Being Asked to Step Back
This episode welcomes a special guest, Mary Thuell, to answer a listener question about being asked to put her relationship on pause so her partner can work things out in their nested relationship. Mary and Libby share their thoughts and experiences with this situation.
Transcript
Mary:
That can be another difficulty with being the outside partner is feeling like every person is not being equally valued. The nested relationship ha probably has longer. History has more resources invested, you know, is the outside partner. You don't have very much leverage with that pin partner as opposed to the nester relationship, but you're still a human being that matters as much.
Libby:
I'm so excited to bring my friend Mary onto the show today for another listener question. Mary is my, who I've known for many years and I brought her into this episode because as you will find, as you listen to her speak, she is full of so much wisdom and thoughtfulness. And I have been very grateful to have her as a friend. And so I hope you will enjoy our conversation today.
Libby:
Mary, do you want to introduce yourself?
Mary:
I am a moderately public polyamorous person, myself having here in the Washington post state lab as a polyamorous person. So I'm excited to do this.
Libby:
A polyamorous Sunday school teacher at might ad. Yeah.
Mary:
Yes. That was the fun juxtaposition they decided to take
Libby:
Mary, is it okay if I link that date lab article and my absolutely. Okay, cool. Well, I'm so glad you're here. And so I'm gonna read this listener question and then we'll talk about it. Okay, great. So I have this listener, email me a while back and I have changed the message that she wrote. So it's not gonna be her message verbatim because there were a lot of personal details in there and I wanted this to be anonymous, but as we'll see, as I go through it, it's a pretty common thing that happens. So it, you know, I think it'll resonate with a lot of people in this story. There's a person named Jill that that's the listener she wrote to me. So Jill is married with kids and she is married to her wife and they have been polyamorous for about six years.
Libby:
A good friend of hers who will call gray, who is also polyamorous introduced Jill to his wife, Lucy who had only recently been dating outside the marriage. Although gray had been dating a little bit more. So maybe gray was a little bit more experienced. Gray was at first, very encouraging of Jill and Lucy to start dating. And then Lucy and Jill hit the NRA really hard and really fell for each other and got really serious due to various mishaps that were, weren't gone into detail in the email in part, because this is Lucy's first serious relationship outside of her nested relationship. Gray started feeling really threatened by Jill and by Jill and Lucy's relationship. And so he asked Lucy, his wife to back off of the relationship and put things on pause so that Lucy and gray could work on their and gray even threatened to leave if she didn't do that.
Libby:
So Lucy did agree to do that. And even though she doesn't wanna lose Jill, she just, she loves her husband and doesn't wanna break up her family. So due to gray, being so easily triggered by her relationship with Jill and now an ultimatum do this or else Lucy feels like she just has no choice, but to do what gray is asking of her, Lucy says to Jill that she feels forced and even manipulated by Gray's jealous behavior and continues to text Jill all the time saying how unfair this all feels to her, but that she doesn't see that she can do anything else. Jill wants to know what she should do. She's really frustrated by the whole situation. She's really angry with gray. She doesn't have nice things to say about gray right now. And of course gray is her friend too. She's also just really upset because Lucy's asked her to back off from the relationship gracefully and just kind of wait. And she's finding that really hard. She's really worried about Lucy and her relationship. She's worried that she's also allowing herself to be mistreated in this situation and is wondering if there's another course of action she should take that is what's going on. So we don't know anything about that kind of situation. Do we Mary?
Mary:
No, it doesn't sound familiar to me at all. I can't draw from personal experience whatsoever being the outside partner sort of feeling like I am placed in opposition to the nested Partner.
Libby:
Yeah. Well, and to be clear for people listening, that is how we're gonna describe these two different kinds of relationships instead of saying primary secondary, because I don't wanna of presume hierarchy. Although hierarchy definitely seems to be showing up in this situation. I would prefer to use the terms, nested partner outside partner, cuz I think that will be more clear to people. So when we're talking about Jill, we're talking about the outside partner, we're talking about Lucy and gray. We're gonna talk about the nested partners. Now I've been there too. It is A's situation for sure. What are some things that you have noticed and experienced about why this kind of situation is really hard?
Mary:
Well, I can certainly identify with the feeling of unfairness because in some ways the nested partner is ascribing really bad motives to Jill, to your listener here. Yeah. She's a threat to the relationship and gray is her friend too. I mean she likely wants the nested relationship to succeed just as much as they do and supports them. And I know in my case that feels particularly bad to feel as if I'm being framed as a bad actor.
Libby:
Yeah. Or even not necessarily a bad actor, but a draw away from the nested relationship. If Lucy's giving attention to Jill, then that means that there's less attention for gray or if Lucy and Jill are, are really crazy for each other, then that inherently is threatening or harmful to the relationship. I mean, I don't know that it's necessarily about Jill being a bad actor, but that the relationship is a threat is definitely real. For sure. I think that's zero sum thinking.
Mary:
Absolutely. And it negates any possibility that the outside relationship can actually support and strengthen the nested relationship in some ways.
Libby:
Yeah. Although, although also on the flip side, I think that a lot of times that's like sort of a selling point of polyamory is that the outside relationship can strengthen the nested relationship. And I, that, that then sends the resources in one direction, right. When I think it should be both ways, why doesn't the nested relationship strengthen the outside relationship too? That's a thing that I always look for is like, do you not see that it is in everybody's interest for this ecosystem to function and that it all benefit other.
Mary:
That can be another difficulty with being the outside partner is feeling like every person is not being equally valued. The nested relationship ha probably has longer history has more resources invested, you know, is the outside partner. You don't have very much leverage with that pin partner as opposed to the nester relationship, but you're still a human being that matters as much. So I actually really like your point that a holistic view of how can all of these relationships support each other is really a lot healthier.
Libby:
Yeah. Well, I love that you point out though the leverage thing, because I think that it's interesting to me because I think both the outside relationship and the nested relationship both have their own gravity because you know, the outside relationship is new and shiny and exciting and it can feel like this escape. It can feel like this thing that is just sucking all the air out of the room sometimes, you know, whereas the nested relationship is this thing that's been around for a long time and, and it's rooted. I mean, if they've got kids together, then it's rooted in routine and domesticity and obligation and probably has a bunch of very deep-set patterns that maybe are getting disrupted and jungled in all kinds of ways. And I've seen this before that the nested partnership can sometimes feel more fragile than the new shiny exciting thing when you're on the other side when you're on the other side of it.
Libby:
But when, of course you're the outside partnership, you feel very precarious. You feel very disposable. You feel very ungrounded because you don't have the domesticity. You don't have the longevity, you don't have the legal obligations. You don't and have the shared resources. Both of them have their gravity and, and it's a bummer again, I think it's a bummer that those things feel like threats on both sides and that in this case, it sounds like gray is literally weaponizing. It is basically saying, I'm gonna leave you. I'm gonna take the kids if you don't back off of this relationship and using that as leverage, I think it's such a losing strategy.
Mary:
Right. But you make the good point that we are unfortunately in the shoes of the outside partner, Jill. Yes. Who asked the question? And I think it's important to validate that sense of unfairness.
Libby:
Yeah.
Mary:
But to do your absolute best, not to let yourself drawn into the competitive framing.
Libby:
Yeah.
Mary:
That, it sounds like the nested partner is making, because again, given the leverage, you'll likely lose the competition anyway. And sometimes you might be reluctant to take the space because you're like, I don't want to reward what looks like bad behavior from the nested partner, or I don't want to lose, but the truth is that everybody's losing in this situation. Like there's, there's plenty of pain to go around. Yeah. So not let your choices be clouded by that, by like losing the competitive aspect.
Libby:
Yeah. And I think that can be a really tricky thing to be dealing with because I, I think that in this case, if it were me, I've been in this situation where I've been in a relationship with a nested partner and my metamour was very uncomfortable with the relationship and had a really hard time with it. And you know, again, from my end is feeling very ungrounded. You know, I felt very ungrounded and felt very kind of persecuted, I guess, but I felt that unfairness, you said, and I think you can get caught in a trap. It can be a trap as a trap to feel like a victim, because the thing that can happen when you feel like a victim is that then it can flip into feeling righteousness about it. And so then you can get caught in this right wrong righteousness. I'm a victim, I shouldn't be the one losing out right now, sort of mindset. Then that can kind of flip you over into that win, lose framework. If there should be a winner and a loser, it should be me cuz I'm not the one doing anything bad and wrong.
Mary:
Right. So I find the winner loser framing to be pretty, not helpful. And the other thing that I is, or what the only helpful course of action is to focus on the direct relationships. Right? And so in this case, Jill has a direct relationship, both with gray as a friend that's and with Lucy as the romantic partner. And I think it is probably in this case. So in a lot of these cases, you don't have that direct relationship with the meta, right. Mm-Hmm but in this case, I think it would probably be worth at least one conversation with gray, like, hi, we're friends, you know, like I'm a good person operating in good faith and I don't wanna threaten your marriage. I care about both you and Lucy. It might be worth trying to lower the temperature that way.
Libby:
Yeah.
Mary:
Uh at least once, but also something to remember is that you're direct relationship is with Lucy, the hinge partner and something that I realized after operating in a situation like this over a period of time is I had to recognize that the hinge partner, wasn't like an honest narrator all the time.
Mary:
Not necessarily through any purposeful manipulation, but it's easy to paint the metamour partner as the bad guy who's making me do this. As opposed to like taking a harder look at your own boundaries or where you're drawing those things or that you're just too scared, to be honest with the metamour partner, right. About what's going on and in some cases, you know, having the hinge partner disclose things to me about the metamour partner that probably the metamour partner, like never wanted me to hear or expected me to hear and was saying things in confidence and that doesn't help the situation at all.
Libby:
Yeah. So I mean, I guess one piece of, of advice there would be to the outside partner, if you are noticing, and this doesn't happen with all hinge partners, but it sounds a little bit like this is that Lucy is throwing gray under the bus a lot, you know, and you're right. I think that there are two things that are important that Jill do in this situation. The first one is to make, maybe treat with skepticism that Gray's the bad guy and it's all gray and that, that Lucy doesn't have any responsibility here. So I think the first thing is, you know, Jill should treat with some skepticism that Gray's the bad guy and that it's all gray. And like you said, treat Lucy, like maybe she's an unreliable narrator, but also that maybe Jill needs to set a boundry about the kinds of things that she's willing to hear from Lucy.
Libby:
Because if Lucy is just sort of using Jill as a place to about her marriage, that's not appropriate. That's a job of a therapist or maybe a really good friend, but I don't feel like that's appropriate to do that with Jill. And I feel like then you're sort of bringing to on your side of making Lucy, the victim, right? Lucy's the victim. Oh, poor woe is me. My partner won't let me do this. And my partner won't let me do that. And it's all their fault. And I'm so sorry, but there's nothing I can do. I said this in my episode about hinges, if that is something that's going on with you as a hinge, then you are not claiming your agency. You are not owning your own decisions. And I, if I were Jill would not allow that to stand. And I actually remember saying this to one of my partners.
Libby:
This was years and years ago, but I remember my partner and I, we had some plans together and we were really looking for to them. And then something came up in my partner's nested relationship and he needed to take care of it. And he said, such and such, oh, my partner is making me do this and I have to do it. So we, I have to cancel with you. And I was like, Hey, no, I want you to say that over again. And here's what I want you to say. I literally did this. I said, you have a commitment to your partner that you're really happy about because you love them and they need you. And you have decided that it is in your interest and in line with your priorities to meet this commitment. And that means that you have to cancel with me, but that's your decision.
Libby:
Nobody's making you, this is based on things that are important to you. And I want them to be important to you cuz I care about you. And so if you're making a decision to do something that's important to you, that means you have to cancel with me. Fine. You have some incompatible commitments and I'm on the losing end this time. That's fine. It's a problem. If I'm always on the losing end, you know, it's a problem. If I'm always being dropped last minute if I'm being treated as disposable, but I want you to own your choices here. That this is your choice.
Mary:
And taking that one step further also as the outside person to remember your agency. Because I think yeah, in a relationship involving three people with a hinge, you can start to center the hinge too and forget that, oh, I actually am an agent who doesn't have to, you accept these choices or, or who can say, you know, for a romantic partner, I want a romantic partner who is able to show up in these ways. And if you can't because of other commitments, you have to other people which that can happen. You know? Sure. Love is infinite, but time and resources are not, your commitments might conflict. And if you're not able to show up that way, then I don't want to maintain the relationship. Or I actually do wanna take that step back. And it's not because someone else is making you, it's just because of this is the way that I want to participate in an intimate relationship. Yeah.
Libby:
That's I think the biggest thing here is that ultimately what's going on in the nested relationship is outside of Jill's control. Right? There's nothing she can do. She can't step in and tell those two folks to sort out whatever it needs to be sorted out between them so that she can have her relationship with Lucy free and clear. I mean, I would do a lot to try to empower Lucy again, own her own agency and own her own decision. But like you said, also, I think it's so important to get clear on what am I willing to tolerate? What is actually poor treatment of me? And it's so easy as the outside partner to offload the pain that my partner is actually causing me because of their inability to prioritize me their inability to stick up for themselves, their inability to be like you said, possibly fully honest with their other partner about how they feel about me and really like, say, Hey, this is really important to me and you need to get on board with this.
Libby:
I think that would upset me. And, but I it's so easy to offload that to the metamour than to yeah. You know, than to say, Hey, actually, what you're showing me through your behavior is that this relationship while you might love me a lot is not possible for you. It's not actually something that you're capable of doing, or it's not something that you are willing to withstand the friction and discomfort of your partner, having a hard, you know, your nested partner, having a hard time with it and dealing with these conflicting needs. And if you're just gonna, you know, make it, you know, again, kind of erase your own agency and not take a stand for me or take a stand for your partner or take a stand for yourself, then I don't wanna be in a relationship like that. And at the end of the day, I think that's the most important thing is to get re really clear on the kinds of boundaries that you have.
Libby:
And I wanna say that doesn't mean that you have to end the relationship, right? Hypothetically, okay. Jill kind of says, okay, I'm gonna wait around and I'm gonna see what's possible. Well, what I would do in that scenario is I would reorder within myself, okay, what are my hard lines of what I will and wanna accept from my partner in terms of treatment? And then I, that like, here's, what's okay for me. Here's what's not okay for me. What's okay for me is if we have a plan and you need to cancel, here are the circumstances under which that's reasonable for me. Here are the circumstances where that's not, if the outside partner, you know, has plans, but then the nested partner is having a bad day. And then you cancel cuz the nested partner's having a bad day. Well, that's just gonna make me feel discarded.
Libby:
Well, what if I have a bad day, you're not gonna cancel your, your family dinner or your kid's soccer game because I'm having a bad day. So, you know, I would want that level of equity, keep your commitments with me unless there's a good reason. Like if your kid's sick and needs to go to urgent care, okay, fine. Cancel plans with me. So that might be like, you know, one thing that I would do is I'd have some kind of clear lines of what's okay. And not okay how wanna be prioritized. And if it's clear that my partner can't prioritize me for a certain kind of relationship, then I'm not gonna prioritize them. I might maintain the relationship with them, but I'm not gonna sit around and keep my calendar open, hoping that they're gonna find time to schedule with me. I'm gonna make plans in my own life. I'm gonna pursue other relationship. And so it might be like a more casual connection where I just don't invest as much of my time and energy. And again, I maybe set boundaries around the amount of time we communicate the level of depth that we communicate. Certainly, I would set boundaries around how much I'm willing to hear about the nested partnership and how much processing and support I'm willing to give around it.
Mary:
Yeah.
Libby:
Because I think that that can happen a lot. The outside partner can just feel very used.
Mary:
That absolutely can happen. That is definitely something that I can identify with. I do wanna make maybe a small clarification though, because I also think sometimes there is, you know, this happens in all kinds of human communities where, where there's a general sense of what's like a good or bad choice. And Jill has framed the question this way of like, should I take a step back or is that, you know, a bad thing to do to wait and give them the space want? And I don't think that's inherently a batter week thing to do. Like, it's totally okay to say, I really, you know, love this person and the possibilities with Lucy. And I'm willing to take this space back and wait and see where it goes. That's not necessarily a disempower. Our choice. There is a strong center taking care of myself way to make that same choice. You don't have to victimize yourself.
Libby:
Yeah. That's a really good point. I would say that, you know, and I mean, I think that is a valid choice and I think that also a thing that can make it empowered is to say, you know, actually I don't know that I wanna be connected with you, you and, and all in mesh with you and proceeding in a deep relationship with you while things are messy in your other relationship. I don't actually think that's healthy for me because maybe you're coming to a date with me and you've just had a big fight on your way out the door and then you're all flustered. And then it takes, you know, an hour for, you know, your nervous system to settle down and be able to be present with me. And that makes for a day that doesn't feel very good or makes me again, sort of feel like, well, I'm your therapist instead of your lover.
Libby:
And you know, again, I would kind of examine if I were Jill, like, and that's the scenario? Why do I want that right now? You know, why do I feel like I wanna kind of plant my flag in that situation when maybe that person just may not be ready for me? You know, they may not be ready for the kind of connection that I wanna have. And they, it doesn't mean that you have to downgrade the love that you feel. Yeah. And I think that's a thing that I actually wrote back to this person when they wrote me kind of the first thing I said was I was like, look, I get it that you love this person. You love Lucy. She's really lit up your life. And I think that when, when somebody does that to you and just turns your world upside down and that you turn their world upside down, it's really hard to think about letting that go.
Libby:
And I don't think you have to let go of the love. I think you might have to let go of it looking a particular way. Mm-Hmm. But I think the love that you feel the way it cracks your heart, open the things you're discovered about yourself and that they've discovered about them. So, and the thing you've created together through this connection, I don't think you have to like, shut all that down and close all that off just cause it's not working out in this moment, whatever glowing thing you saw in each other, you know, you can let that live inside your heart and kind of expand you and cherish that even as you sort of live in the grief of, oh, but it's not fair right now. And it's cuz I mean, you know, and I think that that's what I would encourage Jill to do instead of being a victim is to say, oh my God, I'm so grateful that I have connected to this person in this deep and beautiful way and how amazing.
Libby:
And yeah, it's a bummer that it's not gonna look exactly the way that I want it to right now, but I really don't wanna lose connection to what it opened up in my heart. And, and I mean, I don't know, like when I think about this, I think about this idea of, and I'm, I'm gonna do a whole episode about this, but like this idea of like the heart kind of what it wants, you know?
Mary:
Yes.
Libby:
You know, well, and, that phrase, the heart wants what it wants the first time I ever heard it was Woody Allen said it?...
Mary:
Right, problematic.
Libby:
And that's very cringy because Woody Allen is a child molester. So the heart wants what it wants from that phrase is gross. But the original, the heart wants what it wants. The original person who wrote that phrase was actually not Woody Allen. Do you know who it was? I don't. It was Emily Dickinson.
Mary:
Oh, much better source.
Libby:
Well, and she wrote it in a letter to her friend and her friend’s name was Mary. Actually. She wrote a letter to her friend and in the letter she was writing to her friend because her friend was missing her husband terribly because he was away for a very long time. And Emily was trying to say, I'm here for you. If you need me, I know this is really hard for you. I totally understand. Sometimes the heart just wants what it wants and it, you can't always have it. Yes. And I think that meaning is maybe a little more applicable in this situation than okay. I'm in love. So I should just, it should be that I get to be with this person in the way that I want to in this moment right now. And it is unfair that Jill can't, but you know, I think if you use Emily Dickinson's line of it's okay, your heart can want it and it's okay that your heart wants it. And you can make powerful affirming boundaries to keep you from feeling abused or disposable. But I think that doesn't mean you have to close yourself off from your, from the love, you know.
Mary:
I think that's as good a place to end that conversation.
Libby:
Yeah. Well, Mary, thanks for being here in it with me and sharing your wisdom. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you and we haven't been able to see each other in person as much since the pandemic, but I am looking forward to a future when we do.
Mary:
I also look forward to that future and it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me.
