561 - Level Up Your Polyamory: Common Newbie Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

Leveling up your polyamory

A lot of our issues that crop up within polyamory carry over from monogamy, especially in the beginning. Monogamous mindsets affect our actions and perceptions much more than we realize sometimes, and can lead us to make flawed assumptions or have unrealistic ideals about how relationships should work.

Misconceptions and unrealistic expectations

Some of the most common mistakes we see newbies making in polyamory due to misconceptions or unrealistic expectations are:

1. Jealousy Denial, or believing jealousy can be easily avoided or eliminated by specific structural choices. When we did our first rendition of this episode back in 2016, we found that many newbies tried to avoid jealousy by dating the same person at the same time, whereas in 2025, our data shows that the mistake has shifted more to not analyzing the root cause of jealousy and lashing out instead, or hiding jealousy out of shame.
   
   The solution to this is as simple as recognizing jealousy as a signal, not a flaw or something to be avoided. Explore its roots and communicate those feelings instead of trying to suppress them.

2. The Monogamy Template, or applying a monogamous relationship framework and expectations to a polyamorous dynamic(s). Assuming every partner has the same ideal of polyamory, assuming you’ll always want the same relationship style, trying to force a relationship with someone who doesn’t want the same things, or dating with a monogamous mindset all fall into this category.
   
   The solution is embracing flexibility and individual differences. Understand that polyamory is diverse, ideals can evolve, and try to challenge the assumption that one relationship should meet all needs.

3. Pokemon Polyamory, or viewing partners, especially new ones, as fulfilling a specific role or function rather than as whole, autonomous individuals. This could look like dating with a very specific purpose, like “we need a third to have kids,” or “someone to spice up the bedroom.” This mindset disregards the new person’s autonomy and full humanity.
   
   The solution is to approach new connections with genuine curiosity about the individual, their desires, hopes, and needs, not just their potential role in your existing dynamic.

Communication and structural pitfalls

Polyamory requires effective communication, just like any relationship, but when you’re non-monogamous it becomes even more critical and sometimes more challenging. Structural choices can either support or undermine healthy communication.

Common mistakes around communication and structure are:

1. The Communication Cop-Out, or failing to establish and maintain clear, consistent, and honest communication channels. This can look like poor, ineffective, or non-existent communication, using polyamory as a way to avoid the responsibility of being a good communicator, not having regular check-ins, and assuming you have free reign without conversations.
   
   The solution is to prioritize consistent, clear, and honest communication. Establish regular check-ins and assume nothing. Proactive communication prevents misunderstandings.

2. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, or implementing strict compartmentalization or secrecy to avoid discomfort, which ultimately erodes trust. This could look like implementing parallel polyamory with don’t ask don’t tell policies, leading to distrust and paranoia, or just starting with a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
   
   The solution is to recognize that while privacy is important, fostering transparency and open communication channels between partners, even if metamours don’t interact directly, helps build trust. Avoid policies that actively shut down communication.

3. The Rigid Relationship, or confusing personal boundaries with attempts to control a partner’s behavior through rigid rules. This might look like forcing all relationships into one group, neglecting individual needs, or laying down rigid rules designed to minimize change and discomfort. In 2025, we found that this often looks more like starting with a triad, which is extremely challenging for beginners, using permission-based rules to control a partner’s behavior, and confusing boundaries (which are about the self) with rules (which are about controlling behavior).
   
   The solution is to understand the critical distinction between boundaries, which are about your own actions and needs, and rules, which are about controlling others. Prioritize individual needs and dedicated one-on-one time. Approach complex structures like triads with caution and preparation, focusing on consent and autonomy.

Personal growth and capacity management

Polyamory is a personal growth journey, and neglecting self-awareness, emotional regulation, and understanding one’s own capacity can lead to significant struggles. Some of the newbie mistakes around this topic we see are:

1. Paranoid Protections, or prioritizing the preservation of a relationship’s existing form over its natural development and growth. This could look like laying down rigid rules designed to minimize change and discomfort, like “no falling in love,” or “no overnights,” rather than embracing growth.
   
   The solution is to recognize that growth involves change and discomfort. Being flexible and adaptable allows relationships to evolve organically rather than trying to freeze them in time.

2. Zero-Sum Competition, or viewing love or attention as things that others could take away from you. This could look like seeing a partner’s love for someone else as a subtraction of love for you, or thinking you can “win” at polyamory, or feeling pressure to have many partners as a measure of “success.”
   
   The solution is to cultivate an abundance mindset regarding love and connection. Focus on internal work to manage insecurities rather than external validation or competition. Practice compersion.

3. The Self-Neglect Trap, or failing to prioritize self-awareness, personal needs, and realistic capacity management. This might look like abandoning your own needs to be a “good” polyamorous partner, not recognizing and walking away from red flags early on, starting too many relationships at once without understanding your own capacity, not prioritizing and making quality time for each partner, or underestimating the effort and consideration it takes to be a good hinge partner.
   
   The solution is to prioritize self-care and self-awareness. Understand your own emotional and time capacity. Practice what you learn, and be realistic about the effort required, especially as a hinge partner. Recognize and honor your own needs and boundaries.

Have you ever fallen into any of these traps or made any of these newbie mistakes? Most of us have! Don’t be too hard on yourself.

Transcript

If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Emily: I've thought a lot about that quote I think you said, Dedeker, was from Esther Perel recently, where you were talking about that change involves some sort of loss and some sort of pain, that even if change is a good thing, it can still involve a lot of challenge and a lot of necessary growth to move through and past the thing that you are ultimately losing. And that that loss, especially with monogamy, losing monogamy, is this idea of the unit, this idea that it was only going to be the two of us against the world. And it makes a lot of sense to want to hold on to that in some way. But I do think that even with that loss, so often we discover that the thing on the other side of that loss is even better than we could have expected or hoped for.

Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.

Emily: I'm Emily.

Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.

Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.

Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you, and we're here for you.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about the biggest polyamory mistakes that newbies make. But wait, before you turn it off, this is not just for newbies. All of us, as well as many of the listeners we've talked to, have made some of these mistakes well after we could fairly be considered newbies. So we originally did an episode on this back in 2016, but today we are completely revamping that list and covering a range of mistakes from structural ones to emotional and communication mistakes. So be sure to listen to the end to get all of the categories. If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools, which can help many of these problems, check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books are sold. So, Dedeker and Emily, have you ever been a newbie at polyamory?

Dedeker: No, I was born this way. I was beamed down to this planet.

Emily: A polyamorous woman.

Dedeker: The guru that everyone was wishing for. Maybe not the hero that we need, but the hero we deserve. And that's been my life ever since.

Jase: That's good. How about you, Emily?

Emily: I absolutely was once a polyamorous newbie. And looking over some of this, yeah, I think I absolutely made some of these mistakes, but I feel like we were blessed with the guru in my presence, Dedeker Winston. No, truly, though. Not that you didn't make mistakes as well, but I do think that there was a sense that for better or for worse, we knew a little bit more than the average person just completely trying to do this without any prior knowledge or somebody who hadn't been doing it for a little while.

Dedeker: You mean like when all of us met each other, that we had a little bit of experience under our respective belts?

Emily: Correct. Meaning you had a little bit of experience. And I think your partner, who was my partner as well, had a little bit of experience. And also, I think we are curious people and we were curiously educating ourselves and trying to get better at the same time. And then with all of that, we were like, well, we definitely have enough information now to create a whole podcast on this subject.

Jase: I mean, I do think that overall, the ways that we did polyamory improved significantly once we started doing the podcast and actually researching these things and learning about things and having guests on and learning from them. And I think we still had a lot of learning to do, but I do think it sped up once we started doing the podcast.

Emily: Yeah, for sure. So actually, the podcast was the guru all along, I guess.

Jase: The guru was inside of us all along.

Dedeker: Exactly.

Emily: There you go.

Jase: Yeah. So when we did this episode, it was called Five Mistakes Poly Noobs Make back in 2016, and that was actually much closer to when all of us were those newbies. This was definitely several years in, but I think it was fresher. It was there.

Emily: It was very fresh.

Jase: Maybe culturally we were seeing some slightly different sorts of newbie mistakes back then, or maybe we just had different impressions. Because we covered these five common mistakes that we had seen as well as ones that we'd done ourselves. But a few months ago, we posted on our Instagram stories just asking people, what do you think the biggest polyamory newbie mistakes are? And it was interesting to see of those responses, what was the same and what ones were different from what we had covered before. So our initial newbie mistakes, we focused more on structural things, like always trying to date the same people as your partner, trying to fit them into strict roles or compartmentalizing them. And what really stood out to me when looking at the responses that we got was that in addition to some of those things, there was a lot more emphasis on the internal work that you need to do about your emotions or communication nuances or some of the more psychological aspects of being polyamorous. And so basically, I don't know if that's because things have changed and overall the conversation is more nuanced or if just our previous one was too biased on thinking, oh, if you have the right structure and you don't try to do the wrong structure, it'll go better. I'm not sure.

Dedeker: I have some thoughts about this, but I'm going to wait until a more relevant part of the episode to talk about that.

Emily: Thank you for priming us.

Dedeker: Yeah. I do think what is so cool about producing this podcast for so long and being a part of this community for so long is being able to see the ways that the advice shifts, the way that the conversation shifts, which topics are hot, definitely shifts. What the common sense narrative is around different dilemmas and things like that. That's really interesting to see.

Jase: Yeah. So for today's episode, I've put together a new list combining some of those ones from the past, as well as some themes that I noticed coming up in the responses. And I've divided this into three overall categories of mistake. And then we have three mistake themes within that or specific categories of mistake within those three. So it's a, you could think of it making a Triforce where there's three triangles, each with three sides. But this is not the Triforce of communication. This is the Triforce of trouble. Ooh, the Triforce of trouble.

Dedeker: Okay, I worry about our Triforce branding.

Jase: There you go.

Dedeker: Can we come up with a different shape?

Emily: It's a five force.

Dedeker: The five force.

Emily: Like a faux Triforce. Oh, I see.

Jase: A faux force. A faux force of... Was there a dark Triforce in Zelda?

Emily: I don't believe so. I was just thinking about that. No, I mean, they just used the.

Jase: Triforce of Power to make the dark world. Yeah.

Emily: Yes. I think we're specifically speaking about Link to the Past, but yes, definitely. No, I think we can workshop that one. Maybe all of you listeners out there can tell us what shape this would be. A nine-shaped thing that we have created here.

Jase: Yeah, I'm like, is there a different way that you could configure three triangles into a different... Well, a.

Dedeker: Nine-shaped polyhedron is an enneahedron or a nonahedron.

Emily: Oh, there you go. A nohedron?

Dedeker: A nonahedron. Nonahedron.

Emily: Okay.

Jase: I like how... What is it? Not Sudoku. Something else is called a nonogram puzzle.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Jase: Nine... Maybe that is Sudoku is called a nonogram. Where there's nine rows and columns, nine groups in each square.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: Anyway, hit us up if you've got some ideas. Maybe we'll keep brainstorming this throughout the episode.

Emily: There you go.

Jase: So far, I'm still liking the Trixie Triforce of Trouble or something like that.

Emily: Oh, okay.

Jase: To really clarify, this is not the good Triforce. This is not the one you want. This is... this is a bad one.

Emily: Triforce of trouble.

Jase: Yeah. With that, let's get into category number one. This is about misconceptions and unrealistic expectations. So the theme of this is about struggles carrying over from monogamy or making assumptions about what it is or having unrealistic ideas about how these relationships should work or how you want your relationships to go. So the first of these is actually about denying jealousy. So this is that belief that jealousy can be avoided somehow by choosing a particular structure. So this would be something like, in our episode back then, even we talked about trying to avoid jealousy by just dating the same person at the same time, like doing the unicorn hunting thing or, you know, only saying, oh, threesomes, then we won't have jealousy because we're both in it together. And I think the more modern, maybe more nuanced version of this is not really looking at the root causes of jealousy and instead just lashing out, like denying that you have it or hiding it because you're ashamed, or trying to suggest that you do some kind of structure and like giving some other reason because you're denying that it's actually just, I'm feeling jealous. I'm feeling threatened. I'm scared. And so you'll do all sorts of rules like, you know, no sleepovers or things like that because it comes from this place of trying to deny jealousy. Either don't let it happen or that couldn't happen to me. It's got to be something else.

Dedeker: I think that's the biggest thing that has shifted in nuance. I think that pre 2016, the conversation was much more stigmatizing of feeling jealousy at all. I think that's the root cause.

Emily: Don't be jealous. You're a bad person if you're jealous.

Dedeker: Yeah. If you're feeling jealous, it just means like you have not done the personal work, you're not enlightened enough yet, you're not with the program enough yet. And I think that that has shifted in a better direction, right? This idea that it's not a flaw, it doesn't mean you're doing this wrong. It doesn't mean that you need to root it out of your system. It's just like, nah, this is normal. This is part of the process.

Jase: Right. And I know some people will always chime in on these discussions and they'll be like, I don't experience jealousy and like, awesome, cool. That's great. But most people will experience it in some way or another at some point or another. It's not necessarily going to be all the time, especially as you establish your relationships more and you get more used to polyamory, I find that the amount of times I feel jealousy in that actual sense of like, I am kind of freaking out and scared that I might lose my partner to this has almost completely gone away or is very, very low. So I do want to say it does change over time, but I think people try to rush into that. And I think I've kind of fallen prey to that, thinking like, oh, I can just rush to that feeling of being fine. And then it's like you still feel bad, and so you come up with all these other reasons for it. I feel like I see this one a lot. I feel like I see this more often with men in polyamorous relationships who will make up all these other reasons for why something should or shouldn't be a certain way when really what's going on underneath is scared, right? Or jealousy, right? This feeling of, oh no, I'm going to lose this thing that's important to me. I don't know if either of you have noticed that trend. I just feel like that's come up in a number of conversations that I've had with guys.

Dedeker: Yeah, I would say so, yeah.

Jase: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of these responses just come from a fear-based place, which makes a lot of sense. It's scary. Non-monogamy is scary in general, and there's a lot that we don't know about that we have to relinquish control over in order to, I think, do it in a healthy manner. I did want to point out we do have two episodes on 50 Ways to Handle Jealousy, part one and two, and that's episode 394 and 395, where we compile an enormous list on a bunch of different tactics and tools for handling jealousy. So definitely check out those episodes if you want a little bit more on that.

Jase: Yeah, but the core of it comes down to seeing jealousy not as a flaw, but as a signal, right? To get into it and try to understand what is it that I'm feeling? What is it that I'm afraid of? Is it about my own feelings of self-worth? Is it about how my partner's actually treating me? Is it about something they do with this partner that I want? But getting to the bottom of understanding what's going on there rather than trying to either avoid them through rules or just suppressing them and denying that you feel them.

Emily: So our next mistake that we're going to be talking about is called the Monogamy Template. And that essentially is applying a monogamous relationship framework and expectations to polyamorous dynamics. I do think, even in monogamy, where a lot of people will sit there and say, I know what monogamy looks like. I know everybody has the same idea of what it is. Everybody knows that X, Y, and Z equals cheating. And that's that, like that is something that is universally thought of as truth. And the reality is that people's perception of what monogamy is or isn't can be very different from one another. And so even if you are not in a non monogamous relationship, that's something to really speak about to your partner and try to get clear on what your take of monogamy looks like. And here, the same applies to polyamory that not everybody is going to have the same idea of what polyamory looks like, and not everybody is going to necessarily want the same type of relationship style. So I think in polyamory, if you're somebody who very much wants a kitchen table type situation, but you have a partner who really doesn't want to talk about their other partners, who wants a much more parallel type situation, or even a don't ask, don't tell situation, you're going to come to a head in terms of the things that you want in your non monogamy, and that might not be as compatible as you had hoped that it would be initially.

Jase: Or I'd say the worst case is you both just assume that the other person means the same thing when they talk about wanting polyamory. And then you have this rude awakening when it's like, oh, but you're not doing the thing that you wanted. And they're like, But this is the thing that I said I wanted to do. And it was just because you didn't have clear communication about it. I feel like with monogamy, this happens, like you said, Emily, because there's this assumption that, oh, because that's the cultural norm, we all just know it. But I think with polyamory, it's the opposite where because we don't have a variety of role models, at least most of us don't have a wide variety of different models for what this can look like. We'll see one example of it and think, oh, that's what it always looks like.

Dedeker: Sure.

Jase: Whether that's we watched some TV show that had a triad on it, or they probably called it a throuple, but had a group of three and you're like, oh, that's always what it looks like. Or you read some article in the New York Times and you're like, oh, it's always three or four people all living together. Raising kids or, you know, you might have this preconceived notion of what it is. And if you don't talk about that and do a little bit of reading and listening to podcasts and stuff to get a broader sense of what the options are, you might not even know that there are other things it could be. And you might be stuck in that conception of it.

Emily: There's a lot of unlearning that happens throughout the course of one's polyamorous life in general in terms of taking away monogamous focused mindsets when you are in a totally new paradigm and a totally new relationship. But, for example, if you open up a relationship with a partner, you might expect your primary or that partner to still be the person that fulfills all of your needs or all of the main things that it is that you want in your life, where in reality, one of the great things about non-monogamy is getting to date a variety of people and then seeing your needs shift to others and also having people that are not just your primary partner fulfill additional needs in your life, which is a really lovely thing about non monogamy, but especially at first can be very scary.

Dedeker: However, I think that can lead into mistake number three, which is what some people call Pokemon polyamory. So it's this idea, a very common idea, it comes from a good place, this sense that, yeah, maybe one person can't meet all of your needs, therefore it's good to seek out multiple partners who can fulfill multiple needs. But that can lead to viewing partners as being there to fulfill a specific role or a specific function rather than being whole autonomous individuals themselves. And so this can show up in many different ways. Everything from, let's say, if you're a couple who's very, very specifically wanting to find a third in order to spice up the bedroom, or if you have a sense of, well, my partner is just not interested in leaving the house, really. And so I need to find somebody who's going to be the person that's going to take me out on all the dates, right? And we'll just have a fun time that even though that doesn't necessarily come from a bad place, it does mean that you're maybe setting yourself up for frustration. When that other person shows up just as a full human being who's not always down with the program of just being slotted into a particular role or to fulfill a specific need. That's why it's really important to be honest about what it is that you're hoping for, what it is that you're looking for, what it is that your capacity is, but also approaching new connections with genuine curiosity about who this person is as an individual, what their desires are, what their hopes are, what their needs are, not just how they might slot in and fill a particular gap in what you think that you're needing.

Emily: Definitely.

Jase: And I guess this is called Pokemon Polyamory because you're trying to catch them all. Catch a specific type. Well, I don't know if it's catching them all or I guess, yeah, all your different roles or all your different types. But I will say, if you go into Pokemon also with a very particular type of Pokemon and certain specs and gender and everything that you want for it, you will have a more frustrating time playing Pokemon. So, I think this rule does really transcend.

Dedeker: Oh my goodness.

Emily: Pokemon and everything and everyone. Yes.

Jase: Yeah, yeah. There you go. All right, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors for this show. Please do take a moment, listen to us, talk about them, check them out, use the links in our description. It does really help our show. And of course, if you'd like to help our show in the most direct way and get access to things like ad free episodes, our amazing community, our monthly video processing groups, things like that, go to multiamory.com/join and you can sign up there. We have a sliding scale to make it accessible to everybody. And we would love to have you as part of that community and to help support us in doing this work and putting this content out there.

Jase: All right, part two of our Trixie Triforce of Troubles, Triforce of Trials and Tribulations.

Emily: Ooh, that's good.

Jase: This category is about communication and structural challenges or mistakes, I guess. So the overall theme here is that effective communication is really important in any relationship, but it's even more critical in polyamory because you're doing stuff that's new and you can't get by on as many assumptions. Those are more likely to bite you. And similarly, your structural choices of like how you do your relationships can either support or they can undermine that ability to have good, healthy, honest, clear communication. So the first mistake in this category is the communication cop-out is what I decided to call this one, which is basically using non-monogamy ironically as a way to communicate less or to not feel like you need to communicate. So rather than starting this to make sure you establish these clear, consistent, honest communication channels, that instead you can use polyamory as this way to avoid ever really being accountable to anyone. I feel like I often see this one show up with, well, at least years ago, this would show up as the person who says they're a relationship anarchist and what they actually mean is they're just a jerk who doesn't want to care about anyone else.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: Which is really unfortunate for the whole term and for all the actual relationship anarchists out there. But there can be this thing of, well, because I have multiple people, I don't really have to reveal myself to anyone. Or, oh, well, whatever, they can deal with their problems some other way. I don't have to be accountable for it. It's almost like the flip side of the kind of denying your jealousy. It's kind of like denying that anyone else is going to have things they need to communicate about and using it as a way to avoid that. So this one shows up as not communicating enough. So the clear solution here is communicate more. But how do you do that? How do you make that useful? How do you make that honest? How do you make that fun? Especially when you're doing something that could be a little bit scary. And what we've found is the best thing is to have a consistent way to do that communication so that it's not something that has to be on your mind all the time. So we suggest doing monthly is sort of a good cadence for it. We have RADAR, which is our framework for that. You can check out more information about that in our book. Or look back through our episode on RADAR, Relationship RADAR, or even multiamory.com/radar. It's probably our most referenced, most commonly talked about tool. We actually have a lot of therapists who recommend RADAR to their clients, which is very cool to hear about. We'll hear secondhand, like, oh, my therapist told me to do RADAR, and that's how I found out about your podcast. But the key thing about RADAR is that you do it regularly so that there's not that sense of oh, if we have to communicate and have a talk about stuff, that means bad, bad news, right? Like that's only the thing you do when it's all coming apart. It's that you get to do it regularly. So yeah, you might work on some hard things, but you also get to talk about fun things and what's coming up and what's going on in your other relationships. It also makes it much easier to communicate about your other relationships when you have a time every month where you're going to do that, that that makes that easier instead of thinking like, oh, do I tell my partner that I kissed this other person right before we go to bed, or that we said, I love you for the first time, right as we're heading out to work. Instead, you have a container where that's part of that conversation. And I've just found it's been such a game changer for all of us in our lives and for so many other people. So definitely recommend checking that out.

Emily: The next mistake is the don't ask, don't tell mistake.

Jase: Oh, yeah.

Emily: Now, this is challenging because I do want to acknowledge that some people's version of non-monogamy is a don't ask, don't tell.

Dedeker: Scenario.

Emily: I definitely know people who say they're in an open relationship and they are maybe living apart from one another. I have friends who are on contract and they don't live with their partners full time because they're in a totally different country, and they have sort of a hall pass scenario situation where on either end, both partners are able to sleep with other people, and it's not necessarily discussed. But the implication is that, yeah, that's okay if you do that, and it's not a big deal. I think in polyamory, where there is the opportunity to explore romantic relationships with real feelings, this is a really difficult thing to implement well without some trust eroding or without being as honest and open as I think is necessary in a good relationship, because you do want to be able to speak about the people that are important in your life, and that includes your other partners. So when you just implement strict compartmentalization or secrecy to avoid discomfort, that can ultimately lead to some eroded trust. Yeah.

Jase: This one, I personally have never seen an example of someone doing this in a way that after talking with them and seeing their relationship over time, I've said, yeah, that was a good way to do it for you.

Dedeker: But you know, because we're saying this, we're going to get 1,800 people who.

Emily: Will... No, I know. That's what I'm saying.

Jase: I actually would love that. I would love to hear that, right? Because I do want to have a more nuanced understanding of it. I just see so often this starts from a good intention, right? If we both want to do this, but we're uncomfortable with having these conversations or I don't really want to hear about those things. And I think that can come up as a reaction to, you hear about people who it's like, oh, I want to hear all the juicy details about the hot sex you had with this other person. And they're like, Whoa, I do not want that. Let's not talk about our relationships. And I think there's a lot of middle ground there, right? Within the more parallel polyamory where you each have your other partners, maybe you don't really talk with your metamours much. You don't all hang out in a group. I think that's fine. But once you cross this line into, the point where in order to honor our don't ask, don't tell, I have to do stuff that feels shady to hide this from you.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: That's where I think it tips over into this. I haven't seen that work out in a healthy and sustainable way. If there is the, yeah, you date this person. Cool. I know who they are. Maybe I have an emergency contact if you're going on a trip or something, but I don't need to meet them. Maybe they have my info, but we're not all friends. We don't all hang out. I don't want to hear about the sex that you have. I think that's fine. And I think that's actually probably more normal than a lot of people think since we tend to, in the media sensationalize more of the, all the sexy details turns everybody on. And that's not the case for a lot of people. So I do want to say there is a broad range here, but I think you can tip over the edge if you try to take it fully into that. Like we're doing this to avoid the discomfort of having to think about this. I think you're just asking for trouble.

Emily: Yeah, we don't want any policies necessarily that actively shut down communication. And like you said, delving into shady territory of, oh, I have to hide stuff from you in order to keep this whole situation from you, because that's what we decided early on.

Jase: Right. It's like, even though you want me to hide it from you, it still.

Emily: Is like, it feels weird. I think, yeah, that's challenging for both parties. And yeah, privacy is important. I do think that that's something to speak about early on as well. Like, how much do you want to hear about my other relationships? Is this something where I can speak to you about my feelings if something is difficult, or I can speak to you about the exciting things that are happening if something is good, or if we've leveled up our relationship in some way, getting transparent on those things and having open communication channels present. I think that all of that is fantastic, even if, like you said, Jase, the metamours don't necessarily meet. I am a big proponent of meeting metamours. I think that that's a really good thing to do, but not everybody is, and that's totally okay. I just do think that you need to openly communicate again about what the expectations are from the beginning surrounding this one.

Dedeker: And mistake number six, and I think this could show up in a lot of these mistakes, I would call this the rigid relationship mistake. And often what it is is we can confuse our own personal boundaries or personal preferences with attempts to control or rein in a partner's behavior with rigidity. Often this shows up in the form of really rigid rules that are meant to contain both of your behaviors. It could look like some of the stuff that we've already shared before, you know, this rigid sense that, well, the only way that we can be non-monogamous is if we're all dating the same person all at the same time. Or the only way we can be non monogamous is if it is a don't ask, don't tell, or if it's a fire hose level of information sharing, right? Like that there's no privacy whatsoever. It's really important to understand that there is this distinction between taking care of your own actions and expressing your own needs and the very human desire to want to control others. And I think that if you're someone who has been in a monogamous relationship, that then opens up, there's this weird transition period where you go from being the couple unit, right? Like the two of us together are a unit to now we need to function a little bit more as individuals who have our own individual dating lives and sex lives separate from each other. And that can bring a lot of really wonderful things and it can be a really freaky transition. And it can be scary to have a feeling that if my partner now is acting as an individual, maybe they're not going to have my back anymore. Or maybe they're not going to make decisions that are also in my best interest. And so I think that's where rigidity comes from. Anywhere that there's rigidity, it's because we're trying to protect something.

Jase: Yeah. And that when you have a rigid structure in place and someone does make a decision that's insensitive and breaks one of those rigid structures, I think that hurts a lot more and is much harder to repair than when there is a little bit of flexibility and still someone could make a choice that is hurtful to you or felt like they weren't considering you enough. And that sucks. I don't want to downplay and say, oh, if you don't have strict rules, that never happens. But I've just noticed that there's a little bit more room for being disappointed and then talking about that and adjusting rather than, oh, now you've cracked this foundation and now what? What other rules are you going to break now? I don't know. It lets us put a lot of extra meaning onto these things as well. And so I'm thinking of a few specific examples, actually, even of people who are not polyamorous so much as more in a kink power dynamic of rules about asking permission to do certain things with other people often is based around this assumption that the answer is always going to be yes, but there's this hot power dynamic that I'll still have to ask, right? Oh, that's part of our thing. But it's like the one time that that answer is No, it's a really hard thing to recover from and actually does a lot of damage, even if really it was that the person asking for it at that time, that was kind of a rude time to be asking it. But it's like now you have this weird situation where the person saying no feels bad and the person who asked feels bad. And then the person who said no is like, But I shouldn't feel bad because that was kind of shitty of you to ask this right now. Do you see what I mean? It's like you've put this rule in place that actually kind of amplifies the uncomfortableness and sort of the weirdness of this situation rather than protecting you, which is what you thought it was going to do.

Emily: Yeah.

Dedeker: And of course, we talk about this a lot on this show, and we did a deep dive into this topic. You can go check out our episode 227, which is titled Rules Versus Agreements, Feet, Boundaries. And this also was a whole chapter of our book as well.

Jase: Okay, we're gonna take another quick break here to gather our wits about us and also to tell you about some ways that you can help support this show. The best way, of course, is to join our community.

Emily: @Multiamory.com/join.

Jase: We have a sliding scale. It's such a great community of people, really supportive. We have a whole variety of topics and channels in our private Discord server that you get access to, as well as our monthly video processing groups, where you can actually real time engage with one of us, as well as the community. It's just been such a cool, uplifting way to connect with other people. I highly recommend it. So go to multiamory.com/join to check that out and support us. Or of course, you can sit here and you can listen to some ads and check out our promo and links in our episode show description, because that does directly support our show. And now we descend or ascend into the final triangle of our troubling Triforce of turbidity. I actually don't know what turbidity means.

Emily: Did you make that word up? Let me look.

Jase: I might have made it up. I don't know.

Emily: There's turbidity.

Jase: Turbidity. That's the one. It's like turbulence in a fluid, right?

Emily: A measure of the level of particles such as sediment, plankton, or organic byproducts in a body of water. As the turbidity of water increases, it becomes denser and less clear. Okay.

Jase: Yeah, there we go. So yeah, your turbidus triangle. Okay, all right, I'm gonna stop. All right, so this third one here is about personal growth and also understanding yourself, understanding your capacity. So the theme here is that polyamory, if you're coming from a monogamous background, which almost all of us are, it's gonna be a lot of personal growth, a lot of unlearning. And if you're neglecting your own self-awareness, your own self-care, your own emotional regulation, you can end up struggling a lot. You can end up having a really hard time. So mistake number seven, I've called it paranoid protections. And this is where you want to prioritize the preservation of a relationship's existing form. Over its natural development and growth and evolution. So this might look like laying down specific rules that are designed to minimize change and discomfort. So where other ones are maybe about jealousy or other things, there's overlap here, but these are about, I want to do something to make sure this relationship stays somehow the same. And that's stuff like no falling in love with anyone else, like kind of the most common rule that's impossible to follow if you ever make it, right? So the no falling in love rule or no overnights or one night stands, only things like that. Some people will have those early on. I think some of those rules, like the no overnights or like hookups only, especially if you're coming from more of a lifestyle swinging open relationship kind of entry point into polyamory, they are somewhat common. And I don't want to say, like, oh, that's terrible that you would ever make those rules, but they can fall into this trap of being in place just to try to preserve the structure and the way the relationships are as they are right now, like kind of enforcing this person's primary and primary means these certain things versus actually just letting those relationships develop and letting your relationship with your existing partner and your new partners each evolve and grow in their own way, which feels scarier from the start. But again, having a little flexibility in there is often a stronger shape, right? It's not this kind of rigid structure, but something that has a little bit of flexibility can evolve and move over time.

Emily: I've thought a lot about that quote. I think you said Dedeker was from Esther Perel recently, where you were talking about that change involves some sort of loss and some sort of pain, that even if change is a good thing, it can still involve a lot of challenge and a lot of necessary growth to sort of move through and past the thing that you are ultimately sort of losing. And that that loss, especially with monogamy, losing monogamy is this idea of the unit, this idea that it was only going to be the two of us against the world. And it makes a lot of sense to want to hold on to that in some way. But I do think that even with that loss, so often we discover that the thing on the other side of that loss is even better than we could have expected or hoped for. So I encourage people who are, especially in this realm of non-monogamy, to understand that maybe letting go of some of those rules will enable them to get to even better places that they never even dreamed of.

Jase: And I think that this is much easier to say than to really have it land and be comforting. But I do mean this is comforting in a weird roundabout way, is that I think people can look at this and go, oh, well, I know someone else who opened up their relationship and they ended up falling really in love with this other person, and then that initial relationship broke up. Or they might think about it more in a hypothetical of, oh, well, but you might find this other person that you like, so much more than me, and you realize that you actually don't like being with me, and then you'll leave me, that those two fears leave out the possibility that that might have happened anyway.

Emily: Of course.

Jase: And that it could have happened through an affair, or just through needing to break up and not have that be part of an honest and open communication. Like that that couldn't be a process you were part of instead it kind of happens outside of you, and it just can happen to you. So I think there's a little bit of an illusion of security that we put on monogamous relationships, even though, like, we all know in real life that they end, that relationships can end and people can cheat and people can break up.

Emily: Happens all the time.

Jase: All the time. But we still kind of buy into this illusion that, oh, but if I'm doing it right, that can't ever happen. And I think that sometimes people can approach polyamory with this sense of, like, oh, that risk is greater. And I actually think in reality it's lower. And I know that feels counterintuitive if you're new at it, but if you talk to a lot of people who've been doing it a while, I think a number of people will back me up on this. There's actually more security and more of a feeling of less hidden threats out there by being more open and not trying to control those or limit those things.

Emily: Moving on to mistake number eight, This one is called the Zero-Sum Competition Mistake. So this is about viewing love or attention as things that other people can just take away from you. So essentially, if you are in a relationship with someone and they start dating someone else, you might sit with that and feel like, crap, I am now in a scenario where somehow love is going to be subtracted from me and moved on to this other person. And I think many of us, especially in Western culture, think about everything that we do as a competition. So we have to be the best at our job. We have to be the best sibling, for instance, for our parents. We have to be the best partner. Somehow we need to be number one. And I understand that mindset. It's completely common. It's something that is really hard to shake. But if we can move away from this, this mindset of everything needs to be a competition to instead, we all have the ability to love multiple people. We have the ability to give our attention to multiple people, to give our time to multiple people. Even though that is a finite resource, we still can spread ourselves in a way that allows for the opportunity to be in multiple relationships and have them all be quite meaningful.

Jase: We actually have an episode coming up in about a month or so where we're going to be talking about the different types of time that you can spend together, because it might be about making your time higher quality and not just more of it. So just trying to get the most of something might not be the actual good stuff, right? The competition might actually lead you to not get what you want.

Emily: Absolutely. So with this, if you can just sort of step away from that competition mindset and instead move to a mindset of abundance, which I know many of us will look at scarcity versus abundance and talk about polyamory in that way that monogamy is this idea of scarcity and polyamory is an idea of abundance. And I don't know if that's necessarily a reality. I think many people have abundance and scarcity mindsets in a variety of scenarios, but still just try to focus on the internal work of managing your own insecurities rather than constantly looking for external validation or looking at your metamour as your competition, because that's just not something that's going to make you into the best polyamorous person that you can be, or somebody that's attractive to your partner, somebody that they want to perhaps spend less time with just simply because they're constantly needing to reassure you, even though that's an understandable thing to ask for, but try to practice compersion instead. And a way that you can do that is listen to our many episodes on compersion. But one in particular that stood out for me was 484 with Dr. Marie Thouin, where she talks about how compersion is a spectrum and that there are many different types of compersion. And it doesn't need to just look in this classic way of, oh, I feel really good for my partner dating this person, and I'm feeling a lot of warm fuzzy feelings for the fact that they are in love with another person as well. But instead, it is a spectrum. It can mean a lot of different things. And also, of course, our episode 350 called Abundance and Scarcity.

Dedeker: And mistake number nine, our final mistake for this episode, the self-neglect trap. So, essentially this is abandoning your own needs in order to be a good polyamorous partner. Maybe not recognizing or walking away from red flags, maybe not even screening for red flags early on. I often see this playing out as rushing to start too many relationships at once or acquire too many partners at once without really understanding your own capacity. Connected to that is often the tendency to underestimate how much time you need for yourself or underestimate how much time actually goes into creating a good relationship. Maybe underestimating the effort and the consideration that it takes to be a good hinge partner. For instance.

Jase: Yeah, this is when I did so hard. You really like this.

Dedeker: This is hard. Yeah, because it comes more with time and experience that you actually start to understand what your capacity is and how it is that you need to care for yourself the best.

Jase: Yeah. Or like comparing your amount of dating to someone else, whether that's your partner or just other people can lead you to feel like, oh, I'm not doing it well enough or I'm not attractive enough. I need to have more partners and just You can really end up over committing yourself where you're feeling stressed out, burned out, and also disappointing everyone that you're dating too because there's not enough of you to be there and be present for everyone in a way that is good for that relationship. Boy, I feel this one very hard because I definitely went through that phase of just over committing myself so significantly dating just too many people too much. And too many serious ongoing relationships at one time too. I think it also depends on the type of relationships you're having, of like, are they ones that should require more time or should deserve more time? Having a lot of those is going to be much harder than having several much more intentionally casual, clearly casual relationships or friends with benefits or things like that. And when you mistake what kind of time you need for each one, they can get into trouble.

Emily: Because time is a finite resource. And yes, abundance mindsets are great. However, you really do only have so much time and energy, and you have to save some of that for yourself as well.

Jase: That was the lesson I had to learn, was figuring out how to set some of that time for myself and not just feel like any non-scheduled moment is a time for a date or a time that I should give to partners or whatever.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: And that wraps up our tricky triforce of troubles and mistakes. I will be making a PDF for this one. There will be a link to that in the show notes. All you have to do to get that is to join our community, which you can do at multiamory.com/join. And if you're not already, you can click that link to get the link for how you can sign up for that. We have a sliding scale to make that accessible for everybody. And there you'll be able to see a visual layout of all of these nine different mistakes that might be a good way to review and check out and maybe go through with a partner if you're just opening up your relationship and make sure you can avoid as many as you can. And then also, for those of you listening at home, we have a question of the week for you, which we'll be posting on our Instagram stories. And that is, what was the most significant mindset shift you've made in your non-monogamy or in your polyamory? Very curious to hear what that was for people. Like what was the thing that finally shifted, that finally changed the way you thought? The best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post in our private Facebook group, and you can get access to both of those by joining our community at multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share publicly on Instagram @multiamorypodcast.

Jase: Multiamory is created and produced by Emily Matlack, Dedeker Winston, and me, Jase Lindgren.

Jase: Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins.

Jase: Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP.

Jase: The full transcript is available on this episode’s page on multiamory.com.