Fingers Crossed
In this episode, Libby offers an idea on making upcoming difficult situations smoother, easier and more connecting.
Transcript
Today I am going to share a piece of wisdom that I really could have used myself relatively recently, because guess what, guys, I have a podcast episode to get out every Tuesday I've made that commitment, but then I got to the end of the day on Monday and I had no podcast. And when I look at why that happened, it makes sense. I was at a conference in Philadelphia called poly living, Woohoo! And that was all weekend long. And that was taking up a lot of my time over the weekend. And then on Monday I had some stuff to do. I had to take my kiddo to an appointment and I scheduled a professional development call. And so my normal available time that I block off to record and sort of outline my podcast got eaten up and the thing is I knew all of these factors well in advance. So what could I have done to avoid showing up to you on a Wednesday with no podcast? I'll tell you I could have made a plan.
So this kind of thing comes up a lot with my clients and it looks something like this. Something is coming down the pike in your relationship or in your life that you are like, oh, that might be a sticky situation or it might be difficult, but I don't know. So here's some examples, you know, maybe your partner is going on a date with someone new and it's the first time. And you're feeling nervous about how you might feel while your partner's on that date. Maybe you don't have any plans. So, you know, you're gonna be at home by yourself. And so, oh, what are you gonna do? Maybe, you know, that you are gonna be going away on a trip in a few weeks and you are worried about getting enough time with all of your people and feeling connected to everyone in the smaller window of time that you have to connect before you're gonna be going away.
Maybe you're going to be at a party with both of your partners for the very first time, and nobody's sure how that's going to work or how to all interact with each other. Maybe you are traveling out of town to see one of your other cuties. And that has in the past been a little tricky for your nesting partner. And, you know, maybe while you're gone, that's caused some emotions, and reconnecting when you come home has been challenging. So what do all these scenarios? And gosh, I could list many more are what do they have in common? They could be made better if you have a plan. So I can tell you an experience that I had years and years ago, where this came up for me. And, it was one of the scenarios I went through. I was going to a party for the first time at a friend's and both and I was going to be there and one of my partners was going to be there. And one of my metas was gonna be there too. Now the metamour and my partner were a more established relationship and I was sort of the brand new partner in that relationship. And I wasn't in any way sure. How to act like I wasn't sure because the party was actually at my metamour house and I was there and she was my friend and my partner you know, again, he was, I was just sort of like, what do I do? How am I supposed to interact with my partner? Am I supposed to keep my distance? Because it's her house and, their established partners to each other. And so I kind of like made up my mind that that's, what I would do is sort of like seed the space for the partnership for the two of them. But then like halfway into the party, I realized that I was feeling super shitty. I was feeling like my relationship with my partner was sort of not being acknowledged. I felt sort of erased and invisible and it just caused me a lot of upset. And I ended up mentioning it to my partner. I was just sort of like, Hey, you know, I'm feeling a little distant from you. And I'm wondering if you'd be willing to just like acknowledge the relationship and, you know, maybe like put, be some, be affectionate with me at this party. And I mean, he heard that and he did that, and then after we talked about it like several days later, what came up was that he said, oh yeah, we should have made a plan, we should have made a plan on how we were gonna do this. I should have gotten a sense of what would make you feel good and what would've made my other partner feel good and how I can navigate, connecting like with both of you and acknowledging my relationship with both of you.
So you both feel good. And I was like, oh yeah, that would've been a great idea. Now in this situation, I would say that if you're the hinge partner in a situation like this, I do think it's kind of more in your court to manage those two relationships. Not completely. And totally, I think that definitely, if you're one of the other two parts of the prongs of the V or whatever, in a situation like that, you can definitely ask for what you think you might need or what you might want. And when I reflect on that, now I didn't do that. And I was afraid to, I think because I just didn't wanna seem, you know, needy or clingy, but in retrospect, it would've been really good for me to say, Hey, I'm uncomfortable going into this situation. Can we talk about what might make me feel more comfortable?
And again, I think like having a plan, you know, most of us have been to a party before most of us can sort of imagine the kinds of things that might happen at a party and the kinds of, and if you know, the people that are going to be there, you know, who you might wanna talk to, you might know, you might be able to sort of imagine and sort of play out in your mind, different scenarios that might come up. And when I think about some of these other examples, most of them, the situation is not full of all unknown variables. There's not that there's nothing that you can anticipate in terms of how you might feel. And we all have this wonderful capacity in our brains to imagine what might happen, even if we've never experienced it before an imagination can be really quite powerful.
If we really sort of visualize and game out, well, if this happened, then how would I feel? You know, you might be wrong. So you might imagine you'll feel one way. And then when confronted with the situation, you feel another way. But if you've spent a little time sort of gaming it out and thinking ahead and thinking through what the whole experience might be for you and, and then really put yourself in that situation. Sometimes you can unearth at least some idea of what you might feel and at, and then you can also be prepared that, well, if I don't feel that way, then this might need to happen. And I've, so I give this advice a lot. Couples come to me or people that I'm coaching come to me and they say, well, I'm headed into this situation and I'm nervous about it.
And I think to myself, okay, well, what are the various things that could happen? And then after we think through what are the various things that might happen, what are the various scenarios that could come up then I think, okay, well, what kind of resources would you need, or what kind of responses would you like to have, or receive in the face of those scenarios? So to go back to another example I gave of, if you know, you're gonna be going on vacation for a couple of weeks, or maybe one of your partners is going on vacation for a couple of weeks, and you're worried about whether you're gonna get enough time with them to really feel connected. And you're worried that you're gonna miss them. Maybe you reach out to them and you say, Hey, I'm noticing that you're gonna be gone for a little while.
I'm gonna be craving some connection with you. So in the week, leading up to your trip, how are you going to balance time with different partners? How am I going to be able to say goodbye to you? How are we gonna be able? Cause I think that being able to have these kinds of connection and disconnection rituals around when you're separating, having a ritual around that and when you're reconnecting and coming back together, having a ritual around that can be really useful in terms of setting a tone for those kinds of separations. And, but if you haven't thought about that and you haven't considered what you might need and what might feel good, then you might sort of find yourself just being disconnected and then feeling a little bereft when all you really might have needed was just like a kiss goodbye or a text or a, a chance to grab a quick lunch together, a quick cup of coffee, which you might not normally do, but because there's gonna be a long period of separation, you might feel better having that.
Another example is, you know when you're coming back from a trip or maybe in the case of the partner, who's going away to visit one of their long-distance partners and they're gonna have like a decent stretch of time with them and, and the, your nesting partner or some of your other established partners are going to be separate from you sort of having a plan of, okay, at these various times, I'm gonna text you while I'm gone. Or at these various times, I'm gonna set up a quick phone call with you so that we can reconnect. I can check in with you, see how things are going and you can tell me what you might like to hear from me. And if there's any kind of reassurance that you might need, those kinds of things, having a plan for this is so much better than just winging it and hoping that nothing uncomfortable or bad happens, it does take an extra step.
And some people might feel like this is a bunch of extra work, but I think what it does is it creates an opportunity to set you up for success in the moment, instead of potentially creating a lot of fallout, which then is gonna create a lot of extra work on the back end. And I think that the biggest opportunity for making a plan is when I said, when you're in a situation that you've been in before, where, you know, the five or six things that might happen, that might be difficult and you can sort of game out, okay, well, when this happened last time and it was difficult, why was it difficult? How could we think through making it less difficult next time? What would make it feel better? And this is a really great opportunity for you and your partner to be on the same team, really collaborating, and brainstorming together on how to make an experience that might be making you both a little nervous, feel a whole lot better.
And in, and as I say in my work, I talk a lot about how to build a secure relationship. And I think a lot of times we reach for things that give us security out of a sense of control or a sense of obligation. And when we're able to instead sort of reach for security around I've collaborated, I've created something with somebody and we are building something together and it's, it's a team effort and we're both putting in our ideas. I think that's like a much more expansive way of creating security together. So I'm gonna close this now because, I wanna keep this particular episode short and sweet, but I'm gonna recap real quick. So to recap, if there's something coming down the pike for you that you know, is, is going to be sticky, potentially uncomfortable, make a plan set aside some time before the event, you can do send over an email to, it's not like you have to have a big lengthy processing conversation about it.
You can go to your corners and both sort of think and game out separately as individuals. What, what would feel good? What do I need? And I guess I shouldn't say both, cause it could be like a multi-prong thing. It could be multiple people involved in this. But I think the important thing is, you know, let's say you're going on a group vacation for the first time. I mean, when I went on a group vacation with my polycule years ago, one thing we did was we sort of gamed out, what do we all most want out of this vacation? What is going to make us feel the most joy? What will we be sad if we miss out on it? You know, what are our top priorities? What are the things we definitely don't want have happen so that we can watch out for those things.
And you know, having that kind of collaborative conversation where everybody starts to get to express what their wants and needs are express what their fears are and to have some kind of plan in place for, if those things come up can just make the whole experience more or relaxed, more connecting and more prepared for handling difficult things. And when you are able to confront difficult things together as a team, whether it's two people or three people or four people or more people that conquering something difficult is I think one of biggest things that creates a secure relationship together.
