506 - How do I prioritize my career and my relationships? Listener Q&A
Today’s questions are…
Dear Multiamory,
I'm in a situation where I find myself truly blessed by an amazing career and two highly entangled romantic partnerships. I'm married to one of them, and hope to get married to the other someday.
I'm having to move for my career -which is going great, but is based over 100 miles away from where my second partner lives. I'm trying to split the distance, but it's so hard to figure out what my priorities really should be in a society inundated with monogamy and "career above all else" mindsets.
I'm very lucky that my husband is happy to move with me and probably can find a new job pretty easily. Still, I am struggling with just how far to go for my work! I don't need to be literally next to it, just closer than my current 4-hr distance. I'm currently looking at places about 1 hr 40 minutes away from the area, which would be good for my husband's work prospects and keep me within striking distance of my other partner. But what do you think? I feel so torn 😭
Is it fair to keep my distance from work to be closer (still over an hour) from a man I want to marry?
PS. Yes I have a therapist;) and we talk about this stuff! <3
Torn in Two (she/her)
I have been dating Nelly for 2 years. They are a loving, kind, dependable, and fun partner. We see each other every 1-4 weeks, and we spend 1-2 days together at a time. Overall, I feel very secure in most parts of [this relationship], and I rarely worry about much related to it.
However, there's a major inequality that's developed: they always come to my city, home, and social circle. They regularly interact with the partner I live with, have met my friends and colleagues, and have even met some other folks I've dated. I've never met anyone in their life. Also, this feels minor, but they have never posted a public picture of me/us on their social media, even though they use social media actively, and we take plenty of cute pictures together.
This has begun to bother me in the last year because Nelly started dating another partner that they have integrated more deeply into their life. That partner almost always comes to see them. They are now part of Nelly's friend circle, family, and life otherwise. And they regularly appear on Nelly's social media posts. I don't need to be integrated to that degree, but I want to feel included. I want to be visible in their life. I'm increasingly beginning to feel like a lover rather than a partner.
How do I ask for more visibility? Is this a fair thing to ask for, even when I know that it's largely prompted by jealousy toward Nelly's relationship to their other partner? Or, should I just focus on our time together (which is always great) and manage my jealousy by tuning out when they talk about their other partner and muting them on social media?
Thank you for your insights :-)))
Invisible in Iowa
How do I come to terms with the fact that being in a poly relationship means other people's choices have an impact on my life?
My male partner's girlfriend had a pregnancy scare recently due to an issue with her birth control. This is a person I have never met and it became obvious that a life with polyamorous relationships means that people that I have not chosen to be in my life can have a great impact on it.
It makes it harder for me to choose how to live my life when strangers can make choices and create drama that affects me. How do I move on from this? And from the fear of being collateral damage?
Scared in Sweden
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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 answering questions from you, our wonderful listeners. Today we're going to be covering a variety of topics such as how to prioritize a relationship versus a growing career, wishing you were more visible in a partner's social media and amongst their friends, as well as understanding how more people have an effect on your life if you're non-monogamous.
We're going to get into all of this, have some awesome discussions and we have a little bonus question at the end, which we will also ask to all of you on our Instagram stories. If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show all the time, check out our book, Multiamory Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships.
You can get that at multiamory.com/book or wherever you buy books.
Emily: Quick disclaimer before we get started, we've spent a lot of time studying healthy relationship communication, but we're not mind readers and our advice is based solely on the limited information we have, so please take it all with a grain of salt.
Dedeker: Everybody's situation is unique. We encourage you to use your own judgment, seek professional help if needed, and ultimately, you are the only true expert on your own life and feelings. Your decisions are your own. These questions have been edited for time and clarity.
Emily: Here's the very first question today. I'm struggling with how to honor one of my partnerships and my growing career, which is far away. For some context, they say, Dear Multiamory, I'm in a situation where I find myself truly blessed by an amazing career and two highly entangled romantic partnerships. I'm married to one of them and hope to get married to the other someday.
I'm having to move for my career, which is going great, but is based over 100 miles away from where my second partner lives. I'm trying to split the distance, but it's so hard to figure out what my priorities really should be in a society inundated with monogamy and "Career above all else mindsets."
I'm very lucky that my husband is happy to move with me and probably can find a new job pretty easily. Still, I'm struggling with just how far to go for my work. I don't need to be literally next to it, just closer than my current four-hour distance. I'm currently looking at places about an hour and forty minutes away from the area, which would be good for my husband's work prospects and keep me within striking distance of my other partner.
What do you think? I feel so torn. Is it fair to keep my distance from work to be closer? Still over an hour from a man I want to marry. PS, yes, I have a therapist, and we talk about all this stuff. Signed, Torn In Two.
Jase: Wow. Great to note also that you have a therapist you're talking to about it. Love to hear that.
Emily: Definitely.
Jase: This is a tough one. Something that we don't have from the question here is how often you're currently seeing this second partner and how permanent their living situation there is. In the longer version of the question we edited down, it sounds like that second partner is just getting settled in this place and so I don't know if that's more of a temporary lease or if it's like they're buying a house and this is going to be their home base permanently.
If I wanted to just be really mathematical about it and try to approach it from this really logical standpoint, it'd be if you're going to work every day and you think about how many hours of my life or how many minutes per week are spent in that commute based on how close to my work I end up being, and then how often do you see this other partner.
Maybe if it was three hours to get to this partner, but you're saving yourself six hours of commute every week to work, that could be more worth it. Also, just throwing out there, are you close to any regional airports or anything like that? I had a girlfriend in college, actually, who lived a six-hour drive from me during one year of college, and we actually figured out that it was cheap enough to get flights every now and then.
We would sometimes actually just do this really cheap little half-hour flight between the two places. Just something to throw out there as well, that there are other options and that as long as you're willing to do those, it might be worth it to not have this-- That's a quite long commute to do every single day if you're going into the office every day.
There's also the possibility that maybe you only go in once a week and that could also change the math, but I would just encourage you to look at it holistically that way, instead of just this, is it a career versus a relationship, and more just, what is your time spent doing every week and how would you best get more of that back for the things that matter in your life?
Emily: Yes, Dedeker, I was thinking about you and a relationship that you had where a partner lived the next big town over, but it was still in a different state and it still took a while to get there. The fact that you would take longer weekends and do a longer trip out of it. Maybe once a month or every once in a while perhaps six weeks or something, where the two of you go to a place that is not either of your hometowns or your houses specifically, but then you get to go to somewhere novel together thing and you make it really special trip that happens every once in a while.
I understand this isn't necessarily going to be practical for all the time, but it's a way to keep that relationship exciting and special, especially when it is long distance and you're not necessarily getting to see them perhaps as often as you want.
Dedeker: Yes, there's two things that stand out to me in this question. First of all, something that the question asker has not said directly, but that I think I'm picking up on here is it sounds like with the partner who is not moving along with her, this is going to be a transition to something long-distance ish. It seems like she's trying to be mindful of where she moves to so that the distance doesn't become prohibitively egregious, but this is still a transition.
I think there's a lot of things to be mindful of in making a transition there, but I do think the big one is in weighing up all these factors. I think it's good to invite this partner into the picture, at least into the discussion to at the very least talk about all the different ways that this could play out and all the different things that may impact this partner.
It's unclear the way this person is writing and it makes it sound like the decision is on their shoulders, and they're trying to figure this out on their own. It's unclear how much they have already consulted with this partner, discussed these things, but I just want to drop it in as a reminder. I've been through the whole rigamarole dating a partner who had to move relatively frequently, like every couple of years or so because of the nature of his career and sometimes very large moves like international moves to that extent.
At that time, I was nomading around and I had some travel flexibility and so it was the thing where, yes, of course, I wanted to support him and support his career success and things like that but definitely, there was one time where I got really hurt because he made a decision without really discussing what the impacts might be or without bringing me to the table to be like, "Hey, this is what I want to go with, and I want to acknowledge that this is how it may impact our relationship and our time spent together. Can we talk about that? Can we strategize around that?"
Just want to drop it in there just in case, to make sure that the partner here is not being left in the dust and there's not any assumptions being made. The second piece of this is, I don't know if this is going to make me sound old fashioned or aged perhaps, but I just want to highlight the fact that we live in a culture that yes, as this person says, is very career-first oriented.
However, my perception of our culture is it's much more career-first oriented for men specifically. There's often this assumption that while the man's career is the most important, it's most likely he's making more money or being paid more and therefore, if work says go, he's got to go. If you're the female partner, you better go with him.
You better figure something out. Your career is less important. I find it refreshing that this person is prioritizing their career because I think so many women are put in this position of having to essentially be secondary to their male partner's careers, so that's cool. Does it make me sound old? This is the thing people are dealing with all the time now and I'm just stuck in the '70s, a decade I never actually lived through.
Jase: No, I think you make a good point. I think that that's something I wanted to come back to with that thing of looping your partner into the conversation. Even with Dedeker, with your situation you were talking about with your past partner, where he made this decision about a move without really looping you into that conversation.
In that case, I think that it would be reasonable that you might have that conversation and that still he's like, "I'm definitely-- I really want to do this. This is important to me because otherwise, I don't have a job." Or it's, "I get a much better job this way." There is something significant to letting you be part of the conversation, even if it's not like, "I want to talk to you to see if I'm going to do it."
In this case, four hours from your work seems completely unreasonable to me. Again, I'm assuming you're actually having to go there relatively often, but that's ridiculous. That's an incredible amount of your time that is just spent commuting to your work. That sucks. I just want to be clear that it's not, loop him into the conversation so that he can convince you not to do it or to live closer to him.
I really think you need to try as much as you can to just look at, where's my time going. Some people love having a long commute. I should clarify that. Maybe you're one of those people who loves, "This is my one special time where I get to listen to my podcasts and I get to listen to my audiobooks or whatever."
Assuming you're not that, to my mind, at least a commute is the worst way to spend your time. I would tend to prioritize finding a way that's going to minimize that. Like I said, totaling it up, looking at how often are you doing this one distance versus the other. Just like Dedeker was saying about your career does matter.
Also, I think your time and your day-to-day Experience matters a lot not just your experience of getting to see this partner occasionally.
Emily: Yes, because if the commute is so long that you don't have any bandwidth for anything else in your life, then I think it's answering the question for you. Maybe you're not going to know that until you start doing it, but if you can step back a little bit and look at the bigger picture and ask yourself, "Wait a minute, is my time going to be so limited because of this commute that therefore any remaining time that I have just will need to be spent recovering from that on a day-to-day basis?"
Then that's huge and that's going to make this decision a lot easier for you. Do the thing that's going to ideally help everyone involved, but you should be looking out for yourself first and foremost. If your husband who you live with is able to be a little bit more flexible in that way, then take that into account.
I love that idea, Jase, of finding maybe a local airport if there is one, and using that as a way to more easily get to a partner. Or if that's not the case, then do those longer trips less frequently, but make them really special when you do get that opportunity.
Jase: Yes. I guess, something else to throw out there too is to look at it in a longer period of your future because you also mentioned that living a little bit away from your work might be better for your husband's job prospects. I'm assuming that means there's more of a city center in that area or something.
That is worth thinking about too of what if you want to change jobs later? Is that a better place for you to get established? Think about it not just in terms of right now, but also if you are going to marry this other person, is that going to change their living situation? Are you going to compromise on a good living situation for the right now when in the long term that might not matter as much?
I do think it's worth zooming out and looking at this too of if you're going to get settled in a new city and your husband's going to get a new job there, don't just choose something primarily for the reason of being close enough to this other partner if that's the only reason why you're picking that area.
If there's other reasons for it, then yes, maybe that makes sense. Well, thank you so much, Torn In Two, for writing in. It's definitely-- I think moving is always stressful. Commutes are stressful. I hope that you're able to find a good option that feels good for you and that feels good long term.
Dedeker: Here's our next question. How do I ask my partner to make me a more visible part of their life? I've been dating Nelly for two years. They are a loving, kind, dependable, and fun partner. We see each other every one to four weeks and we spend one to two days together at a time. Overall, I feel very secure in most parts of this relationship and I rarely worry about much related to it.
However, there's a major inequality that's developed. They always come to my city, home, and social circle. They regularly interact with the partner I live with, have met my friends and colleagues, and have even met some other folks I've dated. I've never met anyone in their life. Also, this feels minor, but they've never posted a public picture of me/us, on their social media even though they use social media actively and we take plenty of cute pictures together.
This has begun to bother me in the last year because Nelly started dating another partner that they have integrated more deeply into their life. That partner almost always comes to see them. They're now a part of Nelly's friend circle, family, and life otherwise, and they regularly appear on Nelly's social media posts.
I don't need to be integrated to that degree, but I want to feel included. I want to be visible in their life. I'm increasingly beginning to feel like a lover rather than a partner. How do I ask for more visibility? Is this a fair thing to ask for even when I know that it's largely prompted by jealousy toward Nelly's relationship to their other partner?
Or should I just focus on our time together and manage my jealousy by tuning out when they talk about their other partner and muting them on social media? Thank you for your insights. Invisible in Iowa.
Jase: Not a great sign-off name.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes, that's great. I'll just jump in to say that last one, "Should I just focus on our time together and manage my jealousy by tuning out when they talk about their other partner and muting them on social media." That's probably not solution number one in this case. Now, that could be part of the solution here, but I don't think it's the first thing to do.
I always like to say that jealousy sometimes acts like an X-ray, or maybe it's like a spotlight, or an alarm going off. It's something that shows up and is trying to tell us something. I think jealousy is very rarely something that we should just tune out or just ignore or just gaslight ourselves out of. At the same time, we don't necessarily want to invite jealousy into the driver's seat to control where we're going and what we choose to do with our behavior.
My first piece of advice to this person would be, yes, listen to the feelings that are coming up for you. My read on it, I know this person said they think it's just prompted by jealousy towards this other relationship, but I think there's something really human about wanting to be seen. I think there's something really human, and I know this may be controversial non-monogamous spaces, but I think there's something very human to wanting to feel like you're number one.
If you're someone who's non-monogamous, you may not need to feel like you're number one all of the time, but I think we all want to feel like we're number one some of the time. I think this is related. It sounds like this question asker is saying, I don't need to be super integrated into their circle, their family, their life. I don't necessarily have the capacity for that, but you're human.
You do want to feel integrated and visible. I guess, that's the first place I want to go is, I don't want this person to disavow themselves with these uncomfortable feelings. There's not something just wrong with you. I think these are legitimate ways to feel.
Emily: I think what I'm hearing potentially is that there's a bit of a disparity between what your partner, Nelly wants in terms of the optics of the relationship versus maybe what it is that you want. I've had this be the case in certain relationships where I'm the person that spews and I'm just going to tell everybody about my new relationship.
All the important people in my life, including you listeners and Jase and Dedeker and my mom and all my best friends and stuff will know about someone immediately, and I have a relationship where there's very few people in this person's life who know about me, even though it hasn't been that long but there's that bit of difference there in terms of the comfortability of how much to share with other people about a relationship.
If you are integrating your relationship into your life in a very meaningful and impactful way and then that other person isn't doing it, that would weigh on me too. I totally get that. I would ask what's going on there? What exactly is happening that's causing these things to not be aligned because to me, that lack of alignment is maybe telling, maybe not.
I don't know in this particular instance, but I do think at its core, it's going to give you some information about the other person and what it is that they are or are not comfortable with. Now if they have this newer partner that they're starting to integrate into their life more, that may just be a shift in their personal growth. That just may be like, I now am at a place where I feel like I want more people to know about my partnerships and stuff.
You may still be in this category of the before times, before I was interested in doing that with people. I'm still keeping you in certain ways at arms length and maybe just a conversation needs to be had about that because perhaps the two of you just haven't talked about it yet, and that needs to happen.
Jase: Something I want to bring up here that I'm surprised we haven't said yet is just that we don't know how much of this has been talked about at all. I would definitely encourage, yes, bring it up, have a conversation about it because at this point we don't know what the reason is. It could be that that other person just lives closer, and so that just makes sense that they would end up in their social circle more as far as being integrated with their friend group.
There could be some circumstantial reasons and it's possible that Nelly has just never considered that that might feel weird to you. Maybe to them it's like, hey, the fact that I am the one who comes to you is a big act of service. That's a big favor I'm doing because traveling, commuting can be a bummer. It's like, that's great.
I love it when people come to me because then I don't have to drive somewhere or go-- it could be that this is just, they didn't even realize that that would be a thing that would matter or that you would want because they feel like, wow, but I'm a part of their friend group and I come to see them. I do think it's worth having a conversation.
I think that part of that though, is being ready for the variety of answers they might have for the social media stuff. I would try to encourage you to approach this in a way that makes it so they are able to be really honest with themselves and you about it because there's a possibility that for them it is this, I get why you would want to be on my social media, but I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with having to answer the questions that comes from posting about multiple different partners on my social media.
That said, it sucks that you are the partner first, but this new one is the one who gets posted about more. It's also possible they just haven't thought about it and it's not that big a deal. I do think it's really worth having that conversation. I will say that this has been a point of contention in my relationships in the past where if I did post more with one person than another, maybe just because we did more interesting things or maybe just that partner posted more on social media or less.
Maybe it's you post on social media so Nelly doesn't feel like they need to. I don't know there's any number of possibilities, but it's worth having a conversation about. Trying to keep that open to being understanding of where you're both coming from as much as possible while still being honest and clear about, yes, it would be nice to feel more featured in your life and to feel like I'm more a part of it.
Dedeker: I think this is a great scenario for using a framework like non-violent communication. The quick and dirty of that is stating an observation as objectively as possible. Opening up this conversation with something like, hey, so these are the things that I've been noticing. Doing your best to state them in a non-accusatory way.
Where you're like, I noticed that you've been posting a lot with this other partner, and we've never posted anything publicly on social media. I've noticed that it seems like you're hanging out with this person and introducing them into your friend circle and I haven't really gotten to be introduced into your friend circle and then talking about your feelings about that.
Maybe your feelings are like, it brings up some confusion for me or a little bit of sadness for me, or I feel a little insecure and not sure about how you feel about the relationship. Then you express a want and that want in this situation could be everything from what the question asker literally said, I want to feel included. I want to be more visible. Or it could be, I want to have a conversation that clarifies our expectations around this.
Then the request. Are you open to having a conversation with me about that? Can we have that conversation right now? Or can we set a time to have that conversation? Or maybe a request is, can you post more about us on social media? I think this is a really good framework for if this person is struggling to find a way how to open this conversation, having some formula like that to follow, I think, is a good thing to rely on to at least get you started.
Thank you, Invisible in Iowa, for writing this question. I know that this is a scenario that a lot of people go through in non-monogamous relationships. I hope that this has been helpful for not just you but for a lot of people listening who are facing a very similar situation.
Jase: Now, our third question. How do I come to terms with the fact that being in a poly relationship means other people's choices have an impact on my life? My male partner's girlfriend had a pregnancy scare recently due to an issue with her birth control. This is a person I have never met and it became obvious that a life with polyamorous relationships means that people I have not chosen to be in my life can have a great impact on it.
It makes it harder for me to choose how to live my life when strangers can make choices and create drama that affect me. How do I move on from this and from the fear of being collateral damage? I have given this person the name, Scared in Sweden.
Emily: Yes. I think that's something that you learn pretty quickly when you are non-monogamous that there's going to be the potential for other people's decisions and other people's lives to affect yours. I think the degree to which it affects it is going to be dependent on the degree of entwinement and also simply those decisions in general.
You can do things to potentially shield yourself from that, but you may not be able to. That's how it goes. You're signing yourself up for that to a degree when you become non-monogamous.
Dedeker: Some of this boils down to the inherent risk that comes with being in relationship with any human being whatsoever. I don't see it as a function of non-monogamy necessarily. Your partner's mom could kick off with some drama or put your partner in a really difficult spot. I know dominant culture has some ideas about who the default winner should be in that situation.
Although dominant culture does not necessarily completely agree on that front. That's a situation where someone that maybe you did not choose to have in your life could still potentially have an impact on it. With this example, though, that the question asker gives about their partner's girlfriend having a pregnancy scare recently, I have some follow-up questions that shall not be answered, but I'm going to ask them anyway because on the one hand, I'm like, if this was just an accidental situation, because sometimes that happens.
It's like you put whatever barriers, you take whatever measures meet your own risk tolerance around safe sex and preventing pregnancy, and sometimes they fail because there's the fact, there's inherent risk in being in human relationships, there's also inherent risk in having sex. It's just like, yes, shoot. Just an accident that happened and everyone's trying to deal with it and learn from it and improve and move on.
That I chuck under the umbrella of, yes, sometimes there's things that happen that are just out of your control in life in general. We cope without the way that we cope with the unpredictability of life in general. However, if this was a situation of, I think my partner's making very risky choices, and maybe they and their other partner making super risky choices. Maybe they're not taking the risk of pregnancy very seriously.
I'm worried that how that's going to affect my life. Maybe I don't trust that my partner's going to have conversations with this person about that or I don't even know how my partner feels about the possibility that they might be risking a pregnancy or things like that. That starts to become a little different because that, I think, starts to come down to you're more nervous that your partner's going to make a choice that's going to have a negative impact on you.
You're more nervous that your partner is not taking into consideration the possible impacts on you rather than necessarily that this stranger is the one who's going to impact you. This could get into semantics, but am I making any sense whatsoever to the two of you?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes, that's where I wanted to take this to, is in this case, from reading the full question, it seems like the question asker had the impression that their partner's girlfriend maybe had been lazy about taking her birth control or that it was somehow a little bit her bad, I guess. Her being inconsistent or forgetting it or something like that.
With that in mind, and even without that, even if it were not the case, and it's just these accidental things that can happen because nothing's 100% certain that the big thing that lights up in my brain here is that the issue is not with your metamore, it's not with your partner's girlfriend. The issue here is with your partner.
What I mean by that is if the only thing he's doing to avoid pregnancy is relying on that partner to do all of the work in that front, then that's him being irresponsible. That's him not taking that risk as seriously as it seems like you think he should. I agree with you. I think he should take the risk more seriously because yes, as a man, when it comes to pregnancy, you don't get a lot of say in what actually happens after that initial getting pregnant.
It is something he should take very seriously. I think all men should take it much more seriously than they do in terms of taking ownership for what you can do to avoid that risk and not just relying on the female partner to take that on. There's my little soapbox, a little bit about who needs to take responsibility, but to bring it back to you, the question asker here, I think it does come down to, do you trust your partner to make good choices?
Like Dedeker said, I don't think this is actually unique to non-monogamy, even though certain situations like this can feel unique. You could look at the same thing of, if your partner were to do something illegal and get into legal trouble, and maybe they hid something related to that at your house. I know this sounds extreme, but it's possible, they could do that.
If it were someone, especially that you were married to or financially entwined with in some way, and they got into a bunch of debt, that can affect you. That could be because they got into debt to bail their friend out from his gambling debts, still could be related to some other person in their life, or like Dedeker said, with their mom, maybe something came up with them that they had to deal with and had to make a choice there.
I think the question asker is maybe jumping a little too much to saying that this is just a polyamory thing. I get that it can feel that way, and especially when we treat our metamores like their behavior does directly affect us, when I would argue it affects us much less directly than we tend to think it does at first.
Really, it's our partner who we need to be having a more serious conversation with here about, what does happen in this situation? What responsibility are you taking for this yourself? Can I trust you to make good decisions in your life? If not, that's a problem for me. This isn't just your own thing. This does affect us, but it's about your partner, not about your metamore.
Dedeker: My suggestion to everyone, should you have body parts which when combined with the body parts that you prefer to combine with could create another human being.
Jase: I get what you're .
Dedeker: Should you have them?
Jase: If you have them.
Dedeker: Sorry. That was not a "Should you or should you not," that was a, "If you're in that position," where pregnancy is a risk that you're having to deal with, you have to talk about it. You have to, not just with the person that you're having sex with, but also, potentially, another partner, of, "Hey, if something happens," accidental, whatever the intentions are, if this person over here gets pregnant, what would you do about it? What would I do about it? What would they want to do about it? What would we do about it? What if I get pregnant? What would we want to do in that situation?
It doesn't mean you have to have planned out every single possible contingency, but you do need to talk about it. Same with STI risk. If your partner's response is denial, or saying, "Oh, that's not going to happen," or, "Oh, I'm sure that if that happened that that's how they'll deal with it," even if they haven't talked to the other person directly about it, you should be really cautious. Really, really cautious.
Jase: I do think it comes back to, though, having this real conversation with your partner. This goes back to stuff from the early days of this podcast, and a lot of drama that the three of us had in a quad that we were in, where, I would say, a big source of some conflict and suffering came from this blaming the partner's partner for the problem instead of focusing on the relationship that you're actually part of, that you're actually have some say in and some control in.
Once, I think we started to learn that and realized to focus more on those, things got better. It didn't fix every problem magically, but at least we were able to put our effort toward where it could do something. You could actually have a conversation with your partner about, sure, maybe it's because their other partner is doing shitty stuff, or they're making them feel bad, or they're trying to ask them to cancel dates with you, or they're getting pregnant or any number of things.
That even though that's your metamore, that's your partner's partner doing those things, the decisions that affect you are the ones your partner makes about those. I do think it's just really important to bring that focus back to where you do have some agency because you don't have control over your metamore and you shouldn't, I would say, but you do have some control over your own relationship.
Not that you can control that person, but ultimately you can control whether or not you are with that person. That's the relationship I'd really encourage you to look at and say, what are some ways I could feel safer," to come back to this thing of, how do I move on from this? How do I get over this fear of being collateral damage, is that, is focus on your relationship with this male partner, and getting those answers to those serious questions, and having those conversations about, what will you do in these situations? How will I not be collateral damage from these things?
Emily: I would say I'm inferring this entirely from the way in which this was asked, but this may be new for people involved like non-monogamy in general. There is a certain amount of control that just needs to be rescinded to a degree when you're in non-monogamy because you can't be controlling over absolutely everything the way that I think people think that they can be in monogamous relationships, that they can control for all of the possibilities of whatever may or may not happen in those relationships.
When there's other people involved, that control goes out the window even further. I think what Jase said, try to do what you can to understand what you would do in certain scenarios for yourself. You can't make decisions for anyone else, it's got to be just for you and for the people with whom you are in relationship, and you can ask questions.
I would also eventually try to meet this metamore because I think also that is very helpful, in general, just to know who this other person is, not just some mythical human over here that may or may not ruin your life at some point but instead, like, this is a human being who also has fears and wants, and needs.
Let's all try to work collaboratively because we know now that that is a possibility that something a little bit scary happened, and so let's try to come up with some understanding across the board for the potential next time when something scary is going to happen, whether it be this thing again or something else.
Jase: Thank you so much, Scared in Sweden, for writing in your question. I know we're being a little tough, giving you some tough love telling you what to do, but please understand we're also very sympathetic to this. That is a very scary thing, and it's hard when you feel your life got turned upside down without any involvement of yourself. I do want to express some sympathy there, too.
When I was going through our questions that people had submitted, trying to pick out some ones for this episode, I saw this question that was very different from the others, and I wanted to include it, just for fun, as a bonus question. This question is, what was the best date location you have been to, and why? Then the context here is the reason why I picked it.
This person said, "My goal is to bring about a moment in time where we all focus on a positive experience we've had. Our Facebook feed is so filled with problems to be validated or measured to avoid heartache and I just want a bit of joy, just once." I can resonate with that. Sometimes it feels we're dealing with a lot of stuff, there's a lot of stress going on, and it is nice to just share a little joy now and then.
We like to do that actually at the end of our video discussion groups that we do with our subscribers, where we try to end those with people sharing little bits of joy from their past month and so thought this was a fun thing to throw in here, and this will also be our Question of the Week on our Instagram Stories so that everyone can just have a moment to share something delightful that has happened in their life and get to share that with each other.
Dedeker: We have had people ask us before to write an episode or something that's about poly-joy or poly-euphoria and I'll be totally honest, I think an entire episode just about that wouldn't necessarily hold up as an episode/maybe wouldn't be very interesting, unfortunately. However, like Jase mentioned, it's really wonderful to end our monthly discussion groups that way.
In our Facebook group, people regularly have, I think on a weekly or maybe every other week basis, these Monday Morning Joy posts. In our Discord, people do Friday Fives, which are not necessarily all about sharing positive things, but a lot of people do share joyful things. This is important. I'm zeroing in on the joy part because I can't think of an answer to the best-date location that I've been to, really, and why.
Jase: Emily has one. I can see it in her eyes.
Dedeker: Whenever people ask me also about like, "Oh, your worst date stories," I'm like, I don't know if I have any. I don't know if it's because I've gone on a lot of dates and it's just it all gets lost in the morass of all my memories of dates. I don't know, I need to chew on it. Emily, you should go.
Emily: I think this one is because I'm just very enamored and falling in love with the city that I moved to recently, New York, but I was with a partner and our mutual friend in Central Park in Sheep Meadow. It ended up being a five-hour excursion, where we got to hang out in the park with food and fun music and stuff and looking at the beautiful sites, but then also walking around the park, and it just felt so quintessentially New York that day.
Just really getting to take in the sites. It wasn't expensive. It wasn't anything. It just was getting to enjoy the beauty of something really lovely within the city that I'm in. I think if you're able to do something like that, a lot of big cities really prioritize parks and outdoor spaces. If you can get the opportunity to go to a really beautiful one and just to get to exist in nature and shut everything off for a while and just be there with people that you love and care about, damn there's nothing better.
Jase: Wow, I don't know that mine is so much tied to a space in particular. The question is a date location and the one that jumps out to my mind is, I guess only a little bit about the location, which was just randomly Dedeker booked a date. I guess it was for my birthday too. It was just the two of us. To go to a VR arcade. This was in--
Emily: In Tokyo?
Jase: In Tokyo, yes.
Emily: Oh, shoot.
Jase: It was just like, I didn't even know that this place existed. It's not a place I'd been wondering about, but that she noticed and saw and thought, I know that Jase would be into this. We went and got to do Dragon Ball VR and Gundam VR and all of the random--
Dedeker: Mario Kart VR. That was a good one.
Jase: Mario Kart was quite good.
Emily: So jealous. That's all I'm saying.
Jase: This was several years ago now. I think VR arcades are a little less rare now than they were back then. To me, it was that someone else thought about a place that I might like to go that I wasn't even aware of. I just think that's really sweet and made me feel very loved.
Emily: If you can find something that you really like to mutually do with a partner, I will look on the 50 best bars in North America or the 50 best bars in the world and try to visit some of those with partners because apparently I like to go to cocktail bars but it is really fun. It's a fun experience to check off a list of things and then go and do that with a partner, whatever it is.
If that's, we're going to go see a bunch of different national parks within a specific location or on a certain side of the country or whatever. If you can do things like that and make it into a fun game of how many of these can we get through within a certain year or a certain amount of time, that would be really cool.
Jase: I'll keep buying Dedeker more time to consider this because I did want to throw another thing out there, is that, when it comes to dates, I really love traditions or rituals as well. For example, if there's a particular place that you go back to every year or maybe a type of place, like Emily said, with National Parks.
I know that for Dedeker and myself, one day we randomly, not even a date exactly, but just randomly went to this tiny little museum in Tokyo that was the Museum of Tobacco and Salt. Specifically, it's just-
Dedeker: It's random.
Jase: -the history of those two things. It cost what, a $1 to get in or something.
Emily: It was like ¥300, which back then was probably like $2.50 or $3 or something.
Jase: We just had the best time at this just random, tiny little museum.
Emily: It is still one of my favorite dates, the Tobacco and Salt Museum.
Jase: I know, I still think about it, but now when we see other random little museums, there was a model train museum recently that we went to. It gives you this little bit of a ritual. There's a little bit of a callback or, oh, this is a thing that we do. Let's go do that. Rather than, oh, this is just a beautiful location, but it's got almost a bit of an inside joke hidden inside of it. That, to me, is also really special.
Dedeker: I've finally come up with some memories.
Jase: Oh, wow.
Dedeker: Well, it's a whole category because for me, anyone who's close to me will know that I am just a sucker for ambiance in restaurants, bars, public spaces, whatever. Cheap, expensive. It doesn't matter. I'm a sucker for ambiance. If I'm in a new city and trying to figure out where to go to eat or whatever, I got to look at the photos on Google Maps because ambiance is often my number one deciding factor when deciding when to pick a new place.
A couple of places that stand out in my memory. Do y'all remember the Bourgeois Pig?
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: In Los Angeles?
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: It's sadly closed.
Emily: Oh, that's too bad then.
Emily: I think it didn't make it through the pandemic. I loved going there both for dates and just for hangouts because in the back of the Bourgeois Pig, there was a room that was just dark. It was blocked off by curtains, and you walked into this room, and the only light was this very, very dim ceiling light that looked like the moon and there were all these fake trees.
It looked like you were stepping into a forest and whenever you first walked into it and your eyes were not adjusted, it's like, oh, I just wandered into their supply closet or something. I just loved that you could just be there in the forest, like a little frog who's also a witch and whisper your little secrets to your friend or to your date or whatever it was. I absolutely loved that.
Second to that, weirdly, it's going to be another Tokyo place that I went on this date in Tokyo with this guy I had met on OkCupid years before actually. As far as dates go, the attraction for me was not there, but we had a great time, really wonderful conversation. He took me to some random little whiskey bar in Tokyo.
A lot of bars in Tokyo or in Japan in general are where it's four seats. It's maybe 20 square feet or something like that, a tiny place. If anyone's ever played a persona game, it definitely felt like some bar you'd wander into in a persona game. I never got the name of that bar, I have no idea where it is. Although, to be honest, in Japan, I could probably find 50 other bars just like it. That cozy, dark-- I like dark places for dates.
Jase: Yes, clearly.
Dedeker: That's the takeaway that we're getting here. Take me to a cave.
Emily: I was like, if you want to date Dedeker just take her to the darkest bar possible.
Emily: Take me to a cave in the woods and let's just talk about books and then maybe not talk to each other for 50% of it.
Jase: Great. Oh, my gosh. It's funny actually, now I'm thinking about all these other surprise delights and things like that. A similar one actually with a tiny little four-seat bar at this place in Osaka, also in Japan. I'm not intentionally picking places in Japan, it just happened to be the one that came to mind, but this was more of a friend date with this guy that I met there, randomly at an event, who he latched onto me.
He was like, "You're like my big brother here." We would hang out sometimes and one day we just randomly wandered into this bar that's on the second floor of this building that just looks like a corporate white hallways with unmarked doors. One of them was this place called Milk Bar. We walked in, there's four seats, but a huge vinyl collection of all American classic rock.
The bartender was super friendly and chatted with us, and it was just such a weird, unique discovery. I like dates of discovery maybe. That's the answer I'm getting at.
Emily: I love that.
Dedeker: I think Emily just likes dates in New York is what we know.
Emily: Guilty.
Dedeker: Guilty. I love Tokyo and Hong Kong and all of those places too. Be outside, be inside whatever suits your fancy and just be up for discovery. I'd say that's what makes a great date possibility.