No Longer Nesting

Me and my partner have been practicing polyamory for a couple of years now. It’s had its ups and downs like all relationships do. We’ve lived together for 3 years.

We’re both actors so we know that there will be moments where we will be separated doing shows in different locations. So we’ve talked about what it would look like for us.

However, we’ve explored the possibility of living separately again. And now there are plans about living separately, but my partner would live with a different partner instead.

I was only looking at it as we would live separately individually. And now, I have scared feelings. Even though I know the other partner and trust him completely. It’s hard to not think I failed as a “roommate” to my partner. 

And she is going to move on to someone else. I know that I’m struggling with so many feelings like jealousy, and just sadness because I’m afraid that she will never live with me again. And I lost my chance. 

It’s difficult because I know things will eventually be okay. But I still hold resentment, fear, and disappointment for myself and for what will come next.

I really need help with resolving to be okay living on my own again, even though we will still be together. And help with managing the feelings that she will live with a different partner instead of me now.
I know that my thought processes are very hypocritical of each other. 

But any help would be nice.

Your thought process isn't hypocritical at all. In fact it makes a lot of logical sense. The first thing that will help you out with this is giving yourself a little bit of grace. I absolutely understand that this thought process is frustrating, especially if your partner has done some work to try and reassure you. 

However, it's important for you to remember two things that can help you give yourself grace: your brain has been engineered over years of evolution to encourage you to maintain social connections and you have been raised within a mono-centric society.

Humans are social creatures and your ancestors have survived because of their social connections to others. It makes sense for you to want to avoid the loss of any and all social connections. It makes sense to be afraid to lose partnerships in whatever way that loss seems to be manifesting. 

You also have grown up in a society (most likely) that has told you for most of your life that monogamy is the way to gain one of the most important social connections in life. You have not been given any other option and all of your cultural scripts have told you relationships look a certain way and escalate in certain ways.

When you add that to this situation, it makes every bit of logical sense that you would feel like your partner's decision to move in with another partner represents some type of failure on your part. Moving in together is usually an escalation in a monogamous relationship and within this context, even though you both don't have much time together because of your careers, this other partner will now have easier access to your partner than you do. 

I think you need to acknowledge that even if this isn't personal and even if your partner isn't home a lot, this does represent some amount of loss of access. 

So part of this is definitely you acknowledging to yourself that you are not being hypocritical and this does represent some type of a loss of access to your partner that you did once have while also understanding that because moving in is part of the typical social script of relationships (even if it holds no special meaning to your partner) which will trigger these feelings.

From a practical standpoint, it might help for you to have some more in depth discussions with your partner about how long you would spend apart. You don't really go into that as part of your letter and if your partner is moving in with another partner, I assume you're not living separately out of her own desire to live alone or try living alone. 

I'm not sure if this is motivated by careers and needing to live closer to a specific location and it being easier to move in with your metamour due to a closeness or if it's actually due to issues in living together, so maybe have a bit more discussions about that.

Explore what difficulties have come out of living together and what her feelings are. Were there ways you could improve upon your shared living experience and is there a possibility of living closer together if living together isn't an option? 

It may be that she doesn't know all of this information now and I don't think that anyone could promise you that you'd always live together because people can sometimes just grow apart in terms of their compatibility but I think at least having some basic discussions about this with your partner might help soothe your anxieties a little bit.

Some of this is just going to be a little bit uncomfortable. Moving is one of life's major stressors for a reason. Invest some time in taking care of yourself and making sure that you do what you need to make your living situation as comfortable as possible. 

Invest in therapy for the time period that you'll be adjusting. Lean on the other aspects of your support network or work on growing that support network a little bit more during the difficult times. Things will definitely get better as you adapt to the new way your relationship will form, but I think it will be a lot easier if you give yourself grace.

I hope this helps and good luck!