497 - I Hate the People My Partner Dates
Do you hate the way your partner dates?
This episode is NOT for you if you:
Hate the fact that your partner is dating other people at all.
It IS for you if:
You are consensually non-monogamous, but you are finding yourself turned off by the people that your partner chooses to date, or you may be feeling negatively or even disgusted by the way in which your partner dates.
You’re not sure what to do if you’re experiencing this kind of clash or feeling some kind of discomfort around who your partner is dating or how they are dating
You are having issues with your partner’s friends or family members as well, not just who they date.
Some ways we’ve seen this play out or things people have expressed discomfort over are:
Partner dating someone much younger/much older.
Dating too close to the inner circle.
Parting dating “too casually.”
Parting dating “too seriously” or “too much.”
Partner being less than 100% honest with others.
Partner not treating metamours well.
Metamour feels like a bad influence.
Metamour just “gets under my skin.”
Metamour has said or done something hurtful.
The tools to deal with this
Some things to think about and exercises to help address this feeling are:
What’s Underneath All This? - a journaling exercise:
Is my discomfort tied to how my partner acts with others?
Is my discomfort tied to how my partner’s other partners treat me?
Is my discomfort tied to a direct interaction I had with a meta?
Is my discomfort tied to an indirect interaction? E.g. telephone game.
If my partner dates in a way that’s very different from me:
What values do I perceive my partner to have around dating or relationship seeking?
What values do I have around dating or relationship seeking?
Could it ever be okay for a partner to date in a way that is drastically different from the way I want to date?
Seek Understanding - a conversation with your partner:
At a time when you and your partner are feeling calm, connected, and safe, open up a conversation about what drives each of your decisions when dating or picking partners.
Tread carefully and make sure that you are seeking mutual understanding and not looking for opportunities to just drop criticism.
Let’s Use Boundaries for Good - check out MA 423: Boundaries are all About YourSELF (or check out our book)
Some options:
No contact at all with metamour
Conditions on contact (only in garden party style situations, only in a group thread, etc.)
A sprinkle of parallel can sometimes do a body good
Some Hard but Hopeful Truths
Unless this third party’s behavior is truly egregious and damaging, it may be unreasonable to put your partner in a “you have to choose” situation.
Hands down, the hardest way to solve this problem is choosing to try to change your partner, change how they date, or change who they date.
You cannot control your partner's other relationships (unless both of you have consented to this level of control).
BUT you also don’t have to be 100% on board with it and high-fiving your partner every time they mention this other person. There is a dominating polyamory narrative that you need to completely let go and not have any opinions or feels whatsoever about who or how your partner dates.
The Ultimate Question
Can you still admire, respect, and love your partner if this never changed?
Disgust response/disrespect is really hard to undo.
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 what to do if you just can't stand the person your partner is dating, or maybe you can't stand the way that your partner dates other people, or you just hate the way they are with their friends or their family. Any of the above. We're going to dive into all the different ways that we've seen this play out, what some of the research says about navigating this kind of tricky situation, and how to get to the heart of what's really going on for you, and how to cope with it. If you would like to learn more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on the show, check out our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships.
You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book, or wherever fine books are sold. Even places that sell mediocre books will probably carry it. Also check out the first few episodes of this podcast where we have some of our most widely referenced episodes so that you can catch up real quick, and then join us here on the current ones.
Dedeker: Have the two of you ever hated a person?
Jase: Oh, geez.
Emily: I strongly dislike one of our mutual exes, yes.
Dedeker: Oh. Oh, okay. Yes. Sure.
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: Totally.
Jase: Definitely some strong dislike, maybe hate things about some people.
Emily: I'm like, "Do you strongly dislike some of our exes rather."
Jase: All of the above, yes.
Emily: No, there's people who, there are things about them that I dislike where maybe I would use the word hate. I just try not to use that about a whole person.
Dedeker: Well, I don't want the two of you to get hung up on the word hate. I recognize that hate can be a strong word, and I don't want us to get distracted splitting hairs about what does it mean to hate versus just dislike. I titled this episode using the word hate, because that is the language people use when they come to me-
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: -when talking about, "Oh my God, I hate my metamour," or "Oh my God I hate the way that my partner dates people." "I hate X, Y, and Z." I don't want us to get bogged down in semantics, so call it hate, call it strongly dislike. Call it having an aversion, whatever you will just you don't feel good about a particular person. For the two of you have you had an experience of really strongly disliking the person that a partner was dating, or really strongly disliking the way that a partner was dating other people?
Jase: Yes. With that ex that we're all talking about right now, that you both were--
Dedeker: Oh, yes. The very hateable one. We all know the very hateable one.
Jase: Yes. He was sure hateable. No, there definitely some others. There's someone I've hated more in retrospect after-
Dedeker: Oh, sure.
Jase: -you've broken up and then I get more of the goss, and then maybe I've hated them a little more.
Dedeker: Makes sense.
Jase: I'm trying to think of some other examples of the way that a partner has dated.
Emily: I don't know about way, but definitely one of your exes. Of course, Dedeker, I would say I probably hate him a little bit for sure. Definitely hate, yes but I don't know regarding the way that is interesting. I feel like I tend to have quite a lot of people in my life who have a lot of integrity when it comes to the people who they date-
Jase: That's good.
Emily: -and in the way in which they do so and so at this point, no. Maybe when I was younger. I've some when I was younger.
Jase: I've had some friends that I've hated how they date.
Dedeker: Let's expand into-
Emily: Yes, for sure.
Dedeker: -friends as well-
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: -not just your partners.
Emily: Yes. More so when we were younger, and I think that they've grown up quite a bit now, but we were all doing some wild stuff back in the day.
Jase: Sure.
Emily: Objectionable and questionable.
Jase: How about you though Dedeker?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Oh yes, for sure. Weirdly I think that I've more often had the experience of really finding the way that a partner dates disagreeable more so than the specific people that a person dates.
Emily: I wonder what that means.
Dedeker: Well, I will elaborate.
Jase: We're going to get into all of that.
Dedeker: Yes, we'll elaborate but let me back up to say that Emily, you and I first bonded over some shared dislike of a shared metamour, and maybe that's terrible to say. Maybe that's not the best thing to base a friendship on, but here we are 10 years later.
Emily: I guess it was.
Jase: Maybe it was, yes.
Dedeker: Maybe it was. I know at the time it was just so helpful to me to realize, oh, I'm not crazy actually. Someone else finds this whole situation questionable, and of course in retrospect I think it was less about the metamour and more about that hateable partner who was doing some shady things.
Emily: Indeed.
Dedeker: All of us have had touchpoint to this, and this is something that I hear people talk about all the time. What the heck do I do if I just can't stand the person or the type of people that my partner's dating, or I can't stand the choices that they're making in their dating life. Before we dive in, I need to lay out who this episode is for and who it is not for. Now, this episode is for you if you are, let's say consensually non-monogamous, but you're finding yourself turned off by the people that your partner chooses to date. Turned off emotionally, it doesn't necessarily have to be anything sexual, or maybe you're feeling negatively or perhaps even averse or disgusted by the way in which your partner dates, or some of the choices that they make in dating.
However, the problem is that I think in the non-monogamy community, everybody getting along and everyone always being supportive of your partners dating. Really holding up kitchen table polyamory is as this paragon. This be all end all of healthy non-monogamy practice that's very much baked into this little subculture that we're a part of. Also if you have no idea what I'm talking about with the whole kitchen table polyamory thing, go back and check out our episode 322 titled, From the Kitchen Table to the Parallel Universe for a little bit more of a breakdown of all that.
Maybe you're not sure what to do if you're experiencing this kind of clash, or you're feeling discomfort around who your partner's dating, or how they're dating. This doesn't have to be for all you non-monogamous folks out there. This could apply to you even if it's not about metamours, or the way that your partner dates. You could be having issues with a partner's friends, or family members, or coworkers.
Emily: Now, Dedeker laid out that this episode is for you if all of these things apply. However, this episode is not for you if you hate the fact that your partner is dating other people at all. That probably means that you don't necessarily want to be in a non-monogamous relationship, or if you are you're only choosing to do it under duress. If that's the case, you probably have bigger fish to gently caress not fry.
Dedeker: Oh, I see. The vegan version. You have other fish to caress, correct?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: There you go, yes. If you have not had any agency in this process, or if a partner is cheating on you, it's understandable that you're probably not going to have really great feelings about the people that your partner are interacting with. That makes a lot of sense. As always please do not weaponize that statement. You don't have free license to treat your partner or the people that they date like shit. That's not okay, but I think that this is going to be a really interesting episode to talk about this phenomenon, because absolutely I think that this can still apply. Don't treat them or your partner like shit, but maybe we can all learn something from this episode how to deal with this.
Jase: Yes. Focusing first on the non-monogamy part, let's look at some ways that we've seen this dynamic play out in terms of, these are some specifics that we've experienced, our friends have experienced, or clients, or listeners, or people that we know have expressed all of these and more. I think these are some of the most common ones here. The first one is a partner dating someone who is much younger, or much older than themself. That for some people is fine, and for other people it's just like, "Something about it is upsetting." It falls into that disgusting I hate that they're doing
this category, even if it's not about the person themself per se.
Dedeker: I think that that gets at some people feeling discomfort with, "Ooh, my partner's entering into a weird power dynamic that I'm not entirely sure about even if they're the one in power or they're not the one in power at the top of that dynamic, it still makes me feel uncomfortable." Sometimes related to that, I've seen people experience discomfort over their partner dating a little too close to the inner circle. What I mean by this is, it could be, "Yes, my partner's dating a coworker of theirs and maybe there's a power dynamic there.
Jase: Or a coworker of mine.
Dedeker: Or a coworker of mine or my friends. I've had a lot of people reach out to me where, I guess this seems to be a phenomenon, at least enough of a phenomenon that I've gotten multiple requests and questions about this of like, "My partner just wants to date all my friends because those-
Jase: That's interesting.
Dedeker: -because they're the people that they already know, or that they already feel intimate with, or that they feel close to. It feels like easy pickings and like I don't want to control my partner, but also this is my best friend. I don't know, this is complicated. I'm not sure what to do. That seems to be a surprisingly common situation.
Emily: This next one surprises me within the non-monogamous community, but I get that certain types of people may have a challenging time with a partner dating "too casually." Perhaps just having a lot of hookups like hit it and quit it, for example, or constantly going through, "I'm going to go to the bar and hook up with someone and then not ever see them again" and doing that over and over again. That might be challenging for them. I get that if there's one partner wanting to build really meaningful connections with someone, and then you have another partner who's choosing to not do that, that can feel a little strange perhaps.
Jase: I think a lot of the ways that we are brought up to have certain judgments or shame about the ways we ourselves date can reflect onto our partners when it comes to things like that, and also can show up on the other side of a partner dating too seriously, or they're being too much in those relationships. One option of that is they overcommit where it's like they're dating five people and they're trying to treat all of those really serious entwined relationships, and that's just too much, they're not managing it, they're doing a bad job of it.
It could be just overcommitting to plans with a new person. It's like, "Oh, I just started dating this person, we're going this week-long trip together." Just jumping in way too far that way. Or it could just be emotionally escalating really quickly of that. It seems like every new person they date, they're saying, I love you within the first month. Then they're talking about it like it's so serious and this person's such an important part of their life, even though we've been together for 10 years and they just started dating a few months ago. That's upsetting to me. It's lots of variations on that other side too.
Dedeker: I've seen people feel really uncomfortable if they pick up any sense that a partner is maybe not being 100% honest with other people. This is a really hard one because unless you're a fly on the wall when your partner is going out on dates or talking on dating apps or stuff like that, it's pretty much impossible to police how honest your partner is being with this new person about their life or about non-monogamy or stuff like that. Sometimes, I don't know, there are some really messy situations that arise when someone hasn't been completely honest about the nature of their existing relationships or their existing commitments, or maybe they've undersold the non-monogamy thing because they're afraid of getting rejected.
Then they've gotten over entangled with someone who's not a great fit necessarily or doesn't want the same things. I've been on the receiving end of that also of being with a partner who wasn't always honest and then that caused some really messy situations down the line. Maybe that falls under the umbrella of this next one, which is if you notice or you perceive that a partner is not treating their other partners very well, or you feel like they're not treating your metamours very well, this is one that has come up for me more often where I feel like, I don't know if I get a story about how my partner completely didn't communicate with someone or just left them on red for six weeks or something like that or said something that I felt was really mean.
Then I'm always in the awkward position of, "Well, I don't want to criticize my partner about the situation that I wasn't necessarily a part of." Sometimes these things can accrue, I think, and people can start to question their partner's integrity, even if the partner is being totally kind, honest, nice to them.
Emily: It can definitely feel strange just why are they choosing to be so lovely to me, but then it seems as though something is causing them to not be particularly great to this other person. What's the underlying story there? What's the reason? On the opposite side of that, when you see your metamours as being a bad influence on your partner, meaning that you don't particularly like how a partner acts after they've been around them, for instance, or your partner seems stressed or really emotionally taxed by the relationship. I've definitely seen both of those things where I think some of the maybe more cringey elements of a person's personality can sometimes be brought out by being around certain people.
That caused me to be like, "Oh, I don't love it when you come home from hanging out with them," or" I don't love the fact that you seem really upset every time you come home from being with them. What's going on there?" That's awful.
Dedeker: I think this one happens a lot with friends as well. Not just--
Jase: I was just going to say that.
Dedeker: I've definitely had that issue where a particular ex of mine, I just really didn't like who he was when he was around a particular set of friends and those friends were drinking. That combination was just really bad and I really did not like it, which is a shame because it seemed like they were all having fun and I didn't want to be the party pooper.
Emily: Yes, but still.
Jase: I think this one can show up especially, if it is I don't like how my partner acts around this other person, it could be that maybe they don't bring that energy home to me or back to our relationship.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. You're right.
Jase: It could be I just don't ever want to hang out with you when you're with that partner. That can be a point of contention if it's like, "No, but I want us to all be able to hang out together and be social" and you're like, "I just don't like you when you're with that person." That could be hard to say honestly. Usually, it's finding excuses or things like Dedeker was saying, of not wanting to be the party pooper with that group of friends. Another version is just this particular metamour just irritates me.
Maybe they remind me of my third-grade teacher who is mean to me, or whatever it is. A lot of these have been about our partner's behavior in this situation, but it could also just be, I really don't like this person. Maybe I don't even have a good reason for it, but just the tone of their voice irritates me. It's like if Dedeker started dating Dave Matthews, I would be so annoyed-
Emily: How dare.
Jase: -because I just don't like the sound of his voice and I know everyone loves it, but for some reason for me--
Emily: Not everyone. I get a lot of shit for liking Dave Matthews.
Dedeker: Would I date Dave Matthews? I think I'm Dave Matthews' neutral, to be honest.
Emily: All right. Well, we have every side of the spectrum.
Jase: Would you date Dave Matthews?
Emily: Would I date him?
Dedeker: Every position is represented here at Multiamory.
Emily: Exactly. All sides of the triangle. I don't know. He's actually seems like a really weird dude, but he's very impressive.
Dedeker: I need to look at him. Hold on, let me--
Emily: He is an average-looking gentleman.
Jase: Multi Dave Matthews, going on here.
Emily: No meaning he looks like standard White dude is how I would view him.
Dedeker: Yes, generic.
Emily: Generic White dude, yes.
Dedeker: I'd have to get to know him more. I really do feel like Dave Matthews' neutral right now. If he had a winning personality and just made me laugh and we had so much fun together, then maybe I would, but if that's not there, I'm not throwing myself at him.
Emily: There you go. Again, this has happened to me actually with that same group of people that we've been talking about, where a metamour has said or done something hurtful either directly to me or indirectly through my partner or through the grapevine. We were all at a party together. I don't know if y'all remember this. This person, this metamour of ours Dedeker, said something about me that was really unkind that clearly our mutual partner had said to her and she was repeating it back to me. I forget the nature of the thing, but I remember that he was like, "Oh, I can't believe you just said that out loud."
Dedeker: He had said something unkind about you.
Emily: To her and repeated it back to me when he was basically standing there.
Jase: She was like, "Oh, you're the clingy one," or something like that.
Emily: Yes, whatever. Something like that, yes. Exactly.
Dedeker: Awkward.
Emily: It was a little bit more intimate than that honestly. It was just a very--
Dedeker: I don't remember that at all.
Emily: Yes. Well, it didn't happen to you. It happened to me.
Dedeker: Oh man.
Jase: Gosh.
Emily: I'm sure that-
Dedeker: I want to say I'm sorry. It was his fault and her fault, but I'm still sorry.
Emily: It was very unkind. Just don't be that kind of person.
Jase: Sure, sure.
Emily: Geez.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: If somebody's going to say something unkind about you in any capacity, keep that shit to yourself, okay?
Jase: Right. That's on both of them, really.
Dedeker: Right, yes.
Emily: Totally, 100%.
Jase: Boy.
Dedeker: Yes. Well, but that's a situation that happens all the time that will turn someone completely off of their metamour that like-
Emily: It certainly did to me.
Dedeker: Even my metamour said something shitty to me or indirectly I got this sense. That's always a really tricky one because sometimes the way your partner, the way the telephone game can play out, that if your partner reports back to you, something that a metamour said that it's already gone through many filters of interpretation and then it's going to--
Emily: Taken out of context.
Dedeker: Yes. I have definitely seen some big misunderstandings and some feelings get hurt in a major way because of that weird indirect telephone game as well, yes.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: With each of these situations, we could do a whole stand-alone episode and we probably should because it seems like these are, again, these are the situations we see all the time. I think there's a lot of demand for more resources about these specific situations but today we're going to be looking more broadly at this phenomenon. When I was looking at research for this episode, it's a little bit of a struggle because we don't have a ton of research about this specific situation of what do people do when they don't like the person that their partner is dating? Again-
Jase: Right. It's a little specific, yes.
Dedeker: Yes. As non-monogamy gets more researched in general, hopefully we're going to see more of that coming out of the woodworks but we do have a lot of research about other, maybe similar overlapping situations such as research about what happens when somebody dislikes their partner's friends. I found this study 2018 study by Fiori et al. It's titled I Love You, Not Your Friends: Links between partners’ early disapproval of friends and divorce across 16 years. That was published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Yes.
Emily: 16 years down.
Dedeker: Yes. These researchers followed 355 of, it was a mixed sample of White and Black married couples married for 16 years. The most interesting findings from this study was that for White couples, husbands disapproving of their wives' friends predicted higher divorce rates but this wasn't true for Black couples. Just as a fun side note, I was like, "Why is that?" The researchers theorized that interactions with family might be more relevant for the stability of Black marriages more so than White marriages. They said that, I guess in the researcher's previous work, they found that Black couples are more likely to be embedded in family-focused networks while White couples are more likely to be embedded in friend-focused networks.
Therefore, for the White couples, if the husband doesn't approve of the wife's friends and that's an integral part of their network, it's probably going to negatively contribute to the quality of the relationship possibly leading to divorce later on down the road. Now, funny thing on the flip side, they found that wives disapproving of their husband's friends did not predict divorce for either race. The researchers theorize that this may be that wives or women in particular may be less willing or able to give up the friendships that their husbands disapprove of compared to the reverse.
That it may be the case that statistically if men have fewer friends or are less likely to have very close intimate friends, that if their wife doesn't approve of their friends, maybe it's more likely that it's easier to let go of those weak ties, or to not see those friends quite as often versus if women are more likely to have these tight-knit friendship networks, and much more close intimate friendships then the cost of your partner disapproving of a friendship could be higher.
Now this is a lot of generalizations and theories but I did think that it was interesting, and they found that specifically if husbands said that their wives’ friends interfered in their marriage, and if they started saying that as early as year two of their marriage, it strongly predicted the link between the husband's disapproval and divorce. That's also a piece of it, that husbands seem to be more likely to spin this narrative that their wives' close friendships are interfering in their marriage.
Emily: Interfering, how?
Jase: Yes. I want so much more information on this one. That's really interesting. It just brings up a lot of questions for me too about how much time any of these people are spending with the friends of their spouse, right?
Dedeker: Right.
Jase: It also makes me wonder that too, is it that the men's friends, yes, we do know that statistically men tend to have fewer close friends, at least heterosexual men than women do. Yes, maybe that's part of it but could there also be an aspect of men being less likely to want to hang out with their friends in this larger social situation with their partner versus that we're just going to go hang out on our own, and that maybe women want to do something more as a larger group? I have no idea. This is pure speculation, but I have lots of questions.
Emily: It almost feels like, is somebody meddling here more? Or perhaps a friend is telling the wife I don't think that he is good enough for you, or something like that. That to me would be a reason why somebody would say, I don't approve of you being friends with them because they're putting these ideas into your head that we're not a compatible couple or something.
Dedeker: I did find, and this is just a tangential tidbit because I didn't pull out the research for this, and I don't remember if this came from this specific study, if it was another study that I was looking at when I was down this rabbit hole, but there was one piece of research that found that women tend to add more weight to their friend's approval of their partner than men do. As in if I have a partner, I find it really important that my female friends approve of this partner. I'm not talking about this hypothetically as the hypothetical subject matter of this study, versus men that seems to be less important if their male friends disapprove of their partner, that carries less weight for them.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Just in looking at this, extrapolating this out to metamour relationships. This idea that if a metamour is saying, I don't love this person that you are dating and it's you, and then that's causing some strife in your relationship or putting ideas in that partner's head or whatever. I can completely understand that that would be really difficult.
Jase: Yes, absolutely.
Dedeker: I also tried to look at research about in-law relationships, not just friends. The in-law relationship may be one of the closest existing proxies that we have for describing the metamour relationship. At least that's what I know three of us like to use as an example, whenever talking to, like if we're being interviewed on like a Normie podcast for instance and people are like, "metamour's, what's that? Oh my goodness." The fact that like a metamour, your in-laws are people that are important to your partner that you didn't get to choose. They come along as maybe a little bit of a package deal. metamour relationships like in-law relationships can be very close and very positive and very familial and very affectionate or the complete opposite.
They can be very antagonistic, they can be very heated and conflict ridden, or they can be neutral and in between. It's not a perfect proxy. There's definitely ways that it's different, but it is close. I also went down this rabbit hole looking at that research and I found what was most interesting to me was this 2015 dissertation that was written by Daniel Isaac Goldstein titled, Mediating the Influence of Interference on Marital Satisfaction: Boundaries with In-laws. This researcher created a questionnaire to measure how wives feel specifically about their mother-in-law's involvement in their marriage and how well husbands set boundaries with their mothers. He created the scale, it's called MIBS, the Marital Interference and Boundaries Scale.
Jase: Love that.
Dedeker: Some examples from this scale are statements like, "My husband defends me to his mother when she criticizes me," or "My husband would recognize if his mother's involvement were harmful to our marriage." The study found that when mothers in-law, is it mothers-in-law? It's not mother-in-laws.
Emily: Mother-in-laws?
Dedeker: I feel like in conversational speech we say mother-in-laws, if I'm talking about a group of mother-in-laws.
Emily: Mothers-in-law.
Jase: I think mothers-in-law is correct.
Dedeker: It's probably more grammatically correct. It feels weird.
Jase: There's multiple mothers.
Emily: I don't like but-
Jase: -and they're all in law.
Dedeker: None of us like it, but I will do the right thing. They found that when mothers-in-law interfered more in the marriage, wives were less satisfied with their marriage, which seems like it probably could be pretty obvious. However, when husbands set clear boundaries with their mothers, it reduced the negative impact of that interference. The results show that when husbands don't set limits with their mothers, it can create this us against them dynamic where it feels like husband and mom are on one side and the wife is on the other side, maybe feeling left out which fits in with Bowen's Theory of triangles, which is where we get this notion of triangulation.
This idea that when there's tension or anxiety between two people in a relationship, they may try to bring in a third person to
diffuse that tension or to be the referee or something like that. That at least according to Bowen's theory, it stabilizes the system, but also creates this new set of dynamics where the third person becomes either an ally or an outsider. It's like the Karpman drama triangle, which we also covered on this show before. Long story short, is that triangulation dynamics tend to not be the most healthy way to deal with relationship conflict and tension.
Emily: Yet here the three of us are a triangle on this show
Dedeker: We are a triangle indeed. I think it would be different if myself and Jase were in conflict about our relationship and we roped you into that.
Emily: Sure, that's true.
Jase: I do think that anytime the two of us might be disagreeing about something and try to pull in the other to be like, "Say that I'm right." Usually the third one of us is like, "Uh, uh, I'm not getting in the middle of that."
Emily: I'm going let you deal with that.
Dedeker: Right. Or is pretty good about, "I see what Dedeker is saying and I also see what Jase is saying."
Jase: I love you both. I think it's wonderful.
Emily: Totally. That's true.
Jase: First off, I want say that this whole line of research is fascinating and I feel like there could be a whole episode or set of theories. We're looking at boundaries with mothers-in-law and comparing that to existing married couples that open up where a mother-in-law has been there a lot longer before you came along as the spouse, and so the existing longer term relationship, if you are the new partner dating one of those people.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: It's almost like the mother-in-law proxy works that direction.
Dedeker: That's true.
Jase: Where they're the ones who's already had a history and has this trust and has this in some ways.
Dedeker: Maybe have more say more control.
Jase: Exactly. Or feels more entitled to that control or any number of things. I think that's interesting. I think for the context of this episode, what it makes me think about is basically it's someone else whose opinion matters, and so in the other study it was about friends and then in this, it's the mother-in-Law, but it's someone who you feel close to and whose opinion matters to you. This could also be just a metamour a newer partner, but if it's someone that your partner feels a closeness to that, then they're going listen to them and they're going to, I think that something like Emily said about that metamour bringing up something negative that your mutual partner had said to her about you, that there's that thing of, "Well, is my partner saying good things about me to this other person? Are they defending me to this person if needed or are they using them as a person to complain about me too?"
Emily: There is guilty of that.
Jase: There's another mother-in-law dynamic there too, of maybe the spouse is the one that you complain about the mother to or something, so I could see a lot of similarities just in terms of the closeness and the weight that are put on those relationships.
Dedeker: Yes. I think this is speaking to where I see so many people get spun out about this is if they feel like, "I can't trust my partner to have good boundaries." That's very subtle because that can very easily slip into, "I feel the need to control my partner's actions and behaviors and hand my partner in," but I do think that's the seed, is like I don't feel like I can trust my partner to consider me, protect me, consider our relationship, consider both of these relationships or all the relationships that they're in, and so that puts me into a panic and therefore I need to try to interfere.
Emily: I think that's why communication is really crucial with all of this and with the ways in which you are comfortable or not disclosing an amount of information to a partner about a metamour or vice versa saying, "Please don't talk about our fights to my metamour. Find other outlets for that because I don't want this person that's really important in your life to see me as a villain in any way, or to be only thought of as I'm hearing just all of the shitty stuff that's coming up in y'all's relationship and therefore I don't really think highly of this person because of that." I think we get in these patterns so often of only ever going to our friends about a partner when something is bad.
Dedeker: Totally.
Emily: I think that happens also in metamour relationships.
Jase: I think that can be a fear on both sides.
Emily: I think that happens so much in existing relationships when a partner will go to the hinge point and talk shit about another partner kind of thing. That just gets in a really--
Jase: It's triangulation again?
Emily: Yes. It's the triangulation, but it's pretty toxic with all of this. I think we still have this problem of many different competing value systems when it comes to how should we explore and look at all of this? How should we think about the ways in which we interact with our partner's partners? Or do we have any say in who our partner dates or should we just suck it up and deal with it? I think even in mono normative land in monogamous relationships, you hear all of these tropes of, "Bros before hoes," or "Blood is thicker than water," or "Your spouse needs to always come first."
Dedeker: I really appreciated that on an episode of Esther Perel that I was listening to several months ago. She asked a client, "When you got married did you see that as a union of individuals or was it a union of families?" This client had a particular cultural background. That's also something that changes the value system that again even to use a pretty normal example of looking at the in-law situation that I think a lot of us Americans would be like, "Well if that mother-in-law trying to get all up in your business. That's your relationship. It's not her business, and your spouse should come first.
Your romantic partner should come first." There's other cultures where it's like, "No, that's your family, and your family is a more important structure to prioritize over the stranger who's marrying into the family." We still don't even have a clear sense of what's the right choice necessarily.
Emily: One of my very, very good friends is a Serbian and I feel like when she married her husband, they both exist on the same playing field. She really listens to her parents a lot and sides with her parents sometimes, and the husband just has to deal with the intensity of the relationship that she has with her parents, even though he is the spouse and she lives with him. I think that those operate very similarly, they still mean the same in terms of hierarchy or whatever.
Jase: I think this is something that is even more complicated because we don't have as clearly defined sayings or rules for it when it comes to non-monogamy and dealing with metamours and people that are partner dates, stuff like that, where there's the old school, "Oh, well your primary partner or your spouse assuming that you're opening up a marriage, obviously they should always come first and everyone else just exists at their goodwill." Then there's a backlash to that which is, "No, no one should have any say in it." Then we sometimes talk about this middle ground of, "Yes, but also your partner knows you well, and if they see you coming home being stressed out and anxious after hanging out with this person, like any friend, they would bring up, 'Hey, I'm noticing this thing. This doesn't seem like it's good for you, what's going on?'"
That can be a tricky area to figure out what's the right thing to do. Then to go back to the way we started this whole episode is that it's not always about a conflict with the person your partner's dating. It could just be you don't like how they're doing it. It's like, "Oh, well they're dating them in a weird different way. Is that good?" Where I'm like, "Great, I'm glad you get that out of your system with someone else." Like, if it was a kink or something, it's like, "I'm glad you have someone else to be kinky with because I don't want to do that particular kink with you and I'm glad you're getting your needs met." Or is it, "I'm really uncomfortable that you're doing that because it feels weird to me and that's this whole dynamic that I don't want in my life and even though I'm only having it through you by proxy, I'm uncomfortable with it."
Dedeker: I think I've seen this situation, maybe it's a kink or a sexual practice that like, I'm uncomfortable even knowing that my partner's into this at all.
Jase: That's true too.
Dedeker: That changes my opinion of them. Then it feels even weirder for you to be, even if you're not putting that pressure on me to perform this particular kink, but you're taking it to someone else. That's also really common.
Jase: I think that applies with the hookup stuff we talked about as well. That if your partner dates much more casually than you do, there can be that weird sort of like, "I just don't even like knowing that you want to do that often, because we've got some internalized baggage about what that means about people." It's complicated, because maybe you've got some valid reasons why you feel that way about it. It's not just your cultural upbringing. Maybe you had some bad experiences with people being dishonest with you or taking advantage of you in that way.
I think that's fair to feel that way even if it's maybe not great that we're projecting all of that onto our partner, but still are the feeling's valid? Now let's dig into this. As we brought up there are
a lot of preexisting beliefs and feelings and things that can be hard to untangle and figure out, what here is really mine? What's based on my culture or my family? What's based on my past experience? What's based on actually something troubling I'm seeing with my partner that should be addressed and we should talk about? A first step for getting to the bottom of this is an exercise of some questions to ask yourself.
Ideally, you can write these down in a journal. Personally, I always prefer handwriting this kind of stuff. I just feel like there's something a little bit more intimate that gets your brain working in a different way. Maybe that's just because I sit at the computer all the rest of my day. I need to break from that to shift modes. Whatever works for you to ask these questions.
The first is, is my discomfort tied to how my partner acts with other people? Is it about that, or is it something else? Next is, is my discomfort tied to my partner's other partners and how they treat me? Is it about how those metamours treat me or how I think they might talk about me or treat me, and then dig a little further of, what is it, exactly? Is my discomfort tied to a specific interaction that I had with them? Is it an indirect interaction of something that I heard or maybe assumed through something my partner said to me?
Dedeker: Or that I saw on their social media.
Jase: That's a good one. I think maybe they're subtweeting me, and I think this might be about me. Or some other subtle thing like, "We were all going to hang out, and then they canceled on it. I feel like it's because they might think something bad about me." Just getting to the bottom of, can I point to anything specifically about how this partner has treated me? Or something that I think they've said about me or that they have said. Then the third option here is, is my discomfort about the way that my partner is dating in a way that's very different from me.
Not about how they're acting to me when they're around this other person, but how they act toward them. That doesn't have anything to do with me necessarily but makes me uncomfortable. Then, like we talked about digging into, is this my values that I think the way they date means they must have these certain values and those don't align with mine, and so I'm uncomfortable about the way that they date or the way they escalate in relationships or how much they disclose. Is it about my values that I have around dating and relationship seeking in general? Like we talked about, that maybe it's actually my own baggage about feeling like I can't ever casually date. To see my partner do it makes me feel uncomfortable, for example. Then, could it ever be okay for my partner to date in a way that's really different from how I date? What would it look like if that could be okay? Is there a world, if I could wave a magic wand and make that okay, do I think that's possible? Would I want that?
Dedeker: The answer to that could be, no. The whole point of this exercise is finding more data about yourself, and if no is the answer, I just don't think I could be in partnership with somebody who dates in this particular way, that is still a valuable answer.
Jase: Absolutely. The idea here is just to get to as much as you can get to the heart of what's going on here because it might be surprising, you might think, "Oh I don't like this person they're dating." When you do this exercise, you might realize, "Oh, actually, it's about the way they're dating that I don't like." Or it might be that I don't like that they have all these hookups, and then you realize, "No, it's actually that I don't like that they seem to be dishonest about it." Or that like, "I feel like I'm being hidden while they're doing that." Or it could be, "I don't like this partner but it's really, I don't like the way my partner treats me after they've hung out with them." Or, "I don't like the things my partner does, like canceling our plans or changing our plans last minute because of this other person."
It's really not technically about that other person, it's about the partner. Just getting into that nitty gritty of what's really going on here can then help inform you as you move into these next steps about what do you actually do with this information.
Emily: When you do have that information, the next step is to seek understanding and actually have a conversation with your partner. Ideally, you're going to do this at a time when you and your partner are feeling calm and when you're connected, and you do this in a safe and gentle environment. Maybe get some pillows, get on the couch, have a glass of wine, something to make the two of you feel safe and connected with one another. Just open up conversation about what drives each of your decisions when dating or when picking partners. What's going on there? What are the reasons why you want to date at all? Why is it that one of you may want to date a lot more than the other person? Is that seeking some personal fulfillment, or is it because I don't have a lot of time to date right now, and so I'm just choosing not to as much?
Try to tread carefully here and make sure that you're really seeking mutual understanding and don't look for opportunities to just drop criticism on each other. I know that can be easy. Defensiveness can be really easy in these moments, especially if this is a volatile thing that you are worried about bringing to someone else. I think that that can definitely come up. Try to first seek understanding and be kind and also use boundaries for good. Check out again our episode, Multiamory 423 - Boundaries are all about YourSELF. Or check out our book. Our chapter entirely on boundaries and on boundaries about yourself is in our book. I believe it's chapter five. Some options for boundaries might include things like no contact at all with your metamour.
Jase: Yes. If you do realize that it's about being around this person, or that something about this person rubs me the wrong way and I don't want to be negative about them, I don't think it's a problem. My partner's dating them, I just don't like them. That could be okay. Maybe what you need to do for yourself is just be clear of, "I don't want to interact with this person. Not because I disapprove of you or what you're doing, but just that's what I need to do for myself."
Emily: Maybe you'll have specific conditions when it comes to contact with them. You only are in garden party-style situations where you're with a bunch of different people, and multiple partners are interacting with one another. Or maybe just in a group thread for instance, where all of you have communication with one another, but truly a little bit of parallel polyamory here and there is probably okay and it can sometimes do the body good. I know people who really choose to be parallel with their metamours, and I think that that's totally fine and it's okay if that perhaps wasn't a thing that you've done in the past, but you say to your metamour or you say to your partner, "This is something that I need to do right at this particular moment in time."
Jase: I can give a personal example about that one actually. That there was someone that Dedeker was dating who I liked and enjoyed hanging out with, but I found being around him to just be really tiring and draining. It's like, that's fun for a day, but if it's been too many times in a row, I would sometimes struggle with this. I don't have any problem with him or you dating him. I don't want to always have to be around for that because I need to recover and regain my energy. It was something that we had to figure out how to strike a good balance there where it's not like, "I'm not saying this is a boundary, I don't ever want to hang out with all of us together," but more of just to, "I need some time on my own as well. I just don't want to feel pressure to do a lot of group stuff, go hang out, go to events together, play games together." I'm like, "I don't always want to do that." That could also be the case here. It might not be a strong, this all the time boundary, but just a little bit of parallel can be good.
Dedeker: Yes, and it wasn't a difficult figuring out process. I think because the fact that you were very clear and it was also you were still a team player. I do think sometimes people reach for more parallel solutions because it's like, "I can barely tolerate non-monogamy as it is." Or something like that.
Jase: This wasn't that.
Dedeker: Yes. That definitely wasn't that. It really wasn't that difficult to figure out what was going to be the solution there. Again, just like this little sprinkle of parallel sometimes and removing some of that pressure for it to be all happy kitchen table polyamory all the time can make everyone feel a little bit better and have more capacity and energy as well.
Jase: That's why I brought it up, is because it was more something where, "Why am I feeling annoyed about this?" For me it was, I pretty quickly realized, "It's just because I don't want to be involved as much." I get tired by it, and it's not my partner, so I don't quite have the same level of relationship." It's like, "Yes, let's hang out sometimes, just not as often. For me it was this weird, why am I feeling annoyed by this at first until I figured out, "Oh, I just need more of my own space. I just need to be taking care of myself, figuring out what I need and it doesn't have to be about them."
Dedeker: Lastly, I have a list that I have titled 'Some Hard But Hopeful Truths' that I'd like to drop in for your reflection and consideration. One hard but hopeful truth is that this third party, whether it is a metamour, a family member, a friend, unless this person's behavior is truly egregious, damaging, abusive to you and to your partner, it's probably going to be unreasonable to put your partner in any kind of a you have to choose situation.
Any kind of, "It's me or it's your mother-in-law." Or, "It's me or it's my metamour." That's not going to end well, again, unless this person is behaving in ways that are completely unacceptable and unforgivable and intolerable for you. That's truth number one. Truth number two. Hands down, if you want to pick hard mode and not just hard mode but I mean God mode, challenge mode tier of how to solve this problem is if you choose that the solution is going to be you trying to change your partner or change the way that they date or change who they date. That is a solution you can attempt to reach for but I promise you it is going to be the hardest version of solving this.
Emily: I truly don't even know if that's attainable at all.
Dedeker: I think it depends on people's relationship agreements because maybe they're in a relationship where maybe they decided that they're going to give each other a little bit more power and a little bit more sway around this. People do reach for that but I'm just saying it is tempting to reach for, "Well, why can't you just date the way that I do?" Or "Why can't you just date this different type of person?" It's not going to be the easy road.
Jase: I will say not nightmare mode difficulty but then is really rewarding when you beat it. I think that the reward is not going to be any better in this case.
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: More destructive.
Jase: Maybe worse, actually.
Dedeker: Probably destructive, yes. Of course, the truth that you can't really control your partner's other relationships or friendships unless both of you have consented to this level of control, which is unlikely but maybe those were all the hard truths and maybe this is the more hopeful truth. You also don't have to be 100% on board with how your partner dates, who your partner dates. You don't have to be high-fiving your partner every time they mention this other person, every time they come back from a hookup if hookups really get under your skin.
I do think that there can be this dominating polyamory narrative that you just need to completely let go and not have any opinions or any feelings whatsoever about who or how your partner dates. It can be a beautiful thing to do the whole, "Yes, let the butterfly go, don't cling." Also, you can have feelings about it at the same time because you're a human being. That leads to the ultimate question to ask yourself if you're in this situation if it's never changed, if the way your partner dated never changed, if the person that your partner was dating never changed, if the type of people your partner seeks out never changed, could you still at the end of the day admire, respect, and love your partner even if it got under your skin?
I'm going to repeat that question again because I think it's very important. If this aspect of your partner's dating life never changed, could you still admire, respect, and love them even if it got under your skin? Now, we have to make this calculation all the time in relationships. This is related to the Gottman's talk about perpetual problems. There's always going to be certain incompatibilities. There's always going to be differences in the way that we operate from how a partner operates. Either we find ways to love each other through those differences, even if we can tease each other about it a little bit, or maybe we roll our eyes, but ultimately, we can still respect and admire each other. Or maybe you can't.
That's also valid if that is what the answer is because I know in my personal response, I've found that if a partner is doing something that I do not respect, like their choices make me lose respect for them, or their choices produce maybe even a disgust response about how they're living their life or how they're dating. I've found at least for myself, that is really hard to undo. Once you go into that territory of losing that respect and losing that admiration, it can be really hard to walk back from that. I would not recommend just trying to grit your teeth through being in a relationship with someone that you can't respect their choices, even if they're making a choice that's different from how you would do it. I really do think that's what it comes down to at the end of the day.
Emily: If you are in a situation where you see something that is rather unpleasant in your mind about your partner, it may not be unpleasant to other people, and maybe it'll be okay for them. To let them go into the world and perhaps find somebody who is more tolerant of that is totally okay and probably better for both of you, rather than stay in that relationship and just try to tolerate it and then ultimately have it backfire and lead to resentment and shitty behavior all around.
Dedeker: On the flip side, to try to again inject a little bit more hopefulness into this, if you realize, "Yes, this never changed. I find it a little silly, I find it annoying, but still deeply love my partner and want to build a life with them." If that's the relationship that we have or I still want to be connected with them, then there's a pathway to be like, "How do we figure out managing this in the meantime? How do we figure out collaborating on this on the meantime so that we can both feel that sense of mutual admiration and respect?" That is this week's episode and we want to hear from you listening.