Episode 56: Escalating Past a Metamour

Your partner is escalating your relationship and it’s making your metamour jealous. What can you do?

*A metamour is a person who also dates your partner who you do not date.

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

Listen to Episode 56. You can also find the podcast on Spotify, Apple, and other providers.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Use our affiliate link for 10% off your first month.

Thank you to Chris Albery-Jones at albery-jones.com for the theme music and a big thanks for the podcast art to Dom Duong at domduong.com.

Podcast transcript

Letter:

My metamour, Kay, suffers with depression and anxiety, I feel it would be unfair to omit this. They have been dating our partner, Pip, for a year longer than I have. My relationship (friendship) with Kay started to go downhill a year ago, after they found out that Pip and I were fluid bonded and regularly had sex without condoms. Kay has another partner with whom they are fluid bonded and have been for several years.

Since then Pip has suggested that we move in together, introduced me to their parents, and planned a big holiday for us to visit their relatives in another country. The last time I met Kay it was clear that they were blaming me for "plotting" these relationship escalations, even though they were all initiated by Pip (which it turns out they had failed to mention). Kay told me that they had a fear I was going to change to being monogamous and "drag Pip down with me".

I feel it isn't my fault that between the two of them they had never had any of these discussions about how their relationship could escalate, despite over 2.5 years of dating. I said I thought it was pretty normal to at least discuss these kind of escalations by that point in a relationship. Kay said "it's always going to be unfair if one partner is always planning ahead then the other partner never even gets a chance."

I feel really stuck in the middle here, and unfairly blamed. I don't feel I can break it to Kay that all of these 'life events' were initiated by Pip. Then they would want to know why Pip hadn't sought out the same things in their relationship. But I feel like I have to either do that or just pretend to accept some "blame" for things moving forward in my own relationship with Pip.

This all happened just before lockdown and I've had very little interaction with Kay since the climax of this whole saga. I know that this all makes the situation really awkward for Pip but I don't know what to do to make it better. I feel like I don't want any kind of relationship with Kay right now.

Response:

Right. So, initially when I'm reading through all of this, my first instinct is to be like don't have any relationship with Kay. You don't have to have any kind of friendship or anything with Kay. But the thing that kind of really bugs me about this entire situation is you are doing Pip’s work for them. And that's really not cool. I would have just outwardly said straight to Kay’s face from the beginning that they started to blame me for all of this that this was initiated by Pip, and if they had a problem about their relationship with Pip, then they needed to go speak to Pip and not to me, because I have no control over that.

I would have outwardly said that. It makes Pip’s life awkward? Tickity tough. Okay? Pip’s life is awkward then and that is a

direct consequence of Pip not having those discussions with Kay. Especially if Kay is going to talk to me. If we're going to talk, and we're going to have a friendship and you're going to start blaming me for stuff that's not my fault, I'm going to immediately tell you who initiated this stuff. And I'm not sure why you haven't done that.

Okay, it makes Pip’s life awkward. Big deal. Pip made Pip’s life awkward. The second that Pip decided not to have these discussions with Kay was the moment where Pip made Pip’s life awkward. Especially if Pip knew that you and Kay were talking. At what point does it make any sense? So, yeah, two things.

First and foremost, you are not required to have any kind of friendship or relationship with Kay if you don't want to. And I know. I've gone through depression and anxiety myself. Anxiety is something that I've got. It's tough. I get it. But that is something that you can, especially if the anxiety is technically kind of being caused by you (which it’s not really). But I can understand from Kay’s perspective feeling really anxious about the way that your relationship is escalating and feeling like that's not happening to me and wondering why.

I can get that. That's a totally logical reason for having that. However, if Kay is using you to voice these concerns, you can set your own boundaries and it doesn't have to be like an either or situation. It doesn't have to be like “Excuse me Kay. Fuck off. Never speak to me again”. Doesn't have to be like that. But you can set very clear boundaries with Kay and it's understandable they have anxiety. It's understandable that they have these problems, but you're not their therapist and you're certainly not Kay and Pip’s couples therapist at all.

So you can very clearly say to Kay, “If you have a problem with what's going on in your relationship with Pip, then you need to speak to Pip or a relationship therapist and not to me”, because that is unfair to you. It puts you in the middle of a situation that you have a stake in, and it would be no different if you and Kay and Pip were all friends, and you went to, I don't know, Disney World with Pip and Kay was really upset because Pip had always said that they would take Kay to Disney World. And instead of going to Pip and saying “Hey why didn't you take me to Disney World?” Kay came to you and said “Hey why the Pip take…”. It would be the same if you were friends.

You wouldn't want to be in the middle of this, so don't allow yourself to be. Put very clear boundaries down with Kay. You don't have to be like “Fuck off forever and never speak to me again”. Because I do kind of think that, you know, maybe there are other things you have in common. Maybe even a casual cordial friendship is possible between the two of you. It's just

that because Kay is using this as a means to voice their grievances and their relationship with Pip, it’s very difficult to be friends with that. So make that very clear and very known.

The other thing that that Kay said that you said, “it's always going to be unfair if one partner is always planning ahead and then the other partner never even gets a chance”. The problem that I have with this kind of mindset, again we were discussing about the relationship escalator and about how there's this thought process within monogamy where it's like okay you meet, and then you are together, and then you decide to move in together and then you have babies, and then— you know all of that progression. The reason why that's so complicated within a polyamorous framework is because some of that is contingent upon there being only one person who does that.

It's going to be very hard for someone to live that kind of life and progression if it's only one person. And the thing of it is, all of the relationship escalating things you've mentioned about like going on trips together, meeting their parents, and moving in — I mean, some of those things may be things that Pip only wants to do with one person, but they aren't necessarily completely limited to one person. Like they could be things that Kay has done as well but if Kay wants to be the first and if Kay wants to be the only then that's always going to be an issue. And that is something that Pip has to address with Kay, not with you. This is not your battle to fight.

So yeah, the first thing is that you need to set clear boundaries with Kay about what can be discussed. And if you have to get really blunt, and really honest about it then do, because it's your right to say, “Look, I'm not involved in this”. You can't control if Kay wants to blame you. There's nothing you can control about that, but you can absolutely control how much you hear about this kind of stuff, and you can absolutely say “Listen, if you continue to have discussions with me about your relationship with Pip, and about how unfair you think all this is, then I will not speak to you anymore, because I am not the one who you should be talking to about this. If you feel like Pip is not treating you fairly then you need to speak with Pip and leave me out of it”. And you can make that very very very clear so that Kay either decides to stop speaking to you altogether, or decides to stop speaking to you about this.

The second thing that's kind of going on here that I don't think you're really focusing on is that you are bending over backwards to make the situation easier for Pip. Why? Why are you doing that? Pip should be the one who's talking to Kay about this, and you have that realisation. In your letter you're talking about like, you know, Kay— all of these things were initiated by Pip which they had failed to mention to Kay and you don't understand why in their 2.5 years of dating they have never had that discussion and it is not your fault that they've never had that discussion. It's Pip’s fault, in a way. It's also Kay's fault a little bit. It's like both of them.

Pip’s not doing anything and Kay is talking to you about it instead. They both need to stop it. And I kind of feel like you're holding Kay super responsible in a way that you're not holding Pip responsible. Pip should that share some of this blame as well. And you're kind of just like “I don't want to make things— All of this is gonna make the situation really awkward for Pip”. Tough shit. Like honestly, I do think you need to be a little bit more talking to Pip as well as telling Kay like “Look these are my boundaries. I'm not going to have this discussion with you. If you have a problem with the relationship that you have with Pip then you need to speak with Pip”.

Equally, you can go to Pip and be like, “Kay is talking to me about this stuff. You need to talk to Kay. You need to do that because I am not the one who's going to be put in the middle of these situations. It's not fair to me. You need to do the work that you need to do with Kay, so that this is addressed, and so that she stops coming to me. There's something clearly going on in your relationship which is not my business, but it's being made into my business. So please do something about that”.

You're allowed to do that. You're allowed to hold Pip a little bit responsible because it isn't your job to fix the situation. You say you don't know what you can do to make it better. You can't do anything to make it better. Pip is the person that needs to do something to make it better.

So to sum up, two things. First thing you need to put more boundaries in between you and Kay when it comes to discussing this. You can absolutely say, “I do not want to discuss this with you”, and you need to say that if that's how you feel. And then Kay can either choose to continue whatever friendship that you would have had without this or Kay can choose not to talk to you, but either way you were allowed to put that boundary in.

Second thing, you need to give Pip some of the blame for this. Be a little bit more annoyed with Pip than you are with Kay because this is Pip’s relationship which Pip is not clearly not addressing, and you can say to Pip directly, “Kay is coming to me and talking to me about this stuff. Why? You need to talk to Kay. You need to figure this out because it's not fair for me to be put in the middle of it,” and you can say that 100% to both of them. “It's not fair for me to be put in the middle of this”.

If you have to sit them both down, I mean I don't think you can do that with lockdown, but like if you have to sit them both down and be like, “I don't want to be in the middle of this anymore. Discuss amongst yourselves,” you're allowed to do that. I'm sorry. I'm just really annoyed on your behalf because you shouldn't be put in the middle of this. This is absolutely… And the fact that you can't even say overtly to Kay… like “Pip is the one who initiated this stuff”. Say that. Just say it. So what if it makes Pip’s life awkward? It's making your life awkward and it's not even your fault. You don't deserve that.

Anyway, I hope that helps and good luck.