion, and if you need to set a boundary by saying, "Hey, I don't want to hear about your other love lives, please stop. Go see a therapist. I am happy to be here for you, cuddle you, and comfort you if you're sad, but I can't hear these details because it's stressing me out," then put down that boundary, if you need to put down that boundary. It's absolutely fine. You're not punishing or being jealous; you just don't want to hear it because it's stressing you out.

Honestly, you shouldn't be the person that's helping your partner with the stress of their other relationships. You're not an appropriate third party for that. You have a dog in that fight, and it doesn't make any sense. It's just going to stress you out regardless. They should really find either a community, a therapist, or a polyamorous friend to talk to about this. You're not in an appropriate position to help them. It's not that you can't help or that you're unfit, but you're not the best person to help because you're not an objective third party, and they really need an actual objective third party.

I hope that helps, and good luck.