525 - Your Metamour is Not the Villain with Alex Alberto
Welcome, Alex!
We’re so excited to welcome Alex Alberto onto the show! Alex is a queer author, publisher, and filmmaker. Last year, Alex published their memoir, “Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home” through Quilted Press, a collective of independent authors they co-founded. This year, Alex is producing a short film called “Coming Out Polyamorous for Thanksgiving,” which is based on an essay from Entwined. Alex also leads writers' retreats and courses at Scrappy Literary, and some of their classes focus on helping writers of all levels write about non-monogamy and unconventional relationships. Alex is originally from Montreal but lives in Upstate New York with their partner, metamour, and kids.
Alex gives their input and perspective on the following questions during this episode:
What did you mean when you say that, “Metamours are the best part of polyamory?”
What are the best and worst metamour relationships each of us have had?
You wrote an article discussing your relationship with your partner’s girlfriend. In what ways are your metamour relationships just as fulfilling as your romantic partnerships?
What advice would you give to people who are new to polyamory, and who don’t know how to get over the jealousy or fear they feel towards their metamours?
Sometimes it’s possible for us to read all the books, listen to all the podcasts, and still not be able to reconcile our emotions, our hearts, and our heads. When you feel like you’ve exhausted all the tools at your disposal, how can you still work towards neutrality when it comes to your metamours?
Are there specific metamour struggles that are simply more difficult/impossible to move past? In these situations, what is a best practice for navigating the complex emotions of multiple partnerships?
Have you ever been in a scenario where you are the hinge and two of your partners don’t get along? What would you do in this scenario, and how would you be understanding and compassionate towards the needs of both of your partners?
We’ve definitely heard from some of our patrons over the years that their metamours actively try to sabotage their relationship with their mutual partner. If you were the mutual partner, what is your responsibility to make the situation better for everyone involved? If you were the one whose relationship is being threatened, what would you do?
You told us that your metamour moved in 8 months ago with her two kids, and that you have a lot to say about co-living, co-parenting, and navigating this transitional period. What have some of the challenges been? What has been delightfully unexpected?
You wrote an article about metamours creating stronger family bonds in your relationships. The framing of that article was a health scare your partner had and how you wished that you had your metamour there to help support you through that challenging time. How can metamours support each other when there are health/financial/other life difficulties with your mutual partner?
Visit Alex’s website at alexalberto.com, or find them on TikTok and Instagram to see more of their work!
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 talking all about metamour relationships with polyamorous storyteller and author, Alex Alberto. Alex is a queer author, publisher, and filmmaker. Last year, Alex published their memoir, Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home through Quilted Press, a collective of independent authors that they co-founded.
This year, Alex is producing a short film called Coming Out Polyamorous for Thanksgiving-- great title-- which is based on an essay from Entwined. Alex also leads writers' retreats and courses at Scrappy Literary. Some of their classes focus on helping writers of all levels write about non-monogamy and unconventional relationships.
Alex is originally from Montreal, but lives in upstate New York with their partner, metamour, and kids. Alex, thank you so much for joining us today.
Alex: Thanks for having me. It's truly a joy.
Emily: It's a joy to have you here. Metamours, we are doing this in March. We started a thing a couple years ago, Metamour March. I didn't realize, but Metamour Day is on February 28th.
Alex: Yes.
Emily: Did you all celebrate?
Jase: Yes. . I guess I did. I went over to a metamour's house yesterday, so I was a day late to celebrate.
Emily: Oh, okay. That's all right.
Dedeker: We canceled the celebration? Unintentionally, in our private Discord, we launched a metamours channel. Again, it was totally by accident.
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: We weren't planning for it to roll out on Metamours Day. It was just by popular demand. I guess that was how we officially celebrated.
Emily: There you go.
Alex: That's great.
Emily: I love it.
Alex: I went to my local open mic with my metamour, and we wore matching "I love my metamour" shirts.
Jase: I love it.
Alex: Oh, cute.
Jase: Nice.
Alex: She read something that she wrote for the very first time, and I've been doing that for a long time. It was really nice to support her in that.
Dedeker: Oh, beautiful.
Jase: That's so cool.
Emily: That's really, really cool. I went out with my metamour and our mutual partner and some friends last night. I guess we all did cool stuff with our metamours. How lovely. I read an article recently that you did, Alex from, I think, a couple of years ago. You said in the article that metamours are one of the best parts of polyamory.
That was really interesting to me, because that's not what goes through my head initially, that metamours are one of the best parts of polyamory. For the group, what, to you, is the best part of polyamory or non-monogamy, and where do metamours fit into that?
Dedeker: I would agree with you, Emily, but I wouldn't lead as part of my polyamory PR campaign, I wouldn't lead with, "Oh, yes, metamours are the best parts." I think that's a hard sell for people. When I do think about my favoritest memories and the things that I cherish most that I feel have been a direct result of having multiple partners, there's usually a metamour involved somewhere in there.
I realize that I can't extract my favorite memories from either a meta of my own being involved or seeing my partner in their meta being involved in some way. Truly, the threads are there, I would think. What about you, Jase?
Jase: I would agree. I think that the times-- I guess what I will say is maybe not that metamours are my favorite part of polyamory, but my favorite parts of polyamory are when the metamours are good. Maybe I would flip that the other way around. I do like that aspect when it's good. I feel like so many people come into it with fear and--
Emily: Oh, yes.
Jase: -worry and concern.
Emily: Can you talk about why you said that, Alex? I found that to be just so unbelievable, because so many of us, I think, are really scared of the possibility of having another person that we don't know and that we don't necessarily choose to have in our life become such a potentially big part of our lives. Even if it is just through knowing them through a mutual partner, or maybe they even become a part of your life in a bigger way.
Alex: It's interesting because when I started with non-monogamy, I had no thoughts about metamours. Meaning other than just like, yes, there's a byproduct of what I want, which is multiple intimate relationships.
Once I developed my first close metamour relationship, I think I was just really surprised about the kind of intimacy that we had. It's something that, even though I've written so much about it, I still sometimes struggle to sum it up.
It just felt so unique to me. This sort of, it's friendship, there's fondness, there is intimacy, there's trust. Obviously, trust developed over time. It was at a time where I was really craving more intimate friendships in my life. I was living in New York City, and it was really hard to make friends, to be honest. People had time for me if it was to date or to have sex.
People have full lives, and as an adult in a new place-- I'm not saying that, for me, metamours are just a different way to make friends. It's almost like it became more intimate and more committed, if you will, than friendship. It allowed a level of intimacy, almost a quick jump to intimacy that took maybe much longer to develop with friends. For me, it was also, it's not really the compersion.
It's not really about being happy for my partner when they are with their other partner, or me having some tingly feelings when I see that. It's actually even just being able to share with someone who knows my partner in the same intimate way.
Almost like having someone that I can also ask advice to, having someone that, when I talk about my partner, they'll really understand in a way that no one else would. To me, that feeling of sharing was something that I just didn't know it existed.
Dedeker: Do you think that you just lucked out, or have you paved a trail of bad metamour relationships that you've escaped from in the past?
Alex: I would say that the metamours that I didn't click with or that were more challenging for me, they did not end up extremely long relationships with my other partner. Even though now I'm in very much of a situation that is much more non-hierarchical, nested polyamory with my partner and my metamour.
Back then, when I was looking for non-monogamy and I finally met someone who was willing to do it with me, we ended up doing very hierarchical. We have our main relationship, and the metamours are secondary. My partner had several metamours that maybe I didn't click with, or it was harder for me to manage my own jealousy or feelings of insecurity.
When I clicked with someone, it so happened that it also became a very meaningful relationship for my partner, Dawn. I think, on one hand, maybe it's luck. On the other hand, it's almost like the people that made sense for our system, our constellation, are the people that ended up sticking around longer. Does that make sense?
Dedeker: Sure. I think in the entertainment industry, we think about how the audience's self-selecting. That's the phrase that ran through my brain is this idea of, yes, the right people who would fit in your ecosystem were the ones who stayed in that ecosystem.
Alex: There was one metamour in particular, and I do talk about that in my book, where I actually would've liked to have an even deeper relationship with her. She just didn't, I think, have the same desire, which is perfectly fine. That's my favorite type of polyamory. When we do meet people who want to build this more entwined level of relationships, that's when things get just really beautiful and exciting for me.
Emily: I love that. It sounds like you have had some metamour relationships that weren't particularly great. Can all of us reflect back on what some of our best metamour relationships have been and what some of our worst metamour relationships have been? Why Dedeker, you and I had a mutual partner, and that was in the early stages of non-monogamy, for me at least.
You and I had a mutual metamour as well, that I think didn't make much of an effort to really get to know either of us. The only time that we really got to see them was maybe during parties or mutual hangouts or places where all of us were together for whatever reason.
Unfortunately, that person tended to be someone who was a little bit more standoffish, and therefore, I don't necessarily think that we ever got the opportunity to get to know them very well, and it just never clicked or vibed as well as maybe I would've liked.
Dedeker: Well, I appreciate, Alex, you talking about how when you were at the beginning of this journey, you had no thoughts about metamours and you thought of them as really a byproduct. I think I was very much in that same camp, where even though when I was first starting the whole polyamory experiments, I had read the available books and the articles and stuff like that, and people talked about metamours.
There wasn't quite the same taxonomy as exists now of, do you want to be kitchen table? Do you want to cohabit together someday? Do you want to co-parent, or do you want to be more parallel or things like that? That vocabulary at least wasn't in the circles that I was running in.
Not only was I really not thinking about how I wanted to intentionally create relationships with metamours, but I also wasn't even really thinking about the fact that there could be options there. Emily, we first connected as metas trying to process this other meta that we shared in common, trying to understand her, trying to understand what was going on in that relationship.
I think, like Alex, you were talking about, there are also, like this particular meta, I think, also wasn't completely bought into the whole non-monogamy thing as well--
Emily: Sure. That too.
Dedeker: -and that complicated it. I do think there were just a lot of flavors of the conversation that we didn't even realize could be part of that at that time.
Alex: Yes. I love what you're saying about, oh, we didn't even know all the different types of non-monogamy and the different types of metamour relationship. That's also where I was when I started, even though I had read some of the books. I think that the focus on what metamours can be has been much more recent in time.
I think it's difficult because, then, people came in with their very specific ideas of what it should be. For me, there was one metamour in particular, who not only did not want to meet me, but did not want to see any trace of me--
Emily: Oh, wow.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Yes, I've definitely come across that, yes.
Alex: -which--
Dedeker: Been there. We've been there.
Alex: Yes. That's was really difficult for me because, even though I prefer developing a pretty intimate relationship with the metamour, I also like to be like, let's see what the people involved will want collectively and what naturally will happen.
When it felt, though, there was literally a fence that I could not cross, and that felt really uncomfortable. It was hard to really even enjoy what this relationship added to my partner's life because I just had no entry, no window into it.
Emily: That's a really interesting distinction there as well, that you're thinking about it from the context of, I want to understand to a degree what this person brings to your life, what it is that you're enjoying with them, the kind of person that you might be around them that differs from the kind of person that you are around me.
If you don't get to know a metamour more intimately, it's really difficult to do that. I think Dedeker, the difference between the relationship that you and I had with our mutual metamour and the kind of relationship that you and I developed and therefore have developed over the past decade, I think, is really astounding.
You and I, we bonded over mutual things. We're both nerdy, and we're both similar in a lot of ways, but we also, I think, wanted to get to know one another and wanted to learn more about each other and develop a friendship and a relationship. It was also a romantic relationship for a while, outside of just our relationship with our two mutual partners.
Dedeker: Well, this feels like an appropriate time to come skidding in. I knew this was going to happen at some point in this episode, I wasn't sure where. I feel like someone needs to represent, I think the growing number of people who want to be more parallel with their metas or who are starting to question.
I think, Alex, you talked about people bring in this idea of how they think it should be, people who are realizing, oh, maybe I'm putting undue pressure on myself to be my metamour's best friend. Maybe I'm putting undue pressure on myself to get really, really close to this person really, really fast.
Maybe it's not a situation where I don't want to see any trace of them or pretend that they don't exist, but I want to just be aware of if I want to actually put my energy there or not. I want to make sure that those people don't get lost in this conversation. I'm sure you have some thoughts about that, Alex.
Emily: Sure. Like you said, I think a big difference is no trace versus that's not really what I want. I think, for me, it also comes back to compatibility a little bit in any kind of relationship. Then it depends on the collection of people involved.
Depending on the kind of relationship, if I started dating someone and they're like, "I really don't want to meet the other people in your life," right now, for me, that would be hard because it also means time-wise, I'm much more limited. It's a different constraint because I have a partner and a metamour that I live with. I also have kids. I also have a lot of work.
When you chop all of that down, if I can't really mix my different partners together or do so in very limited ways, it just means that our relationship will look a little different in terms of time. I think it's good for people to have an idea of what they want and don't want, also with metamours when they start new relationships.
That can help. Of course, you can always figure it out as you build the relationships, but I feel like it can help earlier on figuring out, are we a good match for each other or not.
Jase: Something that I've been actually thinking about a lot recently was a conversation that we all had a while ago, where we were interviewed for a story that was about basically building better collaborative relationships. This journalist reached out to us saying, "Hey, this article isn't about polyamory, but clearly, there's some working together and teamwork that's happening here that maybe we don't even conceptualize of."
I've been thinking a lot about that conversation. Specifically, there was a part where I was telling a story about how Dedeker's partner at the time and I coordinated. Dedeker and I were in Japan at the time, and he was in Australia, I think at the time.
Dedeker: Singapore.
Jase: Singapore. He was in Singapore. That's where he was living and working. He and I planned secretly to have him fly out to Japan for a week-long visit or something like that. I helped him coordinate flying out, doing all that, and then he and I met up at a coffee shop, and then I called Dedeker and said, come meet me at this coffee shop and we surprised her.
It was this fun, collaborative thing. It broke the journalist's brains a little bit, where they were like, "I don't know that I would do something so--" Essentially thinking of it like, "Oh, doing something so bad for myself just to help out somebody else."
Dedeker: Selfless was the word that--
Jase: Selfless.
Dedeker: How she described it. "Oh, my God. So selfless, so altruistic."
Emily: Altruistic. Yes.
Jase: Right. I was just like, "Whoa, that's not at all how I thought about that." It was like, sure, I'm helping them do this surprise, but I think that people can overevaluate or think that there's some great cost with ever helping anybody who wants to sleep with the same person you do, or who wants to be intimate and be in a relationship with that person.
I think that really highlighted for me how much my own perception of that has changed over time. To give a little more context on that relationship, with me and that metamour, we were not close. I wouldn't even say we were really friends, but we were always cordial with each other.
We also lived in different countries, so we didn't run into each other very often, but we'd see each other, we'd be polite, we'd coordinate things of, "Oh actually, let's go in together on this birthday present." I want to say it's almost more like coworkers in a way that we're coworkers in this mutual relationship. It's a weird thing to say, but that's how it felt to me was like we're--
Dedeker: Coworkers in the relationship department?
Jase: Right. We're in the relationship department of Dedeker Winston Industries. We're on the same team in a way because we all want the same goals, but we're not besties. We're not working on the same projects as each other. We're not having to coordinate everything we do, but we can sometimes.
I feel like getting that across to people-- I wish I had a better way to tell it. Even telling you three who get it, I feel like I had to use a lot of words to try to explain all the context of what I'm going for here. It's just such a foreign concept.
Alex: I think it's a great example, actually. I love that you say that you were not that close. That's where it's different. If you had been really close, then it would've felt maybe more natural. Your example of coworkers just makes me laugh so hard, but I feel like people do that with their in-laws or their extended family.
Someone's birthday rolls around, or there's a family holiday that people celebrate, and then they'll team up even though they only talk a couple of times a year. The reason people don't find that weird is that, one, they've seen it before, but two, it doesn't feel threatening to them because it doesn't include that like, "Oh, my partner will be spending time with someone else, and therefore I should feel jealous or insecure."
That reaction from the journalist probably stemmed from that. We're not used to not having that feeling factor in. I think that if people were able to somehow see metamours as extended family, I feel like it's a really great metaphor because there's typically, in general, anecdotally, based on the people around me, not that much.
You don't need to be best friends with your in-laws or your extended family, but if you happen to live close, and to really get along, then maybe those people do become a much greater part of your life. That can change also over the course of a lifetime, which happens with metamours. My metamour that I live with right now, for a full year, when she was dating my partner, we barely saw each other.
Even though we liked each other pretty well, she lived three hours away. We would text every once in a while. Also, it's just we didn't prioritize seeing each other one-on-one all that much. When our life goals and desires lined up in a different way, then that changed. It's just nice to also leave room for going from parallel to less parallel, or maybe less parallel to more parallel in the future. That's just based on what you need.
Dedeker: Do you think that you have an underlying ethic or guiding light around this? I'll explain what I mean by that chunky of a question, is that there's a lot that's unknown. There's a lot that's out of our control.
On the show, we compare metamours to being extended families or in-laws. It's like these people that you don't get to choose necessarily. There's that level of the unknown that I can't control. I can't control which person my partner chooses to do date. Also, I can't really control whether or not we're going to click.
I can't control the speed of how their relationship is going to develop. Are they going to develop intimacy really quickly or really slowly? Is it going to turn into a more emotionally entangled relationship, a less emotionally entangled relationship? With all of those floating factors in mind, what do you think is your guiding ethic when it comes to just creating a relationship with a metamour, with somebody who's new?
Alex: That's a really interesting question that no one has ever asked me. I really like it. It's interesting because there's guiding ethic and then there's also just guiding desires, which can be two separate things. Right away, I was almost thinking of my guiding light as far as what I hope to build in my life or the kind of family I hope to build in my life versus what's the ethic.
I think I definitely have always put a lot of effort into getting to know someone that my partner is dating because, obviously, they are finding someone to like about them. When it's been particularly hard is when it takes a long time for me to even make an opinion of it.
When I'm like, "Is this relationship good for you?" It's a very difficult position to be in when you're an external observer, but at the same time, you're completely biased. Your opinion weighs so much for your partner, so making the smallest observation can have such an impact on their relationship. I don't know when I became aware of that, but eventually, I guess.
That's part of the ethic thing, where I'm like, I want to do right by my partner and the relationship. That means both trying to be open and welcoming the relationship, but also trying to not influence it, and let it develop the way it develops.
Then also, really doing right by the metamour. I've been in positions where I was someone's metamour and didn't really like how I was treated. I do try to think about what their experience of me is like. I've been doing this for over 10 years, but much more so in the first half of my journey, but being really aware of my power as a partner that has been longer established in my partner's life.
That's another thing that I do have in mind, which is hard for me. That's why I appreciate you Dedeker bringing up like, "Hey, let's give representation to the parallel polyamorist," is that, at the end of the day, I-- My desires have changed over time, so never say never.
Right now, parallel polyamory is not what I am generally looking for. Also, being open to what people's differing desires can also bring. Maybe parallel polyamory can be good and fitting for what we collectively need right now.
Emily: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I am sort of newly opening up again after a 10-year relationship that was mostly monogamous. I was speaking to someone about it today, and I was like, "It was mostly monogamous for the entire time that that was happening."
A lot of it, quite frankly, was pretty toxic. I feel like I am still unlearning a lot of parts of monogamous culture that teaches you so much that having a relationship with someone means that you need to be the best and one that they care about the most.
That even them having experiences, even if they're one-off sexual experiences, or getting to know someone more and having a potential for another relationship, there are still parts of me that get a little squeaked by that. I can feel it.
From a conceptual standpoint, I'm able to move past that, but sometimes the visceral reactions that happen are still there, and it sucks. I saw a picture of my metamour, who I talk to all the time now, and we're pretty good friends. We hang out last night.
On Instagram the other day, I saw a picture of her and my partner, and I was like, "Argh." It had this very weird visceral reaction. I had to ask myself, "What the hell was that about? Why are you having this reaction?"
All of that aside, I would ask, what is some of the advice that you would give to people who are more new to polyamory, or who are coming back to it again after a long period of time off from it, and who don't really know how to navigate the jealousy or fear that they have towards metamours or the potential of metamours even?
Alex: It's hard to give a one-size-fits-all answer for that, right?
Emily: Sure.
Alex: I appreciate that you're saying you were asking yourself, "What was that about?" For me, that's always how it worked. It's hard in the moment to do it because when you're emotional, it's hard to be like, "Oh, now let me analyze what is behind this feeling."
One, it was accepting that it's an okay feeling to have, that it does not mean that you cannot do non-monogamy or polyamory. To just have time. For a while, I had-- This can work for any situation aside from just uncomfortable feelings vis-a-vis metamours.
I had my toolkit of things that soothe me. Some of those things I can do on my own. I don't need my partner. Even though I would want to have discussions with my partners and reassuring for my partner to be like, when I'm feeling losing it a little bit, I know that if I walk down to the movie theater and see a movie by myself, that usually helps me just recenter.
Or this specific playlist will also help me, which sounds very silly, but just in the moment when I was spinning, it was hard to remember those things. For me, I just had it all written down and be like, "What can I do?"
Then, when I was out of the really intense phase of those feelings, to then try to be like, "What is behind that feeling? Is it that I'm scared that I'm going to lose time with my partner? Is it that I'm scared that I'm not doing the thing that witnessed for my partner?" Again, I don't think there's an easy answer to--
It sounds easy to just say it, and then it's like, "Sure, I identified that I'm scared of losing time with my partner. Now, what do I do?" Just talking about it and having my partner be like, "Yes, that's okay." For me, scheduling, having rituals with my partner that I could go back to, and then, over time, these feelings became easier. I don't know. What do you think was behind your feelings?
Emily: Oh, 100% it was that potential loss of time, or loss of intimacy, or anything along those lines, but I agree. I really had to look at the "what are you longing for here?" portion of that. Right when I came home, I was in Hong Kong for a number of months, and my partner started a relationship with my now metamour during that time.
I was having a lot of emotions about it. We hadn't met yet. I was like, "You know what? I'm going to make this happen. I really am going to reach out and just say, 'Hey, can we go hang out somewhere, do a coffee date or something?'"
Since that time, we've talked a lot. They've been non-monogamous for a long time, a number of years, are very much in that scene. Definitely, I think, are more well-versed in non-monogamy at this point than I am. I will say that since that time, I've felt just so much better about my--
My feelings have been so much more I think positive, and my emotions have been so much more positive since then. That to me was just putting this person in front of me and seeing them as a whole human being as opposed to just all of my thoughts to run amok of the fear about, are they way cooler than I am, and way hotter than I am?
All of that bullshit that we so often run into, I think. I love that toolkit thing because sometimes your emotions, and I think just the really intense reactions that you don't exactly know where they're coming from, that can catch you off-guard. If you have tools in place to help you through that, it can help you realize that it's not going to last forever.
Alex: I'm glad you talked about meeting your metamour because that's also a thing. It's like, I want to be flexible with all different desires and types of polyamory, but for me, I've had that experience several times also. I would describe it as like the person is the shape of a villain, like a shadow that is undefined, and then I project all of my worst insecurities onto them. Once you meet them, even if you don't hit it off and become best friends, they do become a full human, like you said. Often my experience was, "Oh, they're also nervous to meet me." Or, "I can see their vulnerabilities," and then you can have at least some compassion for them too. It doesn't necessarily remove all of those feelings right away, but it just really helps to work on them.
Dedeker: I want to take that thread and run with it. Yes, I think all of us on this call have had that experience, of when you actually are given the opportunity to see your meta as a human being, to see the vulnerabilities, that it does shift things, and can change things. Also, what I have sometimes seen people do is maybe taking that a little too far in the sense of sometimes I see people reaching out to a meta for security in a situation where they really should be working on something with their partner for security.
I think they can get a little fuzzy, that delineation between what is an actual healthy, helpful development of a relationship or connection with the meta versus what is maybe trying to overcompensate for a lack of security that's in the relationship?
Jase: I just want to jump in and say I've seen that same thing in an even more negative sense of my partner is maybe doing something that is hurting my feelings. They're canceling on dates with me because of wanting to do something with my metamour, wanting to do something with their other partner. It can be easy to put that blame on the metamour, and to, again, let them fill that role of the villain, and complain about them, and they're the problem, rather than focusing on, "Yes, but actually the behavior that hurt me was what my partner did. Not actually something that the metamour did in that situation."
I guess, putting the responsibility of what's the relationship that I want to change, or affect, or repair in that case, or the one that's actually the relationship you are actively in versus this secondary party to that. Does that make sense? I feel like we can both look to them for reassurance or as a place to put all of our negative feelings.
Alex: Though I think in a way looking for them for reassurance is almost a means of control, or can be a means of control. If they reassure me, then I feel I have a better grasp on the situation. It's interesting, I never thought about it this way, but I've also seen a situation like that talking about, "Wll, is it the metamour's fault if the metamour made maybe some requests or demands, and then the partner obliged?" Everyone makes their own decision, and it's easy to basically say, "Oh, my metamour's needs are what here is hurting me," when in fact you do have that individual relationship with your partner.
Jase: I bring it up because that was a personal experience of mine in my relationship with Dedeker from very early on in our relationship, was a bad metamour relationship. Probably my worst metamour relationship was with her longer term partner at the time. Anyway, he was the more established partner, I was the newer partner for Dedeker at the time.
It was a pretty negative relationship, it got more negative over time, but I remember a key turning point in my relationship with Dedeker was when I hit that realization and made that switch from--
Dedeker: I was actually the villain.
Jase: You were the villain, yes.
Dedeker: He wasn't the villain.
Jase: Well, yes, kind of.
Dedeker: He was the secondary villain.
Jase: That seems terrible to say. To realize that actually rather than complaining to Dedeker about these things that this metamour is doing to us and to me and to our relationship, realizing like, "Actually, wait, your decision and what you did here was what hurt me," but that gave us the ability to actually talk about what happened, and figure out how to clearly express what the problem was for me, and for her to also understand, "Oh, this is my relationship with you that's affected here, not this secondary relationship that you have to your metamour that I'm trying to be this go-between."
We've also seen that go bad so many times when the hinge partner feels like they have to referee or try to be this go-between between a contentious relationship when maybe that's not their place. Usually that's not their place.
Dedeker: I think that's a good opportunity to talk about the other side of this, of being the hinge, being the person who has two partners. The party line that I always like to take is that I think that hinging is a skill. I don't think any of us enter into this world just naturally amazing hinges. I'm willing to have a debate about that, but I do think it's a very particular skill. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about that, how much responsibility does a hinge have in helping to lay a pathway for a good metamour relationship?
Alex: That's really interesting. I also agree that we're not born the tiny baby amazing hinge.
Dedeker: Tiny baby hinge.
Alex: Well, the example that comes to mind right now because it's fresh, it's like I said, in the past year my metamour has moved in with me, and before that, even though we clicked so well, but we hadn't had actually that much time being together even in person, now looking back, it was a pretty big leap of faith, but that's something that I really wanted, and I was the one actually who said, "Why don't we consider this possibility?"
Then when she moved in, we just fell into a situation where my communication style and her communication style were quite different. Where I wanted lots of communication all the time, and scheduled check-ins, and that kind of stuff, and to be fair, she was going through a depressive episode, but naturally she tends to be a bit more avoidant of difficult discussions, where I just dive right in.
Our mutual partner, Don, as the hinge, now looking back he's like, "I would never do it this way again," but I think he was being the person who knew both of us. He had so much hope and strong beliefs that we were very compatible, but we were in a situation where we each have personal things we were going through that made it maybe a little difficult, and also it was a big transition. I was also becoming a stepparent for the first time.
Because of that he ended up moderating discussions so much. Even so I would have these discussions with him where I'm like, "I would really to talk to Saga about X, Y, Z," and he would be, "Ugh, I don't think this week is a good week for that because she's in that sort of space." From him this came from the place of, "I'm so worried that if we have too many conversations that don't go well, they will give up and say we're not compatible," versus, he was like, "If I can just get the right timing, I feel like it's going to go so well."
To be fair, in the long term he was right. Now we're on the other side of it, and we've hit a huge breakthrough, and I couldn't be happier, and I feel I'm so compatible with her. When it was happening, he actually delayed, I think, because I was thinking, "He's the hinge. He knows better. He knows both of us, so I need to delay my own needs in order to listen to him."
One thing that he learned, he was like, "I need to really step back. Even if maybe I have my own fears of what might happen if you two have a conversation that doesn't go well, I need to still let you decide of the timing." Anyway, that's just the example that came to mind.
Dedeker: I've so been there as a hinge, and I've seen this play out so many times where I don't think you enter a scenario like that thinking, "Oh, I'm going to play 4D chess, and just manipulate, and move these two people around in order to try to get them to get along." I don't think anyone comes into a scenario with that in mind. When you are coming from this place of, "I know I have all this information, I know what this partner's going through, and I know what this partner's going through, and I know what the trigger word is going to be for this partner," then it's just really, really hard to step back and be like, "They got to figure it out," instead of trying to, I don't know, move the chess pieces around, or, I don't know-
Alex: Control the situation.
Dedeker: -hold up the Barbie dolls and try to get them to kiss, or things like that.
Alex: Good lord.
Jase: That's actually the part that I wanted to circle back around to, and thinking about some of these past relationships like that first metamour complicated relationship that we all had way back at the beginning was one where there was more of this open dislike between that metamour and myself. That I eventually had that realization of stepping back from making it about him, and instead just focusing on my own relationship.
That ended up being the turning point for things getting a lot better in our relationship, and letting Dedeker have her own relationship with that other person. That's not my responsibility to meddle in that. My only responsibility is in the relationships that I do have, that I am part of.
Alex: You can also meddle trying to do something good, like trying to even improve the relationship, but you're still meddling. That has certainly happened to me. Where I'm like, "This relationship is great, and I just want to make sure that it's as great as possible, so why don't you plan a trip? You haven't planned a trip yet," or, "Why don't you do this?" It's just really interesting how hard it is to actually step back sometimes.
Dedeker: I think that's the deal always. I think people struggle with that, obviously not just in non-monogamy, but it's like we have that urge to want meddle when you see your sisters in what seems like not a great relationship, right? Or you see your mom making a decision that you really don't agree with, but I feel like that's the constant push-pull that we have to deal with, is how much can I actually help here by being lovingly honest, or compassionate, or giving suggestions or stuff like that, and how much do I need to preserve my energy and create an appropriate amount of space there?
Jase: To go with my bummer question here, the thing that I wanted to ask about or just discuss together is the challenge of when you do connect with a metamour, and then that relationship ends up not working out with your shared partner. I know that can be a weird situation too. I feel like I haven't ever had the situation where I've connected so closely with a metamour, and then their relationship with our shared partner ends, and I continue on that friendship. I've never had that level where my relationship is so much closer with this metamour that I would keep having that.
I know some people do, and they can end up in that complicated situation of, "Well, I have this friend now who's not a metamour, but they're still my friend. How do I handle that?" Or I've had other times where I find sometimes I now find myself a little hesitant to get too close to a metamour too early on in their relationship with our shared partner, because it's like, "Well, I don't know if you're going to last yet, so I don't want to get too attached to you."
When I was thinking about this question, it reminded me of something my mom said to me in high school, I think. Because I dated a fair amount in high school, but none of them lasted longer than six months or whatever, fairly short high school relationships. I remember at one point my mom saying to me something along the lines of, "Okay, that's cool that you feel excited about this person, but I feel like I've been hurt too many times by getting attached to people you've dated and then you breaking up and me losing that. I'm going to hold back a little bit," which is essentially exactly the same thing I'm saying here. I'm just like, "Oh my God. Is a parent relationship a proxy for a metamour in some ways?"
Alex: I definitely have stayed friends with a metamour. For me, what's interesting is that the first time that my partner broke up with his partner, and then I was so focused I did not expect me to be heartbroken. I didn't even give myself space to mourn that. Which is interesting. Now something that now if it were to happen again, then I would be more aware of that. Then I did find it difficult because even though it was totally fine for all parties, for us to continue our friendship, especially early on, it was difficult because when you have a friend, you're not necessarily censored for parts of your life.
I was really aware that if I talk about my partner, or if I share certain things, then what impact does it have on this former metamour? That was a little tricky for both of us, I think, to navigate for a while. It is really hard. It's also really hard, depending on the context of the breakup, that maybe that person hurt your partner, and you're seeing that firsthand, yet you have to somehow separate that. Again, as we were talking about, this is not your relationship, and even though they hurt your partner, it doesn't mean that they're a bad person or that they can't be your friend in that way and you have-- it is really hard to navigate when it happens.
Jase: I'm just trying to think about proxies that people would think of as more "normal". I guess the closest thing I can think of is when you date someone that a close friend used to date, which I think a lot of us have seen something similar to that, especially if you're in a smaller town or a smaller community where it's like, "Okay, I'm dating someone now that this friend used to date, and so maybe that friend is a little bit weird about me talking about this person I'm dating. Also, maybe it's weird for the person I'm dating to know that I'm friends with this person like that." That I think is maybe a more relatable situation that's a little bit similar.
Again, there's not a lot of good guidelines on, "Here's how you do that." It is kind of having to feel it out, I think, and try to be respectful of everybody, and also hope they respect you, and your decisions, and your relationships.
Emily: Something that you were talking about, Jase, there as well in regards to your mom's statement, I found really interesting because before I got home, I had asked my partner like, "Hey, I'd really like to meet this new person that you're dating." He talked to her about it, and her initial reaction, even though she's been non-monogamous for a while, was, "Why?" Or, "Why do you want to do that yet?" When I spoke to the two of you about it, because I felt like, "Oh, God, do they not want to talk to me? Do they not want to meet me?"
The two of you did the, let's pump the brakes thing here, and instead see if this is even going to last, if this is even going to be a thing that they're going to continue doing for a while. Because if it is, then maybe down the line, yes, you two can meet, and that will make sense. If it is just going to be a chill fun thing, casual thing for a while, then maybe there's not necessarily a need to get super involved in this relationship. I guess my question is, is there a time at which-- the best time when people should be meeting metamours, or I guess that's probably specific to the individual? Yes, if it is going to be chill and cas, then I don't know. Maybe y'all don't need to become besties.
Alex: Is this similar to, when is the right time to meet the parents?
Jase: Right.
Emily: Sure. That's a whole can of worms.
Dedeker: When to take that emotional risk, when to decide that you're going to even make that tiny bit of investment of energy and emotion into this person.
Jase: Yes, and asking other people in your life that you care about to invest a little bit, or to connect with this person.
Alex: Different families might have different standards for that. I've certainly dated people where they were like, "By the third date, you need to meet my partner." Wow.
Jase: I've come across that too.
Alex: I can't really generalize from my small sample size, I guess, but usually I think it was people who were maybe a little earlier in their journey, and perhaps a bit more nervous, which for me was fine. I think it varies drastically. I think for you in your context, Emily, what's interesting is that you were away when that relationship started. How long were you away again?
Emily: Almost three months. He came and visited me in Hong Kong when I was over there. Then the next week they slept together. I had this very jarring, "I was just with you, it was really lovely to have you here." We had this wonderful time together, and then he a week later starts this other relationship. That to me was like, "Wait a minute, what's going on here?" Again, I had to separate myself from this notion that that had really anything to do with me or our relationship. Instead, it was just like, "No, he is taking the opportunity to have a fun time with someone and see what develops."
My knee-jerk reaction was, "I got to meet this person. I got to make sure that they know that I'm cool, and that everything's going to be fine." Because, that's also my fatal flaw of wanting everyone to like me. I very much was like, "I need this person to like me, and to be okay with me immediately."
Alex: It's really interesting because talking about when you were saying, "Oh, the feelings I had seeing the picture of them on Instagram was also probably fear of losing some time." I don't know how long ago that was, but I've had a similar experience where I was away seeing my family in Montreal for a few weeks, and that was at the very beginning of our relationship.
Then my partner was seeing that new person multiple times a week, and I just had this feeling like, "She's getting to know you at a time where I am not enmeshed in your life." I'm not a part of the equation, if you will. It gave me a lot of insecurities because I was like, "She's building this idea that your availability is very different." It's just very scary in that context.
Emily: Totally. I know, Jase, you've talked about that a lot as well, that there were times when Dedeker was potentially with a partner in a different country, and that meant that you were seeing a partner back at home more often. Then, when Dedeker came home, that had to shift a lot in terms of the amount of time that you were able to give that partner. It's this constantly fluctuating, always needing to really communicate about expectations, and the reality of the situation at hand, because it can really ebb and flow, I think, based on how often a person is around, or when they happen to come back into your life or not.
Alex: Even other aspects of your life.
Emily: Sure.
Alex: There are seasons where my work is so busy, I have so little time. That's almost like a partner. There's just a lot to factor in.
Emily: 100%.
Dedeker: I want to circle back because I can anticipate a lot of people in our audience yelling, "Wait, hold on, you moved in with your meta, we need to know more. Please tell us more." Either I think there's a chunk of our audience that would be just like, "Oh my God, I could never imagine doing that," but we also have a lot of listeners who are frustrated that there's not a lot of resources to help us navigate a transition like that very intentionally. You've spoken a little bit about that transition, but I want to know what was actually helpful. How were the three of you able to lay the groundwork so that that choosing to live together was ultimately a success? Not just live together, but co-parent together as well.
Alex: It's a lot thinking about. It's interesting because before we moved in together, I was like, "We need to do this. We need to whiteboard what we want. We need to talk about our fears." I do believe it helped, but I think in my head it would solve everything with just proper planning and discussions that will mean that this will be smooth, or smooth-ish. Just like nothing really hard, nothing that makes you question whether it was the right decision or not. What we did is, yes, laid out what we hoped for that. What were our individual needs, what were our fears, which I think was really helpful to talk about, and to plan around a little bit.
I do think that when there are kids involved, even outside of co-living or polyamory, all of the monogamous people around me that I've been close to who have kids, especially young kids under 10, there's a lot of strain on their relationship, on their day to day. It's a lot of energy that goes towards that. For me, I had never done that before, and, of course, it's a blended family situation where the kids are getting two step parents, which they adapted so well. They love their new school, and all of a sudden they had three adults instead of one to give them attention, and love. That part was actually lovely.
I think what was really hard is adapting to the day-to-day, and both the communications, and also the preferences when it came to both parenting, and the nitty-gritty of sharing a home space. Saga was a single mom for several years, and then moved in, and then for the first time in her life, had a lot of space and safety around her and the kids. Unexpectedly, it just made some past things that she hadn't looked at and maybe repressed for a while, she'd been keeping everything together in survival mode a little bit. That sent her just in a personal path that was difficult, and made that transition even harder in terms of communication.
It became a difficult thing because the things that I needed, which was planning, reading parenting books, talking about, what are our philosophies, how do we handle each situation, what are the house routines that we want? Chore charts, all that stuff. They were triggers a little bit for her where she wanted to-- it was really hard for her to engage with those things. To be fair, when you've been a single mom for a long time, and you've tried to do it "the right way", and it hasn't worked, and you've been burnt out for a while, you're like, "Well, whatever happens at school happens at school." You know what I mean.
Then Don, like I said earlier, was a little bit in the middle trying to just really manage all of that. What has helped is Don stepping back, and me stopping to just listen to Don as like he knows best because he knows both of us. He had been with Saga for I think a year and a half. Also he knew the kids a bit more than me, so I just had this constant like whatever I think or whatever I need, he knows best, so I just delayed a lot of my needs. I think when you find yourself delaying, delaying, delaying, it's just a terrain for resentment, and it's just not healthy.
Then, Saga on her end really tried hard to meet me halfway in communicating. There are times where communicating with words face to face was harder for her, so she wrote emails, which was great. We had this like three-way email chain for a long time. I think for me a big thing was, something that was hard is that when you have challenges in that kind of situation, you have nowhere to look to. I really loved a new book that came out by Laura Boyle, Monogamy? In this Economy? It is a great resource when you are thinking of nesting with more than two adults, essentially.
In terms of just the intuitive models around you, like having seen other people struggle with that, you don't. Even friends who really care about me and knew how much I'd been wanting this for a long time, I think their reaction is like, "But of course it's hard because it's in this situation." Instead of questioning, "What do we need to do, or is this the right fit?" It's more, "Can this model even work?" That is really hard to then stay with your commitment. Whereas when you're in a relationship, and you're like, "I'm not questioning my commitment here. I'm just trying to figure out how we can navigate this." It's just a different ball game.
I had to go back to, "I'm committed to this. This is what I want, and I'm not going to give up after three months at the first sign of a struggle." Then it makes it easier to not catastrophize everything, and to go like, "Okay. How do we get past that?"
Dedeker: I think that's such a great point to bring up, because I think that a lot of people have that when they're first moving from a monogamous default mindset to non-monogamy too, is that it's not just, "Is this relationship working." It's like, "Is this type of relationship able to work at all?" Period. I feel like then, almost the next stage of that is that metamour relationship of, "Is this even a possible relationship?" Not just, "Is this a good one? How can I make this one work?" Yes, that can be challenging when there's that existential question shadowing over the whole thing.
That's cool that you found a way to just say, "No. I'm just going to move ahead as if this is possible so that I can stop having that question weigh me down and actually focus on what's in front of me and the relationships I'm in."
Alex: Right, and I'm not saying for everyone just move forward regardless of what happens. Obviously, you reach a point where you're like, "Maybe this isn't a good fit." Something else that I think some listeners might find interesting that I didn't expect is, I've been with Don for 10 years. He'd been with Saga for a year and a half when we moved in together, and then she brought her two kids. Very quickly, the family belonging, and the co-parenting, and all of that, even though it was challenging to transition into that, it went really well, and the kids really took to us well.
It also meant going to school meetings, meeting teachers, going to the playground and meeting parents. I live in a pretty conservative community, upstate New York. All of a sudden we were outside of our safe social bubbles. I think people would assume that the newer partner would feel left out-- not left out, but the way people look at it is like, "Oh, the real relationship is these two, and then there's this other newer or less important person." Whereas I looked at them and I was like, "Oh, here's a woman and a man who look heterosexual, who have two kids, and everyone can read that situation, and they assume that that is the situation. Then here's the weird trans person that we don't really know how to read or understand next to them."
Jase: Clearly the third wheel.
Alex: Exactly.
Dedeker: Yes. That's a great point. Yes. It's not what you'd expect.
Alex: That was so interesting for me and not expected at all to have all these feelings of like, "Maybe this family would be better without me because we have to face these challenges of just existing in the world as we are." Then I felt like I was the piece that was making this complicated. Even though I knew deep down that that's not how they felt, but that's how it felt for me at times.
Jase: Yes. It makes a lot of sense. Alex, we so appreciate you coming on and sharing so much of your personal experiences. I know it's going to be so helpful to people listening. If people want to find out more about you, and your work, and what you're working on right now, where can they find out about that?
Alex: They can go to alexalberto.com, and I'm also on Instagram @thatalexalberto.
Jase: What exciting things are you working on right now?
Alex: I'm in post-production for a short film called Coming Out Polyamorous for Thanksgiving. It's based on a true life story where we were introducing my metamour to my partner's parents who are southern and visited us in New York. It was an incredibly tense dinner. There is an essay about that in the book, and we made it into a short film, and now we're doing post-production. It's going to come out around Thanksgiving this year. We're also still raising funds for post-production.
One way we're doing that is if you go to alexalberto.com/merch, we have a series of shirts. We have, I Love my Metamour shirts. We have Love is not Finite shirts, and a few other cool Compersion is my Superpower. All the profits go to post-production for the film. Yes, that's my biggest project right now. You can also find my book Entwined everywhere you buy books, and I should have another writing non-monogamy class coming up this summer.
Emily: Well, this was an excellent conversation. A lot of things for me to think about as well heading into this time in my life where I am actually having metamours again, having relationships with them, and then seeing how their relationships with our mutual partner progress as well. I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this because you clearly have a lot of knowledge on it, and it was a wonderful conversation.
Alex: Yes. Same to you all..