436 - What If You’re the Toxic One?
Are you the toxic one?
Don’t stop reading! The purpose of this episode isn’t to shame anyone or assign blame. Instead, we’re discovering what the word “toxic” actually means, since it’s often overused on social media nowadays. We’re also discussing bad behaviors and why they happen, and as always, we aim to provide you with some ways to make positive changes.
This episode is NOT for you if:
You have a history of self-blame or intense self-shaming.
You are experiencing abuse within a clear power dynamic.
You are currently undergoing a period of poor mental health.
It IS for you if:
You’re currently feeling frustrated and disempowered in your relationships, or you feel this way often/ on a consistent basis.
You have thoughts along the lines of “Why can’t they just be better?” or “Why won’t they just shape up?”
You’re ready to take a full inventory of what’s going on in this dynamic, what is keeping it going, and seeing if there are areas where you can be doing your own work.
“What often contributes to ‘toxicity’ in a relationship is when one or both individuals fail to take responsibility for how they have contributed to the breakdowns in their communication and connection. Toxic relationships can be repaired, but take time and commitment by both individuals.”
- Grace Choi, a marriage and family therapist based in Atlanta
The traits we use in this episode to define a “bad” relationship are extreme codependence, high conflict and/or volatility, dishonesty, inequality, imbalanced decision-making, pressure or coercion, neglect, and not meeting partners’ wants or needs.
Common toxic behaviors
Not communicating openly, perhaps by:
Shutting down/stonewalling.
Criticism/attack.
Contempt/mockery/belittling.
Defensiveness/blame.
Dishonesty.
Indirect or triangulated communication.
Why do we sometimes resort to these bad communication behaviors?
Perhaps there is longing or unmet needs and wants underneath.
Maybe it’s a pattern leftover from family of origin.
It can help us feel like we’re regaining power.
It prevents us from having to be vulnerable by being honest, transparent, or by having to apologize or take ownership for our actions.
In the past, it may never have felt safe for us to be who we really are or to say what we really feel.
Maybe we’re overwhelmed by emotions that are clouding our judgment, and making it hard to choose more functional approaches.
What’s the antidote?
Stonewalling → Emotional regulation or HALTing.
Criticism → Describing yourself and your own feelings rather than describing the other person.
Contempt → Building appreciation and respect in your relationship.
Defensiveness/blame →Just working on that apology/ownership muscle, even if you’re only able to take responsibility for something small.
Dishonesty → Identify what holds you back or what feels is at risk by being honest.
Indirect communication → Get clear on what belongs to whom, and have the courage to initiate uncomfortable conversations.
2. Dysfunctional relationship to one’s own emotions, and subsequently:
Taking negative emotions out on one’s partner, sometimes explosively.
Engaging in emotional projection.
Not processing emotional patterns, where they may have come from, and what soothes them.
Why do we do this sometimes?
Never learning emotional regulation or healthy ways to cope with big feelings in the first place.
Being chronically low on resources can intensify our feelings (lack of sleep, money stress, job or housing insecurity).
Unresolved trauma or shame.
What’s the antidote?
Learning how to sit with uncomfortable feelings during a conflict and still be able to listen and communicate.
Be aware of how big emotional displays like yelling, swearing, being destructive, and lengthy crying jags can cause negative impact.
Practice HALTing at a 3 rather than a 10.
Start working with a professional to start understanding your own emotional responses and working toward where you’d like them to be.
3. Expecting mind reading from your partner, which can look like:
Putting them to a test.
Why do we do this?
Even if we agree that we shouldn’t do this, our own assumptions and expectations can catch us by surprise. We may not realize they were even there until they weren’t met.
We may be holding a particular story about how a relationship should be, which can be influenced by culture, family, friends, or past relationships.
We might be avoiding the vulnerability of directly expressing what our expectations are, avoiding the risk that our partner may say “no.”
Past experiences of having unspoken expectations met can color current relationships.
Maybe we’re not trusting that a partner will come through for us without our prompting.
What’s the antidote?
Take an inventory of what actually does work for you in relationships. What behaviors do you expect from yourself and your partner?
Encourage reciprocity with your partner. What are their expectations?
Have regular check-ins to keep track of shifting expectations.
4. Control and manipulation, which can look like:
Covertly or overtly controlling finances, who your partner spends time with, how they behave, etc.
Your partner may feel the need to resort to lying, omitting, hiding, or generally being sketchy. This doesn't excuse their behavior, but it’s important to look at the whole ecosystem.
Why do we resort to this behavior sometimes?
The desire to control people, situations, and environments is very human. We have evolved to learn that control often equals safety. Often that can just straight up be the truth in certain situations. But it's a really hard lesson to unlearn in situations where controlling another person also causes them hurt or makes them feel trapped.
Someone else’s boundaries, limitations, or behaviors may just totally not make sense to us. We may have a hard time empathizing or relating.
We might have a lack of trust that we’ll be seen, heard, or cared for, therefore we have to step in and manage.
We might have too high of a standard for how things are done or how people behave.
Maybe we think we know what’s best for someone else (misguided care).
What’s the antidote?
Get curious about what situations or people trigger your impulse to control.
Recognize what is and isn’t in your control.
Examine how in-control or empowered you feel in your life in general. Feeling out of control in one area can prompt more attempts to regain control in other areas, such as your relationships.
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 are asking the question, what if you're the toxic one? Wait, no, don't switch off your podcast player just yet. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into what toxic really means. We're going to explore some common bad behaviors, why they happen, and provide some tangible ways to make positive changes without shame and without blame. I know that might be hard to believe.
Emily: Fingers crossed, right?
Jase: If you're interested in learning some of our fundamental communication tools that we reference all the time on this show, and that can help out in the situations we're talking about today, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships, not just romantic ones. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book, or literally wherever books are sold in the world. Alternatively, the first nine episodes of this podcast also cover some of our most widely used and shared communication tools, so you can go check those out as well.
Dedeker: What do y'all know about toxic stuff? I think it was real hot buzzword a few years back. I don't know if it's starting to leave the public parlance or if that's just me not being online as much as I used to. I don't know. Do we see toxicity being tossed around these days?
Emily: For sure, it's still pretty hot, I believe, and the cultural zeitgeist and in all of the, I think Instagram and TikTok, armchair psychologists saying that your boyfriend or your girlfriend or whomever might be toxic, that toxic friend and that you should get rid of them.
Jase: Yes, I see it often whipped out in terms of, you should leave this person because blah, or this is how to get out of a toxic relationship, or your partner's toxic if X, Y, Z.
Dedeker: This is how to have boundaries with a toxic person.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: I see that one a lot.
Emily: What does that mean exactly? Put barriers up to keep yourself safe around a relationship with a toxic person?
Dedeker: Yes, I think it collapses into the whole boundaries are everything phase that we seem to be going through, and boundaries are going to solve all of your problems. That boundaries are the only thing to protect you in a world full of toxic evil people.
Emily: May I ask, before we started this episode, you were talking about how this has been percolating in your mind for a while, and you've been secretly internally writing this episode for a little bit.
Dedeker: Just say secretly.
Emily: Secretly internally, right?
Jase: We would walk up and say, "Hey, Deds, what you working on?" She's like, "Nothing," would close her laptop real quick.
Emily: Here, it is now, but is there a reason for that?
Dedeker: Yes, a few reasons. It's been bubbling around in the back of my brain, a number of different things. There was a Huffington Post article that came out a few years ago that was titled, maybe you're the toxic one in your relationship. Of course, I had to click on that. It was actually a very thoughtful, interesting article, and so I saved it and it's just been churning in my brain for years now ever since I read it. Then that's exacerbated also by working with clients sometimes. Mostly my job, when I'm working with clients, is to give them unconditional positive regard. If someone specifically comes in and asks me, "Hey, I need you to tell me if I'm the in this situation," then I will tell them.
Most of the time I'm there to be supportive, but there's a handful of times where I'll be listening to someone's story and I will be thinking, "I think you're the one in the wrong here." Actually, I think you're the one being the bigger jerk here, and I have to really maneuver a way to be able to-- I don't know, find a way to express that in as loving a way and supportive a way as possible and try to not alienate somebody. Plus, I also think I go through these cycles, maybe yearly cycles, where I swing back around to, "Oh, what if I'm a terrible partner after all?" Oh, geez. I have to examine my own stuff, which I think in a healthy way. I would like to believe in a healthy way, and having my therapist helps with that. Having someone to bounce that off of really helps with that.
Emily: I'm sure.
Jase: I think toxic falls into this category of certain words that become popular and end up getting presented in a very absolute black-and-white, good and evil kind of way. You mentioned already boundaries. I think that's one of them, that boundaries were presented as, "This is a good thing." Therefore, if I can define what boundaries are, if something meets that definition, it is therefore good. Or with toxic, if I can see any behavior this person does, that means they are toxic completely. The same thing with abusive, or-- I'm trying to think of another example of these kinds of buzzwords that come up. It's something that we use to define an entire thing rather than a behavior or a dynamic or the way this particular interaction went. Not all the time, but I tend to see that trend with this word.
Dedeker: Yes, I would agree.
Emily: I appreciate that nuance that you're bringing to it, just because as we've said before, so often we will turn to little snippets on Instagram or a quick episode of something that's 10, 15 minutes and it tells us, "Yes, these are the traits of a toxic person and cut that person out of your life if you're seeing that." But often, as you just said, there's so much more to the equation than just simply they're exhibiting these traits. Maybe that's not always the case. Yes, maybe somebody is truly toxic and you do want them out of your life, but I appreciate looking at, "Do I ever exhibit these things? Is that something that I can look at in my life and in my relationships, and how can I solve that or make it better or turn towards a place of not having those things be in my life as much anymore?"
Dedeker: Well, let's start out by laying out who this episode may be for and who this episode is probably not for. I will go ahead and jump right ahead and say, "This is maybe not the episode to send to someone you think is toxic."
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: That is interesting. Why Dedeker?
Dedeker: Okay, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm going to get to this a little bit later. Let me put a pin in that first. Let's first talk about who this episode is not for. If you are someone who already has a history of intense self-blame or intense self-shaming, particularly in situations where maybe you're not to blame or entirely to blame, or where maybe this is not a situation where you should be shaming yourself, and yet you do, and trust me, I think we all can be vulnerable to this inner behavior. You know who you are if that's something that you tend to resort to.
If you are currently experiencing abuse within a clear power dynamic in a relationship, if someone is taking advantage of you, if someone is wielding power over you in some kind of way, I don't want you to be trying to think about how you're the one causing all the problems because you're the toxic one. I want you to look at other resources. If you are someone who's currently undergoing a period of poor mental health, if you're experiencing some acute anxiety or depression, this is probably not the episode for you today. It's okay, you can come back to it later if this is something that interests you. Also, this episode is not for you, Emily. Trust me, if I could summarily dismiss you from this episode, I would.
Emily: Oh, okay. Can I ask why you put that there? Because I saw it earlier as you sent this episode to me, and I was like, "What the hell, man? What is this? What do you mean by that?
Dedeker: Emily, you're someone who I think you fall into maybe the first category of like, you're so much more likely to blame yourself in situations where maybe it wasn't your fault, or you're more likely to take the fault or be the first to apologize, even in a situation where maybe there's shared responsibility. That's all. I don't want this episode to give you more fuel for that.
Emily: Interesting. I would go back immediately and say, "Well, maybe I'm going to learn a lot from this episode, and maybe I'll learn all of the ways that like I could be doing better, but yes, perhaps a little call available .
Jase: The fact you default to that is exactly what Dedeker is getting at.
Emily: Fine. Well, I'm going to be here anyways, and I'm sure I'll learn something. Maybe if it's that, I'm simply not toxic.
Dedeker: Yes, you're not allowed to learn anything about your own toxicity. I'm sorry. You're not allowed.
Jase: Oh my goodness.
Emily: Okay. That goes for all of you out there who are similar to me then.
Jase: Right. Perhaps learn about it and I think part of this episode is about removing some of the shame and overall, if you do any of these things you are a bad person. That narrative is so toxic.
Emily: Toxic.
Emily: Indeed.
Jase: I felt it coming, I was like, "Well, there it is." Is so toxic and so prevalent and so widespread and really not helpful for anyone. It's not helpful for people who are with someone who's toxic. It's not helpful for people who are doing toxic things to have this narrative that if you are that you are therefore a bad person. That's not helpful for anybody ever.
Emily: Let's talk about who this episode is for. If you are feeling frustrated and maybe disempowered in your relationships often on a really consistent basis, you may be interested in what this episode has to offer. Also, if you have like a variation of the thought, why won't my partner just shape up or why can't they just do what I wish they would do? Why can't they just be better at X, Y, or Z thing? Or, I expected my partnership with you to look a little bit differently than it does, or I expected my ideal partnership to look this way and my partnership with you doesn't quite look that way.
Again, I think it's fine to be aspirational about our relationships, but I don't necessarily think that telling a partner that they should do something that you think would make the relationship better if you acted a different way or were a different person perhaps, maybe that's a semi-toxic thing to do.
Jase: I think a variation on this that might be worth exploring through this episode is the thought or even saying out loud, something like, well, a blank would do blank or wouldn't do blank. Like, a partner would do this or a friend wouldn't do this. That's not to say, again, not saying those things are always wrong or always something to say, but if that's a recurring theme, maybe there's something there to explore about some expectations or unwillingness to meet a person where they are or communicate more honestly about what it is that you want or what you're looking for.
Dedeker: Of course, we want to reiterate that this episode, it's not meant to shame anybody or to gaslight anybody into thinking, oh, it's all your fault and your partner isn't contributing anything to relationship dysfunction. Oh, your frustrations with your partner you just shouldn't be feeling whatsoever because it's all your fault. That's the complete opposite of what we want people to take away.
It was really helpful for me in writing this episode to think about times in the past that I can look back on now and acknowledge, ooh, that was some bad behavior on my part. Then dig under the surface of, well, I don't think of myself as an evil toxic person. What was going on in my mind? What was going on in my heart? And, of course, I can look back and come up with justifications, why? Oh, yes, it makes sense. I was feeling this way and it felt like my only option was to behave in this way. I can justify it and understand it and also acknowledge that it was bad behavior and that I can move on and do something different.
I think that's what I'm aiming for with this episode, is to not just sweep any bad behavior we have into this category of, oh, it's because you were temporarily evil or maybe permanently evil, I don't know but to understand so that we can change these things.
Emily: Yes. That reminds me of this discourse around jealousy that we often see in non-monogamy and that, again, often it gets lumped into that category of simply bad or something that we shouldn't be doing, but the way that we've talked about it often on this show is that it's just more sort of data points for what's going on underneath the surface. What are we really getting at here? What's the cause of what I'm feeling or what I'm expressing? I'd like to think that what you just said could be the positive version of this as opposed to toxicity, that it is just more data points as to maybe I'm acting in this way because I'm wanting something that I'm not getting in this relationship.
Dedeker: Exactly. I think this episode is for you. If you're in a situation, maybe you've been frustrated for a long time, maybe you've been really hyper-focused on what the other person is doing in the relationship or really hyper-focused on what your metamour is doing or what your parents are doing or whatever, and maybe now you're ready to take a full inventory of what's going on in this particular dynamic that you're stuck on. Really taking an inventory of what is keeping it going and seeing if there are areas where you can be doing your own work.
While we're at it, I wanted to do just a very, very, very brief rundown of the cycle of change framework. This is a framework that comes up often in a lot of different therapeutic modalities, and it's this way of understanding how behavioral change happens, and it's broken down into seven stages. It's over the years, it's gone back and forth between like five-ish and seven-ish stages or so. The cycle begins with the term for it is pre-contemplation, and this is essentially, you don't even know that a change needs to happen.
Jase: I'm thinking about maybe thinking about making a change.
Emily: Exactly. I am like, we're thinking about the potential for thinking about this thing.
Dedeker: No, I think it's more you are pre the contemplation stage.
Emily: Okay.
Jase: Oh, I see. This is--
Dedeker: You're before the contemplation stage.
Emily: Before .
Dedeker: Maybe we can label this as you're completely ignorant.
Emily: Yes. Got it.
Jase: Sure.
Emily: The ignorance stage.
Dedeker: Your behavior or the impact of your behavior. I'll use an example with this. I can talk about maybe my own relationship to social media, let's say, so in pre-contemplation, I'm just scrolling, using it at all hours of the day, letting myself get really upset or outraged or whatever. When I'm interacting with social media I'm not even at the phase of thinking, "Ooh, maybe this is not good for me."
As the next phase which is contemplation, which is maybe realizing, "Maybe a behavioral change could help here. Maybe I need to do something different." I'm starting to recognize the negative impacts that this has on me. Then the next stage is preparation to make a change. Then maybe I'm like, "I don't know. This seems scary to make a change here." I'm going to talk to my therapist. I'm going to talk to some friends. I'm going to look up what other people have done. Maybe I'm going to look for some role models, maybe some friends in my life who I think have a good relationship with social media, and talk to them. That's preparation.
Then is action when we're ready to actually make the change, so for me, it was, "I'm going to install this Freedom app on my phone. I'm going to really severely limit my usage." Then the cycle keeps going. It's not done there. Then it goes into what's known as the maintenance phase which is like all the stuff that we need to do to make sure that the change stays in place. What's really interesting is the next phase is relapse actually, that they updated the model to include relapse to acknowledge that behavioral change is difficult and we do relapse. We do fall off the wagon and then have to find ways to get back on. That's actually part of making a permanent behavioral change.
Then the last one, they label as termination. Not all models include termination, which is basically, okay, now the change has been made and that's it. A better behavioral change has been made.
Emily: You're terminating the behavior.
Dedeker: You're terminating the bad behavior, I suppose.
Emily: Got it.
Dedeker: But it's a cycle. This isn't linear we just go round and around and around with the ways that we want to change things in our lives or our relationships or our behaviors. So the whole point of throwing all that at you at once is that if you're in the contemplation preparation stage of maybe changing behavior, this is a good episode for you. If you're pre-contemplation, you're probably going to skip this episode honestly. You're probably not even listening right now.
Jase: Great. Let's get into some definitions and then we're going to move into the core of this episode here. To start out, we've already talked about it a fair amount, but just the term toxic in general is used a lot, but really not very clearly defined. That it's again like boundaries where we often don't have a clear definition of what it means, but we know this thing is bad or this thing is good, and so it gets thrown around a lot.
Ironically, it's that we have this term toxic, which we then associate with being bad, and so then we just end up using the word for just anything we think is bad or anything that we don't like. The cross definition between badness and toxic ness just get all mixed up with each other. There are some watercolors that have just all smooshed in together.
Dedeker: Not that beautiful. Maybe really ugly watercolors.
Jase: This is when you end up with like that just sort of gray or brown mud color instead of some--
Dedeker: If you mix red and green together.
Jase: Yes. Oh, that one is what I was hoping.
Emily: That's what my smoothie looked like this morning.
Jase: To clarify though a little bit about what we mean when we're talking about toxicity here. This is a quote from Grace Choi who is a marriage and family therapist based in Atlanta. She says, "What often contributes to 'toxicity' in a relationship is when one or both individuals fail to take responsibility for how they have contributed to the breakdown in their communication and connection. Toxic relationships can be repaired, but take time and commitment by both individuals, and that's talking about toxic relationships as a label, but I think we can extrapolate that to think about all of this, it's about not taking responsibility or not being aware of some gaps in your own behavior perhaps."
We talked about that with the, oh, well, my partner should do this, or, well, you're not the relationship I thought you would be. Shows that there's this gap in how far I thought I was going to move compared to how far I thought you were going to move. For the purposes of this episode, we're sticking with a little bit of amorphous definition of toxic, but it's more about the behavior and the acknowledgment of your own role in things when we're talking about this. Not saying you're a bad, evil person.
Emily: I really appreciate, again, that she's talking about both individuals and not just one, and that is so often what we miss in just these little pithy statements about toxicity in a Cosmo quiz or whatever that you don't really get the full picture and potential of maybe what both people are bringing to a partnership.
A little over a year ago, we had an episode titled Having a Good Relationship after Leaving a Bad One, and we discussed a list of traits that we used to define bad relationships, and so those were things like extreme codependence, high conflict, and high volatility. Also, dishonesty, inequality, imbalanced decision-making between partners, things like a lot of pressure or coercion, neglect, and then also not meeting a partner's wants or needs. Those are things to think about as we're getting further into this episode.
Also, I think if two people are wanting to go on that cycle of change that Dedeker talks about before, I think that you can change some of these things from potentially bad relationship behaviors to moving towards better or less toxic relationship behaviors.
Jase: Now for the main event where we're going to get into some common toxic behaviors, how they happen, and what we can actually do about it to make that change that Dedeker previewed earlier on. First, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show if you find this information valuable and you appreciate the fact that we're able to put this resource out into the world every week for free. The way to do that is just to take a moment to listen to our sponsors, see if any sound interesting to you. If they do, check them out. It does really directly support our show and helps us to keep doing this. Thank you so much.
Dedeker: We're back. This whole second half of the episode, we're going to be talking about four common toxic behaviors, or at least four common, I guess, umbrella categories of toxic behaviors. For each one, we're going to talk about why they happen, why we might resort to these behaviors. I think, again, it is really important for us to understand that this doesn't just come from evil. It doesn't just come from being a bad person, that when bad behavior comes out of us, there is a reason for it, and chances are it goes back to our childhood or a previous relationship where that behavior did help us to survive.
It's not for the purpose of justifying it and saying it's totally okay for you to use this behavior whenever you want, but I do think it's important to be able to understand why we sometimes turn to some weird strategies to get the things that we want from the people that we love. For each one, we're going to talk about why they happen, and then we're also going to talk about what to do about it. What are the strategies for counteracting this behavior and putting a better behavior in place?
Let's begin by talking about the first category of behavior, which is not communicating openly or not communicating well. This is going to begin with a little bit of a round-up of the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse as laid out by the Gottman Institute. The behaviors that fall under this category include things like shutting down or stonewalling, criticism, or attacking your partner, contempt or mockery or belittling your partner, having extreme defensiveness or blame, basically never taking any responsibility for what you've done wrong or dishonesty, so omitting or just straight up lying to a partner.
Emily: Initially, when I looked at this and read it not communicating openly, I was thinking about not communicating openly by avoidance tactics, and if that would still lie under the umbrella of maybe somebody thinking that was toxic behavior. We discussed this in a recent episode, but people will tend to avoid conflict and avoid each other and avoid speaking about difficult things or communicating openly about their needs or what they want because they just want to keep the peace. I feel like that's another flavor of toxic behavior, but that very much is two people choosing to do it or maybe one person choosing to do it as a defense tactic or whatever. What do you think about that?
Dedeker: Yes. I agree. Avoidance behaviors can fall on a spectrum. There can be everything from, I don't really want to get into conflict about this, or I'm worried there might be conflict about this, so I'm going to maybe drag my feet in talking about this all the way up to, I'm just going to refuse to talk about something even if my partner really wants to, I just refuse. Yes. I think that falls under this category of not communicating openly.
Jase: We've hit that from several different angles on previous episodes too. For example, just recently with Irene Morning talked about how keeping your desires from your partner, you think you're doing it to keep the peace and make things better, but actually can really end up hurting them when they learn that all this time there's been something you wanted that they didn't know about and they haven't been giving to you and you've been disappointed because you haven't been getting it. That's actually causing more harm by not just speaking up about what it is that you want.
The other one is something we've talked about before. I think, Dedeker, you said this was a quote from someone, but it's that idea that if there's something you're frustrated about in your relationship, maybe about who does the laundry or something, that even if you're not communicating it clearly, you're communicating it somehow by sighing and huffing and being grumpy or giving the silent treatment or something like that. You're still going to end up communicating it, but probably in a much more toxic way than communicating openly. I could see how that could all fit into this category.
Dedeker: Yes. That was from Eve Rodsky's book Fair Play.
Emily: Oh, of course.
Dedeker: You just tease me for referencing it so often, and there it is again. That's a perfect segue into the last item on this list, which is indirect communication or triangulated communication. It's maybe a little bit different, but I wanted to include triangulated communication as well. An example of this might be my metamour said something to me that really rubbed me the wrong way and maybe I took issue with, but instead of bringing it up with my meta, I'm going to go vent to my partner about it or ask my partner to be the one to tell my meta how inappropriate that was. Again, this can fall on a scale. It can be more extreme in certain situations rather than others, but I would put that under the not communicating openly or well.
Jase: Even without including metamours in it, this I see happen constantly with in-laws or other family members of partners. That whole, oh, well, your mom said something that I didn't like and so I'm going to complain to you, my partner about it rather than just deal with it or talk to them, but I'm going to complain to you in a way that ends up just causing a lot more discomfort and upset, I guess. Sure, there's something to be said for commiserating with each other, but that's different from, I'm going to pile on you about this other person in your life, which effectively is the proxy for the metamour relationship as well.
We've talked a little bit about it, but why might we be resorting to these communication behaviors? There is a longing or unmet needs and wants underneath that are not getting expressed as we've talked about. This could be a pattern left over from your family, maybe you grew up in a family where people didn't express their needs clearly. I would say that's probably most of us. Maybe I'm biased because of my own family, but I feel like direct communication about our wants and needs is not a terribly common behavior that gets modeled for people. Maybe that's changing. That would be wonderful.
Emily: Can I just ask, who's the person out there with the perfect family? And are they perfect? What's going on there? I don't know.
Dedeker: It's always something. It's always going to be something.
Emily: I guess it is always something, yes, but good for you out there who have the perfect family. Well done.
Jase: Some of these behaviors can also make us feel like we're regaining power. Even if we're doing it in not the healthiest way, it can make us feel like, oh, well, I'm getting some power back by giving this person the silent treatment or by blaming them for something. Especially if we feel vulnerable and scared that sometimes lashing out and putting someone else down could make us feel better in the short term. It can also prevent us from having to be vulnerable and being honest and transparent, or having to apologize or take ownership for our actions. If I did something bad, it's a lot easier if I can blame you for at least part of it than just taking responsibility for it.
It also may have never felt safe for us to really be who we are or to say what we really feel maybe in a past relationship that was received negatively and we were told we were wrong to even want those things. Or maybe ironically, that we were bad, that we're a bad person for wanting those things, and that now we're doing these behaviors because we feel like we don't have another option. We could also just be overwhelmed. There could be just be too many emotions clouding our judgment, making it hard to choose something that's more effective and more, I would say, conscious and intentional.
Emily: One of the biggest reasons why we created this podcast was this question of, how do we communicate more openly and better with our partners and with the people around us? We have to look at what's the antidote to these things. The truth is, a lot of the things I'm about to say are really interchangeable. They can overlap. There are a variety of ways that you can communicate better, and you can use these in a variety of scenarios, but if you find yourself stonewalling, for instance, maybe try to emotionally regulate or halt.
Maybe if you're getting in a fight with your partner and you find yourself doing some, quote-unquote, "toxic behavior," because you are so charged, perhaps now is the time to say, okay, I'm halting. I'm stopping the conversation. I'm going to walk away and emotionally regulate, and then we'll come back after a time when we feel like we are physiologically in a better place to have a conversation in a much more calm and respectful way.
If you find yourself criticizing a tactic that you can use is to talk about your own feelings. Do things like NVC, nonviolent communication, or clean talk where you're speaking about yourself and your own observations of self and your own feelings in the moment as opposed to placing judgment or blame on your partner. Also, contempt. If you find yourself feeling contempt for your partner, maybe build some appreciation and respect into your relationship and kindness, and assuming good first, rather than getting upset and blaming your partner and getting annoyed immediately.
Things like defensiveness and blame. Yes, just maybe work on that one. Maybe again apology and taking ownership, that's a tough one. Even if you're only able to take responsibility for something tiny within the interaction that you just had with your partner, start there. That's something, it is a muscle that you have to work and work on getting better at that because it does take time, but it's absolutely possible.
Jase: That's one that I think is very effective to work on outside of the situation where you are having to admit you did something wrong, but in other conversations to bring up, this is something I'm scared of, or this is something that in past relationships if I admit I did anything wrong, that means I've lost everything and I've admitted that everything is wrong with me. Bringing that up beforehand can also help you in that situation where it's more difficult and more charged.
Emily: If you realize that dishonesty is crept into your relationship, maybe identify what holds you back from being fully honest or what you feel is at risk by being fully honest. We got into this a lot in our episode on honesty, which happened just a little bit ago. It was Multiamory Episode 430. Go take a look at that again, and maybe look at what's going on there with this honesty thing. Why is that not my first response with my partner? Why do I feel like I want to hold anything back?
Then that indirect communication thing, get clear on what part of the issue is your part and what is somebody else's part. Maybe have the courage to initiate uncomfortable conversations or step out of those conversations that need to be happening between two people that are not you. Maybe let them have their thing and stop being the go-between.
Dedeker: Yes, I'm glad you pointed that out. I want to move on to the next umbrella of behavior here, which I identified as having a dysfunctional relationship to your own emotions that I think can cause some weird not great behaviors. This could look like taking negative emotions out on your partner, sometimes in explosive ways, sometimes at times where it's not even relevant to them. This can look like coming home from a really stressful and frustrating day at work, and then immediately taking that out on your partner, being really shitty to them, or immediately jumping into poking at them in some particular way.
Related to this is emotional projection. That could be, if you are having a negative emotion, you project that onto the other person. Like, maybe I'm experiencing some jealousy or envy, but it's too vulnerable to me to admit that and so I manufacture an accusation that, "Oh, no, it's my partner's, the one who's actually jealous and envious, and they're the one who's causing the problem."
This could look like avoiding processing emotional patterns. This could be someone who has some maladaptive ways that they deal with their emotions, but they also completely avoid any awareness of that or diving into that. There's no sense of figuring out where does this response come from? What soothes this response? How can I set myself up so that I have a better response later on? Maybe even not even acknowledging the impact that your negative emotional responses may have on the other person.
If we talk about why we might resort to this, or why this might happen, there can be a number of different factors that contribute to that. We may never learn emotional regulation in the first place in our upbringing. We may never learn healthy ways to cope with big feelings. We may have grown up in a family of origin where if you had a big emotion, your caregivers had an equally big emotion and it was like throwing gasoline on the fire, or maybe you grew up in a family where if you had a big emotion, then your parents would just send you to your room and just ignore you until your emotions went away. Maybe that didn't arm you with the best tools for being able to cope with stressful circumstances as they're happening.
That's one factor that can contribute to this. Another factor could be being chronically low on resources, which intensifies our feelings. When I say resources, I mean a lack of sleep, money stress, going through job insecurity, or housing insecurity. It's also this unfortunate cyclical thing where existing relationship stress can produce more relationship stress because you're not necessarily getting the same sense of security and fulfillment and validation from your partner and so that makes it even harder to be able to deal with your own emotions or things like that.
Or this could all be pointing towards some unresolved trauma or shame some deep work that hasn't been done yet. I think there's a couple of different antidotes for this. In Martha Kauppi's book on polyamory, A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists. She talks a lot about what she calls the skill of holding steady when in conflict. Being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings and still listen and communicate at the same time. Now, of course, sometimes you need to halt in order to be able to do that, but it's still that skill of I am uncomfortable right now, I'm upset right now, I don't feel safe and secure right now, but I'm still going to show up and do my best to communicate in a healthy way.
She says this also includes being aware of the negative impacts of big emotional displays. Things like yelling, swearing, being destructive. She also includes having big, loud, lengthy, crying jags as well. It's not just about displays of anger, it's also about the negative impact of just melting into tears and weeping and wailing in front of your partner and being inconsolable, which I've definitely been there and it's been hard for me to recognize the fact that, yes, it's okay for me to have emotions, but just doing that in front my partner and not communicating through it is probably not helping resolve the conflict or communicate, right? Like that's maybe a situation again to halt and go take a break and cry it out on my own and then come back when I'm a little bit more calm.
I think related to this, it's a good practice to try halting when you're at a 3 rather than at a 10. This is hard. This is really hard to do. It does get better and easier over time. I suggest that you go listen to Multiamory Episode 218 where we specifically dove into, okay, I've halted, I've paused the fight, but now what am I supposed to do? That'll give you some tactics about how to regulate and how to keep yourself occupied so that when you come back to the fight it's not just more intensified.
Jase: I just want to reiterate how cool that one is that just setting your circuit breaker to a lower voltage you could say of that, just catching things sooner with all sorts of stuff, not just about getting angry or getting sad, all sorts of things. The sooner you say, "Oops, we're heading this direction, let me change course, the easier that's going to be."
Dedeker: Relate to this, working with a professional, a therapist, a counselor, a coach, to start understanding your own emotional responses and working toward where you would like your emotional responses to be. Again, we can't always change how we experience our feelings, but we do have power to change how we behave when those feelings come up.
Emily: Let's talk a little bit about unspoken expectations. This is something that in traditional monogamy is so so prevalent and it's really challenging to break away from this notion and idea that our partners will just like simply know what it is that we need and want. That's something to strive for in a relationship. Instead, we need to be really clear about all of the things that we need because our partners are not mind readers but often, especially in traditional monogamy, it's celebrated that your partner is going to know exactly what it is that you need at any given time. Sometimes I think in the more toxic situations, we may start putting our partner to the test and testing what it is that-- do they really know me as well as they should or as well as I hope or think that they do.
Jase: It's kind of that, what's the matter? Oh, well, if you don't know then that's your problem, like you should know. Oh, obviously, you should know if you're paying attention. That kind of thing. The funny irony about this one too is how the mind-reading thing we all are taught that that'll just happen, but the irony is if you do have good, open, honest communication, you do get to experience some of those moments where it is like they read your mind and anticipated what you needed, but they needed to get the chance to learn that first.
Emily: Yes, 100%, you can't just like meet a person and have them automatically know everything about you, even though the fairytales say that that should be the case. We laid out a lot of reasons why we may resort to this behavior and this idea that our partner should automatically know everything about us. We may have a particular story about how the relationship should be, and that can be influenced by our culture or our family and friends' past relationships. This idea large that we live in a fairytale world and our fairytale prince or princess or whomever should come along and be the savior of our life and they're automatically going to know everything about us.
We may also want to avoid the vulnerability of directly expressing what our expectations are and avoid this risk that our partner may say no to those expectations or those wants or those preferences or those needs, whatever they may be. Additionally, we may have old relationships in our life where we did really groove with a person and we vibed with them and our expectations were met when we didn't have to ask for them or say anything for them and expect that all good, quote-unquote, "relationships" should be that way. When you get in a new partnership, you may wonder, why do I have to voice what it is that I need with this person when I haven't had to do that in the past?
Finally, we may just not trust that a partner will come through for us and so we may test our partner or exhibit those testing behaviors to see whether or not they really truly know who we are or what it is that we want. Which I think is and can be a pretty toxic behavior.
Jase: What is the antidote for this one? One place to start is to take an inventory of what does work for you in relationships or what are behaviors that you do expect from yourself as well as your partner, or what are certain roles that you expect there to be between you in your relationship, and actually, get clear on what those are. Because it's possible that you might be frustrated because you're not getting certain expectations met, but you might not even know consciously what those are. There's a chance that as you write those down, you may realize some of those are unreasonable. Once you actually write it down or say it out loud, you might go, "Oh, yes, that is a little bit fairytale. Maybe that's not realistic".
Then others that do seem reasonable helps you know what it is that you want to express and talk to your partner about because they might have completely different ideas of what relationships look like, what partners are, things like that. Also encouraging reciprocity with your partner. The other side of this is, how can I learn about your expectations? The best way is just having clear communication about it. Having something like a radar where you sit down regularly and talk about these instead of trying to get it all out at once because it's very possible neither of you are very clear on all of these things, or you might discover more that you weren't even aware of as you go.
Having something like a regular monthly check-in can be a really helpful way to go over those and just get clarity especially if you're starting to realize we might be off on some of these expectations. What's really cool is when you can do that and come together as a team to say, wow, look at that. Let's figure out which of these we together actually want and can give to each other and are willing to give to each other, so then we at least have a starting place of us as a team.
Emily: Again, this is not to say that you are a terrible person if you don't voice your opinions or your wants or needs, but that relationships are different. Especially when you're in non-monogamous relationships, each one of those is going to be different so you can't simply just expect all of the expectations to be the same amongst each relationship.
Jase: Now for the fourth and final of these overarching categories is control and manipulation. This can look a lot of different ways. One example is either covertly, secretly, or overtly controlling finances. What your partner spends money on, what the two of you value for money but this is coming mostly from just your side. This could be covertly or overtly trying to control who your partner spends time with, how they behave, what their interests are, what they do in their free time, what their personal life looks like, what their work life looks like. There's a lot of different ways that this can look.
This can also create a dynamic where your partner may feel the need to resort to lying to you or omitting things or hiding or generally being sketchy. Now this is a tricky one, because we don't want to excuse dishonesty and lying but it's important to look at the whole ecosystem here of, if they are honest, what happens? What has happened in the past when they've been honest?
This is almost the flip side of the first one that we talked about, about not communicating openly if you don't feel like your honest communication or expression of your desires is received safely, that maybe you're shamed for that or immediately told you're a bad person for wanting those things or thinking those things. This could be happening on the other side too, coming from a desire to control your partner and snapping to these judgments which may have to do with some old training or programming that we had maybe that was given to us too that we're now projecting onto someone else. That might make it so they don't feel like they can communicate safely with us.
Emily: So many of these things remind me of like the cycle of codependency and how behavior that's not great is causing not great behavior on the side of the other partner, and how it just goes around and around and around. Neither are good and they both can suck and cause the other person to be like, "I wish I'm getting more out of this relationship, or I'm not getting something that I want." That's really interesting and again showing like, hey, it does take two to tango, and let's look at the parts of ourselves, the parts of us that are doing these things in relationships to try to break that cycle.
Dedeker: There's a lot of reasons why we might resort to control or manipulation. I want to normalize right away the fact that the desire, the urge to control people or control situations or control environments, it's very human and it's very normal. If you think about it, we've basically evolved to learn that control often equals safety. The more that we can control, we can know what's going to happen. We know we have the control to respond effectively or make sure that nothing bad happens, creates a more safe environment. Sometimes that's just the truth in certain life situations but that's a really hard lesson to unlearn in situations where controlling another person in particular will also cause them hurt or make them feel trapped.
I just wanted to normalize that this is something all of us have the capacity to do, to feel that urge to want to control someone or something. This may come up because somebody else's boundaries or their limitations or their behaviors may just not make sense to us completely. We may just have a hard time empathizing with where they're coming from or relating, and therefore we feel like, oh, well, if they knew what was good for them, they wouldn't have this boundary. I need to demonstrate to them why it's okay if I just steamroll this boundary that it's going to be okay.
There may just be a gap in actual understanding or ability to empathize. We may feel a lack of trust that we will actually be seen or heard or cared for, and therefore we feel like, oh, I have to step in and manage this. I have to step in and control my partner's behavior or what they do with whom and when because if I don't, they're not going to consider me. They're not going to care for me. Again, if you zoom out and look at the whole ecosystem, your partner may be doing things that really reinforce that message. It's not just you, but it's also not just your partner either.
Perfectionism as well is another one. The cross that I will bear to the day I die, the perfectly artisan handcrafted cross that I will wear on my back till the day I die. We may have too high of a standard for how things are done or how people behave and therefore feel like we need to step in and manage or control what they do in order for it to meet this particular standard. Then wrapped up in a lot of this can be a misguided or a misplaced sense of care. We can assume we know what's best for somebody else. They don't know what's best for them, so I need to step in and show them what's what, or I need to step in and dictate how they behave in this particular situation.
Emily: What can we do about this? First, we can get curious about what situations or people trigger this impulse inside of you to control. Maybe there's something that's linked to your past where you're like, "Hey, I was able to control that situation and it made me feel really good, or it made me feel really safe." This situation seems a lot like that. Maybe if I just do that thing again, then everything will be okay. Look at that, look a little bit deeper, and maybe ask yourself, is that the best place to go? Also, recognize what is and isn't in your control. We talk a lot about that because there's so many things that are outside of our control that we can't do anything about.
Dedeker: But we think we can, that's the tricky part.
Emily: I know, but we do often have to let it go and it is tough. It really is tough. Our partner for one thing, we can't control them as much as we will try and we can't control behavior. We can try to do it and we can want to do it, and we can use tactics to control, but ideally, that's not something that we should be looking to do.
Jase: It makes me think about the Gottmans, that there's a number of issues or arguments or incompatibilities of belief we might have with a partner that will never change. When it comes to a person's core beliefs, it's very unlikely that those are ever going to change during their life and they're definitely not going to change because you try to make them. It reminds me of that a little bit of that difference between, what are the parts of this that we can negotiate about together and express how do we live as two different people with some different beliefs from each other, but do this together in a way that supports each other, versus always being dissatisfied and just thinking the answer will be once they finally come around to seeing the world the way that I do. It just reminds me of that way of looking at things.
Emily: Yes, I think those big fundamental things are what we ultimately can't really control. We can try to move people in directions, but I guess the question is, is that really what we should be doing, or can we allow our partners to fully be who they just simply are and be okay with that? A good thing to do is to examine how in control or empowered you feel in your own life in general, and recognize that feeling out of control in one area of your life can often prompt some attempts to regain control in other areas of your life, such as your relationships and question, where are areas that I can have control? What are areas that are simply about me that I can change the trajectory of something that is or is not happening in my life and allow control to happen there as opposed to trying to impose control on somebody else?
Dedeker: I want to close this out by clarifying that when we say that you can't control your partner, it does not mean you just have to take everything that your partner does lying down if it rubs you the wrong way. You have so many tactics at your disposal. You can make a request, you can express, "Hey, I would really like it if you did this instead of this, or, I really prefer it when we communicate this way, rather than when we communicate that way." "Hey, can we work together to help this part of our relationship feel better?" Or you can even be just straight up honest, like, I'm really feeling a strong urge to control what you're doing. Let me talk to you about what's going on inside me. Maybe we can understand what's actually happening here. Of course, you can use all of those things. It's just a little bit different when you're really trying to get your hands in there to manipulate someone directly.
Jase: Now remember with all of this that these behaviors fall on a scale and much like when we talked about halting, where it's better if you can learn to halt when you're at a 3, instead of waiting till you're all the way at an explosive 10, smashing all the walls and windows in your house before realizing you should halt. With these same things, it's that the sooner you can catch these or start to notice, "Oh, yes, okay, I might be doing some of this, let's open up communication about it. Let me do these steps we've talked about to examine it and figure out what's me, what's them? What is something where I should have an expectation of these and I should express it to them? If they don't do it, maybe this isn't a good relationship for me."
It doesn't have to mean that they are a toxic person or that you are a toxic person. It may just mean this is not compatible on a fundamental level, and that can really suck to realize but that may be the truth. The sooner you can observe these things and notice them and start to actually look into them, the sooner you can work on those together and you can do it in a way that's healthier.
One great tip for this is to talk to a therapist or a counselor or a coach or a trusted friend, someone that you can trust to give you a reality check and to be clear what you're looking for. Dedeker tease this earlier, but most therapists will not assume that you want to be called on your bullshit unless you tell them that's what you're looking for. Because a lot of times their job is to be the one person who's always in your corner. So you need to be clear, "I'm really trying to figure this out, which of this is me?" They might help to give you some of that outside perspective.
Emily: Just go on Reddit and do the AmItheAsshole.
Dedeker: In case of emergency, if you really want to throw yourself into the deep end. You can do the AmItheAsshole subreddit? People will tell you.
Emily: Yes, there you go.