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.