Welcome to the Poly Pathways podcast, helping you create paths for practical polyamory.
Your hosts are Kat and Doc.
We're glad you're here.
Hey everybody, and welcome back to our next episode.
This one really comes from the camp of I could never, or how do you deal with it when this
happens?
And that is of jealousy and envy, but most importantly, how to be okay through jealousy
and envy.
This is the early deal breaker.
This is the early experience that you're going to have as you first open up in poly, open
a relationship up in poly or experience poly.
It's also going to be the thing that you deal with a lot as partners gain new partners,
as partners have different experiences, as partners transition and escalate.
Jealousies, envies, these are just part of human nature, whether you are monogamous or
polyamorous.
And in this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about that, jealousy, envy, and
how to be okay.
But first, I'm just so happy to see my friend Cat here today.
I'm always happy to be here with you, but I'm going to whip out a dictionary and make
this really, really boring.
So what is the difference between jealousy and envy?
So if these are the number one deal breakers that people like to reference in polyamory
and why they couldn't do it, let's understand what that really means.
So jealousy is a feeling of resentment and bitterness and hostility towards someone's
experiences when they think another person has something that they don't.
So it can include envy, it can include suspicion and bitterness as a result of many factors,
the main ones being fear or lacking, not getting enough of something.
So the first time you probably experienced jealousy is when you're a little kid.
For me growing up, it was my sibling.
My sibling had something and I wanted that cookie.
So that's probably the first taste most of us get of jealousy.
But that is actually envy as well.
So right, envy is wanting something that someone else has.
If you've seen the movie Inside Out 2, they do a really good job of kind of explaining
like you see something and immediately you think, "My life will be better because I have
that," or "I would be improved from having that."
And this is the number one elephant in the room for polyamorous people.
It's like, "I can't do that because I would be so jealous."
I think it's also that not just that your life would be improved if I had it, my life
is worse because I don't.
Coming at it from that, "I'm not having this experience," or "I'm not having this with
this person and I'm now angry about that because this other person has something," and this
thinking about it as limited resource.
Love is not a pie.
We are not limited here.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think there's a lot of common fears and misconceptions about jealousy and polyamory.
We talk about in our resource episode and in our terminology episode about compersion
and about being glad that someone else has something and feeling joy that someone else
has something.
And people seem to think that compersion is the opposite of jealousy, that you can't be
jealous and also feel compersion at the same time.
So in polyamorous circles, you will hear people talk about, "Oh, I'm still feeling jealous.
I'm not good at being poly."
That's just not true.
That's a common misconception.
Even the "best" polyamorous people out there still experience jealousy.
Even if you had everything you could ever want, you'd probably still feel jealous and
envious of people sometimes.
Maybe they have a newer car.
Maybe they have a bigger house.
Maybe they have more well-behaved kids.
Whatever it is, you can still experience those feelings.
And it is such a common misconception that polyamorous people do not feel jealousy.
The difference here is that we are more likely to confront it head on.
Being in polyamory isn't better than being in monogamy.
It's that these multiple loving relationships encourage us and certainly require us to confront
the issues that we're having, the topics that we'd have.
And if you went to a monogamous couples counselor or marriage counselor, you would hear the
very same things that a lot of polyamorous people do as a matter of habit.
And managing jealousy and envy is just one of those things that you can do.
And there are really simple ways to deal with that and really complex ways to deal with
that.
And we'll get into that later in the episode.
Yeah.
I think in monogamy, you can get away with more.
You can get away with more jealousy.
It's a really common internet meme that you'll see.
A girl gets married to a boy, right?
And all of a sudden, the girl's not allowed to have male friends anymore.
Or vice versa.
You'll see in women's groups and mommy groups and wife groups all the time, "Oh, my husband
cannot have female friends anymore.
No, no.
Red flag.
Cannot have those."
And there's a lot more protections built in to kind of cushion us from jealousy in those
common social constructs, right?
Everybody expects you to act a certain way.
And even if you don't like it, you get away with a lot more in monogamy of not having
to confront those jealous feelings and not having to deal with all of that.
It is so much more acceptable to just say, "Yep, you got to abandon all your identities
outside of this and all of those friends you had before."
Right.
Right.
And in ways that are socially acceptable because they come from a place of restriction.
And having made that transition from monogamy to polyamory, both of us can understand that
sense of when we're in a monogamous relationship, we misconstrue restriction as safety.
I'm restricting my partner from going out with the boys or going out with a female coworker
or going away on a business trip with a department of people that happens to be mixed gender.
And developing these restrictions seem to build in safety and can often be misconstrued
as elevating us above, right?
We are now in a one-on-one monogamous relationship.
We must now sacrifice all of these things in order to elevate the importance of our
relationship as the premier relationship.
When in fact, what I've seen in my own experience is that that just seeds resentment.
It seeds restriction.
It seeds ill feelings.
It seeds a lot of conversations of, "What the fuck?
I'm going on a business trip.
What choice do I have here?"
Yeah.
And that safety part of it is huge, right?
A lot of people seek those traditional escalator-type relationships and seek that kind of safety.
The appearance is, "I got married to this person.
I'm safe.
They're not going to leave me."
And that goes back to fear being a lot of the basis of jealousy, right?
I'm afraid something's going to happen if I don't get what I need out of this.
And that fear is less so in monogamous relationships because the idea is you got married, right?
You're together, but we know people cheat.
We know people get divorced.
We know all of this happens.
And it's not even just our romantic relationships.
It is our friendships as well.
Jealousy is not unique to monogamous sexual relationships.
It is also prevalent in our jealous interactions with our friends, right?
Your friend goes out and has this huge birthday bash that is absolutely amazing, and you're
kind of jealous because you can't afford that or you don't have a big enough friend
group to do something like that.
So jealousy comes up all the time, every day.
It's not something we're given tools to deal with, per se, even on a family level
and on a social level.
So it's unfair to say that it's unique to monogamous and polyamorous people, but
it does come up as that reason.
That excuse is, "I can't do this because I'd be so jealous."
And that's completely disregarding the rest of your human experience where this is
a normal emotion.
It's not something you have to feel bad about.
It's not something you have to hide, but it is something that you should deal with
in a healthy way.
And I think Doc has a really great story about how he's experienced jealousy in his life
and how he's dealt with it.
I do have a great story about jealousy.
The first thing is that there's a lot of these things.
I experience this from both sides of the equation.
And my story goes to one of my anchor partners who started a new relationship and we were
a long distance and we had been for many, many years.
There's a lot of experiences that she and I did not get an opportunity to do simply
because we were a long distance and our time together was intermittent.
And when we did have time together, it was often busy with other things the day to day
things that we needed to do to continue our relationship and rebuild and connect and do
these things.
And this might sound petty because for a lot of things, jealousy's in hindsight, it seems
petty.
At the time, it was a huge deal for me.
I was really upset by it and it came in a flurry of other types of things.
But the experience I'm talking about was my partner going camping with her new partner,
which I know seems very small and very petty, but this is sometimes what happens where we
don't know when we're going to get triggered in a jealousy.
It would be one thing if I was like, it would be a bigger deal if I was like, oh, hey, this
person's going to go away for a week long business trip with their new partner.
That seems like something really big and that would be easily identifiable as jealousy.
But camping for me has always been part of my experience.
I was an active outdoors kid.
I spend time in nature all the time.
In fact, Kat and I ourselves have numerous adventures that are hiking and camping related
and we are not partnered together.
We are not partners together.
That's the next episode.
That's right.
We're poly pals.
We are not poly partners.
So, my partner lets me know, hey, I'm going to go camping with my new partner.
And I was very jealous of this because it was something that was important to me.
It was something that I wanted to experience with my partner for the first time because
she really hadn't gone camping with anyone in the length of our relationship.
So it was a new experience for her and I was wanting to be the one that went camping with
her to experience that for the first time and have that moment and build that connection
and say, wow, we had this experience together.
And this sort of jealousy or this sort of envy really threw me for a while on how to
deal with that.
And it came at a complex time in our relationship.
So there were other intersections here that we don't need to necessarily go into.
But that issue of camping was a jealousy or envy.
Come to find out, it was also a twinge of envy that my partner was feeling.
She also wanted to go camping with me for the first time, but also didn't want to say
no to the experience of going camping with this new partner.
And so we had to work through that jealousy, that envy, that pain point in our relationship
and find ways to connect around that camping experience.
Can we also go camping?
Can we also do something?
But it certainly was a painful point for me.
And the entire weekend that she was gone camping, I spent with my feels.
That's a good way to work through it.
Sometimes you do just have to sit in that feeling and really poke at it and try to find
out what the source is, how to work around it.
So we're going to go into some strategies for that in the second half of this episode.
That's right.
Just because it's a bad feeling doesn't mean it's not an appropriate feeling.
And it doesn't, and just because you feel bad doesn't mean something's wrong.
It just means that you're feeling bad and you can work through that.
And polyamory forces us to deal with that in a really helpful way.
And it's not like we keep saying that it's not exclusive to polyamorous people, that
everyone feels jealousy.
For me, I have a unique situation where I experienced jealousy that might seem kind
of dumb.
I'm polyamorous.
Both of my current full-time partners are monogamous.
And I was experiencing a lot of jealousy in the beginning of my new relationship with
my boyfriend.
I was jealous of his clients.
He is in a profession that requires an intimate setting with clients regularly, and a large
number of them are women.
And there's nothing sexual about the encounters at all, but it's just the nature of the job
that he does.
And I found myself in the beginning really uncomfortable and really jealous of the time
that he was spending with these people in the situations that he was in.
For no other reason than I was just uncomfortable with the situation, even though it had been
his career path for over 15 years.
It was that moment in my head where I was like, "Oh, you're also with these other people
in this type of area having conversations about it, and there's other things going on."
And I really had to confront why I was uncomfortable with that.
And it had to go back to our origin story and how we met and tease a lot of that out.
But for me as a polyamorous person to say I was jealous of my monogamous partner is
not something you hear very often, but it's the same principles that apply.
It doesn't matter if it's a friendship or a relationship, poly, mono, whatever you call
it, jealousy comes up in weird ways.
Sometimes it can be something that you're totally fine with in theory, and then it comes
to the day of the event or it comes to the thing and you are feeling a type of way about
it.
So I think it's worth going through the different types of jealousy to kind of put a name on
it so that when they do come up, we can name it, we can see it, and then we can move past
it.
So we have a little list here of the types of jealousy that are the most common in polyamorous
relationships.
And I think the first one is something that probably Doc has the most experience with,
which is time envy.
Yeah, time envy is a big deal in my relationships because I had a long distance partner who
was several hours away and I had a partner who was local.
It was local to me and got to see me more.
Likewise, my longest partner had a local partner that also saw her a lot, things like that.
And time envy is a hard thing.
And I deal with this a lot, not even just within polyamorous relationships.
It's not that my partners have partners and I'm like missing time or my partners are missing
time with me because of my time with other partners.
This extends to family and friends and work and projects and things like that.
And taking away time out of what is, time is a limited resource.
We only have so many hours and days and a week to deal with.
And when we give all of that time away to different parts of our lives, sometimes our
partners can feel envious of that time.
Even dealing with something like our podcast, this takes time away from my relationships
with my partners.
It gives time to my good friend Kat and our fun project together.
And it builds a lot.
It's important to me.
It's something that I want to do.
And it's also time that is taken away from us.
My partner has expressed time envy with me before.
Actually both of my partners have.
I've heard it from my boyfriend who does not live with me that they wish that they had
more dedicated one-on-one time with me, not group time, but just us, the two of us.
On the flip side, my monogamous husband has also expressed time envy for the number of
hobbies and other things that I'm involved in.
So even though we live together and see each other every day, he's not getting quality
time with me.
He's getting quantity of time where we just happen to be in the same space at the same
time.
I see this a lot in dynamics with a nesting partner and non-nesting partners, where nesting
partners will have a lot of time with the person that they're nesting with.
And then the other partners who are not nesting will feel like they're lacking time.
And it does go back and forth in that way where that nesting partner may feel that the
time is not valuable that they are getting together and they'll ask for more and you'll
have the other partner having feelings that kind of way about it.
So the time envy is definitely an interesting struggle that can impact everybody in a different
way.
And that's where time envy comes in for me as well, because my long distance partner
is now my nesting partner, where our, and even before was my nesting partner spent a
lot of time together on the phone, spent a lot of time together on FaceTime.
And that time wasn't spent with my other anchor partner.
That's where envies and insecurities and worries of we're not spending time together.
I would like to spend more time together.
I would like our time to be more one-on-one.
It would like maybe more exclusive is what we're going to talk about here in this quick
second.
But also this idea of, you know, what does our time look like together?
Are you coming over for a couple hours?
Are we just having this one activity and are, you know, can we have special projects?
And there's lots of ways that we're addressing some of that time envy because they are both
important relationships to me.
I want both to be able to progress and be able to grow and be able to evolve.
And time is a limited resource.
So making sure that we prioritize that talk about those things.
And we'll talk about different strategies, but it's a real feeling that it's a real
feeling that I incur on as, as a hinge partner.
It's also something that I feel towards my other partners when they're spending a lot
of time with other partners.
I'm like, there are times where I'm like, Oh, like, good.
Why are you not spending time with me?
Especially with my long distance partner when I'm there or when she's here, when she was,
when we were long distance, when we were together and we were spending time with our other partners,
it was like, Oh, like I hardly see you.
I want more of this.
And so that time envy comes up in lots of different ways, but yes, for sure it comes
into, and it intersects in with these other types of things, activities and exclusivity
and things like that.
Yeah.
The next type of envy is definitely exclusivity envy.
You get this a lot and it kind of ties into another type of any like first experience
envy, first experience envy is the, you know, I want to be the first one to have that experience
with you.
So like you mentioned with the camping, another example that I have is I wanted to go to a
club and I was invited to go by one of my other partners.
And when I told my boyfriend basically that I was going with this other partner, he was
upset because he wanted to have that first experience with me.
And it wasn't necessarily a conversation that I think either of us realized we were going
to have that that envy and jealousy might've existed, but we were able to address it by
bringing it up.
The exclusivity envy is more of these are special places to us.
These are special activities for us.
This comes up where you try to containerize experiences to only one partner.
So saying I am only going to go painting with you.
I'm only going to go camping with you.
We are only, we are the only two people allowed to visit this restaurant.
Exclusivity envy often leads to boundaries that are kind of unfair to say that you can
only experience this thing that you really love with one person.
There's ways around that.
There's ways to make it equitable and more fair.
But I think exclusivity envy is one of those things that I really struggle with because
when I have something that I enjoy and that I really love, I love sharing that experience
with multiple people and multiple partners.
And every time I experienced that is it's a different experience for me.
And it's obviously a different experience for them.
So even if you do the exact same thing, the exact same thing three times, you're going
to have a different experience each time.
But a lot of people bring that monogamous thing of like, "This is our spot, man.
This is our spot.
No one else can come to our spot."
Or "This is our time."
Or "We're the ones that watch suits together."
You know, a lot of those activities and places become inflated and special in that way when
exclusivity envy comes into play.
That's right.
So backing away from, "This is our restaurant that we go to," or "This is the show that
we watch together," or "This is the experience," is understanding that it's not about the place.
It's not about the show.
It's not about the thing that the event that's taking place.
It really is about being able to share that experience with your partner or partners.
And that's as we start to talk about unpacking jealousies and envies, we'll talk about this,
but really pulling away from, "Well, we're the only ones that go to this restaurant."
Okay, well, that's maybe.
And if that's an agreement that you and your partners make that this is the restaurant
that we go to and this is the restaurant that the other partners go to, then that's an agreement
that you can make within your polyamory.
It's not about the place.
It's about the time.
It's about the quality.
And it's about the experience that you're having with that person.
But we'll unpack that.
It's just letting you know that when we pull away from the...
When we hear these things about the show we're watching, and there's a funny polyamory meme,
like, "Is it considered cheating if your polyamorous partner goes ahead and watches the next episode
without you or watches it with their other partner?"
And most people are like, "Absolutely, yes."
That's obviously an infidelity that cannot be overcome.
But it's about...
What it really is is about it.
It's a very funny way of looking at saying, "This is our quality time together, and I
value that experience."
Yeah.
I think it's definitely something that's come up a lot of people, especially when you're
new to poly, and you think that that's a way of determining specialness for each of those
partners and kind of creating something special that is only theirs.
And that's okay if you both agree to it.
Just watch out for that.
All of you.
All of you agree for it.
You agree to it.
Just watch out for that trap, because if they're your partner, it's a good chance that you
have intersecting interests and overlapping things that you enjoy.
You know, if you're like me, you attract a lot of the same types of people.
So we all like to do the same things.
And then you could be unfairly excluding somebody from something that they would find joy in.
Yeah.
We all have a type, right?
And so another type of envy here is, which is similar to exclusivity and time envy, and
that's first experiences envy.
So my story of camping with my longtime partner and experiencing that with her as her first
time camping with a partner was an example of first experience envy.
Or this is the first time we're going to go away for a weekend.
Or this is like, we're going to travel to this destination together.
We're going to see this movie together.
Or whatever it might be that's the first time you do something with a partner, you may,
or when your partner does this with somebody else, you may experience first experience
envy.
It's important to address those things, to talk about what it is.
Like me, any time I've had this conversation, it's always been, I know this seems so silly,
but this is something I wanted to do for the first time with you.
And the more it happens, honestly, the lesser this becomes because we've developed strategies
to deal with those types of first experience envy.
But it is a real thing, especially for, I'm seeing this with a lot of people who call
to me and say, "Hey doc, we're starting to open up our marriage.
We're considering polyamory."
These are things that we want to deal with.
And these are things I want to do with my partner, but my husband or my wife is not
comfortable with this because it's something that we do.
It's like the first time that this happens.
And this even happens in sexual spaces as well.
That these are, this is the first time this has ever happened to me.
I don't know, or this is the first experience you've had with this element of sexuality
or sex or kink or whatever it might be.
And your other partner may have been chomping at the bit to do this thing with you and you
didn't see it or didn't recognize it, or you were just in the flow when it happened.
And this actually happened to a friend of mine who had a sexual experience that was
unexpected and unplanned, but it was something that they and their spouse wanted to experience
together, who could never get to that point or just never got to it.
And it happened and there was a lot of first experience envy around that.
Now the game is on.
So.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I'm glad you called out about that because those experiences, those first experiences,
especially because there's the added layer of sexual contact and sexual contact can add
more fuel to the fire, right?
Because we're always more protective of our bodies sometimes than our minds, even though
our minds are more powerful.
Another.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For sure.
For sure.
For sure.
That is real.
And there's ways that you can deal with that because especially if it's a really great
experience, you're definitely going to want to bring that experience back.
Yeah.
And it will be completely different the next time you do it with this other partner.
They might do it better.
They might do it worse.
It's not a contest, of course, but it's going to be different every single time with every
single person.
Another type of envy, I put these two together.
They were separate on the list.
There's nesting envy and then there's escalation envy.
And I kind of think they go hand in hand.
The reason I say that is because escalation envy is when you think about the relationship
escalator that exists, right?
You get married, you move in together, you have kids or whatever order you go in.
Sometimes as you move in, you get a dog or a cat, you get a shared animal, then you get
married, then you have kids, then you have grandkids.
That escalator of the "natural" progression of relationships, that goes with the nesting
envy because one of those escalations is living together.
So if you have a partner, if you already have a nesting partner, and you have another partner
like myself, who is not on a nesting path, they might find themselves in a space where
they're having escalation envy.
Maybe they do want to live with you.
Maybe they do want to get married.
Maybe they do want to have children.
And they're envious of your other relationships where that element is already present or has
the potential to be present.
So if you are married but don't have kids yet, and you have another partner, they might
want to have children with you.
And it doesn't seem as viable as the relationship where you're legally married to your partner.
So there's a lot of envy that can go with different life paths as new partners come
into the scene, or as relationships develop over time.
If they don't see any type of escalation path with you and they want that, not everybody
wants that, which is important to call out.
But if you do want that, and you're seeing it happening with another partner, but you
don't necessarily see the immediate future for you on that path, that can cause a lot
of envy.
"I want to have that big, fancy wedding," turns into, "I'm never going to have that
big, fancy wedding with you."
With you, right?
And that's an interesting aspect of polyamory as well.
And this is hard.
It's hard to see partners escalate aspects of their relationship when that's something
that you've wanted.
It's something that you've yearned for.
It's something that you want yourself with that person, but it's just not in the cards
at this moment.
It's also really unfair to ask that partner to put that on hold if that's something that
they're seeking or something that they're trying to do.
It absolutely takes negotiation and communication and support and reassurance to work through,
but there's definitely times where I've felt like, "Well, shit, that feeling sucks for
me.
My partner is escalating this relationship in a space that I want to escalate our relationship,
and I understand the reasons why rationally, but irrationally, from an emotional standpoint,
I'm on the struggle bus about this.
And I need to find a way to work through that and talk about that and find some alternative
paths," or really just to examine the relationship itself and say, "Why doesn't this relationship
also include this escalation?"
And sometimes that is very much something like a nesting escalation.
Sometimes it doesn't really allow for that to be the same.
Yeah.
And there's ways to escalate in other ways.
So if you really want to have children with your partner and that partner is not available
for that path, maybe you can get a pet together.
Maybe you can create a business together.
Maybe you can have a creative project that you uniquely share with that partner that
simulates that in a different way.
And I think that's one of the coping strategies.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
A lot of times people think, "If I can't have this, I won't be happy."
And it's realizing that part of the coping may be to determine something else that you
can do together and not get caught up in the, "I can't have it."
I think that's an important point, Kat, that it's not all or nothing.
These jealousies and envies come from this place of limited resource in a very binary
sense of, "I can only have this and it can only look like this and it can only be fully
incomplete," and the opposite of that is emptiness.
And that is just decidedly a very human thought, a very mononormative thought.
And in polyamory, what I've come to realize is that it's not all or nothing.
There are aspects that we can adjust and tweak and change and find ways to get to the feeling,
the connection, the experience that we want to have with that other partner in a different
way.
For sure.
Yeah.
You can just as easily have a hand-fasting ceremony or something like that if marriage
is not available to you.
And anywhere along the line.
Maybe you buy a house next to the person.
You're not going to mess with them.
Maybe you move nearby.
Maybe you take out an apartment that is a shared space.
There's lots of ways you can find other ways to escalate with your partner that don't follow
the traditional path and helpful in eliminating some of those types of envy.
We just need to get creative about it.
Yes.
In my world, that does not include matching tattoos.
Mine either.
I am very anti-matching tattoo.
That brings up a good point though because the next type of envy we have is visibility
envy.
Visibility envy is how visible your partners are to your friends and your family and social
media and on your body.
If you're into tattoos, when do they get that tattoo?
In the old days, we used to call it becoming Facebook official.
Well, can you be Facebook official with all of your partners and have them be visible
to your friends and family?
If I am your main nesting partner and all of a sudden you're adding your girlfriend
to all of your social medias, people are going to come to me and they're going to say, "Hey,
did you guys get divorced?
Did you break up?"
Something like that because there's still this area of not understanding polyamory and
there's questions will come up.
Being careful with those escalations and the visibility to your friends and family can
be very real.
If you're told you cannot come to grandma's Christmas dinner or brunch or whatever it
is and you're the other partner that's not a nesting partner, that's really hard to hear.
You're going to have visibility envy because that long-term partner is getting all of that.
Then you're going to start to say, "Oh, is this couple's privilege?
Am I going to have to ingest this injustice to myself because that person gets to be out
with all the friends and is fully integrated into the life and I'm just here in the background?"
It is couple's privilege.
It's really, really tough.
I think there's different levels of it too.
If you are a person that's very private and not used to being loud and proud and out there,
but your new partner is more public, then it might come up earlier for you and you might
not see the value in it.
Really hearing your partner out if that's something that's important to them, but it's
not important to you, finding that middle ground.
Another group of people that I did not include in this list and I should have is visibility
envy with children.
So if you've had a partner for a year and they've never met your kids and they're dying
to, maybe they want to be the fun uncle, maybe they want to be the fun aunt, maybe they want
to be involved and you're holding them at arm's length because you're not ready to have
that conversation with your children.
That can generate a lot of visibility envy.
Having that person become part of your circle isn't just limited to your friends and family.
It can be limited to your coworkers.
It can be limited to granny at the book sale.
It can be anybody.
It's so many different levels.
Visibility envy is not something that you as the polyamorous person trying to navigate
is going to notice first.
It is probably going to be your partner that has just come up to you and say, "Hey, I'm
not feeling very visible in your life.
I feel like you're ashamed of me.
Can we work on a way for me to feel more like a valued partner and less like a page in your
book?"
And both times that that's come to my life, that's how it's come to my life is that I'm
not feeling seen or heard.
I really like what you had to say about the children aspect because that is an aspect
of our relationships that we both have children and where polyamory fits in that for us is
very different.
Your approach to that is further down the line than mine is right now with my partners.
That said, there was just a really adorable kind of poly moment that I don't think my
youngest knew was a poly moment for me, but was knows that I have more than one partner,
knows who they are, knows their names, and knows, and obviously, the one lives here,
so knows that, but asked to meet my other partner.
And like, wow, like it wasn't anything that was on my immediate to-do list.
It was something that I wanted to work towards and build that understanding with that person
because both my partners are amazing people.
Both of them are wonderful with children and wonderful, just wonderful people in general.
There's no reason why he can't meet them or know them or have them involved in some
way in his life, but that he asked for that was a big deal for me.
That was like the best gift that I could have asked for.
It accelerated a timeline for me, which I think is cool.
Yeah.
I have one partner that's very enmeshed in my children's lives that is not their parent,
but then I also had another partner that had children of their own and neither of us enmeshed
our families at all.
Even though we had over a year long relationship, I did not feel any visibility envy that I
was not known to their children and they never expressed anything to me in return.
But I often think about what if that had come up?
What if they were like, "Well, I want to know, did you share me with your children?
Am I that important to you?"
And I think it comes back to that fear that you're not important enough to be visible
in someone's life.
We talk about jealousy and envy being the result of fear.
It's often a fear of not enough, a fear of lacking, a fear of not being visible, not
having enough time, not being fair even.
A lot of times jealousy is about, "Is it fair?
I don't feel like you're being fair."
So that I think comes up even more in visibility envy than some of these other ones that we
talked about.
And we could talk about the types of envy and envy stories forever because this is just
something that happens a whole lot.
I think we want to know a little bit more about your jealousy or envy story because
I think talking about it, getting it out there helps us to visualize it, see it, talk about
it and deal with it.
So drop us a note in social media, right?
Follow us on whatever your favorite social media is or whatever social media is allowed
in your country anymore.
And drop us a note about that and let us know, you know, tell us a little bit about your
jealousy story.
And then not only that, but how do you deal with it or how did you deal with it at the
time?
How does it get dealt with now?
What's your success story around that too?
Because that's also something that's really important because both Kat and I have talked
about our jealousy stories, but we have also resolved those.
As always, this is meant to be a conversation where we're sharing and exchanging information.
This isn't just us, you know, knowledge dumping on all of you.
It's you guys sharing with us and making us better as well.
For our second segment, we are going to talk about what causes jealousy and how do you
recognize it as it comes up.
So we mentioned a couple of these root causes already.
Insecurity, right?
If you have a partner that has a new partner that is everything you aspire to be, I will
use a fictional person.
If Joe has a partner named Jenna and Jenna is, you know, an average looking woman and
she's really happy about this relationship, but then Joe starts dating Jill and Jill looks
like a model that just walked off the catwalk, right?
You're going to feel insecure about that.
It's going to highlight some of the insecurities that you have and that can cause some jealousy
and some envy.
Other root causes can be trust of your meta.
How did those relationships start?
Did they start in a good place or did they start in a place of your partner cheated on
you and then poly-bombed and now you're trying to navigate that?
That's one of them as well.
Fear of inadequacy.
Am I not good enough?
And that's why you need these other partners, right?
That's real.
People feel that.
Social conditioning.
Are you just social conditioned that this is not okay?
It's not okay that your male partner has female friends.
You know, is that voice in your head that is society norms just really loud and it's
making you feel some type of way that you might not feel if you didn't have that.
Fear.
We mentioned it before.
Very real.
Fear of lacking.
Fear of being not enough.
Fear of all of this stuff.
Fear of anything at all.
Fear of change.
Maybe you're just fearing the escalation that's happening over there not because you want
that escalation, because you fear the change that it's going to bring to your relationship.
And then another big root cause that we've brought up before is restricted resources,
right?
There's only so much of you to go around.
Love may be infinite, but the time slots on our Google calendar are not.
So I don't have enough time.
I don't have enough money.
We talk about doing some of these things and you might be like, "Well, I don't have all
that kind of money."
Look, guys, I grew up poor.
I'm not going to say I didn't.
I did not grow up with a lot of money.
So money being part of it too.
Do I have enough resources to have a special date night with both of my partners?
And do I have enough resources to make individual time for them?
All of that can be roost causes of envy and jealousy.
That's right.
So with attention to how and when jealousy shows up or envy shows up in your life, it's
an important aspect in starting to solve jealousy or being better about jealousy and envy in
your life.
When does it occur?
Does it occur around the same types of things?
Does it occur around resources?
You are always spending time with this person or we're not spending enough time here.
Is that one aspect?
Is it resources?
You're always going away for a weekend with this partner or that partner, but not me.
And how do you justify these things, especially where time and resources often get intermingled?
I can imagine a world where it's easy if you have a nesting partner for you to go away
for a weekend with your other partner as a way to make up for time.
But that has a resource aspect to it that might incur some envy.
And certainly attention is one aspect of that as well.
Are you giving more or different styles of attention to one partner over another partner
that they can't agree to?
It might very well be an agreement.
As Kat said, she had a third relationship that didn't include this aspect of attention
of a child rearing entanglement.
If that's an agreement that you've made, that's fine.
But if it's not, what if that person said that all the attention is on your other partners
and not on me?
And what do I do?
When we can first recognize these things and start to see the pattern of them, that's when
we can start to shift our perspective, start to really look at it from the angle of it's
not about me as a moral failing as a person or them as a moral failing as my partner,
but rather there's some need that's not being met and this is how it's manifesting.
Now let's talk about how we can solve that problem.
Yeah.
And what happens when you don't address it, right?
So the obvious answer is you break up, your relationships fall apart, all that kind of
stuff.
It's almost worse if that doesn't happen because a lot of times people will internalize jealousy.
They'll not address it.
They'll just ignore it.
They'll just hit the ignore button.
And what that does is it leads to resentment within yourself and it just builds, right?
You're just building and building and building because you're not naming it.
You're not talking about it.
You're not learning from it.
You're just letting it build up and build up and build up.
And eventually it will explode and lead to destructive behavior.
It can lead to petty behavior between partners.
So if you're experiencing envy over another partner, you might start to try to erode your
partner's feelings about them from the inside.
Start saying some petty things, start trying to take down those other relationships, which
can cause a strain not only in their relationship with that other partner, but their relationship
with you as well because they're like, Oh, you're being really manipulative and they
might not realize it on the surface, but it just kind of builds until you deal with it
in a healthy way.
Jealousy is not one of those emotions that if you leave it alone, it goes away.
People think that if you leave jealousy alone, it's just going to disappear and eventually
evaporate.
Or if you remove some of the components of it, that it's going to go away.
But often it's if you're not addressing the root causes of it and addressing those root
causes, it might manifest itself in a different way.
So if you're jealous of something, um, and magically it goes away, you might find that
jealousy manifesting somewhere else.
One other aspect of when does it occur?
How does this, how, what causes it?
When, how do you recognize it?
Kat and I are talking about jealousy as we experience it as Kat and I are both hinge
partners was we experience it, but our partners also can experience jealousy and envy towards
each other.
That's independent of us, might intersect with us, but they might feel this person is
X, Y, Z, or this person is, you know, this person is doing something I don't like, or
there's something about the way that they spoke to you the other night that didn't sit
well with me.
These sorts of jealousies and envies also occur.
What we're talking about through this whole episode is not how do you deal with it with
other partners?
How do you deal with jealousies and envies within yourself?
Because they occur in lots of different ways.
It's not about how do I manage my partners?
It's how do I manage myself and how do I break that cycle of jealousy and be, because
it does happen as Kat said early in the episode, at different times and in different ways in
very unexpectedly so.
I'd be curious to send us a message on your social medias, have a conversation with us.
What patterns do you see in your own jealousy and what could you do to start making that
better?
That's where I spend a lot of my time when I, when I'm sitting with my feels, because
again, feeling jealousy, feeling envy is a normal human feeling.
Just because you feel bad doesn't mean something has gone wrong or something is bad.
It just means that you're having a bad feeling and that could be appropriate and normal and
a signal for you to work through it.
So I spend a lot of time like, why do I feel this way?
How is this manifesting?
Are there patterns here and what can I do to start to get over it?
Definitely.
So that's really what we're going to go into next.
How do you break away from jealous and envious feeling?
We mentioned it's so tempting to hit the snooze button on it, right?
To not deal with it.
It's uncomfortable.
Growth is uncomfortable.
We'll stop.
When you start to feel things that are unpleasant, our natural reaction as a human is to kind
of hide from it, to pretend like it doesn't exist and to try to avoid it because we are
busy.
We have lives, we have responsibilities.
There's a million things going on.
Who wants to sit down and have a conversation with yourself about jealousy?
You probably don't.
It's probably not top of your mind, but it is really important to do this because the
consequences can be so dire to both your relationships with your partners, your relationship with
yourself and your relationship with everybody as a result of that.
So we have got 10 steps here to kind of digest some of these and don't be overwhelmed by
there being 10 steps.
You might not need all of these and you might not have all of them be applicable, but the
first step is self-reflection.
Name it.
Name your jealousy.
Go back to that list.
Say, "I am feeling jealous of my partner and their escalation.
I am feeling jealous that my partner is visible."
I have a phrase that I use.
You can fill in the blanks.
"I am feeling jealous of blank because I am afraid of blank.
I will do blank to help myself and ask for blank from my partner."
So there's four components to that.
Naming your jealousy.
"I am feeling jealous of my partner going away for the weekend without me.
I am afraid that they will enjoy that experience so much and not have a similar enjoyable experience
with me or they will have more fun without me than they have with me.
I will find a hobby to do to help myself in the meantime that is something I enjoy so
that I can have a good time as well.
And I will ask for reassurances from my partner that we can do a similar activity together
in the future."
That is me naming my jealousy, naming what the source of my jealousy is, what I'm going
to do about it, and then I'm going to ask for some reassurances from my partner so that
we can work together on that.
That is a really good self-reflective framing.
Absolutely.
And when we talk about what you're going to ask for from your partner, we're not talking
about restriction.
We're not talking about a limitation, right?
That's very mononormative type thinking of, "I'm going to ask for my partner to never
do that again."
That is what damages other polyamorous relationships.
Rather, we want to have some open communication.
So the second aspect here is this open communication with our partner.
We're sharing our feelings with our partner without blaming them.
One of the methods that I really like using is from the multi-amory folks, and they cite
their relationship check-ins, and they start relationship check-ins with kind of a self-check.
So when we're communicating openly, we want to start, just as Kat said, with ourselves
first.
We're not trying to have past blame here.
We're not trying to hurt our other partner.
We're trying to come at it from an open perspective, and they use this HALT method, which is where
I usually start.
So HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, although in the relationship check-in
it says tired/drunk.
And I like that as a self-reflection.
Am I about to have this time with my partner to communicate openly when I don't have space
to do this or the spoons to do this myself?
Communicate from a place of observation.
This is what happened.
This weekend, you had some time away with your other partner.
I experienced this.
I felt this way, and I did these things.
I would like to find a better way to do this, and these are some of my ideas.
And start just to keep on that theme of going away for a weekend.
But it could be anything.
It could be you and I were watching The Bear together, and I noticed that your account
was several episodes ahead.
And I caught up with that, and I would like some reassurances that we can continue to
have this time together.
I know it was released a while ago.
I'm deep in Star Trek rewatch land these days.
The other aspect that I really like in handling jealousies and envies is being proactive about
reassurances.
This is something that I really enjoy employing with my partners.
One, because I think reassurances are terrific.
I think being able to be declarative about your affection, your love, your dedication,
your interest, your emotional high with that person all of the time, I think is also really
beneficial.
I think that's part of what I love most about polyamory is that I can share those feelings.
And so building in reassurances around those jealousies that you've identified.
Do you need to have some sort of an activity?
Maybe you play a board game before that activity goes just to reassure that partner.
Maybe you sit on the couch and just cuddle and watch a show together and have that physical
connection time.
What are some of the ways that you behave here?
Have you noticed in your activities that you tend to get a little bit shitty maybe as you're
leaving because you're rushed and you're just having a long day and everything's behind
and every time you run out to see your other partner, you're rushing out the door and that
can feel really shitty?
Yeah, there's a lot of ways you can add reassurances in, and they'll come out during that open
communication cycle.
So if your partner is going away for the weekend, maybe you want a reassurance from
them and have them agree, "Hey, can you text me before you go to bed to say I love you,
to say goodnight, to give me that touch point so I still feel connected to you."
If they're going to go do an activity, you can say, "Hey, I would like a reassurance
that we can revisit this activity at a later time together.
I would love to do this with you.
I'm not going to stop you from doing it because you don't want to place rules on people, but
I would like to make a plan to do this with you in the future."
So don't just say words, make that strategic action plan.
Now I'm talking like I'm in business mode.
Make that plan.
Like, "Okay, you're going to go on this date with this person to this restaurant.
I would like reassurances that when you get back, we are going to go on this walk together.
We're going to reconnect."
This is really, really important for when you escalate some of those relationships to
sexual encounters.
Oftentimes you will hear this come up as, "I know you're going out on an intimate date
with your significant other.
Can we have cuddle time when you get back?"
Or "Can you assure me that you're going to be safe and that you're going to go through
our steps that we agreed upon and that we're going to have time to reconnect afterwards?
Can you dedicate 30 minutes to me when you get back so that I feel like we are connected?"
There are a lot of different ways you can add reassurances into this and communicate
them with their partner.
The biggest part of that is that you agree that they're both reasonable and not overbearing.
Don't get caught in the rule trap here.
Right.
One of the things I do as a personal practice that I really enjoy doing is really validating
about why am I in this relationship with you?
What are some of those feelings that I have?
I love you because these reasons or sharing some memory of our relationship from the past.
This is how we met.
These are the things that you've helped me do in my life and building in those reassurances
because again, jealousy and envies come from a place of fear, a comfortable place of insecurity,
and I want to be very proactive because I also know that when I'm in the fields of it,
I'm like, "This person hates me.
There's something missing."
Sometimes the world is falling apart.
I do have something really adorable that me and my husband do for each other.
Early in our poly relationship, I found this to be super valuable, but I would write him
long text messages, basically like mini love letters.
He does the same to me in email form.
Every once in a while when we're feeling disconnected, I will get a long email from him where we
talk about why we love each other, all the positive points that we share with each other.
Oftentimes I can ask for that too.
If I'm feeling disconnected from him, even though he is monogamous, but if I'm feeling
disconnected, I can say, "Hey, would you mind writing me a little love letter?
I love when they're spontaneous, but I don't feel bad asking for it.
If I feel like I need that, I'll ask for it," which I think leads into our next point.
Number four is taking note of your own personal insecurities.
We all have them.
If you're sitting here being like, "I don't have any insecurities."
Great, you're lying.
Thank you.
We all have those personal insecurities.
Going back to my own jealousy story with my partner, I realized that a lot of the fear
that I was experiencing was the fear that he was going to be more interested in someone
else besides me.
I'm not confident in my body.
I don't have a lot of good feelings about myself in that way.
I didn't always have a sense of self where I felt super valuable.
That's my insecurity.
I have to own that.
I don't feel secure in my body.
There's someone prettier out there.
There's someone funnier out there.
There's someone more interesting out there.
I have to address that I feel that way, but my partner does not.
If my jealousy is they're going to find someone better, that's my insecurity to own.
That's not them to prove to me that I have nothing to worry about because they can't
do that.
Your inner voice is so, so loud.
So loud.
I have to have that talk with myself.
Am I letting my insecurities create this jealousy where my partner's behaviors and actions
and thoughts and words are really proving them wrong?
They're proving to me that they love me.
We are together.
We are both valued in this relationship, but I can't let my personal insecurities sabotage
my relationship by generating more jealousy.
I think it comes down to internal and external locus of control.
I feel confident because I feel confident.
If you're using your relationships as a blanket of security for you, that's probably a good
sign that maybe going back and reading something like Polysecure would be really helpful or
dealing with that in therapy.
And I think the next part of this kind of framework is making sure you are taking steps
to build your internal self-esteem.
A lot of us tie our identities to who we are with.
You'll hear people that are serial daters or people that never seem to be single and
they've never been single for more than a hot minute.
I have lots of friends that are like this.
And we tie our self-worth to other people and we tie our self-esteem to, "Well, I must
not be that bad because this person will put up with me or this person will date me or
this person will marry me."
But developing that strong self can help combat jealousy because when you are proud of yourself,
when you have self-esteem, you're less likely to feel jealous envy of other people.
You're more likely to work through it because you can lean back into your strong self-esteem
and independent selfless sense of self.
So working on that would be really, really great to just take some steps to build those
self-esteems.
And as cheesy as it is, go pick up some books from like, you know, some second graders or
some third graders, health and wellness class when you're in like elementary school.
They talk a lot about self-esteem and how to build that sense of self.
So if you haven't revisited your self-esteem structure, maybe take a minute to back out
and build your self-esteem for yourself to address some of those internal insecurities
and how they're bringing jealousy into your relationship.
It doesn't just have to be go to the library.
Absolutely take advantage of things like your employee assistance program that work.
And maybe you just need a quick shore up.
You need three or four appointments with a good therapist to find some self-esteem.
And while we're talking about insecurities and in building self-esteem in your relationships,
by the way, this will help you in the rest of your life, in your relationship with family,
friends and your colleagues.
So use EAP, find your health insurance, make a phone call, get into therapy.
It's absolutely okay to do that.
And if your self-esteem is such that things are getting a little bit self-destructive,
reach out to things like 211, which is a United Way outreach program, which can help match
you to some of the things that you might need, including counseling in your area.
So there's lots of ways that you can build this and especially when things are starting
to get a little bit out of control because maybe you've hit pause on it for just a little
bit too long in your life.
Yeah.
Too many uses of the snooze button can really let this build up and take it some more that
you don't want it to be.
Obviously, we're talking about jealousy here, but it can manifest in a lot of different
ways.
One of the things that I kind of like about, I don't want to say I like about working through
jealousy and envy, but one of the perspectives that I've gained over the time is recognizing
that when these feelings come up, these issues of jealousy, especially if it's not something
that's ever come up in the past and it's just like, we've done this before.
Why is it a problem now?
Is because it might be the time for there to be growth in connection, a different connection
in your relationships that you're having.
So just reframing your mindset rather than this is the end of the world, this is the
worst thing that's ever happened.
We're going to fight about this.
Maybe frame it as, "Hey, I think that we're starting to feel these pangs of jealousy and
envy in our hearts because this is a time in our relationship where we're ready for
some sort of a transition or we're ready to have this weekend away with each other, or
we're ready to watch Star Trek together."
I don't want to like code a message here, so I'll just be really clear.
If my partners were like, "Let's watch Star Trek together," I would fall over.
I wouldn't know what to do.
So if you're feeling jealous that I watch Star Trek, we're in.
You can solve this today.
I love that.
I love that.
I don't watch a lot of TV, but I always want to find that partner that's like, "Let's
watch this show.
I'm really excited about it," to kind of convince me to get into TV.
But I'm sorry, I'm not a Star Trek person.
That's okay.
We don't have to watch Star Trek together.
But I would watch Star Trek with you.
I would watch Star Trek with anybody.
I would if you made me.
But I think that the idea of reframing the jealousy as an opportunity, as a signal that
your relationship is ready for some sort of transition, is a really helpful and healthy
way to look at jealousy.
Again, it doesn't matter if it's polyamory.
It could be at work too.
Maybe it's time for you to ask for that raise or ask for that promotion.
Yeah.
And it's so hard to do.
I just want to call out how difficult it is to try to reframe jealousy while you're in
the jealousy.
Let's call a spade a spade here.
When you are feeling jealous, the last thing you want to do is poke at it.
But if you can force yourself to look through it and look beyond, using that frame, "I'm
feeling jealous.
Okay, great.
We named it that we're feeling jealous.
We're not going to feel bad about it.
But why?
Why am I feeling jealous?"
Really looking beyond that is an opportunity for growth.
I'm not saying I love feeling jealous, but it does bring to light issues that I would
not otherwise look at.
It brings you a problem you can't ignore.
And the squeaky wheel does get the grease, if you've ever heard that old term.
You need sometimes to force your hand to deal with some of these things.
And jealousy can be that force.
It can make you deal with things that could down the line be damaging to your relationship
and your sense of self if you did not deal with them.
So really try to push through that discomfort and deal with that jealousy head on and name
it.
Use your words.
Talk out loud.
Journal it out.
Whatever you got to do to get through it.
And really working through it, it's hard to see it as a gift, but sometimes it is.
It really is.
And making sure too that your whole polycule knows this technique of like jealousy is a
potential opportunity here to grow together helps because you're exactly right.
When you're in that pain point, you don't see it.
Your amygdala has hijacked your brain and everything has gone to survival mode on you.
So having your partner be able to say, "Hey, I understand this feeling.
This sucks.
Validate your feelings.
And I think that what we're really saying here is we're ready to have this together.
And I'm pumped about that.
And I'm pumped about that experience."
That's why you're in a polycule together too, right?
So that you can support one another.
And ask them, "Hey, when I'm feeling this way, can we work on the reframing?"
Yeah, for sure.
And the next step is, again, optional.
We're talking about compersion.
A lot of times when you're feeling jealous, it is hard to get to that place where you
feel joy from someone else.
But assuming you love your partner, right?
You're with this partner for a reason.
You enjoy the experiences you have together.
You like them.
You love them.
You enjoy their company, whatever it is.
At the base level, everyone deserves to be happy.
And if you're any type of a good person, you probably want happiness for other people,
right?
We're not going around wishing misery on everyone around us.
At least I try not to, because I try to not live that kind of life.
But try to cultivate a sense of joy.
I'm glad my partner is having this experience.
I know they're going to have a great time.
I know they're going to get something out of it.
And they're going to be happier.
And they're going to maybe bring some of that joy back to me.
Not to make it about yourself, but find a little bit of that selfishness.
Find joy in what they're experiencing.
Especially the way you would feel joy if your sister won an award, or your mom got a promotion,
or something good happened to a friend or a family member.
Think of your partner like a friend, like a family member.
And feel a little bit of joy at their successes, or at their triumphs, or at their good experiences.
You can try to find those little nuggets of it to unwind some of that jealousy, even if
you are feeling jealous about it.
You can have that emotion at the same time, like, "Man, I really wish I was on that trip
with my partner, but I'm glad that they're finally going to get to see that forest, that
city, that restaurant, that whatever.
I'm glad they're going to get to experience that, even though I am a little bit jealous
that they're doing it without me."
That's right.
And I have actually had, in the past, one of my very long relationships, that person
say to me, "I don't want to see you be happy."
And that's a red flag.
Let's call that what it is.
That is a red flag.
Sure.
If somebody doesn't want you to be happy, that's probably not somebody you should be
spending time and energy and effort on.
That's not really...
And I'm not.
Comparison is an optional experience.
It's not at all the opposite of jealousy, but being able to be happy for someone because
they're having something is cool.
And I think you're right.
It's also good to know that in poly, we can...
Things come back, right?
It's leftovers, right?
I really wanted to go to that restaurant with that person, and it turns out they brought
me my favorite dish.
Or we can still do those things.
I have a partner who started reading a book with one of her other partners and came to
me and was like, "Hey, I would really like to share this experience with you because
it's a lot of fun."
I wasn't jealous of that.
That's great.
I'll read a book.
I'm totally excited about that opportunity, right?
And being able to be happy for your partner because they're having those experiences.
Even going back to my early example of the camping experience, yeah, I felt pangs of
jealousy there.
I was also...
Part of the conflicting feeling was that I felt shitty because I was jealous of it, but
at the same time, happy that she got to do something that she wanted to do.
Yeah.
There's always the good and the bad.
There's good and the bad in every situation, whether you're feeling jealous or not jealous.
But again, it's okay.
It's part of the experience.
It's part of the experience of being human.
You can feel joy and sadness at the same time.
If you've ever laughed, cried, you know that.
It can contain multitudes.
Yeah.
We're people.
Just remember that.
We're people.
We're imperfect, and we're going to do what we're going to do.
Here's our final little tidbit of ways to manage this.
Three hot tips on how to do it.
We've talked about so many of these already.
Set boundaries and agreements that work for everyone involved.
So if you and your partner both agree that you're going to have a special restaurant
and only you're going to go there, set that boundary, set that agreement together.
And if the other partner brings up an issue with it, maybe you take a look at it and see
if you can reconfigure it.
Make them reasonable.
Make them flexible.
Yes, boundaries are existing for a reason.
That doesn't mean that they can't be revisited.
I always say this when people talk about boundaries.
They're like, "We have a boundary."
I'm like, "Well, when did you make that boundary?"
"Three years ago."
Nothing has changed in three years.
Okay, great.
Maybe you take another look at that boundary.
So set boundaries that make sense for the now.
Set an interval of when you're going to go back and look at them again, or just be aware
that maybe in the future it might change a little bit.
But don't disregard those boundaries without talking to your partner first.
I think that's probably the biggest one.
The other one is time management.
For the love of God, have a shared calendar, work with something.
Find a way to create a fair and equitable schedule for both resourcing and time allocation
because the last thing you need to have is two people fighting or waking up one day and
realize you haven't seen your partner in two months.
You've been talking and they might not even say that to you.
They might not be like, "Oh my God, I haven't seen you in two months," but I bet they're
feeling it.
So before it even becomes an issue, set boundaries from the get-go.
Be like, "Yeah, I'm going to give you every other Thursday.
I'm going to give you every other Tuesday."
Obviously, life happens.
Be flexible as you can, but try to set some time management schedules in place to eliminate
some of those types of envy that come up with that.
I think another big part of this, and we've talked about this throughout this whole thing,
is being able to acknowledge and validate your partner's feelings.
Be able to do that for yourself, but absolutely when it's brought to you, be able to acknowledge
and validate those feelings of envy without judging them as lesser than, or they shouldn't
be feeling this way because they're polyamorous, or they shouldn't be feeling this way because
they're an adult, or they shouldn't be feeling this way because this has happened
before and what the hell has changed now.
None of those judgments help that situation resolve.
In fact, it entrenches those feelings of jealousy and distrust and envy and hurt and anger towards
you, towards themselves, towards your other partners.
It really is problematic.
Being able to acknowledge and say, "Yeah, I can absolutely see that and understand that's
how that felt, and that's a shitty and sucky feeling that you shouldn't have had to experience,
and we can't go back in time.
I want to make sure that we don't have to do that again."
Not only validating their feeling, but also validating that they don't want to feel
that way again and maybe not be able to say that because that is also part of the fear.
Yeah.
There's nothing worse than your partner coming up to you.
There's nothing worse than going up to somebody and saying, "Hey, I'm feeling
jealous.
Can we talk about some reassurances?"
Only to have them turn around and say, "That's stupid.
Why are you feeling jealous?
There's nothing to be worried about.
There's nothing to be jealous about.
What's wrong with you?"
"Don't you know I love you?"
"Yeah, don't you know I love you?
Why are you making this a big deal?"
All of those invalidating statements hurt so much more when you're taking the time
to be vulnerable and naming your jealousy.
It takes a lot to come up to somebody and say, "Hey, I'm feeling jealous."
That's hard to say.
To be met on the other side of that with judgment, even if your immediate reaction is, "Oh my
God, this is so stupid," hold back on that.
Hold back on that just to listen and to try to understand.
Really, the next best question is, "How can I offer you reassurance for your jealousy?"
"Is there something I can do to help you move through this?"
And then have that conversation.
I think that is a great way of coping with this, no matter what the nature of the relationship
is, your friends, your family, and your romantic partners.
Absolutely.
And honestly, friends, jealousy happens.
This is absolutely the number one question that I get from people who are not polyamorous
who find out that I am.
How do you manage your jealousies?
I'm super insecure.
I'm super jealous.
I could never deal with these things.
A lot of this is that jealousy and envy happens, and sometimes it happens unpredictably.
Something that was okay once upon a time, this time is not, and next time maybe.
And so being able to have coping mechanisms and skills to deal with jealousy within yourself,
which is the first step that you should be taking, is, "Why am I feeling this way?
This cat gave us that self-reflection and getting that jealousy and envy out and naming
it."
But also dealing with it and moving through it, whether that's on your own or with therapy
help or with help from your partners, but also being able to help your partner by making
sure that you're communicating openly and honestly and caringly for them to understand
that jealousy is a sucky feeling that you too will feel if you haven't.
You're probably lying to yourself about that, so be a little bit emotionally honest about
your feelings, absolutely understand that those reassurances happen, and work all the
time to find the balance of time within the agreements of your relationship, whether you're
in a hierarchical relationship or egalitarian or if you're in anarchy.
Being able to honor the requests and progression of the relationships that you have in your
life is important, and being able to make sure that your partner knows that you care
about them, they know that you love them, that you want to do and experience things
with them is important.
And there's just a lot of tools that we've shared throughout this episode, which I think
will be really helpful.
Hopefully you took notes.
And if you didn't, you can also go back and re-listen and take notes too.
Share it with your partners if your partners are struggling with jealousy or even if you
suspect that they're struggling with jealousy.
It's always good to share points so that you guys are on the same page with communication.
It's great to learn how to communicate, but you have to communicate with someone.
So if you're not on the same page and you're not on the same level, it can be hard to have
those communications and to have those conversations.
Thank you so much for joining us.
This is always a hot topic.
Jealousy, envy, they come up.
They're unavoidable no matter who you are.
So I'm glad we took the time today to unpack it.
Coming up in our next episode, we are doing an episode on polypills.
So as Doc and I have mentioned many times, we are not partnered with each other.
We are just poly friends.
So is it possible to build a village and to find community within the poly space when
everyone assumes you just want to boink everyone?
Do your friends hear, "Oh, I'm poly," and take that as an opportunity to hit on you?
Do your friends hear, "I'm poly," and all of a sudden they think you're out to get their
husband?
How does this manifest itself in all of your social circles when you start to talk about
poly with your friends and how do those friendships turn into other things?
I have some hot takes on this because I'm a demisexual, so we're going to be friends
first.
But can't wait to see you next time.
Thank you for tuning in.
And of course, please subscribe on all of your channels, whether that is Spotify, YouTube,
Instagram.
We would love to hear from you and we would love to hear a little bit about your struggles
and triumphs with jealousy as well.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening.
If you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing and follow us at Poly Pathways Podcast on
all the social medias that you enjoy.
