Mono poly relationship explained part 2

Sometimes we are happy to give up one thing or another in order to be with someone, but we have to make sure that if we are giving something up that we’re doing so willingly. If you are going to make this kind of compromise in a relationship structure, hopefully no one is feeling coerced so no one feels like they’ve been manipulated into agreeing to it, and they haven’t been frightened into agreeing to it. And that goes for yourself. Don’t convince yourself that you want something that you don’t really want. If monogamy is what’s going to make you happy monogamy from your partner, you are allowed to hold out to find someone who wants that monogamous commitment too. And if you want to be polyamorous and practice polyamory and have everyone involved really be enthusiastically on board, well, that makes a lot of sense.
And it’s entirely okay to only be with people who also want that out of their relationship structure. I really hate to see people forcing themselves to do something that they clearly don’t want to do. I have seen and heard people who are monogamous who are trying to make it work with a polyamorous person, and they just sound like they are in so much pain. They talk about sobbing on the floor when their partner is out on a date or like pacing around their house just fretting and picturing all these incredibly intense things that could be happening between their partner and someone else. And it’s possible that could just be growing pains when you’re becoming accustomed to being with someone who’s polyamorous. Like, maybe you’ve decided I really do want this, but in the meantime, until I get used to it, it’s really painful. But I sometimes worry that it’s not just a phase where you’re adjusting.
I worry that I see people doing this and that they’re just engaging in sheer misery and no one deserves that. If you aren’t going to be happy with a polyamorous person. If you’re a monogamous, I just want you to feel like you can give yourself permission to seek out another relationship. You shouldn’t have to be sobbing on the floor while your partner is on a date for the simple fact that they’re on a date. It’s okay for you to go find someone who will be monogamous with you. And similarly, very few people are going to want to know or find out that their partner was sobbing at home while they were on a date because they were on a date. Very few people are going to be okay with causing that kind of pain or being the catalyst rather for that kind of pain. One of the pitfalls I’ve seen on the monogamous end of things is that a monogamous person will date and be with someone who’s polyamorous, and in their own mind they’re thinking, okay, I will enjoy my time with this.
Person. But if I meet someone else who wants to be monogamous with me, and they seem like a good match, I will leave the polyamorous person to pursue monogamy with this new person. If this describes you, if this sounds like something you’re doing or might want to do, I strongly encourage you, please tell the person that you’re with the polyamorous person when you first start dating them that this is your intent. If you suspect or know that you’re going to eventually want to find a monogamous partner, and they’re only going to be with the polyamorous person until that happens. At the latest, they deserve to know that they have a right to decide whether they want to be with you, knowing that you’re almost definitely going to leave them at some point for someone else who’s monogamous. It’s okay if you want to date someone temporarily.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as everyone understands the arrangement. I’d also like to talk about some of the things that I hear, or read people say about each other. So things I hear monogamous people sometimes say about a polyamorous partner or vice versa. On the polyamorous end, I sometimes hear or read polyamorous people saying things like, I don’t understand why isn’t it enough that I do love you and that I have committed some of my time and energy to you? I mean, I see you more than I see anyone else, and I barely have time for my other partners because you want so much of my time and energy, that sort of thing. And on the monogamous end of things, you might hear things like, why am I not enough for you? Why is just being with me not enough? What’s wrong with me? Or what’s wrong with our relationship that you feel like you need to have other people too?

If you were happy with me, if I were enough for you, then surely you wouldn’t need to be with anyone else. You wouldn’t have the compulsion, the desire to seek out connection in other people on a romantic level. And both people are there’s nothing wrong with thinking or feeling these things or wanting these things from each other or wanting the things that you want for yourself. In both cases, there’s a fundamental incompatibility going on about what people want out of a relationship when the polyamorous person is saying, I give so much of my time to you already. And, you know, I barely see my other partners. For example, they’re saying, I have gone above and beyond for you what I would do in any other relationship because you are monogamous, whereas my other partners are polyamorous. And now I feel like I’m being stretched far too thin and something’s got to give, and they’re feeling a lot of pressure, and they’re feeling like they’re maybe neglecting some of their other partners, or maybe their hobbies. Maybe it’s not their partners that they’ve started neglecting, but yeah, their hobbies.
They’re platonic friends or even maybe overtime at work that they want to put in, but they don’t because they need to spend more time with a particular partner. In this case, they might feel like something is not working. In the monogamous person’s case, it’s absolutely the same. They’re feeling like, okay, what it means to be in love or to love someone romantically is to not want anyone else. And I just can’t wrap my mind around how you can love me and want to spend your life with me and also want that with someone else. It just doesn’t make sense because this person is monogamous. Again, both people aren’t thinking anything that’s innately incorrect about relationships.
I’m also not saying that a relationship like what I just described is doomed to failure because of this incompatibility. I think that that could happen. But I would strongly encourage people in a situation kind of like this to seek out a polyamory friendly therapist. Now, don’t get me wrong. Polyamory friendly here does not mean that this therapist would push polyamory on the monogamous person. At least if they’re a good therapist, if they’re an ethical one, they would not do this. What I do mean by polyamory friendly therapist is a psychiatric professional of some kind who does accept that polyamory is a valid way to approach relationships. Not a superior way, not an inferior way, just one of multiple valid ways, and that they could help guide you together to determining whether you can be together and if so, what that might look like. Most therapists, again, if they’re ethical, are not going to tell you what the correct answer is because there isn’t one.
There isn’t one correct answer. Sometimes the reason a person who’s monogamous isn’t happy with a polyamorous person is because they feel like being with the polyamorous person is introducing a level of instability in their life. Stable and unstable don’t mean the same thing to everyone. One person’s stable is another person’s unstable. There’s a lot that goes into whether a person feels like their life is stable, but one of the things that can influence this is how many people are coming and going from a person’s life and how predictable life can be from day to day. Of course, there is absolutely no way to guarantee a predictable life, because you can only control what you can control, and the world is going to impose itself on you in unpredictable ways.
But within your sphere of influence is what kind of relationships you engage in. And a person may not feel that being with a polyamorous person can be as stable as they want to be. The polyamorous person in question might feel like, wow, I feel like my life is really stable. I’ve been with the same two people for ten years, and you’re the first new person I’ve dated in that time. And I don’t really go out and meet a lot of new people. Nevertheless, maybe their schedule is a little unstable. Maybe it’s that they can’t guarantee that you’ll always see them a certain amount of time each week or a certain day each week. Maybe that kind of instability is incompatible with someone.
We all come to relationships with a lot of assumptions about a lot of things, and this is a great example of one of them. Of course, keeping an open dialogue with your partner is critically important in a relationship in general, in any relationship of any kind, it’s important that you can talk to someone. It’s important that your partner is someone you feel like you can be honest with, that you can be open and vulnerable with. More important than anything is listening and be compassionate and be kind to them, to yourself. And just in general. It’s very rarely a bad idea to be kind.