Episode 57: Begging For Time

You’ve started in a new triad but you’re feeling like the third wheel and no one is spending time with you. What do you do?

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

Discussion Topic: What is a gift you’ve been given that’s made you cry?

Listen below. You can also find the podcast on Spotify, Apple, and other providers.

https://anchor.fm/non-monogamy-help/episodes/Episode-57---Begging-For-Time-e1cgbdo

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:

Hello. I’m a 27 year old bisexual female who has been in a monogamous relationship for almost 2 years and we have been close for almost 5 years.

We both are Aquariuses and born the same year 2 days apart. We have been traveling homeless together for years and finally got together. We bonded right away because we are so much alike.

After almost 2 years, we recently met a girl who is really cute and down to earth. Me being bisexual, I want to have sex with a woman and the way I see it if I’m in a relationship with a man, if i have sex with a woman so does he.

So I met a girl who accepts both of us who we both like a lot but she had a boyfriend at the time. She is now single so recently we fooled around one time.

Two days later they decided they want her in our relationship. I instantly felt hurt. I agreed out of my love for him and out of curiosity because I have never been in a polyamorous relationship.

But I also told them I don’t know how it will go or how I will feel being that I’m very insecure and emotionally unpredictable. I believe that I have borderline personality disorder. So I constantly am either very mad, very sad, or very happy.

This has been going on for a month now and they are constantly in each-other’s space always making out or loving on each-other or finding ways to be alone but I am not getting the same love or affection. It feels that me and her are sharing him.

I am fine when we are all together or when me and him or me and her are together but when they are alone which is a lot of times they are constantly running to the store together or going to take a nap together or finding any way they can to be alone and it leaves me sitting in the living room alone.

Every time I feel very upset and often lash out or cry. I try to vocalise my feelings to them and somehow I’m selfish or I need to get over it. That I’m just insecure and need to calm down.

The last 3 days I’ve been asking him to have alone time with just me. Alone time with my partner that I have had for the last 2 years! And we work at home, so when she’s at work we are working.

The second she gets home he spends the entire time following her all around (we live at her house until we find our own place). So I’ve been trying to get him alone for 3 days. I’ve been on shark week for about 4 days so they have been having sex without me since I started. Also we switch off who sleeps at night together.

Day 1

I asked if we could have some time he said yes after work. She’s at work. Then once we got work done she requested he spends time with her. So he does.... I am left sitting alone. I got upset they told me I’m being irrational and need to stop. I cry. I’m still alone. We all go to bed together.

Day 2

She’s at work. I ask again. He says after work. So we work till 7 pm. We finally are done she asks him if he will go drive with her to a friends. He does. Again I’m on the back burner sitting here alone... He tells me we when he gets back we will. He promised me the 2nd day that we would. We never did. Me and him go to bed and I try to have sex. He lays there like a dead fish. No effort. I got upset and told him to at least pretend he is enjoying this. He said she’s sleeping. He doesn’t wanna be loud. He told me to get off of him. We went to bed.

Day 3

I ask to spend some time just us. He says yes. We finish working and fall asleep. When we wake up I ask again. He gets irritated and says I’m bothering him. At 2am they go to bed together, I asked them not to have sex until he keeps his promise. They get irritated but agree.

Today is Day 4.

Me and him slept in until she got home. I didn’t ask again today. Yesterday he mentioned in front of her that I’m bothering him about it and she chimed in that if I leave him alone he might try harder.  We woke up. He instantly went to the living room to give her attention didn't even say good morning to me. She took a nap after work.

Hours later still nothing. I took a shower with him. We tried for a whole 2 minutes. He got soft. We got out of the shower and he said after we get out the shower but she’s sleeping. So she wakes up and she asks him to shower with her. They have sex even tho we have not still! And he tells me its ok. Don't get mad. This is what you always do. So they fuck and its 3am and we still haven’t.

She’s now going to bed which means he wont want to. They’re talking about how we should try again in the shower and they don’t want a mess on the futon. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m being ran over. It was my relationship to begin with. She has made no effort towards me but is infatuated towards him.

Response:

So, okay, there's a lot going on here.

Honestly, why are you with these people? I want to be delicate about this situation but it's really really horrible. This is a really horrible situation. Really horrible. You're being treated terribly here. I know that there is a kind of midway point between you know — people can overreact.

People can have very insecure, very instant emotional reactions to things especially in polyamory. Especially when there's this attempted triad situation and it feels like there's not a balance of time being spent between both people. But you don't respond to that, by gaslighting somebody,

So it can be possible that two types of realities exist where, yes this person is having an intense emotional reaction that maybe they could learn to regulate themselves a little bit more and therefore not react so emotionally to the situation, because they are in a situation where they're actually safe and they're thinking that not safe while also — yes maybe we need to have a bit more of a talk about things and work things out.

You could be in a situation where this whole entire situation can be different and he could be spending equal amounts of time with you as you would with this person and you still get very upset. He still would be unjustified in saying that you're irrational and that you just need to get over it.

That's not an acceptable response, even if you are being irrational. Because people don't regulate their nervous systems or learn to calm down or learn to trust or learn to feel safe with people who are basically telling them that they are being ridiculous. That's not a response that helps anybody come to terms with a situation, and that may be how he feels and it may be frustrating for him, and that's fine too. But in this situation in particular, you're not overreacting at all.

You're basically being ignored. You're basically being completely rejected constantly and a certain amount of rejection will happen in any relationship. Most people are not going to always match up exactly when it comes to wanting to spend time together, when it comes to having sex. Two people aren't always going to have matching identical desires so rejection is normal and will happen. That is fine.

However, when you're constantly being rejected, not only for sexual things but also just for time spent with somebody that is going to impact you. And you're going to be upset by that. And that is perfectly valid. And I think that the things that you need to ask yourself first and foremost — do you want to be with someone who you have to beg for them to spend time with you?

I feel this so hard, because I don't know what kind of environment that you grew up in or what kind of situations you were around. But for me, I always felt like, if somebody wasn't calling me names or beating me up, they were a good partner and that's what a good partner was, and I always thought that anything that I wanted was an add on. Anything that I wanted wasn't standard or acceptable.

And so I had, not this situation, but I had a similar situation where I was with somebody that I felt like every time I tried to ask them to spend time with me, or hang out with me or anything they would react with disgust, or frustration, or they just obviously didn't want to spend any time with me. And because it wasn't an overt rejection or an overt dumping, I put up with that for a very very long time.

Because I thought maybe if I just ask them right or hit them at the right time or if I— you know. I blamed myself for that reaction instead of realising, hey, do I want to be with somebody who isn't enthused to spend time with me? No, I don't. So, really think about that. You're sitting there and even when it comes to sexual situations, you're like “he could pretend to enjoy it”. Do you want someone who's pretending? Do you really really want that?

Do you want someone who is with you out of some type of emotional manipulation or guilt, and who is pretending to like you? Do you really really want that? You don't want to be around somebody who was only spending time with you because they promised, and all of the rules and situations like when you're asking them not to have sex because he hasn't had sex with you and he promised… while I totally get that, You're not going to be able to fix his shitty behaviour by restricting what they do together.

And it's not her responsibility or her fault that your boyfriend is behaving in this way, but she's also not helping by basically contributing to your gaslighting by basically saying, “well maybe if you left him alone he would try harder” bullshit. Obviously, okay it's fine for him to feel bothered by you if that's how he feels. Okay he feels that way. But equally you need more time with him and if he doesn't want to give you that, then he could also do something about that and he's not.

Instead he's telling you that you're a irrational. Oh he keeps promising. Oh, we'll do that we'll spend time. This time we'll spend time. He's not being a grown up about it and going, “I don't want to spend this time with you”. You know he could say that overtly to your face, instead he's just pushing it off and pushing it off and then basically saying that you're doing it wrong and that's why he doesn't want to spend time with you. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Ask yourself if these are the kind of people that you want to be in a relationship with? I know you've clicked with this person. You've been together for two years. Hopefully he hasn't spent the entire relationship being this way but even if he hasn’t, he is now showing a side of himself that is really not great. If there's any side of himself that's basically going to

ignore you or treat you poorly then, do you really want to be with this person?

I think that there is an element and a part of, you know— you say you think you have borderline personality disorder. There probably is definitely things for you to work on in terms of feeling more secure, but this is like a perfect example of when I talked about how you can be the most secure person in the entire world, and have the best self esteem in the entire world. But if you're with someone who's treating you poorly, you're still going to feel like crap. There's no amount of self love, and, you know, self care that's going to make up for being in a situation where someone is completely ignoring everything, and not treating you right which is what is happening here.

Of course there's an element where you know you have some anxious attachment stuff going on, where you could work on that. But you need to work on that in an environment where you're with someone who actually wants to be attached to you and someone who actually wants the best for you. You can't fix that in a situation with people who don't want the best for you or don't care about you.

There's a brilliant piece about— I don't know if you're familiar with nonviolent communication, but it's a whole way of phrasing things that's supposed to be really really helpful, and someone has pointed out how with nonviolent communication you assume that everyone who is communicating doesn't mean any harm.

And how nonviolent communication can actually help abusive and horrible people because they do mean harm. And when you assume that they don't mean harm, that is actually giving them a benefit of the doubt you shouldn't give them. So you could work on all of these parts of yourself but you can't do that in this environment. This is terrible, like I'm not saying he has to have sex with you every time you asked him to. I'm not saying yes to drop everything to spend time with you, but he needs to be better at communicating that he doesn't want to and be more honest about that if that's the case.

So then you can make a decision. “All right, do I really want to be with someone who doesn't want to be around me?” This is such a bad situation. I feel so bad for you because you're sitting here, begging for time for someone, and begging for attention from someone who is just like telling you not to get mad because he's not meeting your needs and he's also— this is like one of the most painful aspects that you can have in polyamory in my opinion and in my experience is seeing your partner give something to somebody else that you want from them that they refuse to give to you. That hurts so much.

That is so shit. And it's so painful, and you're sitting here watching him basically give time to her and give none to you. And that's — ugh, don't be in this situation. Honestly that's my best advice. Leave, both of them. Both of them. This clearly isn't a triad situation. Y ou didn't even want to be in it to begin with. They just decided that this was a triad relationship, and no effort has been made on her part to form any kind of bond with you. So, just leave this situation.

It's such a bad situation in so many ways that you deserve much much better than this. I feel so bad for you. This is horrible. You don’t deserver to be treated this way. This is absolutely terrible. These people— I’m sure that there are obviously positive sides to their personalities and, but this is a truly despicable way to treat somebody.

So to recap, ask yourself if you really want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with you and who puts off being with you, who complains about being with you, who responds to your distress with annoyance and with gaslighting behaviour, basically telling you that you're irrational. You can acknowledge and validate someone's feelings in the moments even if they aren't rational. If you feel like, “Oh, I think you're gonna leave me”. Okay. You can, as a partner go, “It's okay that you feel that way and I see that you feel that way. Here is why I'm not going to leave you. This is what I feel,” and, you know, that is a helpful response.

Saying you're irrational and you're just jealous and you're just insecure and you just need to get over it. That is not a helpful response, regardless of whether or not someone is actually under threat of their partner leaving them. That's not helpful regardless. Ask yourself if you want to be with someone who responds to your distress in that way, because that is rubbish.

And then, yeah. Last but not least, you deserve to be in a better situation than this, and you should absolutely leave because you didn't want to be in a polyamorous relationship. This isn't really a polyamorous relationship in my opinion. I’m not trying to be all no true Scotsman or anything but this isn’t— If you didn't consent to it and you felt forced into it— It's one thing to try polyamory because, and I think that you were open to the concept, but it just doesn't sound like this was actually polyamory.

It just sounds like he wanted to be with this person, you know. Polyamory isn't cheating with permission. That's not what it is. This isn't a situation that I would describe as polyamorous. This is highly unethical. And it's hurting you. And you shouldn't have to deal with that you should find someone who responds to your distress with empathy and compassion, who wants to spend time with you and who is excited to spend time with you. That's what you deserve. You deserve someone who is ecstatic about spending time with you and you can find that and you will find that, but not with these two people.

So I hope that helps and good luck.