Tag: metamour

Polysaturation: Do I Have Enough To Give?

RustyLeave a comment

I appreciate the concept of polysaturation, a piece of wordplay I both admire for its cleverness and find useful in the discussion of non-monogamy, but I prefer to consider being spread too thin overall since the bandwidth I have for a relationship of any sort is entirely dependent on what else is going on in my life.

  • Chronic illness
  • Career/work
  • Parenting
  • Community engagements & commitments
  • Writing projects
  • Household maintenance
  • Self-improvement
  • Hobbies

These things take time, energy, and other finite resources. Sometimes an extended lull in my personal mayhem inspires me to go on a date with someone new, but I’m never far from feeling like I’ve made a mistake when my laundry list of life-stuff recedes out of reach and I begin to schedule myself out of any me-time. 

It’s never a certain number of people, or a shortage of any particular finite resource, but a feeling that creeps in when I’ve overextended myself. I struggle with a sometimes debilitating amount of anxiety when it comes to ensuring that the people I care about feel cared for by me. I’ve had to learn to trust that I do enough, and if my best isn’t good enough, then we’re not compatible anyway. . . but I also acknowledge that it would be irresponsible of me to engage the hearts of more people than I have the time to care for properly. Trying to locate where that line is can be a daunting task to undertake, and it’s usually my individual interests that suffer in the long run in favor of nurturing the relationships in my life.

Currently, I am in two very loving partnerships with people I anticipate having in my life for a long time, but I remain a very “autonomy-first” individual. For many reasons, I enjoy spending quite a lot of time with each of them; I never wish it were less. While my logic-brain understands that I am a pretty good partner, I still wonder at times if I have enough to offer. Enough what? I don’t know – the stuff folks want from partners I guess . . . 

Sometimes I miss that first-date energy but I’m honestly scared to meet anyone I truly like when I feel like any aspect of my life isn’t getting the attention I would feel best giving it.

When I had just one partner for an extended period, I wondered if other relationships had been short-lived because they needed more from me. But when I met my more recent partner, it became very clear to me that what matters *most* in this equation is the type of person I’m connecting with. 

It’s like I have a bucket filled with a collection of treasures – odds and ends I’ve collected through my life. Some take up a lot of space while others fit in where they can, but all of them are parts of me. When I meet the right people, I can pour what we create together into that bucket like water, and I want them to feel the same way about how I fit into their lives. 

I like to be together, but not tangled.

I love being emotionally enmeshed without codependence hobbling autonomy. I pair well with folks whose relationship ideology is based on individual autonomy and who have a strong sense of self. I don’t feel polysaturated when my partners aren’t looking to me to be their missing piece. When someone needs that from me, it’s akin to adding a heavy rock to my overflowing bucket. Not only do I not have the room, but I risk crushing or having to abandon other important things. I used to try and accommodate relationships that didn’t fit but quickly learned that throwing myself out of balance to try and make something work is not in anyone’s best interest.

I see questions from folks on non-mongamy forums regarding the ideal number of partners, or what a concerning number of partners may be for one of theirs. I don’t know that there’s a number you can assign to this metric, or that it should even be a metric. I know my concerns are that I have enough time to attend to my own wants and needs as well as ensure my important people feel loved, but others need more or less me-time than I do. And many folks enjoy fulfilling relationships on a less-enmeshed basis. It’s a good idea to know what you’re looking for and what you have to give, and then it’s advisable to have a direct conversation about that with the individuals in question. This is also an important topic to revisit as relationships and individuals evolve over time.

Just as I know I won’t pair well romantically with anyone whose idea of love is my idea of codependence, or who wants to cast me in the role of “primary partner,” I also know I’m not compatible with someone who could only see me the second Tuesday of each month for three hours but not in December, because my emotional attachments develop in person and that schedule would not allow for a fulfilling relationship. 

At the moment I spend one weeknight a week with each of my two partners and dedicated weekend time with each of them every-other weekend. As such, I don’t have that to offer anyone else without allocating the majority of my free time to others, and I don’t want to do that. I know this about myself, so when I do meet someone I might otherwise consider a potential romantic match, I am candid about not seeing another enmeshed relationship work out right now, if ever.

I used to worry if my partners kept adding partners that what we had would need to grow smaller, but that isn’t the case. Relationships built with intention are able to add and subtract in a way that doesn’t push out what’s already there and important to us. Additional relationships might mean less flexibility in scheduling, but focusing on what matters in each one allows for more than you might imagine.

Ultimately, I know I have enough to offer more than one person because compatibility is more than chemistry. It’s the way two whole people fit together, and the ease with which that connection flows – exactly as it’s supposed to, finding its own level, like water. But while love is infinite, my personal vessels have limits, and my awareness of and respect for those dimensions ensures I don’t find myself polysaturated and unhappy.  


Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash

Meeting the Metas

RustyLeave a comment

There are various approaches to metamour relationships in the non-monogamous dimension. Some folks prefer to never interact with their partners’ partners in an arrangement known as parallel polyamory where folks are aware of each other’s existence in a mutual partner’s life but one or more of them has decided they do not want contact. In other set-ups, metamours have a lot of interaction and many form strong friendships. Regardless of the structure, the odds of meeting someone your partner dates is pretty high, especially if that relationship grows over time.

Getting to know your partner’s other partners can be beneficial in a number of ways:

  • Meeting someone in person goes a long way towards alleviating the compulsion to compare yourself to someone who can seem perfect in the absence of evidence to the contrary (not that you should be looking for the defects for Pete’s sake! You know what I’m getting at here . . . )
  • You’re a quality human, so chances are pretty good your partner finds themselves smitten with another quality human. Can you really have too many quality humans in your life?
  • Ganging up on your partner in playful ways is such a rewarding pastime.
  • Over time, metamours can develop into a solid support system.
  • Collaboration is useful when it comes to ensuring you’re not getting your mutual partner the same gift or you want to go halfsies on a big ticket item for them.
  • Special occasions and social gatherings become much more comfortable affairs when everyone knows each other.
  • If you’re running low on empathy for this other person, knowing them as a fellow human being and not just an abstract concept can help you get back into that charitable head space. When I’m feeling like I wish a meta didn’t exist, I make myself do something nice for them. (Dear metas: no, this does not mean that when I do nice things for you I wish you didn’t exist lol, I’m just saying . . . sometimes when I’m feeling less than charitable, I force it and I’m never sorry.)
  • Sometimes it’s just nice to know who the other important people in your partner’s life are! 

When one of my partner’s needed surgery last year, his wife and I were both at his side in the hospital and I sent updates to his long distance partner each step of the way. It felt like I was part of a support team while our important person went through something painful and it felt good to have others present who I knew cared as much as I did.

That’s all well and good, of course . . . but what’s a good way to meet this person, and what if you’re anxious or have other concerns?

Look: most of us live in societies that have told us our whole lives we should be competing for the love and affection of a single individual, and that territorial feelings are a sign of devotion. Maybe they are, I don’t know – I don’t like how they feel in my body, so I let that guide how I think of them; they feel gross and I don’t want to feel that way. On the flip side, I abhor being “fought over” and viewed as property by folks who vie for my finite resources against each other. YUCK. 

Are you having feelings that make you feel gross? Super normal. The other person probably is, too. And if they’re not? Perhaps they’ll become an ally you can turn to for support as you work on letting go of yours. 

As with most first impressions, being yourself is the best possible approach. One or both of you could be nervous, but nothing says you have to be friends or even like each other. And hey, that actually bears repeating: you do not have to be friends. If you’re going into meeting someone under pressure like that, you’re doomed to fail. 

Here are some other things to watch out for:

  • If your relationship with your partner is contingent upon being approved of by their established partner(s), this is not a carefree meeting of equals: it’s an interview, and you don’t have to put yourself through that. 
  • If all of a sudden meeting your new interest’s established partner is presented as a “package deal” relationship where you must date both of them or neither of them, run. Just . . . I shouldn’t even have to tell you this is fucked up. This is BAD, m’kay? These are bad people. 
  • If meeting your partner’s established partner turns into a seminar on what you can and cannot do with your mutual partner, then this is a bad-news situation and you probably want no part of it. Advocate for your relationship as a separate entity and if that’s unacceptable, chalk this up to a bullet dodged and don’t look back; you’re nobody’s doormat, I don’t care HOW good the sex is.

Even actively avoiding all of these things won’t necessarily mean you avoid an established-couple trap. Sneakearchy is rampant, and while the person you’re meeting might not have veto power per se, their influence over their partner might as well be. This is not said to scare you, it’s just a thing you need to be aware of because the failure in those situations is not yours, it’s your partner’s failure to honor their autonomy in the face of fear. You can’t fix that in someone else, but be gentle with yourself if you end up bruised by someone else’s shortcomings. It just happens sometimes. Challenging the dominant narrative is hard and not everyone shows up well all the time.

So what are some tips to have this meeting go well? Lucky you! I have some!

  • Make sure you both want to! It sounds so simple, but if one of you has no desire to meet the other, then don’t. No one should feel pressured to interact with anyone else for any reason. I used to harbor this deep need to meet everyone my partners dated because I thought that knowing them would help me feel safe. Over time I completely changed my mind and now prefer not to meet until my partner deems them a significant part of their life. And if I’m the casual partner in this scenario? I likely won’t meet any of my metas, and that’s fine! 
  • Meet somewhere neutral, like a restaurant or coffee shop as opposed to someone’s home. It can be really intimidating to meet someone’s established partner for the first time in the home they share together.
  • Leave your partner behind. Wait, what? You read that right. You don’t need a chaperone and neither do they. There are so many things that can go sideways in a three-way meet up I’m not going to bother to lay them all out here, but suffice to say the majority of anxiety newly minted metas might be feeling can be avoided by cutting out the mutual partner. Shit, they’re probably more anxious than either of you anyway.
  • Be yourself. I know I said it before, but please . . . do that most of all.

I am a very guarded person, but I feel a lot of affection for the people in my partners’ lives who bring them happiness. I haven’t met even half of the people my partners have dated over the years, but I know they’re good people and they care about someone I care about. We don’t need to be friends, but we can be if it works out, and letting that work itself out organically is the best possible route to harmony.

Photo by Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash

Your Metamour is Not the Problem

RustyLeave a comment

In online forums across teh interwebz, one question crops up more than daily: how do I get my metamour to stop doing xyz and negatively affecting my relationship?

Welp. You don’t.

Oh, and also, it’s probably not your metamour that’s the problem if there is a consistent pattern of Metamour Issues = Your Relationship Problems. That usually ends up being a case of the hinge partner being more invested in not rocking the boat than advocating for themselves, (and your relationship). 

Once upon a time, I was partnered with someone who at times felt that upsetting their other partner was too high a price to pay for advocating for our relationship with them. As a result, there were times when the insecurities of their other partner were prioritized over the development of the relationship we were in. It often felt as though because I was not the one with the power to make their life miserable, I was the one who lost. 

You’re likely familiar with the phrase “pick your battles.” You’re also likely familiar with the desire to not pick certain battles because just letting them slide is easier in the short term than addressing the issue head on. So that’s a thing we can have empathy for – yes?

In all reality… there is only one person who can choose a different outcome, and that’s the person making the decision. If that person is scapegoating their other partner in order to avoid being the target of your negative feelings, consider calling them out on that problematic behavior. Likewise, if you’re misdirecting your disappointment and anger towards your meta, perhaps look at what’s actually happening in that scenario. Regardless of the relationship you have with your meta, it’s in everyone’s best interests to tend to their own individual connections and not try to leverage things like insider information, duration of relationship, or ultimatums to get what they want.

But when you’re in the position I was in way back when, there’s a tendency to blame the metamour for being the proverbial squeaky wheel getting greased as opposed to your partner. It is difficult to accept that someone you care for deeply is unwilling to risk discomfort elsewhere to maintain harmony with you. It’s natural to want to blame someone besides your partner when it feels like issues in another relationship are being transferred to you to bear. Particularly when you know if this person weren’t behaving the way they were, none of this would be an issue. 

This can create a feeling of helplessness, but here are some things that are within your power to do:

  • Ask for what you want using clear language, and be willing to accept a no. I covered this topic some time ago in my blog The Big Ask. You can’t expect a partner to advocate for your relationship if you’re not advocating for yourself within it. 
  • Resist the urge to blame your meta for everything you don’t like about your relationship. It’s quite possible your meta struggles not to blame you from time to time as well – give each other the benefit of the doubt. You aren’t responsible for each other’s relationships anyway.
  • To that end, ask your partner not to communicate your meta’s insecurities as they relate to your relationship with them – it’s none of your business, and serves you in no positive fashion. Furthermore, you can be assured that if your partner is throwing your meta under the bus to you, they’re likely doing the same thing to you. Advocating for a healthy relationship sometimes requires asking someone to modify how they treat others in your presence as well.
  • Communicate your needs using clear language and don’t let a scarcity mindset convince you to settle for less than what you need. Your needs are valid, but not everyone will be able to meet them.
  • Consider that the reasons your needs or wants are not being met is because your partner has different priorities than you. Because being able to see these as mismatches in desire will help you frame this as a fundamental incompatibility and not a metamour issue.

Oftentimes it’s easier to choose the path of least resistance even when it hurts loved ones. There is an awful lot to be said for not being a doormat; when you insist on healthy boundaries, advocate for yourself with clear language, and don’t accept less than you need, the tides either turn or your alternative becomes clear. 

You do get to have boundaries regarding how you’re treated in relationships, and if your wants and needs are consistently sidelined in favor of someone else’s issues, you have the ability to opt out of that dynamic. And yes, I do mean you can break up. You can, and you should if you’re miserable and this is never going to change. 

I know from experience that it’s very possible to love someone with your whole heart, and still not be compatible or even good for each other as partners. I assure you, that’s okay. I also know that self advocacy and healthy boundaries go a long way toward shifting burdens from other relationships, back where they belong. They also inform future interactions by letting everyone involved know exactly how you expect to be treated. The good news is, when everyone is on the same page regarding the success of each relationship, progress is inevitable. And with progress, comes hope.

Image credit: Photo by Tom Crew on Unsplash

The Metamour Connection

Rusty3 Comments

I have two very different romantic relationships: an open relationship with a woman whose other partnerships are pursued without any obligation to me as far as notification and whose love interests I rarely meet until they become more serious, and a more structured relationship with a man whose love interests I am well aware of and discuss with him at length as they develop. The latter relationship is called a V triad wherein my boyfriend is the hinge and his wife is my metamour.

There are as many ways to structure polyamorous relationships as there are people who practice them. For some, knowing their partners’ partners is problematic and undesirable. My style of polyamory is more family-oriented, and I prefer to know and interact with mine.

One of the things that brings me the most happiness in my V, is the relationship I have with my metamour (my boyfriend’s wife). The three of us practice what is referred to by some as “kitchen table polyamory,” and is hilariously enough literally how we do things, (detailed in a previous post about how we communicate as a pod).

One benefit to a close relationship with my meta is being able to share the joy of loving the same person, or, as it happens, the not-so-joyful stuff. I was recently able to lean on my boyfriend’s wife in a way I never expected to be able to, and she was there for me. I cannot tell you how much that meant. And there are certainly times she comes to me in a similar vein. There is not a lot of support in this world for the way we live, but being that for each other means the world to me.

Another important aspect of being close to her is the opportunity we get to see each other as fellow flawed humans. Society conditions us to be competitive, and we might imagine the other as “better” than us, or somehow perfect in a way we are not. I call such thoughts “gazing into my Crystal Ball of Doom” and more information helps me combat that situation.

She and I have poured intention into forging a friendship in what might seem like turbulent waters, but I am really proud of how we’ve done it and continue to do it. We are not perfect by any stretch, but we share a vision of how we want our relationship to look, and therefore put in the necessary work. For us, it’s meant being vulnerable and trusting the other not to leverage it to their advantage. The society we live and love in has some very prescriptive behavior models for how to manipulate perceived threats to our romantic relationships, so being good friends with a metamour is not without challenges. We have to actively work against what we’ve been taught to do, but the rewards are plenty.

So this Friday, I’m looking forward to heading out for burgers, cider, darts, and laughter with my amazing meta before we join my boyfriend/her husband at a game night with mutual friends. I will always be grateful for what we have and how it works, because it makes me feel like family in a world that sees, and often treats me, like “the other woman.”