The Other Skipped Step in Opening Up
Why is it that some monogamous couples who open up end up blowing up their existing relationship while others don’t? Libby offers one idea that you might not have heard.
Transcript
Why is it that some monogamous couples who open up their relationship end up blowing everything apart while others don't are the people who make it work just better. People immune to jealousy at one, with the abundance of love while the people who end up bitter and broken, just aren't as evolved, is it about having better agreements and rules and really sticking to them? There are a lot of ideas about what makes a polyamorous relationship work, and goodness gracious. There are many wonderful books and blogs and Facebook groups, and of course, podcasts devoted to this. But I have one idea about it. That might be something that you haven't heard. And I'm gonna share that with you today.
If you are a monogamous couple opening up, what's the first step that will let you up for success in this new way of doing relationships. A lot of people suggest getting clear on what you want, getting a deep understanding of your boundaries and expectations, making agreements, instead of rules together and maybe attending a polyamory meetup or two reading some books or listening to some podcasts. And then there's an article written by the polyamory school that I've seen widely passed around. And it is called the most skipped step. When opening a relationship. According to this article, the most skipped step is disentanglement. Now this idea really resonated with me, and I think it's an important step. It's true that a lot of monogamous and even polyamorous relationships have a lot of unhealthy codependency. I don't exactly define codependency in the same way the article does, but the article talks about how couples who do everything together, never miss a meal together, share all the same hobbies, finish each other's sentences and never fight are creepy.
And that if you tend to be so in lockstep with your partner, that you don't know how to be autonomous and alone, that you're in for trouble when you open up your relationship. And I agree if you don't have any practice being alone, how are you gonna deal when your partner has a date and you don't. Now, maybe you can think that your partner won't go on a date unless you also have a date and you're gonna keep it all equal in fares. But whoops, all the polyamory, blogs and books say that this is bad and controlling and it is. But if your alternative is to be alone with your thought, swirling anxieties, building fears, escalating while your partner's out with their new partner and you just don't know how to be alone, well, that's gonna be agonizing and terrible.
But then I ask myself this question, why do people get so enmeshed with one another, have no practice being alone or doing things separately or having separate interests. And why do many of us in our guts feel this is unhealthy? I mean, being close is good, right? Isn't that what we want in relationships? Well, so I think one reason for sure, why we recoil is because when a couple is bound at the hip with each other, they don't seem to have any boundaries or a sense of themselves as individuals. And that feels like a real loss of self that many of us find terrifying. But again, and why would someone do that? Well, what I think is that it's usually because they are so afraid to let their partner out of their site. They hold on tight, prioritize the relationship over even themselves, because they're afraid that if they don't, then they will lose their partner.
And this is because the real relationship is fundamentally insecure for me. That's why I feel uncomfortable. When I see these kinds of tightly bonded partnerships, I look at them and I think to myself, wow, you do not trust each other at all. And to me that isn't just creepy. It's also sad. And it makes me worried. But what is the solution? The article suggests that the solution is to differentiate disentangle, create more autonomy. And I do agree that needs to happen, but that is, I think putting the car art before the horse, remember folks who are so enmeshed are often that way, because they're insecure. They might be insecure because they've lost their sense of self. But I suspect that they may have also given themselves a way because they're insecure. The polyamory school article seems to think that the enmesh is the problem. And I think insecurity is more deeply the root of the problem it's counterintuitive.
But if you put your intention first on disentangling, without creating a more secure relationship, I think it's gonna be a rough road. And I've seen this people who are partners to each other, then opening up a relationship and then doing everything right, including disentangling, a lot of polyamory books and articles and Facebook group posts, focus on autonomy. And that autonomy ends up ripping their relationship to pieces because there was no security underneath people's hearts get broken and trust, which was tenuous at best before gets utterly destroyed. People make their way through it sometimes, but plenty of relationships don't survive. This engaging with non-monogamy before creating a secure attachment with your partner is like asking someone to do the flying trapeze with no practice doing so and no net <laugh> it's not going to go well. And science is on my side here. I present now for your consideration.
The interesting story of attachment theory attachment theory was developed from the work of John Bowlby. In the 1950s, Bowlby studied children and babies and discovered that babies would seek out proximity to certain caregivers when they were distressed. Bowlby was also surprised to find that the baby's criteria for the caregivers, that they found soothing had nothing to do, whether or not the caregivers fed them were not, which was what was previously believed by of behaviorists. Instead, the baby sought out for comfort. The caregiver whose behavior was the most attuned, responsive, and available. When the baby cried, Bowlby believed that from infancy, we are wired to seek comfort and safety from a consistent caregiver. And he believed that if we weren't able to do that, we later in life, subsequent research has born out B's ideas. Researchers have found that babies and children who are confident that their parents are available to support them, grow up to function at a higher level, emotionally, socially, and academically later in life.
That is also why developmental psychologists label secure as wait for it. Autonomous many psychologists have found evidence that this pattern of behavior continues into adulthood, that we seek safety and support with emotional regulation in our adult relationships. And when we have a secure base of support, we feel safe to take risks. When we know that our people are there for us, we are more able to securely be alone. This is known as the dependency paradox. The more we know we can depend on others, the less dependent we actually feel being wired for attachment can have downsides. If we become attached to people and don't feel secure, insecure, attachment behaviors include acting clingy, anxious, and controlling or withdrawn, dismissive, and walled off, and sometimes alternating between both extremes. Some of this behavior can be a carryover from our upbringing, but an insecure adult relationship can trigger or amplify these behaviors.
Now, one problem I have with a lot of modern attachment focused relationship publications is that they are overly focused on Dtic, meaning one-on-one and parent child relationships. And then translating that to adult monogamous, romantic partnerships, a lot of studies look at one child attaching to one caregiver in this case. Most often the mom, I think <laugh> that this is incredibly patriarchal and obviously mono centric. It's all also not realistic to how families actually work. Many families have two parents and two involved caregivers. My household has three and many families have oh, more than one kid. So if it's all about Dtic relationships well everyone who has a sibling is gonna be maladjusted. And so far, there's not evidence for that. Cross-Cultural studies that have gotten away from a more Western model of family have shown that babies and children easily attached to more than one caregiver provided those caregivers are attuned, responsive, and accessible.
And there's no evidence that multiple attachments aren't as healthy as, or even more healthy than as single attachment to one caregiver. Here's the message I want you to get from attachment theory. We are not designed to be the solitary little islands. We are wired to be connected from birth and that wiring attachment continues to operate into adulthood. We need to know that we have a safe place to go for comfort when we're distressed and having that creates a base of support from which we can grow and stretch and take risks and thrive. As those autonomous individuals remember securely attached is autonomous. And to create those secure attachments mean that you and your partner need to be attuned, responsive, and accessible to each other. So what does it mean to be attuned? It means being emotionally available, attentive, and fully present, getting the other person listening deeply and remembering what the person tells you noticing when the other person is in distress.
You don't have to be able to read your partner's minds to be attuned. You just have to be paying earnest attention. And honestly, attention is at a deficit right now in our lives with our smartphones and our busy lives. And our job sometimes being attuned can be hard. What does it mean to be responsive? It, this is what John and Julie Gottman described as turning toward your partner. When I reach out to connect, do you respond and respond positively with connection back when I am in distress, do you offer support? Do you hold space? For me, this is very different from being reactive. Reactive is when you don't have boundaries between your partner's feelings and your feelings. And so you are directly impacted by your partner's moods feelings and you take them on this can actually create insecurity, know why? Well, if you're reactive, instead of responsive, you can make your partner feel unsafe to have a bad day for fear of your reaction or vice versa. You might feel unsafe to talk about difficult feelings with your partner because your partner might then take them on or blow up or shut down. You become afraid of ruining the mood or ruining each other's days with your feelings, which are important to be able to process together.
What does it mean to be accessible? Can I reach you when I need you? Do I know how to get to you? Do you reach out to me? Are you reliable and consistent? Do you do what you say you're going to do? And let me be clear. Someone sitting right next to you can feel inaccesible, if they're on their phone or watching TV or just aren't present, and someone can be 3000 miles away. And just knowing that if you called them, they would answer back or get back to you creates that security, that they are there for you. This doesn't mean that someone has to be at your Beck and call 24/7. And it doesn't mean you have to be perfectly consistent. It's just knowing that if you need them, they can be reached. And if someone needs you, you can be reached. You need these basic things to create security.
And the science says that you need security to feel comfortable in that autonomy in polyamory, a lot about jealousy. Some people don't wanna admit that they are jealous or ever get jealous. And I've seen a lot of jealousy shaming, and there are people out there who say they don't struggle with jealousy. And they act as though they're like more enlightened than the rest of us. And I think this is because it said insecurity is what's at the root of jealousy. And insecurity's often thought of as some kind of personal failing, rather than a relational problem. If we are feeling insecure, we just need to go do some personal work on ourselves, in feeling more, okay, fix our own self-esteem and not put that on our partner. And our relationship and insecurity certainly can exist. Even in a partnership that is attuned available and responsive.
This can be true, especially if the person in question has not previously had the experience of a secure attachment, or if they have some psychological or emotional things getting in the way. And I get why you'd want to tell your insecure partner to go do their own work and not make it your problem. Because a lot of times what the insecure partner wants is more control over you or exhaustive amounts of reassurance, neither of what your fun and you absolutely can't let the person's insecurity control the relationship and dictate the terms. One place I've seen this happen is with HetCis men who haven't unpacked their toxic masculinity. Even if they don't try to Institute a one penis policy, they can act extremely fragile and triggered when their partner dates other men. And I've talked to, to several women who have felt pressured to end that other relationship, because it's too hard and threatening for their established partner.
That's letting someone else's fears and insecurities run the show and that's not okay. And it doesn't do anyone any favors. It's essential to stand up for yourself here and set boundaries and ask someone, be to be willing, to face their fears insecurities and manage them instead of letting them manage you. But there are ways to do this with love and care for the person who's having a hard time. And there are ways to do this destructively, as I said, you are a hundred percent, right? If you say, look, I can't fix someone. Else's insecurity. Whether they're wrestling with toxic masculinity or whether they have anxiety, fears of abandonment, a past history of trauma or an unstable upbringing, whatever is causing their insecurity may not be your fault and can't be your responsibility to fix. But I wanna offer you this got the partner you've got, and you can move through their difficulty together as a team with compassion while standing up for yourself with love, or you can assert your rights and do what you know is correct in a harsh way, leaving your partner to struggle and twist in the wind.
One way is whole holding your boundaries, but also being soft and caring while your partner struggles and not taking that on the other is probably gonna leave your partner feeling abandoned and betrayed. Remember about the babies. Security is created by the caregiver being present and responsive and attuned when the baby was in distress. So abandoning your partner emotionally, when they're struggling, can decimate feelings of security at the base. What we all want to know is, are you there for me and not just are you there for me when I'm being excellent and my best self, but are you also for me when I am at my worst and I'm falling apart and I'm being a shithead, that's what creates trust and intimacy. And many behaviors can undermine that security, defensiveness, reactivity, minimizing criticism, contempt, avoidance, and the big one withdrawal can be devastating for a connection.
And a thing I've seen is someone acting insecure and acting badly as a result of that, acting controlling as a result of their insecurity in their jealousy. But then how does their partner respond? They react. They criticize, they get defensive, they turn it back on them. And then they withdraw. And the connection goes away, threatening someone with the loss of their relationship because they're struggling with insecurity. That's the antithesis of being attuned, responsive and accessible. It does not help your partner instead. It just makes that insecure partner feel more insecure and then their jealousy amps up and then their behavior that comes up as a result of that insecurity comes up. And then the partner reacts with minimizing and criticism and defensiveness, and eventually can he withdrawal and then around and around, we go until what happens? The relationship falls apart. There is a way through all of this that is less painful, which is to spend some time and energy taking stock and figuring out if your relationship is actually a secure, functioning relationship up.
And then if you notice some real weak spots, try to address them. I would encourage you to do this before, or at least in tandem with disentangling. Otherwise the disentangling is gonna feel scary. And when the emotions start to flare up around new partners, you won't have the tools to handle it. Please try trust me on this. So here are my action steps for you. Oh, but before I dive into these, I just want to say to my relationship anarchist, non-hierarchical anti couple privileged listeners. I am so with you. And I wanna say that while I am saying these are good things to do with your anchor partner or established relationship before you open up. I think they're good for everyone. Every relationship. The truth is that if you know how to create a secure attachment with one partner, you can create them in subsequent relationships.
But if you start with a brittle insecure relationship and then add more people, the behaviors that will come out as a result of that in security will cause some serious harm to any additional partners. I think that a lot of couple privileged behavior that is the most harmful comes out of insecurity. This is why I want couples who are opening up to address this first, before they start involving other people. These action steps can also be valuable. If you are in a monogamous relationship, monogamous relationships, aren't inherently insecure or codependent and healthy monogamous partners are able to be secure with each other and have that healthy autonomy. So if you're monogamous this advice a hundred percent for you, I just know that there's a lot of books in out, out there about how to have a healthy, monogamous relationship, which is why I'm focusing in on polyamory. Okay. Let's move on.
My first action step for you is to, by yourself, take an inventory of your relationship. We can start with how enmeshed you are. If right now you have trouble being apart from your partner, sleeping without your partner or making solitary plans or having them have solitary plans or outside interests. That's something to get curious about if you are thinking about opening up, but a lot of your attention is around the excitement that you have about dating someone new, spend some time also imagining your partner with someone else that they are Baso with. And maybe they are also taller or more athletic or better looking or more accomplished than you are. What are some of the feelings that come up now? I'd like you to also ask yourself, if you feel like your partner is attuned, responsive and accessible to you, does your partner turn toward you?
Do they listen to you deeply? Do they respond when you're in distress? Do they get you and notice what's up with you? Do they understand you? And can you reach them? If you need them, do you trust them? And do they communicate with you proactively instead of reactively and even more importantly, honestly, vice versa. Are you attuned and responsive and accessible to your partner? If you answered no to some of these questions, where are the things you'd like to work on? Then take a look at your fears, ask what am I afraid of? What's my worst fear. And then ask, do you feel safe talking about your worst fears with your partner together? You feel confident that you could work through things with your partner. If your worst fear happened, could you make a plan together on how to move through it and repair?
If that scary thing happens, this question is so important to look in the face and it can be tremendously connecting to be able to talk about together far too often, we go long, just hoping or assuming that the scary, bad things just won't happen. And then honestly, far too often, whatever a couple's worst fear is around opening up is exactly what happens when they do. And then they are unprepared and well, you can guess what happens also. I'd like you to set aside the idea of creating agreements for now, a lot of couples look to agreements to create the security that they're looking for by preventing the bad things from happening. And guess what human beings mess up the unexpected happens, or the agreement that you thought made sense, just didn't work agreements are generally an iterative process. So if you're just expecting agreements to keep you safe and avoid any mistakes, you are setting yourself up for a big disappointment.
Now, obviously big trust violations are a different story, but even then sometimes people create these agreements that are just not workable because they're based in fear. And it would be a big betrayal if they're broken, which just sets someone up to feel like they should lie to protect themselves. So it's just stay away from agreements for now. <Laugh> instead I would look at how you current handle things when stuff does go sideways research shows that it's not whether or not you fight, but how you fight and how well you repair. That makes a strong relationship couples who fight well and repair well report higher satisfaction and greater security in their relationships. Then the couples who don't fight at all. And if you're one of these never fight couples, it might be because one or both of you tends to shut down when conflict comes up, that doesn't mean the conflict isn't there.
You're just not dealing with it together. And I would really look at why that is. You will likely have disagreements and hurt feelings and mistakes in your polyamorous journey. Knowing how to fire your way back to harmony together is the most important thing successfully resolving a difficult issue, causes the body to release oxytocin, which is also known as the love hormone. I'm gonna talk a whole bunch more about how to have healthy conflict and subsequent podcasts and how to make a good repair, because I think how to do that well is another huge skipped step in all relationships. Another thing to take a look at is your boundaries with each other. When I talked earlier about responsive versus reactive, I am talking about boundaries. So what happens when you express difficult feelings to your partner? What about when your partner is having a hard time?
If either you or your partner tend to be reactive instead of responsive, that is something to work on. I'm going to share a practice in the next episode that will help with that. Remember if you can't make it safe for your partner, or if you don't feel safe expressing your hard feelings, whether it's about them or something else that you're going through that can get in the way of a secure attachment though, if you or your partner, aren't reactive, it's also worth checking to make sure that your boundary isn't actually a wall. If you or your partner tend to shut down or emotionally check out when difficult feelings come up, that's not on not responsive, but it's also not accessible. Remember you can be together, but with one of you not actually there taking stock on some of these things can really help you see whether or not your enmeshment is papering over the fact that your relationship isn't as secure as it needs to be being aware of things that might come up, doesn't fix them, but having them on your radar can at least prevent you from being blindsided.
Once you've opened up, if you are right now in the early stages of opening up your relationship and listening to this podcast has you to some places that could use some tuning up. I encourage you to put some real time and detention to it. Now, if you've already opened up your relationship, things have been rough. And what I'm saying resonates with you. It's also not too late to make changes and turn things around also pretty much, no one is perfect at these things. Life is full of competing commitments and distractions. We all drop the ball. Sometimes many of us didn't learn how to be vulnerable with our fears, be comfortable handling conflict or having healthy boundaries. And in future podcasts, I'll break down each of these elements and skills so that if you feel at sea right now, you can get some support. So stay tuned.
There are also a lot of positive practices that can really help soothe insecurities. If they're coming up in your relationship, a big one is having dedicated time together without distraction. Now you might think Libby, if the problem is being too enmeshed, how does more time make sense? The difference is is that this time is fully present time, no phones, no TV and no exciting activity to focus on and no kids and no chores. Just the two of you connecting. And this doesn't have to be a long time. What's important is that you make it consistent and sacred and actually recommend keeping it to just once a week. Another practice is having little rituals together that accompany the rhythm of your lives. A simple one is just a ritual of how you say goodbye to each other when you separate and how you greet each other when you come back together, another is having a sort of call and response. When you're apart, I send my partners short little texts periodically when we're apart, it's usually just a meme or a funny tweet or a song that made me think of them though. Sometimes it's just, I love you. This isn't the same as obsessively texting when you're not together such that your partner can't be present, where they actually are. It's important also that it's okay, neither of you respond right away.
One ritual I have with one of my partners is that when we're together in the evenings, we make tea for each other. It's just simple. We just say, would you like some tea? And we make it. And I don't know, it's just really connecting and feels really loving, but it doesn't take any time and it's not, I don't know. It's just a simple thing that we do that sort of recenters ourselves and lets us know that we care.
These small things can really help both with the disentangling and with the attunement. They can give you both an anchor when you are connecting with new, with new people or when one or both of you is like in the throes of, NRE also known as new relationship energy. That kind of thing can really take you on a huge roller coaster ride that really takes your focus away from everything else except that new person, but having these rituals in place can really help just give you a stable focus point to keep coming back to the people you're already connected to. Another thing I like that creates an enormous amount of security is having a story of your relationship. What brought you together and what keeps you together? What deeper meaning does this partnership have for you in your lives? And do you both know what that is and talk about that with each other and how do your choices together reflect that larger meaning or purpose?
Unfortunately, I can only just scratch the surface of what it takes to create a secure functioning relationship. I've only got a 30 minute podcast, but my goal here is to get you started. And as I said, I'll follow through with more things that will help in subsequent episodes. What I really want to make sure that I have said in this podcast and that you've heard is that it is from a secure attachment, that we are able to create that autonomy for ourselves that allows us to be able to stretch outside the box of monogamy. I think this isn't said enough and I wanna make sure that I say it. I have seen so many advice. Givers say that it's just best to rip off the bandaid of codependency. And I just think that's the wrong approach. It's pretty rough. It's pretty harsh. And I want something gentler. Instead, I encourage you to slow down and look deeper into why those codependent behaviors are there and then take some time to rewire your relationship so that it is more secure so that you can move forward in a much kinder and more compassionate way together.
