369 - Navigating Multiple Partners in the Same Space-Time
Social situations as the hinge
Depending on your style of ethical non-monogamy, there’s a fairly high chance you’ll be around your metamours every once in a while. For some of us, that’s not a problem, but for others, it can cause some anxiety that good communication might help alleviate. We’re mostly looking at these situations as a hinge partner, but a lot of these tips can be applied to non-hinge partners as well.
Some situations we might find ourselves in where anxiety like this might arise are:
Group events (such as birthday parties, work parties, play parties, mixers, meet ups, etc.).
Official or unofficial meet and greets when a partner introduces you to a metamour.
Cohabitation situations.
Partner care and coordination situations, such as planning a surprise or coordinating care after a medical procedure, etc.
Joint vacations or travel.
Why can this induce anxiety?
There are a few different reasons situations like these might cause nervousness or anxiety. This might be something as simple as:
Really wanting metamours to get along and worried about tensions between them.
Juggling needs that may be extremely different or extremely similar.
Different micro cultures potentially clashing.
Past experience from anything such as being a child of divorce, going through a bad metamour experience, internalized toxic monogamy culture, etc.
Already-present social anxiety or some form of neurodivergence that makes it difficult to read social cues or socially engage in a way that is considered “normal.”
Worry about others’ perceptions of your relationships with multiple people.
The possible pitfalls
A few possible pitfalls when it comes to situations like these might be:
Not being able to be relaxed or yourself.
Wanting to control, mediate, or micromanage the experience.
Completely absolving self of any responsibility or labor i.e. “checking out.”
Not talking or even thinking about expectations ahead of time, which is often due to not having a social script for this situation, or out of awkwardness and fear.
Relying too much on alcohol or substances to relax you.
Not allowing for any option other than 100% success, 100% friendship, 100% getting along.
Getting caught up in NRE and being unaware of other partners’ feelings or needs.
Focusing so much on keeping everyone else happy that you neglect what you need.
Accidentally engaging in conversation with a partner who is more talkative while another partner who is less talkative eventually stops participating in the conversation.
The pressure of “performative equity.”
Advice for these situations
Some of this will be heavily dependent on the situation. Planning a play party may be quite different from planning a birthday party, for example:
Talk and think about this ahead of time with partners. Discuss expectations ahead of time. If you are practicing parallel or DADT, have conversations about what to do if there is an accidental meetup or if a situation makes it unavoidable.
Come up with best case scenario/worst case scenario options.
Find out feelings about PDA in different situations.
Ask how people want to be introduced to others at the event or to their metamour.
Have a plan and communicate it. Be clear about amount of time event or interaction will last, who is going home with whom, and consider working out a generic code word or microscript for escaping or taking a break if necessary.
Make sure that people who want one-on-one quality time are getting it separately from group hangouts or events.
Some people prefer to facilitate metamours meeting beforehand one-on-one before throwing them into a group event. Some people prefer the opposite approach.
Consider bringing in a bunch of mutual friends to offer multiple social options.
Try to check in with each person regularly.
Remind yourself it’s okay to chill and it’s okay to take care of yourself too.
Have a debrief - how did that go for you? What felt good? What felt bad? What could we do differently in the future?
Some advice from a listener for cohabitation specifically: “Another way we have supported this is by agreeing that unless we have explicitly created triad time in the household, folks are free to move about the house and be in their rooms without having to be super social if they do not want to. You cannot ignore folks when you cross them in the hallways but are not obligated to be out in the common areas to engage. When one of us is available to engage with others we text the group and say we are available for connection if others are looking for some.”
Remember that a neutral experience is still a win. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about how to navigate multiple partners in the same spacetime, in the same-
Emily: Continuum.
Jase: -area of spacetime, yes. Practicing non-monogamy or having some form of multi-partner relationship means that there are more opportunities for crossing paths with a metamour or having multiple of your partners together at the same event. For a lot of people, this can be scary. Like, what's the etiquette? What do I need to watch out for? What should I be doing? How should I be treating them all? In this episode, we're going to look at some of those, some things to watch out for, as well as some tips about how you could go about planning an event or preparing yourself and your partners if you're going to an event where multiple partners will be there at the same time.
Dedeker: Just so you know, we wrote down this topic, 2018. Four years ago was when we wrote this down. We've been wanting to make--
Emily: In simpler times.
Dedeker: Yes, simpler times. We were so young back then. We've been wanting to make an episode about this for a very long time. I think we haven't yet because I suppose-- I don't know. On this show, we try to research things and see what the science says. When we get to these very specific topics-
Jase: Nobody's researching that.
Dedeker: -nobody's researching having multiple partners in the same spacetime, at least not yet. Now, Jase, you were the one who initially brought this topic to the table. I could see in our Trello, you were literally the one who wrote it down. Can you talk a little bit about why this topic's been on your heart?
Jase: Oh gosh, yes. Well, mostly because I always found that to be a very stressful experience, being in an event with multiple partners, but then I knew other people who found that to be wonderful and delightful. They always wanted to do that.
Emily: Dedeker, it feels like--
Jase: Like Dedeker
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: I felt a fair amount of anxiety around those things, especially my early days when this was a brand new interaction. Then for me, once you get over that hump, then it's just great.
Jase: Yes. That's what got me thinking about it in the first place. Then also, hearing from a lot of other people that this is something stressful, or they're like, "I'm not sure. Should I be wanting to do this? Should I try to keep everyone separate? What's the deal?" We've talked about that before when we talk about just different ways non-monogamy can look. Like kitchen table polyamory versus parallel polyamory and that kind of stuff that we've talked about in the past. Anyway, just came up enough that I was like, "This would be cool to do an episode because I'd like to learn about it." Then also because I know a lot of other people have expressed questions about it.
Dedeker: Well, here we are four years later, Jase, you can finally learn more about some good practices here. I do have to give a shout-out to Nick. Specifically, Nick is one of our Patreon. He participated in one of our monthly video discussion groups, I think, last month or so. He was one who initially brought up this topic, sharing his experience, with introducing partners at the same event and things like that. I started asking other people in the discussion group about what are your experiences with this? What advice would you give? People just had such wonderful responses.
Then I was like, "You know what, we got to finally make this episode because, even though there's not any hard science behind it, there's still a lot of community wisdom here." For this episode, it's mostly informed by our listeners. I made posts in our private Patreon Facebook group and our Discord server asking people to weigh in on this and just got really, really fantastic responses. That's going to be the bulk of our episode today.
Jase: Yes. Just a quick note about this, we're primarily going to be talking about things from the perspective of the hinge partner. You're the partner who has multiple partners there. A lot of this can still apply even if you're out on the ends of that V rather than being the one with multiple partners, maybe it's you and a partner and a metamours who's there. This could even apply to situations where maybe you have two good friends from different social circles that are at the same event. It's like, how do I navigate that? Some of it can apply to those, but we're going to be talking mostly from the point of view of that hinge because that's the stressful, "I want to be sure everyone's happy and getting along kind of role."
One last note is that, in putting this together, we did get perspectives both our own and from our Patrons about different levels of entwinement with these relationships. Maybe we're in the same spacetime, and that is our living room, or in the same spacetime of someone's birthday party or a mutual friend's event or something like that where maybe we normally don't interact with our metamours very much. Everything across that whole spectrum of how much we interact is what we talk to people about to try to put this together. It's not just about one or the other.
Emily: Okay. When we're talking about spacetime, we're talking about multiple continuums go through.
Jase: How the multiverse--
Emily: Yes. As the multiverse could see everything everywhere all at once. So good.
Dedeker: We're talking about four-dimensional objects. Yes.
Emily: What are some examples of the types of spaces and times that people might be together in multi-partner relationships? We can talk about things like group events, and that can mean birthday parties, garden party you put on your-- looks hysterical.
Emily: I'm like, maybe if we're a very, very highfalutin British person, then that garden party is. Work events, board game nights, munches, mixers, play parties, the list goes on and on. Truly, each of these different experiences can feel very separate and different and have different things that you have to be thinking about when you're in the midst of them. If you're at a play party versus maybe a cocktail hour, those are probably going to have multiple things that you'll have to deal with and think about that are going to be very separate.
Dedeker: Some of those events may also be on your list of, I never want to be in the same room with a metamours at this particular type of event.
Emily: Oh, interesting, yes. It's a very good point.
Dedeker: These are not an all-inclusive list.
Emily: Yes. Also, things like official meet and greets, which may be like introducing two partners to each other or meeting one another for the first time. Also, that makes me think of meeting parents for the first time or something along those lines.
Jase: It's the polyamory version of meeting the parents. It's like meeting my other partner. Yes.
Emily: Exactly. Meeting my other partner and meeting the metamours. Also, there are potential times where unofficial or accidental meet and greets might happen, like running into each other at the same event or crossing paths in and out maybe parallel polyamory slip up happening. I know Dedeker and I both have stories, but, yes, early on in my polyamorous journey, I kicked Jase out because this dude that I wanted to sleep with, he was like in town for like one night. I was like, "Jase, go over to Dedeker's house." He was not familiar with polyamory much at all. He was like, "I don't want to see Jase. I don't want to meet him." Then it ended up happening. You two met and shook hands.
Jase: I had to come back to the house because I forgot something.
Emily: Yes, that's true.
Jase: He was like, "Hey, good to meet you. I'm Jase." Shook his hand or whatever and grabbed my stuff and then left.
Emily: Then he was like, "That was so normal." I said, "Yes, it's going to be all right. Calm down."
Emily: Anyways, that happened a long time ago. What about you, Dedeker?
Dedeker: Well, my story, again, fairly early in the polyamory journey, probably my first relationship where I was actually practicing polyamory instead of like an open relationship or some general non-monogamy where-- This was back in the day before we had the term like kitchen table or parallel where before people were thinking about styles necessarily. The relationship I was in was in a weird like-- It started out as parallel and was in a not very ethical or very effective way. There's a lot of brokering and trying to keep a partnership. I think it was mostly like old monogamous programming of, if you're dating two people, oh God, you can't let them be in the same room together, or whatever.
Despite all my partner's efforts on that, I still ended up meeting my metamour for the first time at a work event that we were both working. We were both hired for this gig.
Jase: All right.
Emily: Pretend you are in a video game event.
Dedeker: Yes, exactly. It was like the pre-E3 event that we were both working. The weird thing was, literally five minutes before I was walking into the orientation, I got a text from my partner where he was like, "Oh, so I think like it turns out, she's going to be here too . Okay. By'" basically. I always wonder. I was like, did he actually know and he just didn't know how to have that conversation until the last possible minute?
Emily: Probably. 100%.
Dedeker: Or did he find out? I don't know.
Emily: Oh, I remember, story. I remember what you're talking about. Did it end up being chill or did you two talk, or?
Dedeker: It was--
Emily: I know you didn't have a-
Dedeker: It ended up being chill.
Emily: -hugely amazing relationship.
Dedeker: No, we really didn't. I don't think that was necessarily her fault, but I don't want to go into that. Ultimately chill, I guess. It was definitely weird because it's like, literally, I think for both of us, five minutes beforehand were told, "Oh, by the way, you're going to meet this person."
Emily: That is
Dedeker: We didn't talk at the beginning of the event. Things were a little bit weird and awkward. I was so glad that it seems like both she and I had other people at this orientation that we knew, so we had other people to anchor towards. Then I think we talked for like five minutes at the very end and said, hi.
Emily: Nice.
Dedeker: Which is not how I would do it now. I think now it would just be like, I don't know, we'd probably try to prevent that situation from happening, but that was my experience. The point of the whole story was it was awkward, it was unplanned, but always a possibility even if you're practicing parallel polyamory or even don't ask don't tell forms of non-monogamy, always a possibility because it's not entirely within your control.
Other forms of spacetime, we might be talking about cohabitation situations. Of course, that's going to be much further down the spectrum of being much more entangled or entwined if you're living together with a metamour or sometimes even living in the same neighborhood as a metamour. That means you're going to be crossing paths quite a bit. Other situations include things like needing to coordinate with a metamour about taking care of a partner in some way, whether it could be coordinating care after a medical procedure, or it could be planning for a surprise or things like that.
We're also looking at situations of maybe you're going on a joint vacation or some kind of joint travel with a partner or a road trip, things like that. People do that all the time. What other spacetime situations?
Jase: One that comes up is if you're moving and so, well, I've got two partners I'd like both of them to come help me move. Is this their first time meeting too? Is that going to be weird? How do I manage it? Those sorts of questions. Really anytime where you're going to have multiple partners or you're going to have your metamours at the same activity or the same thing, and there's a tone of different ways this could look.
Dedeker: Maybe you're birthing a baby.
Emily: Everybody's in the room.
Dedeker: I don't know. Well, maybe. I'm just thinking about-- Emily, there's such a wide spectrum of possible options for how our chosen families might look. Maybe I'm not co-parenting with all my partners, but maybe I want them there for support.
Emily: Sure. This is one that maybe will happen to you at some point, but I remember I was with my friend and a fan of the podcast. We were at the freaking Hollywood Bowl seeing a show. A fan of the podcast spotted me and ran across the -- not really across the stadium, but across the hall or whatever that we were in and was like, "Oh my gosh, are you Emily from The Multiamory podcast?"
I feel like even in gigantic situations of thousands of people together, you still can get caught up in those moments. Even seeing a friend that you know randomly on the streets of New York City or something, it happens. I think that it just shows that you really can't totally have contingencies for absolutely everything, absolutely every scenario.
Dedeker: That's true.
Jase: With all these situations, what is it that makes them anxiety-producing and that it's something new? It’s this new interaction, and there's a lot of worries that go along with that. Just to clarify with those situations we talked about, if you and your partners and metamours and everyone are all living together day in, day out like birth and babies together and stuff like that like Dedeker was talking about, we're not really talking about that situation here because you're constantly in contact and there's other things to think about and negotiate.
This is more for those situations where this is not just a normal part or maybe this is the first time you're having this type of interaction. That's just to get a little perspective of-- this is more if this is new or if this is a little bit uncomfortable. Some things you might be worried about. One example is just worrying, will my metamours or rather will my partners get along with each other? Will they get along with their metamours? I really want them to get along, I want them to like each other so that we can all hang out together more often. There can often be a lot of, what's the word? emotional pressure that you put on yourself to have all your metamours get along and be able to do more stuff together.
Sometimes there's that feeling of, if I'm doing polyamory right, it means we should be doing stuff all together as a group, which just, for those of you who can tell from my tone of voice, that's not true. That's not the only right way to do polyamory. There's lots of different ways.
Emily: I know we made that assumption early on when Dedeker and I were both dating the same people, and so the four of us always hung out together, that included the two of you, but yes. The other person in that scenario, the fourth person I think eventually felt like that wasn't something that he wanted to be a part of and it caused a huge amount of tension and so that automatic assumption I think-- Our show is all about that, just no assumptions ever.
.
You've got to communicate. You have to communicate about everything, even that, because there are assumptions there that, oh, well we're all dating or most of us are dating and so we might as well just all be together, and that's not necessarily what people are going to do.
Jase: Another example that one of our Patreon gave is that juggling needs of different people might be very different from each other or might be uncomfortably similar to each other. Some examples of that could be maybe someone who needs a lot of help from their partner in social contexts, maybe for anxiety or just fear or awkwardness or something like that. Maybe another partner feels really uncomfortable seeing any public displays of affection with other people or even doing it themselves. Or another one who needs to have that public display of affection so that they feel seen like they're part of a relationship with you, those could have some conflict with each other.
Maybe someone who doesn't feel keen to be restricted in any way on their behavior and another one doesn't like to see displays of affection. There's all sorts of different potentially competing, potentially cooperative needs that might be going on. Then to add to that that there might be some high stakes to these. Maybe one relationship is new and just getting more serious, maybe one is a somewhat newly opened relationship, maybe within the last year or two, that these can result in all these needs and desires being heightened. That everything's just turned up to 11.
Dedeker: Then something that somebody else in the Patreon group pointed out that there can also be a situation where if you're navigating having like a long-distance partner who's in town and they're at the same event as maybe another partner of yours who's more proximal.
That can make things feel a little bit different and produce more anxiety because it's like, "Oh, well, normally, I would hang out with both of these partners equally, but now my long-distance partner is in town, and so I feel the need that I need to monopolize all my affection and attention and time with them while they're here, but my partner who I don't act this way around in public is--" There can just be a lot of different competing needs essentially that can cause some stress.
Jase: Definitely.
Emily: This next one I think happens when you get in a situation like a wedding, for instance, where a bunch of different people come together that are parts of different social circles that you're in, so different micro-cultures potentially clashing with one another. You may have a different type of rapport with one partner than you have with another. These partners may feel alienated because you have an inside joke with one and then y'all are laughing about that. The two of you used to do about this freaking video game really early on in our relationship.
Dedeker: We're never going to live down the fact that Jase and I had one conversation about Door Fortress.
Emily: You did not have one. Are you kidding me?
Dedeker: It was one long one.
Emily: No, Door Fortress came up a lot. It definitely did. It's fine, but that was very much a thing that was for the two of you, but it still came up when we all hung out together for instance. Also, things like relationship history or comfort or intimacy might be very different between two different partners. Another thing is that there may be a different level of outness, and that can cause a lot of complications. For instance, if one partner can't be out if they are 100% closeted for a variety of reasons, and then a different partner is super out, that's really challenging as well.
If you go to a work event or a family event with multiple partners and maybe the relationship isn't really open knowledge, people don't know about it necessarily even though you're there with multiple people and-- What? Do you introduce one as your friend and one as your partner? These are really complicated situations to be getting into.
Dedeker: I've actually run into this, not necessarily in my personal life, but heard a lot from our Patreon group and a lot from clients that I've worked with, of being in the unique scenario of, we can hang out together publicly, but it's still public and we're not necessarily out. While I can hang out with both my partners, I can only really publicly be affectionate or open about my relationship with one of them, which causes all kinds of different levels of stress and anxiety for pretty much everyone involved in that scenario.
Jase: I'd say another dynamic to add to this in terms of those microcultures is, perhaps with one partner, you have some dom-sub relationship that permeates all of your interactions and now you're at a social event with them and your other partner that you don't do that with, or maybe have opposite roles with the other partner or something like that, that can be a confusing dynamic to navigate. Of like, well, do I need to stop this behavior while we're all together? Having to navigate that with more people is important but can also be stressful.
Another thing to think about that can cause stress is just past baggage. It's unfortunate, but sometimes the thing of having multiple partners in the same place can bring back memories of having divorced parents as a kid.
Dedeker: Of course, I've not done any empirical research on this, but when I asked clients, clients who were really struggling with anxiety, the chances that you came from divorced parents is really high. This will trigger that same feeling of, oh my God, I need to keep both of these disparate relationships happy in some way, and I'm the middle link. It all lands on me.
Jase: Yes, that baggage might cause you to take on more of that labor or even assume, these two people are not going to get along, and I'm going to have to be brokering this relationship. Even if that's not actually true, you might go to that place if you grew up with divorced parents and you had to do that. Could also be baggage just from another polyamorous relationship. Maybe you did have two partners who hated each other and made your life miserable because of that, and you had to do a lot of triangulation between those.
Maybe you had a relationship with a really bad metamour and so now you want to be sure that your partners don't have that with each other, or something. That it could even be more immediate baggage of just, I expect this is going to be bad and so I'm scared. Then the last one, we've touched on this a little bit, is that just leftover monogamy ideas. That idea of any situation where an ex meets your current partner is always going to go bad for you.
Dedeker: Oh, my goodness. I had a former boss in a dance company that I was in where she was in the middle of-- she had just broken up with a long-term partner, but they were still a little bit connected. They're sharing custody of a cat or something and still spending quite a bit of time together. I don't know if they were still sleeping together or not. I forget that part. She just started dating somebody new.
She told us this long and sordid tale of how she was like out at a cafe with her new date person and then her ex walked by randomly and saw her in the cafe and came into the cafe. She tried to suddenly move to another chair and pretend that she didn't know the guy that she was at the cafe with. Also, the guy was trying to pretend she didn't know who the ex was. She didn't know who this guy-- This whole, ultimately, ironically, comedic tale of just how she had to pretend to both of these people that she didn't actually know them because, God forbid, they would be in the same space together. At that time, I was starting to hit my polyamorous stride and was just like, could not eye-roll harder.
Emily: It's really unfortunate for a variety of reasons. Wow.
Dedeker: Yes, but that's the situation. Think about how many times that's presented to us in the media, often for comedic effect of-- usually, I don't know, the guy who's just like, accidentally invited too many people to the same party or whatever like that. I think that we get presented with that situation quite a lot.
Then another reason why there can just be anxieties is like, if you already have social anxiety, or if you have some kind of generalized anxiety, or if you have some form of neurodivergence that makes it difficult for you to read social cues or to socially engage in a way that's considered "normal", this can be even more stressful.
Emily: You also may worry about other people's perceptions of your relationship with multiple people, especially if you are in something like a work setting or a family setting and you're telling grandma for the first time like, "Hey, these are my two partners that may come with a lot of anxiety," because they may not understand, and there's still so much stigma attached to any non-monogamous relationship or any other type of alternative lifestyle or relationships. That's understandable that it would produce a lot of anxiety.
Dedeker: Speaking of the perceptions thing, I've felt some anxiety around-- If I'm at an event with my metamour and we have a shared partner there, and if my partner's going to be affectionate or kind with my metamour, I felt this weird pressure of like, I feel like everyone's going to be looking at me if like, oh my god, is she okay with this? What does she feel about her partner--
Emily: Is she number two or something?
Dedeker: Yes. I felt this pressure of I need to look super cheery the entire time I'm at the event. I can't have any resting face. I have to look super, super cheery so no one thinks that I'm just the sad sap being jerked around here. I still have that weird, internalized pressure.
Jase: I've definitely experienced that of like, yes, you got to maintain appearances if you're in a crowd of mixed people who don't get it or might be suspicious of it or something. I found that even not being in the same spacetime exactly, but like Dedeker is going to go off to have a video call with a different partner while I'm there and my mom's around and needing to be so chill and cool in how I present that face to my mom so that she's not like, oh, is this weird for you? Is this whatever? There's that. Then to take it to like master level, this is what I do. This is next level.
Dedeker: Is this master-level anxiety?
Jase: Yes. Master-level worrying, I'll call it that. Is worrying about other people being worried about what other people think.
Dedeker: Hold on. Walk us through this slowly.
Jase: Then it's not worrying just about me worrying about what other people might think about my relationship, but I'm also worrying about what my partners might be thinking about what other people might be thinking about them because of something that I did or didn't do. You can really--
Emily: Yes, this sounds like you.
Dedeker: I was going to say it sounds very Jase Lindgren.
Jase: You can really take it pretty far if you put your mind to it. If you really dedicate yourself, you can really go places with this one.
Dedeker: I would say I like you putting it that way. I do think you might be a master-level worrier. I hope that doesn't come across as a criticism.
Jase: I think it is.
Emily: It is a little.
Jase: I was trained by the best. I think my mom is also a master-level warrior. I think that I just-- it's a family business.
Dedeker: It's been a long apprenticeship up to this point.
Jase: Growing up as a waterbender, it's like, well, you want to develop that skill, and you master-
Dedeker: Worrybender?
Jase: -because you're-- Worrybender.
Emily: I'm like, wait, you guys haven't seen Avatar?
Dedeker: It's okay. We know all about worry bending in this house. We're going to take a break. When we come back from the break, we're going to be talking about common pitfalls or common mistakes that people make heading into this situation as well as some advice, wonderful advice from our community for how to navigate this with some grace. First, you're going to hear about some of the sponsors that help us to keep this show going.
Jase: Now, we're going to talk about some of those pitfalls, some common mistakes. We've probably made all of these at some point and so have our listeners. Just to start it off is the general catch-all of just the weirdness that worry or anxiety can cause. Mostly just not being able to be relaxed or to be yourself, where you're focused so much on being cool and chill that you're anything but cool and chill. I've definitely fallen victim to this many, many times.
Dedeker: For sure. That can manifest in a number of different ways. One of them can be wanting to control or mediate or micromanage the experience in some way, either really getting all up in your partner's business or really trying to make sure that they get along or really trying to just be super, super granular. Sometimes that can look like trying to control the way your partners interact or it could also be trying to control and trying to really desperately keep them apart because the idea of them hanging out with each other or hanging out in the same room with you can be so anxiety-producing that you're just like, no, I can't. I need to keep it hermetically sealed.
Jase: I've also seen this manifest as, anytime I have any affection with one partner, I have to go immediately find the other partner to do the same to try to keep things equal. That's one that I've done a lot.
Dedeker: It can go the opposite way of trying to control and micromanage. You can completely absolve yourself of any responsibility or labor or just completely checkout. This is one I've seen a lot also of just like, I can't even think about how that's going to go, so just y'all figure it out. I have no responsibility here. I don't need to facilitate anything. It's all on you. I don't need to take care of you. I don't need to pay attention. I'm just like, whatever, I'm just going to go pay attention to this corner of the garden party and y'all are on your own.
Emily: It's really beautiful over here
Jase: Right. Or it's like, I'm just going to come here. To avoid the awkwardness with my existing partners, I'm just going to go here and try to hit on new people.
Dedeker: Oh yes, I've seen people that once.
Jase: I've seen that movie before, too.
Dedeker: Yes. The big pitfall, and we'll be talking about this a lot more when we start getting into takeaways and advice, but probably the biggest pitfall is just not talking about this or even thinking about expectations ahead of time. There can be a couple of reasons for this. Often, I think this is due to just not having a social script for this situation.
We have a social script for a dinner party or for a birthday party, or I'm going to a work party or things like that and we don't get this handed down social script for, "Oh my gosh, two of my partners are going to the same event together where I'm going to be," or something like that. Sometimes we're just like, "Okay, I guess we'll just see what happens. I'll just show up. I'll put my body in space in this spacetime and see what happens."
Sometimes people feel I think just a sense of awkwardness or fear about having the conversation at all, for all the various reasons we talked above. There can be just so much anxiety around it. I don't even know how to talk to you about expectations. I don't know what to do. Maybe if you're the hinge partner, you feel like you need to be the one who leads the charge and makes all the decisions about how it's going to go and you just don't even know how it's going to go, so you avoid the conversation. There's a lot of reasons why people avoid talking about this or thinking about this.
Jase: Another thing that hopefully this episode will help with a little bit is I think some of that fear can come from, well, I'm worried about this, but that must just be my problem that I should just deal with or maybe that's not a valid fear to have, so I shouldn't be thinking about this. Hopefully, this episode in hearing about this will let know these are common worries and probably good things to be thinking about. Ideally not in a worry and anxiety-focused way but in more of a productive, hey, let's talk about this, which, again, we'll get into in a moment.
Another pitfall is relying too much on alcohol or other substances to chill you out. This is just basic if you're going to anywhere where paying attention to social dynamics and being aware of your behavior is important, so going to a play party or an orgy or a dating event, or a mixer, or basically, almost anything is sometimes to self-medicate that fear and anxiety will drink too much or we'll take drugs or something like that. Those are pretty much never a good way to handle those situations. That applies here too.
Then another pitfall which may seem to go against the whole point of worrying about this and planning about this ahead of time is that sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking our only options are 100% success, like 100% my partners all totally get along, they become best friends tonight at this event, or just that they get along 100% and they love each other so much and they're so happy hanging out together.
Dedeker: No one has any weird feelings or no one needs any reassurance from me. It's just all smooth sailing the whole time.
Jase: Right. If you're thinking is that's the only measure of success, is that, then if anything doesn't go according to that, then it's a total failure. It's swinging to those extremes and expecting it to look a particular way going in.
Emily: I think in early relationships, especially, it may be you are meeting an established partner for the first time or your new partner is meeting an established partner for the first time. Sometimes there can be a tendency to really get caught up in NRE, and then you potentially become a little bit unaware of your other partner's feelings or needs. That does happen regardless of the setting that you're in. It may just happen in general but also in these bigger social settings. You may be tending more to one person simply because NRE and excitement is getting caught up, and that may mean that your existing partner doesn't have as much attention perhaps as they want or need in that moment.
Also, you can focus so much on keeping everyone else happy that you neglect what you need, and that's important too in this whole situation. Ideally, you're getting together and having a social situation to have fun and to enjoy yourself. Maybe you get together at a work function to network, but you also want to be able to show off your partners and enjoy yourself, things like that. In those scenarios, in any scenario that you're in, take care of yourself. That's super important because I think that we neglect, especially when anxiety is high, we tend to neglect our own needs in those moments.
Jase: I often just neglect to having any fun. That's my favorite move.
Emily: Oh, I see.
Jase: I just neglect having fun and instead put all my energy into worrying and making sure my partners are doing okay. I'm often just like making it worse in the process. Now, to be fair, have not had this experience in a few years now, so maybe I'm great at it now. Maybe I just needed a nice little break to reset.
Emily: Just you as Moses being better at it. There you go.
Jase: Yes. We'll see.
Emily: Something that a Patreon of ours brought up is that you may be in a social situation where multiple partners are talking at once but perhaps one is a bit more gregarious than the others. They are talking more, being the center of attention, and you get caught up in a conversation with them and neglect the partners that are less talkative a bit. Maybe that less talkative person eventually stops participating in the conversation at all. That's something to be aware of in another challenging moment potentially to happen in situations like this.
Dedeker: That's also a good thing just for knowing about your partners because I think that social anxiety can produce those effects on people as well where they can suddenly get much more talkative, talkativeness, or they can get way less talkative.
Emily: Yes. Any like dead air, any dead times. In there, exactly. Jase touched on this before, but a Patreon of ours called this performative equity. That idea that, yes, I talked to one partner, so I got to run over and talk to another partner and make everyone see how equal it is between all of my partners, especially if you are non-hierarchical. I think so often were fed this thing of like, oh, okay, well, you're with two people, but who are you really with? Who's the number one thing. We want to be able to show and perform that's not the case that things are really equal between these two partners or multiple partners. That can get pretty challenging to deal with over and over again or just to uphold that when you're in a social setting.
Jase: Yes. I think it's just being both the person doing that and the partner receiving that as it were, you see through it right away. It's just this like, oh, they kissed that person then ran over to kiss me or did the opposite. It's just a little awkward. It's just weird. I think there's good intentions behind it of wanting to be sure, be aware that I'm not just neglecting one partner for the other, but at the same time, it can feel a little weird.
Emily: Yes. It's false potentially, sure.
Jase: Yes. That's where the performative equity part comes in. It's a little trickier than that. We've talked about the worries that people have. We've talked about some common mistakes. Now, the moment you've all been waiting for, which is, what do we do about it? What do we do that's good?
We're going to go into some advice, and this comes from the conversations that Dedeker has had with a lot of our Patreons as well as our own experiences and our own conversations with different people about this. Some of these will vary depending on the situation. Planning for a birthday party is going to be very different than a play party or a work party or something like that. With that in mind, number one is to talk about some of these concerns and pitfalls that we've mentioned, to talk about those ahead of time. Is doing that work, to talk about that ahead of time with all of the partners who are going to be involved.
This includes things like discussing expectations ahead of time. Say you have a relationship where your partners know you're dating someone else but they don't know any details about each other, or maybe they know a little bit about each other but never see each other, and that's how everyone wants it, but we're all going to be at the same event together because it's something important and I want to be sure everyone's there, is to have those conversations of just, hey, okay, so what do we do in this situation?
Even better is to have these conversations before that event comes up so that then in the event that, okay, sure, you don't want to know about this other person that I'm dating, what happens if we run into them at the grocery store or at the bus stop or whatever it is? If we run into this person, what do we do? How do we handle this in a mature way?
Sometimes just having that conversation is enough because then they at least know that you thought about it. Then in that situation, if they do end up feeling weird, it's not like, "Oh, well, you handled that wrong." It's like, "Okay, yes, that was weird but I realized, we talked about this, let's maybe do it different next time." It gives you a starting place for those conversations. Whether you know the situation is coming up or not, that's good, especially in those kinds of situations where you're very intentionally limiting information and contact between those people because they want it that way, not because you want it that way. I want to clarify that because they want to be kept separate.
Then maybe look at some best-case, worst-case scenarios about those and talk about, well, what do we do in those situations? What do we do in a situation where the other person's super weird about it? What do we do in a situation where it's totally cool? Just have those conversations so you know some options going in.
Another conversation to have beforehand, whether you are intentionally going to event or just preparing for maybe, is talking about public displays of affection, about PDA. This is something that I think in general is a good conversation to have with partners regardless of whether you're monogamous or polyamorous. It's just, hey, how comfortable are you with that? What are your expectations with it? What are situations where you might not want to do public displays of affection? This really varies.
For some people, it's, "In public, I'd rather not hold hands," and other people, it's like, "Oh yes, I love that, but in public, I don't want to kiss in public." Or, "I'm totally fine with us kissing in public, but if we're with my parents, that feels weird to me," or whatever it is. It's a lot of different variations but just have that conversation. Then thinking about a social event is with multiple partners then saying, "Okay, but now in this situation, does that change it?" and having those conversations with multiple partners.
Dedeker: It's funny, it's bringing up some memories for me. I think that, for most of my life, I have gone into these situations assuming I may have to reassure a partner of like, "Hey, it's okay to be a little bit affectionate to me, that's okay," or, "It's okay for you to be affectionate to your other partner. I'm okay with that. We can talk about that." I've often assumed it's going the coaxing direction of like, "Hey, it's okay. You don't need to be shut down around public displays of affection."
Then I was at an event once where I had multiple partners where one of my partners was super affectionate. I don't think in a weird way. It didn't seem like it was coming from a weird, insecure place or whatever. If anything, I think he may be just drank a little too much. Again, the parallels of alcohol was making me uncomfortable even if I didn't have other partners there. It was just like, "Whoa, buddy. Jeez."
Emily: Put him away.
Dedeker: Just, "Hey, calm down." I really wish we talked about that ahead of time.
Jase: Then another one similar to that is, in a verbal way, how do you want to be introduced to people? This is like if you're going to that work event or some family wedding or something, have a conversation beforehand. If it's like, "Look, I don't want to make this wedding about me, I want it to be about whoever's wedding it is, so I'm just going to introduce both of you as friends, and let's--" Let's talk about it beforehand so they don't get shocked at the wedding to get introduced as a friend and suddenly feel hurt or feel like, "Oh, they introduced me as a friend. Does that mean they're only treating the other partner as a real partner?" or whatever it is.
Having those conversations ahead of time and then gauging your partner's level of outness too. If we are talking to a stranger and we go to a coffee shop and the barista asks us how we know each other or something, what's our answer going to be? Just having those conversations ahead of time can go a long way to avoiding some awkwardness and hurt feelings.
Dedeker: My answer is, how dare you speak to me?
Emily: Well, as a person who works in the service industry, yikes.
Dedeker: No, I'm joking. I would never say that to a barista, and I would never say that to you.
Emily: Well, thank you.
Dedeker: I hope no one's ever said that to you in your line of duty.
Emily: No. I generally don't ask many questions.
Dedeker: You don't ask how they know each other?
Emily: No. No, that would be weird. Although people have offered up that information, like, "So who do you think are the couples here?"
Dedeker: Oh, funny.
Jase: Oh, I see. Yes.
Emily: I'm like, "I don't really care."
Dedeker: You've done some talking about it and you've done some thinking about it for yourself. Something that I think helps generally with social anxiety, whether that's for yourself or for your partners, is to just have a plan, even if it's a loose plan, and communicate that plan to everyone involved. That could involve things like, "I'm going to be clear about the amount of time this event is expected to last, or the amount of time that I'm hoping that you will stick around during this event." Or, "This is the amount of time that I think this particular interaction might last."
Of course, that's going to depend on what the situation is. If it's, "Oh, I'm inviting everybody to my birthday party," you can be clear about like, "Yes, I'm hoping that you stick around, at least until, I don't know, the karaoke starts or whatever." Then whatever is fine or being clear about, "Oh, yes, my other partner's just going to come pick me up and so I was hoping that maybe the two of you could just say hi and introduce each other and then we'll go. It'll be five minutes." Just giving a clear sense of this is how long I'm expecting this interaction will last because what I've found time and time again, reading people's feedback on the topic, was no one wants to feel trapped.
Social anxiety often really amps up that feeling of, "Oh my God, I might be trapped in an awkward situation that I can't escape from." Doing things like being clear about the amount of time, and also you could do things like work out a code word or a micro script for, if you need to express, "I need to go step outside," or, "I need to go home," or, "I need to take a break and talk to some other friends and then I can engage back in this." That's totally okay. Give people information and also give people options for being able to escape.
Also, being clear about who's going to go home with whom. If it is your birthday party, it's like, "Oh, well, I have plans for a sleepover at this person's house, and so that's probably what we're going to do." Just be clear about what you're wanting, what you're hoping for, and negotiate that with your partners ahead of time instead of it just being on the fly decision because sometimes people, especially if they're in social anxiety brain, don't have all their faculties necessarily to be able to participate in those kind of negotiations just on the spot.
Jase: I would add to all of this that sometimes you don't know the answers to all of these questions. I don't know how late we're going to want to stay at this event or how late I'm going to want to stay or how late my other partners are going to want to stay, but just what you do know, have a conversation, and what you don't know, also being clear that you don't know the answer to that can be helpful too so then people know what are the things I can know or at least have some expectation about.
Then if there is that kind of, "I don't know if we're going to stay an hour or if we want to stay there all night," maybe plan some regular check-ins about that, of like, "Hey, each hour, let's find a way to duck aside for a moment and say, 'Hey, do we want to stay one more hour or not?'" Chunk it up into little groups like that. I love this so much.
Dedeker and I do this when we're going to social events, even if it's just the two of us, of like-- Especially if it's not like, "Oh, we're having dinner with some friends," but it's like, "We're going to someone's party that we got invited to," or something, there is that, "Okay, let's come up with some code words, some check-ins. If someone asks us if we want to go, do something, or stay longer, or if we're going to stay longer, let's have a set phrase that we've decided."
I'm going to whip that out, and that's the signal to Dedeker if she's in earshot. I'm stalling for time so we can go have a conversation about if we want to stay and do this, or that just buys me some time to then go find her and be like, "Hey, so this is the question that got asked." Just doing something like that so that you don't feel trapped has made a world of difference for me in terms of feeling comfortable going to social events.
Dedeker: Another thing that you can be doing or thinking about ahead of time is if you have partners or relationships or people in your life who really want or crave one-on-one quality time with you, that may not be all of your relationships or all your partners necessarily, it depends on the level of intertwinement or attachment, but make sure that that relationship is getting that separately from just group hangouts or events.
I've worked with so many people, I've been in this situation on both sides of this where if you feel like, "Oh, I haven't gotten good quality time with my partner in a couple of weeks because of scheduling or whatever," and then the first time I get to hang out with them is at this big group event, this big birthday party, that means I'm going to show up to the event with maybe some different needs and some different longings than maybe I would be otherwise.
It was like, "This is the first time I've gotten to see you in two weeks, and you're busy flitting around, not only being the center of attention but also dealing with multiple partners and stuff like that," that event may land on me a little bit differently than otherwise. That's not to say that if you just fill up the quality time meter, then there's going to be no issues whatsoever when you're having multiple partners in the same spacetime, but it's something to think about for sure and to be real about making sure that you're still nurturing these relationships and especially not relying on group events, group hangouts to necessarily check that box of quality time because that doesn't necessarily do that for a lot of folks.
Emily: Something that people may want to do, especially if their metamours have never met before, is before throwing them into a huge event type scenario where multiple people are going to be present, you may want to facilitate a one-on-one meeting between the metamours beforehand. Now, some people may really be into this and some people might like the buffer of having a big party or some group setting scenario so that it doesn't make that meeting feel as, I guess, I don't know, anxiety-inducing or--
Jase: High pressure.
Emily: High pressure, yes. Exactly. It's something along those lines. You also don't need to necessarily meet face to face, meet one on one. It could just be in a group thread, like, "Hey, I wanted to make sure that the two of you at least met in some capacity before we all see each other in a group setting."
Dedeker: There's a surprising number of people in our Patreon group who talk about priming the pump as it were with metamour relationships by just sharing memes or even meeting in person. There's definitely little things that you can do to reduce the pressure of that first-time meeting, especially if you're going to be juggling I think a lot of different things in your mind.
Emily: You also could bring mutual friends to offer multiple social options. I know that I keep thinking about the Oscar party that we used to hold Jase at our house, and we live together. That would be really fun because it would include multiple partners, but then also mutual friends. We would bring our friend, Paul. Paul would always be fun to talk to regardless of who was hanging out with who at that point. That's another fun buffer potentially to have in situations like this.
Jase: If you're the one hosting the event, you have some more control over that, but that's another thing to think about, is, if I'm going to an event that's part of one partner's social group, but I'm bringing in another partner who's not part of that social group, being aware that they're not going to have the same safety net and buffer and level of comfort around as somewhere else will.
Emily: Maybe they should bring a friend, yes.
Jase: If you're able. Again, if you're hosting, you have some more options there, but if you're not, you might be a little limited, but just being aware of that and having those conversations beforehand can be helpful.
I learned a fun thing on this subject recently where I was talking about going to an event and giving all of these caveats about, "Just let me know if you want to leave early. We don't have to stay. I'll probably want to stay later, but if you feel uncomfortable and you want to leave, that's totally fine. These are some people who are probably easy to talk to, but I'll check in with you. Maybe we could have a code word." She was just like, "No, I love social situations. I'm good." I was like, "Okay. Awesome."
I was my stuff on to you, but you don't have that.
Emily: That's a very good point.
Jase: Having those conversations can help you gauge what concerns are worth having with different people.
Emily: That's a really good point. You can check in with each person regularly. If you do have multiple partners in a social setting, it's nice to check in. I think like Jase just pointed out, though, that may be more or less necessary depending on the person. That's something to perhaps set up beforehand, or just if a partner is like, "I'm good. I'm having a great time," you may not need to check in with them as frequently, or if somebody else is clearly struggling, then maybe they're the one who needs a little bit more in that moment.
Also, you can remind yourself that it's okay to chill. It's okay to take care of yourself too like we said before. This is super important because maybe you want to take a break as well from checking in with everyone and get to go and talk to a fun new person or a best friend that you haven't seen in a while or an acquaintance, something along those lines. You don't need to be running back and forth between all of your partners and checking in with them constantly. It's important to also take care of your own needs.
Then also, at the end of all of this, have a debrief. Check in with people, like, "Hey, how did that go for you? Were there things that you would like more or less have in the future? What parts of this interaction felt good? Were there any parts that felt bad? Let's make a plan for the future and make this whole scenario even better than it was this time around."
Dedeker: I think that what the three of us have learned from experience, especially I think, from that experience very early on in the polyamory days of just not making assumptions. Just because one event goes well, and someone has a good time, that doesn't mean it's going to go exactly like that every single time or that doesn't mean now you can expect your partners to just be 100% perfect and not have any issues or any weird emotions come out and stuff like that. Still do those check-ins, still do those debriefs.
Even if you have a couple of these interactions under your belt and you're feeling pretty good, just it doesn't hurt to check in and just see how folks are doing, because sometimes if you just make assumptions, that's when-- especially if someone starts to feel this pressure of the group dynamic is at play and, oh, I can't say anything, I can't rock the boat, I can't ruffle any feathers, that can really set you up for some sad, bad, mad times later on down the road.
Emily: Sad, bad, mad.
Dedeker: Yes, all the things. I do want to share, we haven't talked a lot in this episode about cohabitation because I suppose we are assuming if you're cohabiting, you've probably dealt with this already, or have dealt with the meetups and introductions and stuff like that, but I really liked this piece of advice that a Patreon shared. When this Patreon does leave, it sounds like with multiple partners, maybe with a metamour as well, but they talked about-- they agreed that unless they explicitly agreed to some triad time in the household that people are free to move about the house, to be in their own rooms without needing to be super social if they don't want to.
There's a caveat here, if you cross someone in the hallway, it's not nice to just ignore them or stonewall them, but if you're on the common area, there's not an obligation to have to engage. They really encouraged essentially more of an opt-in model to social engagement. Like, oh, if there's going to be an organic hang, we text people or let people know, like, "Oh, hey, is it actually cool to hang out?" Instead of just assuming. I think that just goes back to what we were iterating earlier of no one wants to feel trapped.
If you can create a situation where people feel like they are free to opt in to social engagement instead of it being the default that they have to opt-out from or extract themselves from, you're probably going to set yourself up for more success.
Ultimately, the note that I want to end this on is that a neutral experience is still a win. It doesn't have to be a perfect experience. It doesn't have to end with both your partners absolutely loving each other, becoming best friends, or having just a wonderful, fantastic time at your birthday party. Even if it's neutral, even if there are some hiccups, that can still be a win. You're still doing something that a lot of folks in traditional, monogamous culture would be way too terrified to even think about doing or can never even fathom doing. It's like this is still a big thing, and everyone's really courageous for still stepping into a situation where there's no social cues already built in, and so it's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Jase: I want to reiterate something on that note that I mentioned earlier, which is just that doing a ton of social events with multiple partners is not a requirement, it's not the good way to do polyamory and keeping things more separate is the bad way. None of that's true. I've found that what's actually true is if you have partners who get along really well with each other, or you enjoy coordinating with a metamour for your shared partner's birthday each year, or for certain events, and that's fun, great, do it. If it's not as much, then don't do it.
Either one is good, as long as you're not trying to force it into something that it's not as comfortable being. That might evolve and change over time, but that's the big thing. Is just that none of these are better than the other. They're all just different ways of doing it. Anywhere in between there, any subtle variation on that might be the one that works out best for you and various partners.