When Partners Double the Struggle (Patreon)

Hi cutie,

In today's audio resource, I'll explore the question of, "what if multiple partners share personality traits that stress us out?" Relationships aren't always supplementary; sometimes the struggle gets duplicated. In those cases, what are our options?

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TRANSCRIPTION

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Good morning cutie. I hope you’re having a lovely weekend today. I'm opting for an audio resource because it’s going to be a bit more open and less scripted, a bit more free form. Essentially, my thoughts and feelings on this topic are evolving and not solidified yet, but I would love for it to be a dialogue of sorts. I’d love to know your opinions and reactions. You can leave them in the comments on the Patreon post or direct message me or email me.

So I was asked this week, “what do we do essentially when two or more partners have the same traits that might be setting off a reaction in us?” (when partners are “doubling the struggle” so to speak). First, I sat with this and was thinking about how it’s the flipside, the inverse, of the idea that multiple relationships should be supplementary. A lot of times, shifting out of monogamy, it can be more palatable or seen as even more socially permissible to say, “in this monogamous relationship I can’t get something. They are not able to offer me the emotional support I want or they don’t want the sex that I want”, fill in the blank.

I do see the acknowledgment of something that a dynamic can’t give you as a valid entryway into exploring non-monogamy. But I don’t think it’s great to stay in that mindset because I think it’s an extension of the idea that one partner should be our everything. But now 2 partners should be our everything or 3 partners. And it can almost treat dating like a shopping list. It can cause us to look for a compartmentalized dynamic. It’s not always so cold or explicit, but I think it can sneak in. Like, “I’m looking for this kind of sex. OK great, you offer me this kind of sex.” It can close our minds and our eyes to what could be possible, including duplicates of nice experiences.

When we are viewing relationships in this way, I think it’s still rooted in a mononormative, zero sum game idea. I think it can encourage competition between metamours if they offer you similar experiences, or if they have similar traits, as if they can’t coexist in your life. But absolutely they can. It is, I think, counter to the idea of abundance. — Not that I’m above that. Not that I haven’t definitely done that, and can easily fall back into the trap of dating like a monogamous person with a checklist of things that I would like to prioritize. I think it’s just a matter of keeping in check the idea that a relationship must be limited to a supplementary experience that we are hoping to get.

So, going to this idea of the inverse, when you have multiple partners with personality traits that trigger you. Or, they both have the same bad habit that you wish your partner didn’t do, and now you’ve got two people doing it. I think it can kind of open up this bigger question of, “what do romantic partners owe us?”

For example, I am an anxious person. That tends to be how I relate to romantic connections. I am often drawn to people who are more avoidant. And that can be really frustrating if there are several people who are not able to offer me the reassurance that I seek when I am feeling anxiety. However, I think it’s fair in those times to set boundaries around what we build with those people. So maybe, I would never really want to cohabitate with or build a business with or raise a child with a partner who has that trait. I see that there’s no impetus for romantic love to fit any particular trajectory. So if the only way I feel secure with a chronically avoidant person is to keep them in a less integrated position in my life, then maybe all of those people stay less integrated for now.

If time management is something that everybody struggles with, maybe I only make plans with those people that can allow for flexibility and lenience in time. It’s, in essence, saying I accept these romantic partners as they are, and I will integrate them into my life to the extent that I feel is sustainable.

To that end, if there is dissatisfaction and we do have a priority right now that we want to build a specific kind of relationship… If all of the people we are seeing aren’t suited for that role or those roles, maybe we negotiate deprioritizing time with them so that we can keep meeting other people, and keep looking for the person who might fill that role, or the people who might fill those roles. I definitely encourage negotiating that proactively. Don’t just dial back how much you’re seeing them and not tell them what’s in your mind, you know?

As well, if they protest the idea that they might not fill that role, then that could be an opportunity to negotiate a different way of relating to each other with different terms. Or do some trial and error. That is different than demanding a partner change. If they want to be with us in a different way, we invite them to evolve with us. That’s their choice, if that is a priority. I did that with the partner that I currently live with. He was terrible with time management for a lot of years and I really struggled with waiting and waiting and waiting for him to arrive [to dates]. And finally it came to a head, where I just felt completely not safe. I said “OK well, I’m not trying to change you, I ain’t your mama. But if this is how it’s going to be, I would like to just see you less, and I might want to not need as much from you. Because then I’m not resenting you for something that you aren’t giving me, if I just try to not need that thing from you anymore.”

And that was unacceptable to him. He felt very distraught that we weren’t spending as much time together anymore, and he started to make some changes. That was because he desired that. And then I started to feel more secure with him. I was like, “oh wow, I see you doing this differently.” It’s not that it has completely vanished from his personality, but I’ve gotten a lot more relaxed and he’s gotten a lot more focused on follow-through, and so we’ve met more in the middle. And it has found sustainability because that’s what we decided we wanted to do together. It wasn’t approached like an ultimatum, like “you have to behave differently,” because I don’t think I’m that powerful to demand a partner change in that way. You know, maybe somebody makes a change for a week or two, but if it’s not a desire within them, then I don’t really see that as being a long-term change.

So yeah, in times like these I also encourage people to look at their non-romantic relationships. We usually already have experience with several close friends who have similar personality traits. It’s very probable, because we know the type of people we get along with, that we find ourselves drawn to several of them,that a lot of our friends are similar. And that absolutely happens with romantic relationships. But it’s only ever with romantic relationships that we put this pressure to not accept a perceived shortcoming. — Abuse notwithstanding, of course. Abuse is always unacceptable. I don’t think we should find a way to tolerate or endure abuse.

But if it’s something like time management or avoidance or anxious attachment, if it’s something that seems to be an incompatibility in our relationship's current form, we can discuss finding a way that the relationship might be compatible. What do we want to keep, and what might need to be discarded, if nothing [in them] were to change?

So yeah, I suppose my point is that I don’t really see a whole lot of differentiation between how we treat incompatibilities in non-romantic love versus how we treat incompatibilities in romantic love. I don’t think because it’s a romantic connection that they owe us change, necessarily. But rather, we can change the terms of our relationship. And that can be a bit more peaceful, and help us see everything that they do offer us, and not focus as much on the lack.

Anyway, like I said, this was not scripted. I hope it is coherent. I found it to be a really compelling question that was asked this week, and I agreed to speak to it. I imagine that as I continue to sit with this topic that it will solidify more. But I would love to hear your experiences on any of the above, and I would love to know how it is that you navigate multiple stressors that are mirrored across multiple partners. I’m sending you so much love. I hope you have a beautiful week, and I’ll talk to you soon!

xx