311 - Metamour March

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Metamour stories

This week is the start of Metamour March! We’re celebrating the relationships between metamours, since they are often not spoken of, especially in a positive manner. But they can be as deep and meaningful as our romantic relationships, so it’s important to share our positive ones and discuss the dynamics of them as their own experience, rather than attached to our romantic partner.

Join several of our Patreon members as they open up about experience they’ve had as metamours and with metamours over the course of their lives in the polyamory community.

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're celebrating metamours, the partners of our partner. How we relate to a person who's in a romantic or a sexual relationship with one of our partners is something that we really don't have a cultural script for. For many people outside of polyamory or new to non-monogamy, the metamour relationship is one of the most baffling and sometimes terrifying concepts to understand. In recognition of how important the metamour relationship is to the happiness and well-being of everyone involved, I have wanted to make Metamour March into something that we can all do each year.

After Valentine's Day where we're focused on romantic partners, why not take some time to be intentional and to put some thought into the relationships we have with the people who also care about our loved ones? Well, we've talked about metamours many times on this show. The three of us can only share our own personal experiences. To help us give you a broader range of real life positive experiences, I interviewed several of our patrons, asking them to share their metamour stories to hopefully offer some perspective and encouragement to those of you out there who might be more apprehensive, who might be struggling, or who are just interested in hearing what metamours are like for other people.

We're going to start off this episode with some uplifting stories of people who've ended up forming these really close relationships with their metaphors. So much so that some of them even talked about not really feeling like the term metamour does it justice because it really is its own relationship. The first of those is two people who I interviewed together. This is Friday and Kenzie talking about their relationship with each other.

Friday: I feel like my relationship with Kenzie, not to be sappy at you, it has a lot of its own value that's super important to me. I feel almost calling it a metamour relationships feels like a devaluing of the friendship and connection and relationship we have because we're not defined by our shared partner. I don't know. It feels almost like a queerplatonic relationship, and that I really value Kenzie's opinion on stuff and feel very cared for in it. When you should let yourself have room to grow into those relationships and not feel like you're bound by the shared partner, so that's it.

Kenzie: I agree, our relationship is way more meaningful than just a metamour relationship. I text you more than Ken.

Emily: I just want to talk about the word metamour, and this idea that perhaps there's more of a negative connotation with it which is something that Kenzie and Friday talked about, that it is this otherness from the word friendship, and well, I don't know. I think of polyamory that you can have friendships with your metamours, and that they can be really intense and meaningful. Yes, it just says that friendship and queerplatonic friendship is really something that they feel more than just the word metamour. That's really fascinating to me. Does that word mean something different to the two of you?

Dedeker: As you're saying that, it does strike me that this word showed up was created to fit an experience where there wasn't quite a label for it. The reason why there wasn't a label for it is because I think it probably came from a sense of "The person that my partner is dating, they're not my friend. They're not starting out as my friend or my acquaintance or things like that, but they're also not necessarily my enemy." We need to create this term in between. I do think that that is interesting because metamour, the term itself, doesn't tell you that much about the actual quality of the relationship. You could be metamour acquaintances, you could be metamours who've never spoken to each other, you could be metamours who are best friends and business partners. So many things.

Jase: I think that the closest thing is always in-laws. To me, that's always the best possible analogy for metamour, where it's this term where an in-law could be like, "The in-laws, am I right?" or it could be like, "Hey, this is my brother-in-law. We're starting a business together." or something like that. That relationship varies, how positive or negative it is. With metamour, it is interesting, though, to say, "Yes, we fit the label of friend, and we fit the label of metamour, which is the one that really fits for us, though. Which one do we feel is most descriptive of our relationship?" rather than the other way around being, "Well, if we're a metamour, we have to call it that."

The second two metamours that I had here was Melissa and Ellen. They further expressed a similar sentiment, which I thought was cool.

Melissa: I think about our relationship as a surprise gift of 2020, which was such a horrible year in so many ways.

Ellen: Should I mention our first contact?

Melissa: Sure.

Ellen: We matched on OkCupid some time ago. We had one of those chats where it seems like everything could go really exciting, and then it stopped. For many years, I thought it was my fault, and Melissa thought it was her fault, but it was just that our circles had crossed too much and we were uncomfortable, so we stopped talking. Then fast forward two years and I matched with our partner on OkCupid and started talking and got along, met in person. He resisted us meeting at first.

Melissa: Yes, we weren't really down with that. I think, for us, it was meeting was a good thing. We saw it as a good thing wanting to know who this other person was and get to know them rather than the fears or projections.

Ellen: It's harder to be jealous of someone you've met.

Melissa: Yes.

Jase: That's lovely. One thing that I really wanted to do in this episode, was to give our listeners a variety of experiences that people have had with their metamours and how they can be really positive, but I think it would be not accurate to portray all these fairy tale stories of "We clicked instantly and we got along." While that happens sometimes, and actually, a lot of the people I interviewed had that experience, I also wanted us to look at some people's stories of where it didn't start out as good, but it ended up being something very positive.

The first of these is Candace talking about her experience with a metamour who had mostly had bad experiences before her.

Candace: She had some bad experiences in the past, so it took a while before she was willing to do more than just be friendly. In the beginning, it was, "Okay, we'll play Mario Kart together." or "I'll go to things at events that our mutual partner is going to with you as a group thing because I want to be with him and I'm okay with you being there." It would take I'd say six months before she realized, "Okay, you're not just being nice to me so you can be mean to me later or screw me over." She was working multiple jobs, so it was really difficult for her to spend quality time with our mutual partner. I reached out. I was like, "If you get an unexpected day off and it's a day that I would normally have plans with our partner, reach out to me. Let me know if I don't have any serious concrete plans with him, I'm happy to to exchange days with you, let you have some time with him because I know that he wants to see you."

Emily: Something that I really like about this whole scenario here, is that one metamour is changing the narrative on what metamours can be for the other person. That's quite lovely. I know that our past relationships I went into a new relationship and thought, even if it was just subconsciously that it was going to be identical in many ways to the past relationship, and I think that's true with metamour as well, that if you did have a really shitty experience with someone, that maybe that means that's just how this goes. Everyone's going to be an asshole in some respect, and nobody is going to communicate as well as they should. This is really lovely. It sounds like this person changed the narrative for their metamour on what metamours can be to each other.

Jase: I feel I absolutely had that experience early on of learning that I need to be on guard about metamours. That's definitely taken a lot of time to unlearn and find other ways to approach things. Part of that is just from being more confident in my relationships and who I am as a polyamorous person. That also has affected it, but that's not something you can just jump to right away. This is a cool example of how maybe someone who was a little more comfortable was able to reach out to their metamour and help them to learn there's another way this could go, like you were saying, Emily.

Dedeker: Yes, I guess it's striking me that my partner Alex never had a metamour before Jase.

Jase: Christ. Forget about that.

Dedeker: Yes, I know.

Emily: It's only not good experiences.

Dedeker: It's only had, I guess, for at least non-destructive experiences. I feel like I need to ask him about that, about what his perceptions of what a metamour would be before that experience.

Jase: This is from Jac talking about having a more challenging start to a metamour relationship, and then that turning into something more positive.

Jac: I don't know what you call them, but metamour, she was the partner of my metamour. I was actually terrified to meet her at first because she was having this big fight with Ashley, and all I had heard was negative things about her. I met her at pride in 2019. I remember just being so afraid of her, and what her reactions to me might be, and if she was going to be a nice person and all this stuff. If I'm going to make a really long story short, she's now my partner. We basically practice kitchen table poly from the beginning, and during COVID, we all ended up living together during the first eight months or so of COVID.

Dedeker: Well, so it's interesting that Jac talked about your meta metamour, or what the partner of your metamour. I think there is a slowly burgeoning term for that, that I've seen dropped in a couple of places.

Jase: Really?

Dedeker: Yes. Oh, gosh, I think it's something like a tetra more, or something like that. I don't know if that's accurate, but I am starting to see a little bit of that vocabulary showing up. I don't know if it's going to catch on or not.

Emily: I feel like the polyamorous community is relatively small, depending on which area you're in. Los Angeles is going to be fairly large, for example, but if you're, I don't know, in Jacson, Mississippi, potentially, it's going to be smaller. Having a meta metamour, a tetramour, it feels as though you're eventually going to come across this person. Even though Jac had heard not great stuff about this tetramour, so I appreciate that they made their own decisions, and ultimately, it was a good thing.

Jase: Yes. Now, here's Melissa telling a story of how she was able to generate compassion for her partner to get past a potentially challenging beginning to a metamour relationship.

Melissa: When he and Ellen matched, we actually weren't fully open. That was a bit of a challenging start, where he and Ellen had met before through a festival we're all involved in. They were just chatting as friends, but I discovered the messages. It was just not probably the best start, but I recognized he found it so hard for so many years to find nice ongoing connections with people as I had. I really wanted him to have that, and I could really see the potential with the two of them, their compatibilities. It was really worth working through those issues and supporting their connection.

Jase: It would be understandable in this situation for her to just instantly write this other person off as being bad, or trying to stop that relationship, but she didn't. Melissa and Ellen ended up becoming very close friends after that. Sometimes it doesn't happen immediately, that you can overcome differences and connect with a metamour. It's not entirely in your control. As we've seen, sometimes those challenges don't just come from the metamour themselves, but from communication failures, or mismatched expectations, or triangulation of communication. Here is a two-part story from Bex's that deals with some of those challenges.

Bex: His long-distance partner in Colorado had never done polyamory before, was very much not seeing polyamory as what they were doing so much. Yes, she was actively there, but trying to disengage with the topic as much as possible, and it helps to pretend that I didn't exist. Then we tried to establish a friendship, and that went horribly awry, and involved a lot of triangulation of communication issues, and Robert talking to all of us about the other relationships, because there was some difficulties going on. Then talking to one person, and then they would go and share with the other partner. The long-distance partner in Colorado would go and share with the partner in California, go share with her stuff. Then they both decided one weekend that I was the problem in their relationship. That was a whole situation that came to a head, and lots of issues for a while. We ended up breaking up for a time.

Dedeker: This seems like very much an object lesson in some of the dangers of both brokering relationships between metamours, as well as just the telephone game and having unclear senses of what are our boundaries around disclosure and processing other relationships with other partners who are not in that actual relationship, but it seems like that stuff gets really out of hand quite quickly.

Emily: I was struck by when they were talking about the person in a different state, I think, who didn't want to have anything to do with polyamory in general, and just that idea of having a metamour that is not interested in the lifestyle at all. That's challenging, but it definitely happens. We've definitely all been there where we've had people that are testing the waters, but really aren't invested or committed, and how challenging that can be because really, ultimately, it is the partner going to decide, "We want to be monogamous now," or did they decide, "Hey, actually, this is part of my identity and I want to."

Bex: When we started dating again, it was really casual. I dropped a lot of the expectations of how are we escalating? How are we doing the things? I had been able to divest quite a bit from that. That took some of that out. The fact that we started a very casual place and rebuilt slowly from there, was really helpful. At that point, his and Kat's relationship was more of an established relationship, but I wasn't invested in trying to force a relationship there. The last time, we tried to make a relationship happen, and it was terrible, and everything was awful.

I'm not going to try and force that relationship. I hadn't really met Kat at that point, hardly at all. Once I started coming over to the house, it was like meeting her occasionally, and then we'd all hang out together. Then over time, that builds. We have a lot of similar interests of nerd culture, but also musicals, and stuff like that. We built a friendship off of that. Then I also invited her to come shop my closet, which is the thing I do with other people who are vaguely my size. It's not something that as fat folks we often get to do, because a lot of people, A, who are fat don't have huge wardrobes, B, it's less common to have larger groups of fat friends. I gave her a whole new wardrobe of dresses, and that was a fun afternoon and really built a lot of rapport between the two of us.

Jase: I thought it was interesting that taking a break for a while from that relationship and coming back. Well, I don't think anyone wants to do that. That's not like, "Oh, this is a great way to solve this problem," but that in this situation, it did add this perspective, or maybe a fresh start to be able to go into that metamour relationship.

Dedeker: I think it's a hard experience. I can also speak from personal experience with this one, that it's hard to have a metaphor who is really on the fence about non-monogamy because I know for me, it often feels like, "Oh, there's a certain degree of unpredictability here that feels like could potentially lead to either some drama or just some disruption or upheaval." I know for me, that's definitely very challenging and uncomfortable experience.

Jase: Another interesting thing that came up in a few different interviews was this phenomenon of being a metamour with someone more than once. Maybe this is just because the polyamorous community is really not that large when it comes down to it. These stories of either being someone's metamour, staying in touch or not, and then ending up as their metamour again, in the future, or being a metamour, and going through a breakup, but still maintaining that friendship with the metamour. These were all themes that I definitely saw come up a number of times. This story from David, I really liked because it talks about exactly that, about maintaining a friendship throughout breakups, as well as multiple relationships.

David: In 2017, I was dating someone who's fairly well-known in the kink community here, and met her other partner, Ren. Ren and I were at events together. I invited both of them to come to parties that I had at my house. I always enjoy talking to Ren. She and I had a lot in common. The partner broke up with me first and then with Ren about a year after that, and we remained friends. I invited her to the parties still. I might say these parties are always interesting because it was a mixture of kink friends, poly friends, partners, people from my church. You never knew what was going to happen in the conversation.

My partner, Betsy, had mentioned to me at one point she thought Ren was really interesting. I had a socially distanced outdoor birthday party this past year at my partner Ann's house. Ren and Betsy both came and had a long conversation and started dating. Ren is now my metamour, again, through Betsy, and we still hang out some, and have lots in common.

Jase: I thought that was a really touching story of how metamours can support each other through a breakup, with that mutual partner, in a case like this, where they both broke up at the same time, but then could also stay in each other's lives, and potentially become metamours again in the future.

Emily: That's really cool.

Dedeker: That's interesting. I feel like I see that surprisingly often. It's not the most common situation, but sometimes it seems like this is just something that happens, where it's like someone, the hinge partner, goes the nuclear option. It's just I'm going to break up with everybody, or with at least multiple people at once, or I'm going to break up with all the rest of my partners to be monogamous with this one partner.

Of course, that's a crappy situation that often has a lot of pain attached to it, but it is one of those things where it's if you have a decent metamour relationship, you can be support for each other, to a certain extent, in getting through that. Let me tell you. You all who listen to this podcast know that it's really helpful, in my experience, to have Emily. We've had multiple partners in common in the past, and so knows, it is really nice to be able to piece things together, or vent about things.

Emily: "You will never win, blah, blah," did that.

Dedeker: Oh yes, that sucks so bad. He did that to you too? Dang.

Emily: No, I was talking about Jase. No, it's lovely. Shared experience I think is incredibly important with people, and it allows each other to look back on something, and yes, like you said, piece it back together a little bit, especially if you're wondering why did this person do something, or why did this person act this way, and to hear how they were with the other partner, and perhaps more of the story of what was going on. It's cool. It means a lot.

Jase: All right. I have a couple more stories here about the same kind of thing of actually staying friends, through not being metamours anymore, in different configurations. The first of these is Jac again.

Jac: I started out dating Ashley, and I was so in love with her. I was really nervous about meeting my metamour, her partner, named Aiden. I had heard that he's just the most amazing partner, and the most amazing person, and super smart, and super kind and loyal. I was just nervous about meeting this perfect-sounding person, and that I would never measure up to him.

When I met him, I was actually like, "Wow, I really like this person." We got to know each other really well as metamours, and bonded over our love for Ashley. Actually, the day after Ashley and I broke up, which was this really horrific thing for me, he came over, and even though they were still fully dating, he was my main support system that week. He helped me just vent, and really just helped me feel supported during that time. That's the beginning of the story with him.

Emily: Wow, that's really cool. A relationship that so many people would never ever get to have with another human being, that literally one partner breaks up and has a really tough time, and so the metamour comes over and is able to console them and help them through it. Just when does that happen? That's so unique.

Dedeker: Yes, it's such an interesting thing, because I wouldn't necessarily say that that should happen in all metamour situations. I think there's plenty of situations where your metamour would not be appropriate to be the person who is your support system. I think this does bring us back to the beginning about that sometimes the actual relationship transcends what the label of metamour is. Clearly, there was something here. There was more of a connection here that wasn't just about our shared partner. Because once we no longer shared a partner, we were still able to find that connection as a source of strength.

Jase: This last one in this theme is Jennifer and Tammy, who I interviewed together. These two are metamours with each other. This was a situation where they both ended up breaking up with the same partner, or the same partner broke up with them. I'm actually not sure the order of it. There was this intervening gap in the middle, where only one of them was still with that mutual partner before they broke up. This covers both scenarios in a way.

Jennifer: There was awkward moments, obviously, especially in that transition time where I was not with our mutual but she was. There was still that level of connection that we had that made it possible for us to say-- If we were talking about something awkward, I always felt like Tammy gave me room to say, "I'm not super great talking about this. Maybe we can talk about something else." She was able to not only validate me but also just make me feel like I wasn't wrong for feeling the way that I did, which was super helpful. I've actually learned a lot from her in being able to do that.

Tammy: Even though the other was a little chunk of funky transitioning where I was still dating the ex and she had ended, and I was still trying to figure out where I was with everything, she was still there for me, still very respectful and supportive and everything. After I chose to end my relationship, it wasn't a situation where we're both done dating this person and so we just don't have any ties together or anything like that.

We were able to be there for each other through the healing process, and just all of that transitioning and everything. We still chose to continue our friendship and strengthen our friendship, and just put time and effort into that and everything, which I think is really wonderful. I'm really glad that I've got this friendship, this awesomeness from my ex-partner there.

Emily: That's so cool. Just like the dyads that happen all over the place, regardless of what type of relationship configuration it is, and the fact that two people who entered into a partnership or relationship with each other, just by merit of having the same partner, that that is strong enough, that it continues even after that partner is no longer in the picture. That's so cool.

Jase: Yes. It's funny, actually. In my interview with Friday and Kenzie, they talked about how they told another one of their metamours that they were going to do this interview with me about being metamours, and their mutual other metamour was like, "Wait, you two are metamours? Who's your shared partner?" They were like, "It's your partner, the one that we all date." It was a thing of their friendship, was first and foremost in their mind that it just didn't even occur. That was such a cool extreme of that.

Dedeker: I'm also having this kind of funny image of taking the unicorn hunting couple but turning it on its head a little bit, this idea of you have two people who are metamours trying to find someone together.

Jase: To be their new mutual partner.

Dedeker: To be their new mutual partner. We're not in a relationship together, but we just work really well as metamours. We're on the hunt.

Emily: Will one of you, will you date both us?

Dedeker: Will someone date both of us?

Emily: Yes, but not together, just separately.

Jase: Yes, no threesomes you're going to get here, but you will date both of us.

Dedeker: You will get some good metamour cooperation and relationshiping.

Jase: Yes. This next one is from an interview I did with Greg talking about his metamour experience. This is an interesting one that also went from being metamours to being friends, but not in the same way.

Greg: This is my first polyamory relationship. I tend to be a little competitive. I knew some of this other guy's strengths, which of course went right to the heart of my self-confidence. It was like, "Oh, I'll never be as blah, blah, blah as him also." Of course, that was the thing I was the most jealous of, the things that I couldn't tolerate. This year, my metamour decided he needed to get out of the relationship. This came just at a time when my partner and I were starting to open up our relationship, with me dating.

I always wondered if it would be easier for me to hold polyamory, to be more at ease with it if I had another partner, but this breakup is actually what helped me really see the difference between possessive love or territorial love and deep, kind-- I can't even name it. It's another form of love that's deeper and more gentle and more kind. He and I ended up spending a lot of time on the phone. He had tons of insights about our mutual partner that I didn't have, and I had tons of insights that he didn't have. This breakup has actually helped my metamour and me, I guess he's my ex metamour now, and me become far closer. We're just speaking way more honestly, lots more truths are coming out in really beautiful ways. I think the words "I love you" might have been pronounced by me at one point.

Emily: I think the main takeaway is just the fact that these two people who were metamours and started off in this competitive way became really close to a point where you say, "I love you," to this person. I don't know if I would say, "I love you" to every single acquaintance that I have, so that just shows the gravity of what this relationship became of these two people. It's really cool. I'm very impressed with the change there.

Jase: Yes, I think that the interesting irony of it is that, he started out that relationship with their mutual partner feeling competitive and jealous and not comfortable with that. Then over the years that they were together, he told me that he worked on some of that a little bit, but it wasn't until, I guess getting what he thought that he wanted at the very beginning, that he realized what it was that he had and was actually very sad to be missing that relationship and having that metamours around.

Now on the opposite end of the extremes here, we have feeling competitive and jealous there, to Friday and Kenzie's story when Friday started dating one of Kenzie's partners.

Friday: I feel like it wasn't even a thing that I started dating Ken.

Kenzie: Well, it started so very slowly. It was just a hookup thing for a while.

Friday: Yes, we went to that one, we did pink party thing and at the, what's it called, Citadel.

Kenzie: Yes.

Friday: Then--

Kenzie: You invited me to that.

Friday: When did you and Caitlyn accidentally ended up being a date between me and Ken a good first date to go to the pink party.

Then just evolved from that, because we did live far away, and maybe it is because both of us were like two hours from Ken that it didn't seem as-- It wasn't very intrusive, I think on our relationship.

Kenzie: No. If anything, it was almost a relief for me because I was so busy with grad school stuff. My sex drive was lower, and I felt bad that I couldn't drive out to Santa Rosa as often as we used to see each other before Ken moved. I felt guilty about that, and knowing that Ken had someone else keeping him busy. It also did make me a little self-conscious. I never talked to you about this because it didn't really matter because for the same reasons, you were more available than I was. There were multiple sides to that, but it never caused an issue between us.

Dedeker: It's funny, it reminds me of the first time I ever read The Ethical Slut, and I think that they had an anecdote in there talking about this phenomenon of some people actually being quite relieved that there's someone else picking up the emotional labor, someone else picking up the blow job labor. Their words, not mine. I remember at the time that just blowing my mind, I can't even imagine being in a mind state where I'd be relieved, until I was actually in that mindset where I was like, "Oh thank God."

I can have some time to myself, "Oh thank God I'm not the only soul source of support or whatever it is."

Emily: We all have a mutual friend who's very into having comet relationships or secondary relationships, but really enjoys having someone else be the primary, and that's really fascinating to me because he's just very, I think, solo-poly minded. Hey like, "I am happy and comfortable living alone and being one with myself and having these great relationships, but not needing them to be primary," and that's really cool for some people.

Jase: Then next, this is another story about someone becoming close to a metamour after a bad event, I guess you could call it that. I don't want to classify breakups all as bad events. A more serious event. This is a different take on that I hadn't quite heard before.

David: When I met my partner, Anne, in early 2017, I also met her other partner, Ray, and I liked Ray, but he was just a not terribly connected metamour. At one point, he messed up on our STI protocols, and he's very conscientious even though he sometimes does impulsive things. As part of cleaning that up, he agreed that he and I would meet monthly to have lunch or just to talk, and he'd disclose what he was doing so that he could be transparent to us.

Those meetings turned into longer conversations and getting interested, and I had had physical connections with men before, but I'd never really had an emotional connection with a man. I was curious to see in what way that might be different. Ray and I really consciously chose to begin dating, and up until COVID, we were seeing each other oh roughly every couple of weeks. We have four actual relationships. There's the Triad of he, Anne, and I, and we have been together as a Triad at events. Then he and I, and Ann and I, and he and Anne. Each of those four relationships has its own quality, it's really interesting to see the differences in them.

Dedeker: Anyone listening to this from outside of this community is going to think it's just like a slippery slope to dating your metamours, but I think in reality, it's maybe not as much of a slippery slope, but it is funny, though,

Emily: I mean, it happens.

Dedeker: It happens. It definitely happens.

Emily: Dedeker and two people, we were dating two separate people, and then, you know.

Dedeker: Yes, I know. I've been there, done that. Yeah, what I appreciate, I actually really appreciate this solution if there was a push against boundaries, or a slip up that happened, and the way that we bring that back into integrity is like we open the channel of communication with each other, to just be closer to each other essentially and more transparent, which I think feels counter-intuitive to a lot of people. I do think that as much as I love boundaries and our generation's obsession with boundaries, sometimes I think that it does lead some of us to be a little hyper boundary, and so I could very easily see the situation of being like, "Oh, this person slipped up." Then I'm just going to cut them out, don't want anything to do with them, so I'm going to protect myself, and that could be appropriate and healthy in certain situations. I really appreciated that in this situation, it was no we're going to lean in actually to connect with each other and really open that channel of communication.

Jase: Another scenario that we haven't really covered yet, is becoming a metamour with someone that you already live with. Rather than a metamour moving in, what happens when a roommate becomes a metamour. This is Lindsay to talk about her experience with that.

Lindsay: We actually had two other roommates at that point. One of the dudes was my bandmate at the time, one of them was a guy living with somebody who my partner had dated at one point. We all had these vague threads together, so he was just one of the boys. Then he and my partner started spending more time together, and then they kissed, and then pretty much she marched over to our room. She's like, "Oh my gosh, I just kissed him. I don't know what this means, but I want to tell you” and probably from an objective sense, that's maybe not the easiest way to start a relationship with somebody you're already living with. We certainly talked about what happens if this goes badly. Then does he move out, does that complicate our financial situation. My partner and I have been together for 12 years at this point. She had a partner that lived with us before. I had a partner that lived with us before, so it wasn't our first time at the rodeo.

Dedeker: I think the really important part of that was actually having that conversation about what happens if this ends. That's something that I think is a really important conversation to have for all kinds of relationships. It's not a conversation we're really encouraged to have to think about, how does this work out if it ends? If you think about the first time you're moving in with a new partner for the first time, no one wants to sit down and be like, "Okay. Real talk, we need to talk about how we're going to sort this out if our relationship ends up going sour." I think that having these conversations up front can really help to save a lot of heartaches, and actually can be really reassuring to know that, we've thought about all the possible angles at least as much as we possibly can.

Emily: Yes, especially if you're living with someone that if you own a house and having people come into it and live there. I think that's really important to have these types of conversations, not necessarily rigid conversations that they have to be this way and this is a rule, but just exploring the possibilities. That's really important. That's cool that they did that.

Jase: Another theme that came up in these interviews that honestly I should have anticipated and just didn't even occur to me, the pandemic was a significant part of the story, because it either affected how much people were able to be with their partners, or their living situation, or their employment situation. There were these two different stories that I thought were interesting because they covered opposite sides of that thing, where people end up all living together or not able to see each other. This first one from Jac is about their group, all moving in together, and some of the challenges of that during the pandemic.

Jac: At the beginning of COVID, there was a lockdown order. I think we all just wanted to feel safe and held, and getting through this together. Because we had the space to do so, we just joined into one house, and we thought it would last two weeks and it lasted eight months. Oh, there were challenges for different reasons and just our complex relationships. It was not perfect, but I actually just moved out of that house a couple of weeks ago, and I just sat on my bedroom floor and just remembered all of the amazing memories that we had there together over the last year or so, and it was just this really beautiful time, full of life and full of love. And yes, there were complications, but we always got through it.

Emily: That's such a great example of people being able to be flexible in their living situation, and that like a relationship doesn't need to end if you move out, or if you move in, it doesn't necessarily take it in a different direction. Clearly there are some things that are going to be different because of the proximity, but that's really cool that this person, that Jac was able to see it as this really beautiful time and their life, but then also it can still exist outside of that. The relationship can exist outside of that.

Jase: Yes, that they're all living separately now. I think two of the people who lived together are still living together, but all the rest have their own places, and they're all so much happier having their own space. I do love that, like you said, Emily, that flexibility to move between the two different ways of living.

Then now this is a story from Candace coming from the other side of that, of not being able to see partners because of the pandemic.

Candace: For about six months, I didn't really see my-- our mutual partner didn't see her either. A couple of times, they would come over and stand at the end of the driveway and we would be like 10-feet apart, and we'd see each other that way, but nothing else. There were some virtual date nights and time with each other. I also organize our local poly group, and we had to cancel all our meetups, all our events, and I'm an extrovert, so not having people to hang out with and things to go out and do is really hard on me. Now that we have all moved in together, it helps because I have three adults in the house with me, other than myself and two partners and my mother, and at least I have somebody to hang out with, and her and I can do things together, and we can all play board games together or watch TV together and that thing, so that helps.

Dedeker: It's impossible to be non-monogamous and not be okay with playing board games.

Jase: For some people, they've actually already been dealing with similar issues that now all of us are having to deal with even before that, like Lindsay told me about.

Lindsay: Our baby, she had seizures when she was two days old. We spent a month in the NICU. She has epilepsy, so it's a genetic condition. We had been really concerned early on about making sure that anybody who was going to interact with the baby was vaccinated. We had already been a little bit strict in terms of who we were spending time with, who was spending time with us as a family. Now we're doing the extreme version. My partner had been working and then she quit her job to eventually turn into her being a stay-at-home mom. My metamour lost his job, so I'm the only person who's working now. Certainly, things look different than they did, but in some ways, like the fact that we all get to spend so much time together in these formative times, I'm working not to the degree that I would have been working. The fact that I don't have to do that and can be home with everybody, has actually been something that I'm grateful for.

Emily: It's just another example of so many things that can come up, and how wonderful it is to have multiple people there. The silver linings having to be home all the time, it's nice to be able to spend more time with those around us, especially in these extenuating circumstances like this.

Dedeker: Yes, just another period of time where our chosen families are even more important.

Emily: Absolutely.

Jase: Then I really enjoyed this next one with Ellen and Melissa, where they explained that during lockdown, they all separated from each other, had to isolate from each other, but that the two of them who are metaphors realized that for them, they could hang out together and not have to fight the urge to jump all over each other, and so that actually was a way for them to really build their friendship.

Ellen: I stopped seeing Jan at all because my sister's partner, who also moved in with us, is a nurse, and that risk just seemed too much. Jan and I had phone calls, but Melissa and I knew that we wouldn't have any trouble keeping the social distance. We started going on walks together, and that's how our friendship strengthened and really grew.

Melissa: That was really lovely again, just getting to know each other, what our values were. That each other was in a threat. That was a really special part of that time, because it was quite intense. It was really hard for me not to have any other connections, but yes, it was really nice to be able to explore this other relationship. Then after lockdown finished, and that just continued naturally over the next six, nine months over the year.

Emily: I wonder how many people are going to have these really strengthened connections out of this whole time, and what a lack of physical proximity will do to relationships. If those will be strengthened, if they have to change because you're not allowed to see each other as close, or you just have to speak instead of having sex or stuff like that.

Jase: Certainly, it will be interesting to see. There were so many great stories and so much great content in all these interviews, but unfortunately, not all of them could make it into this episode. However, we are going to explore some of these a little bit more in our bonus episode for patrons. To close out this episode, I asked our interviewees to share something that they've learned from their current metamour experience in the hopes that we can all learn from each other. It was really interesting getting to hear the different takeaways, what was similar and what was different in terms of what they've learned from having these positive experiences, and what they will take into their future metamour relationships.

To start us off with what we've learned, is Paula who has not been heard yet in this episode, but we will hear more of in that bonus episode for patrons.

Paula: The thing I've learned is that, what I want isn't always what the other people want. I want to have these really strong metamour relationships that stand alone, but that's not what everybody wants. Sometimes they don't want to be in contact with you, and they don't want to have a relationship with you. What I've learned from that is that's okay, you still should be respectful and kind.

Kenzie: Probably something that we've learned is, you don't have to rush it. You don't have to just instantly become best friends with your metamour. I feel like maybe sometimes there's a pressure to do that because you want to be doing the best version of poly, like no and not to take that personal and like just taking time to observe and maybe figuring out where the places are that you can align with this person where your interests overlap.

Greg: The most obvious one is I've learned that the difference between this early territorial love, where I just want to be in a bubble with the other person, and then there's bigger, more gentle love that I was able to have connecting with my metaphor. The pivotal moment was an evening in bed with my partner, and it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to seduce him away from my metamour. I said to him, "Tell me why, tell me what it is you love about him. Tell me all the qualities about him that make you want to continue to be in a loving relationship with this man," and it changed everything for me.

Bex: I think a lot of is about treating it as a friendship first, and like the metamour relationship, second, if you want to have a friendship with a metamour. The times I've had more negative metamour relationship is because it was very much all through the hinge partner facilitating the relationship, hinge partner is facilitating all the things and we can't talk freely with each other.

Friday: I think for me, I've had a couple of like shaky uncomfortable metamour relationships. I think the biggest thing is when the hinge part is nervous about the metamour relationship that it gets too involved in it. That just adds this whole dynamic that I just want to get to know this person as their own person, and we don't have to be best friends, but just approaching any relationship. When there's too much anxiety or 'meddling' from the hinge partner, it adds this tension and stress, I think on both sides.

Jennifer: I think certainly something that had been a problem for me in other relationships was that like, oh, I'm having a problem, and the only person I can talk to is with the partner that I'm having the problem with. I guess I made a pretty conscious choice. I think I need to have a broader circle of friends, and that also has more depth to it so that I have other places that I can be. I have other people that I can talk to, making sure that my life is full and happy. He's not going to be my go-to person for processing heavy emotional stuff because I just want to have other better atmosphere for that.

Jac: Probably go in with fewer nerves into that relationship, and with the expectation that I'm probably going to really like this person. You're not going to love your metamour 100% of the time. Be open to having differences with them, but also be open to having one of the best relationships of your life with them.