564 - Help! My partner's dates are difficult to endure! Listener Q&A

We’re tackling this listener question in today’s episode:

“I'm a new mom (9 months postpartum) with a nesting husband, Dave, and an anchor boyfriend (of almost three years) Andrew. 

My daughter is being raised by myself and both of my partners and I couldn't be more impressed and proud with the little village we have. Andrew has recently found a wonderful partner who I have a lot of respect for. Though I met her briefly and like her, I have requested a little more parallel than my usual way of KTP functioning (on account of limited capacity postpartum). 

They started dating four months ago and have only been on about a date each month, which is a frequency that seems to serve both of them well. Here's the issue: my felt experience of their dates is not getting any easier. I'm on meds for postpartum depression and anxiety and they help a lot outside of this issue. I have wonderful couples therapists with both of my partners. I have an incredible EMDR therapist with whom I've done meaningful work. When Andrew goes on dates with his recent partner, I create a self-care plan and execute it: face masks, movies, video games, imbibing lots of treats. Andrew and I do a lot of work before and after his dates to help me process the difficulties, he's been an incredible support. We have a communication agreement where he texts me every few hours of their dates, and it's wonderful. I feel so incredibly "team" with him, even when he's out exploring this new connection. BUT THE HOURS GO BY SO SLOWLY. There is always a part of my brain imagining what they are up to. By the end of their most recent date, I just had tears streaming down my face while I went about my self-care plans. We are now five dates in and it's not getting any easier. Help, please! What does one do when dates are not getting any easier to endure?

Little Ms. Struggle Town”

If you want one of your questions answered on a future Q&A episode, consider joining our Supercast community!

Transcript

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

Dedeker: I might actually encourage someone to lean in the opposite direction of trying to distract and trying to soothe. I think if the distress continues and you've given it enough time to rule out anything hormonal, any adjustment to medication, anything that's going on in your relationship, then with my coaching brain, I'm like, okay, the distress is showing up for some reason. The distress is showing up and it's trying to serve some kind of purpose. And maybe you're at the point where the more that you try to push it away, the more you try to distract, the more you just kind of try to keep yourself floating above it, you might be floating above what actually needs to happen for you or some understanding that actually needs to come through, or maybe some sort of therapeutic work that actually needs to come through.

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 answering a listener question about how to best emotionally regulate when a partner goes on a date. Today, we're going to be talking about some of the reasons why emotional distress might be occurring when your partner goes on dates, and some tips and ideas for how to deal with those emotions and work through those, whether those are coming from more of a psychological, mental top down place, or from a bottom up physiological more physical reaction kind of place. So we're excited to dive into all of this and answer this listener question. Thank you for sending it in. And for you listening, if you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can 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.

Dedeker: Just as a disclaimer, we've spent a lot of time studying healthy relationships and communication, but a part of what makes relationships so interesting is that they're all different. Everybody's situation is unique, and so we encourage you to use your own judgment and seek professional help if needed. Ultimately, you're the only true expert on your life, and your feelings and your decisions are your own. And also, this question has been edited for time and clarity.

Emily: And here's the question. Why isn't it getting any easier when my partner goes on dates with my metamour? The longer version of this question is, I'm a new mom, nine months postpartum, with a nesting husband, Dave, and an anchor boyfriend of almost three years, Andrew. My daughter is being raised by myself and both of my partners, and I couldn't be more impressed and proud with the little village we have. Andrew has recently found a wonderful partner who I have a lot of respect for, though I met her briefly and like her. I have requested a little more parallel than my usual way of kitchen table polyamory functioning, on account of limited capacity postpartum. They started dating four months ago and have only been on about a date each month, which is a frequency that seems to serve both of them well. Here's my issue. My felt experience of their dates is not getting any easier. I'm on meds for postpartum depression and anxiety, and they help a lot outside of this issue. I have wonderful couples therapists with both of my partners. I have an incredible EMDR therapist with whom I've done meaningful work. When Andrew goes on dates with his recent partner, I create a self-care plan and execute it. Face masks, movies, video games, imbibing lots of treats. Andrew and I do a lot of work before and after his dates to help me process the difficulties. He's been an incredible support. We have a communication agreement where he texts me every few hours of their dates, and it's wonderful. I feel so incredibly team with him even when he's out exploring this new connection. But the hours go by so slowly. There is always a part of my brain imagining what they are up to. By the end of their most recent date, I just had tears streaming down my face while I went about my self-care plans. We are now five dates in and it's not getting any easier. Help, please. What does one do when dates are not getting any easier to endure? Signed Little Miss Struggle Town.

Jase: Boy, yeah. Sounds like a lot going on there, Little Miss Struggle Town.

Dedeker: Also, one of the worst-selling titles in the Little Miss series of books. I don't know if you remember that one. Yeah.

Emily: But one of the most relatable of all of them.

Dedeker: Right, right.

Jase: Maybe ironically, it would have been the best-selling of all of them.

Dedeker: There you go.

Emily: Exactly.

Jase: I could see a world where that would be the case, actually. So I also just noticed that all three of us are wearing black or dark gray today. Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

Emily: We're all also on the struggle bus a little bit. Yeah.

Jase: Yeah. Wintertime, a little bit dark and gloomy, rain clouds.

Dedeker: The struggle era.

Emily: Yeah. Struggle era.

Jase: Struggle season. Yeah. So getting into this question, I feel like there's a few different parts of this that we can talk about, and I think it'll be helpful to look at each of those. Because there's one part that's more of the general question of what do I do while my partner's out on dates and the normal stuff isn't working. What else can I do? What are some other things? And I think that part we can get into. And then I think there's also this piece that here is specifically about postpartum, but we could also generalize that a little bit more into something where there's a physical or hormonal something going on, whether that's specifically caused by postpartum, you know, having a baby or not. So we can kind of talk about each of those, I think, because they might change a little bit how we would approach this and what sorts of things might be helpful. And hopefully all of that is helpful to this person, but also that means kind of whatever your situation is that some of this might end up being useful for you.

Dedeker: Well, yeah, let's maybe highlight, as you said, establishing what the usual advice is that it feels like this person is following and which I think is actually good standard advice. One of them being having good mental hygiene, whatever that means for you and your life and for this person, it means making sure that they're properly medicated. Also related to that, making sure that their relationship has support. So it's clearly they're being very intentional about this and thinking about how to fortify their relationships to feel more secure. They have their own personal support. They have the EMDR therapist and they have the self-care plan. Another really good, commonly given piece of advice for how to take care of yourself when your partner's out on a date with the face masks and the video games and giving yourself lots of treats. They're also doing the right thing in being openly communicative with their partner about what they're experiencing, what they're going through and what it is that they need to feel safe. And they've created this communication plan as well. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight that. I think, yeah, if we'd just been sent the question, Hey, I have a hard time when a partner goes on dates. What should I do when they're out? This is probably all the standard advice that we would go through.

Jase: Yeah.

Dedeker: Because this person is struggling, I don't think it necessarily means that the standard advice is failing them, but it does mean there are just maybe other things to explore here.

Jase: Yeah, exactly. And I think that part of getting at the heart of what our kind of standard advice for this is, is about the hygiene and self-care, but also ideally toward the goal of your partner going on a date being something that you're excited about, that's fun. It's like, ah, this is my fun time now. This is when I get to have my good restorative alone time. That's kind of the hope of where you could get to. And I know sometimes it frustrates me when Dedeker doesn't go on enough dates now.

Dedeker: Wow.

Jase: Because I don't get to go on dates.

Emily: You just wander out of the house.

Dedeker: Okay, well here, if I'm going to complain though, I started to enjoy Jase going on dates more because of that, except that you also go on a streak of inviting dates back to the house. And so instead of me getting my alone restorative time, it's just a party for everybody that I don't always want to be a part of.

Jase: Sure, yeah, sometimes that's fun, but sometimes that's not, yeah, for sure.

Emily: I did want to point out here, it sounds like this person is really having struggles around one person in the relationship and not their other partner potentially going on dates. And I just wanted to kind of touch on that a little bit, because I know that that has been the case for me. When I was dating you, Jase, I recall there was a time after we had been non-monogamous for a while, where the idea of you going out on dates with new people was less scary to me. And the possibility of thinking about other people who I was dating, going on dates with new people, was more scary to me. And I just wondered if we could speak about that a little bit, the reasoning behind that perhaps. If it is security, if it is just because there's a newness there, if it is because they're legally married to one person and not the other, and with that brings a set of expectations. Or is sort of an internalized, like, this person's always gonna be around, so I don't have to worry about them, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know what the two of you think about that.

Jase: From this question itself, the way that I read it was more that the reason why the focus is on Andrew, this newer partner, but still three years long, still not a really new relationship. My guess is it's just because he happens to be the one who's dating someone new. And that the nesting partner Dave isn't. And that's something we have talked about before where newer partners of your own, there's less history there. And so sometimes that can feel just less secure. In this case, it's been three years, so it might just be the fact that his new relationship is new. So this new relationship is new. So again, it's kind of less of a known quantity. It's less of, oh, yeah, yeah, that's been around. I know everything's fine. My body knows everything's fine. That's just normal, but it's still new. And there's that adjustment period. That would be my read of this particular one, but that is a good point to bring up for other people who might be going through this to see, is that part of what's going on here? Is there a relationship that just feels more stable than the other, probably because of time?

Dedeker: Well, and also because only five dates in, even though these dates are pretty spaced out, it's still relatively new. If you think about the amount of time that your whole system has had to experience being by yourself, having your partner away and your partner away with this new exciting person. It's really not a lot of hours on the ground with your system experiencing this, going through the distress, and then getting to the other side of it and reconnecting with your partner and coming back into safety. Sometimes that process, that whole cycle needs to repeat many, many, many more times before it's not just in your brain, but it's also in your body and your emotions. Yeah.

Jase: Yeah.

Emily: Also, of course, I want to acknowledge that this person just had a pregnancy and just had a baby and that that adds a whole other can of worms because that is a very vulnerable time. Not that I have ever been pregnant or had a child, but I can imagine that that's a very vulnerable time for a variety of reasons. And the idea of somebody who is in your extremely intimate circle, a person who is helping raise this child with you, choosing to go off and be in a relationship with someone else and kind of cultivate a new entirely separate part from you can add to that vulnerability and maybe just heighten it a bit while all of these other new things are going on as well. I can imagine just perhaps the timing of all of this is contributing to the really challenging feelings.

Dedeker: Yeah, to piggyback off of that, now the question asker doesn't bring this up, so I don't want to project this onto them, but if you're in a similar situation, I also just want to highlight the fact that if you're someone who just gave birth to a baby, your body birthed this baby and you're only a few months out, you are probably not in a place of being ready to just throw yourself into a new relationship and go out on dates each month. And so even though this person is not complaining about that, there's still an imbalance there that you have a partner who, even though they're raising this child with you, they feel like they have more freedom. To do that.

Emily: Well, and they literally do.

Dedeker: Yeah, and they do that. Yeah.

Emily: I mean, not that men, I'm sure, or, you know, another partner who hasn't actually birthed the child. Not that they don't have a lot to do as well, but there is this sort of implication that especially if you breastfeed or something along those lines, the kid is going to be attached to you in a way that it's not necessarily to other partners. And so just the sheer reality of the situation of having more time or not, Yeah, potentially this person really does truly have more time, even if they are incredibly helpful and that that imbalance can be really hard.

Jase: So yeah, I do think maybe this is a good time to talk a little bit about the pregnancy piece in a little more detail as well. This is not something we're experts on, none of us having had children, but in, you know, knowing people who have had children and doing some research on hormonally what's going on during this, there are also a lot of things to consider there. And like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we can talk specifically about this postpartum, but there could be other reasons why you'd be having some hormonal changes, such as a new chronic pain or an illness or just a new depressive episode or an anxiety spike for other reasons. There could be other things affecting your mental health as well as just the whole chemical balance of your brain. There could be a lot of things going on here. So one of those is just looking at the anxiety part of it here. So specifically, I looked up some research from Dr. Vicky Fallon. She's done a lot of research about postpartum anxiety and that one of the pieces of that is about the stability of the child rearing relationship, which in your case, you've talked about, you're very proud of this village that you have. It's really great. However, if you think about your brain might know, oh, this relationship is secure. Andrew is coming back. This isn't a threat. But because chemically you're in this heightened state of vigilance about this village that you have, this little childcare environment, these relationships, that your body could still be perceiving this as a threat, even if your brain intellectually doesn't think that. And that's something that I think is just worth acknowledging here. And we've talked about this before with with other things going on, like depression or anxiety, that's, you're having a more acute episode. It's like no matter what you try to logically think your body is saying something else and just kind of acknowledging that there might be a need for one, a little patience with yourself, and then two, also a little bit of bottom up versus top down of things to regulate the physical reactions in yourself, like the physiological reactions instead of just entertaining or distracting yourself, which is usually where our advice tends to go, right? Is more on that side of things. So I do think that one's worth paying attention to.

Dedeker: Yeah. I mean, and just to jump on that also that with distracting yourself, for some people switching on their favorite movie, picking up a video game, that's enough to just occupy their brain so their brain doesn't do any of this weird self sabotage kind of self masochistic exploration. But for many people, if you're going to distract yourself, you actually need something that is much more actively engaging than that. I know that some video games can be more actively engaging, but some not so much. And so you may need something that actually puts you into more of a focus mode where you're consuming something more actively rather than passively. So that could be making something with your hands, crafting, for instance, something like that. Honestly, even reading a book, something that actually makes your brain have to work a little bit harder, you know?

Jase: Than a movie, for sure.

Dedeker: Than a movie necessarily. Yeah.

Jase: Yeah, or a podcast, even.

Dedeker: Or a podcast. I sort of have some maybe controversial opposite day advice that I want to give, but maybe I should do that after the break.

Jase: This question asker also mentioned that they have an EMDR therapist. And so something from that, which is this, the optimal window, of kind of if you're not too activated to where you're, you know, in anxiety and kind of fight or flight response, or you're not activated enough, which is more of the freeze response or just wanting to kind of collapse or fall asleep, that there's sort of this ideal zone that you want to try to be in. And that during a time when chemically things are more off balance, that window gets smaller. And so I think, again, another reason to focus on the physiological stuff going on for you And looking into some things, maybe even asking your EMDR therapist or just doing some looking online about what are some things that are just specifically dealing with the physiological parts and to see if that helps make a little bit of a difference. And this could be things like submerging your face in cold water for a little bit. Is one that activates this, what's that one called? Do you remember Dedeker?

Dedeker: The diving reflex.

Jase: The diving reflex. That's the one.

Dedeker: Oh.

Jase: The diving reflex to help reduce anxiety. Specifically, I guess it's about cold water being inside your nose is part of it.

Dedeker: Yeah, it will, your body will go into oxygen preservation mode and it will slow down your heart rate. And the byproduct of that is often a reduction in anxiety symptoms.

Jase: Yeah.

Dedeker: Cool.

Jase: I've also heard like holding an ice cube in your hand can be another way of activating a similar sort of thing. Or there's various kinds of tapping or bilateral tapping is one I just learned about where you kind of hug yourself. So your arms are, your hands are on your opposite shoulders and then you tap alternatingly one side than the other. So just stuff to look into. Things to just focus on the physiological part since it sounds like you've got a pretty good situation going on in the more intellectual side of things. So just to throw out a few ideas there.

Dedeker: So everything that Jase has said, everything that we've said is great. It's all great. All great advice. However, I want to slide in with some controversial opposite day style advice, but I'll save that till after the break.

Jase: All right, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors of this show. We really do appreciate all of our sponsors for helping us keep this show free for everybody out there. And of course, if you would like to join our amazing community, get early access to ad free episodes, as well as our awesome Discord or Facebook communities, video discussion groups, all of those things, you can go to multiamory.com/join and you can sign up there. But in any case, if you're here listening to the ads, please check them out. Use our promo codes that does directly help support our show as well.

Dedeker: And we're back. Okay, so here is the opposite day approach. I want to take on this again. We said that it's still five dates, it's still relatively new. There's still a lot of time and a lot of room for your body, your emotions, your brain to settle, to start to feel more used to this, to have more of a sense that, oh, even though it's hard, I feel safe, and then maybe eventually over time, it doesn't get as hard. However, I can definitely hear this question asker feeling this distress of like, oh no, it's not getting any easier. What if it stays like this forever? What if it continues to not get any easier? What if it gets harder? Or what if it just takes way longer than I want it to? That's a situation where I might actually encourage someone to lean in the opposite direction of trying to distract and trying to soothe. I think if the distress continues and you've given it enough time to rule out anything hormonal, any adjustment to medication, anything that's going on in your relationship, then with my coaching brain, I'm like, okay, the distress is showing up for some reason. The distress is showing up and is trying to serve some kind of purpose. And maybe you're at the point where the more that you try to push it away, the more you try to distract, the more you just kind of try to keep yourself floating above it, you might be floating above what actually needs to happen for you, or some understanding that actually needs to come through, or maybe some sort of therapeutic work that actually needs to come through. So when I say leaning into it, I think this can look a number of ways. So maybe the lighter lift version of it could be something as simple as when you're going about your day, or when you're by yourself, when your partner is out and you notice your brain going down this particular pathway, or you notice the feelings coming up deciding, All right, I'm going to give myself two minutes to just feel my feelings, just let my brain do what it's going to do. Great, I'm going to set a two-minute timer. Or maybe that's a 10-minute timer, or maybe it's a 32nd timer or whatever, but it could be again on maybe the light lift end of the scale choosing I am actually going to feel this. I am actually going to think this and just kind of see what happens when I just stick with it. And then maybe when the timer is up, then I'm going to shift gears. I'm going to go back to my movie or back to my video game or whatever. That's one version. Another more intensive version could be, okay, I'm by myself and I'm noticing my brain is starting to go to this place and my feelings are starting to go to that place where you might just decide to really dive in and be like, okay, bring it on. I'm gonna feel it all. I'm gonna let my brain do the nightmare scenario of all the amazing things and all the passionate ways that I imagine these two people are in Congress with each other while on their date.

Emily: Wow.

Dedeker: And I'm just gonna dive into it. And you might try something like getting a piece of paper and just free writing, right? Everything that's coming up for you or get some freaking crayons out, right, and just scribble all over the page and make some bad art that doesn't make any sense to anybody but you, and just let yourself vomit all this out for as long as you possibly can. And here's the deal, is that for most people, eventually your body and your emotions will naturally sort of ebb if you let yourself ride this wave. If you're not trying to resist it, at a certain point it'll ebb. It doesn't mean you're going to swing into feeling totally happy and great and you never feel that way again, but there will be an ebbing point and you just kind of notice that ebbing point, right? And notice like, okay, after I've sat here for 10 whole minutes just scribbling and crying and writing out all this stuff and writing out these curse words and writing out all these nightmare scenarios, I'm noticing all of a sudden things have gotten a little bit quieter and I feel a little bit better. Okay. And maybe you're only there for like a minute before the imagery comes back or the feelings come back and then you go back into what you were doing, right? You know, of scribbling and and drawing and doing art and stuff like that. Or of course, you know, I'm always going to encourage people to do a somatic exploration, right, of moving your body in a way that wants to move and just kind of pay attention to those ebbs and flows. And I think the important thing here is that it's not about torturing yourself, right? It's not about, I'm intentionally going to push myself into an extreme form of distress. It's just kind of letting yourself feel what it is that you want to feel. Now, if you dabble in this and this feels really scary and really overwhelming, again, it's good that this person already has a relationship with an EMDR therapist, because this is a really, really good thing to bring to EMDR therapy. Because that's almost essentially kind of what EMDR is doing is kind of helping your system to develop more resilience around these kind of natural ebbs and flows around really difficult feelings.

Jase: Yeah.

Dedeker: Another thing that this person could try as part of this whole leaning in camp is, you know, you might let yourself have your brain kind of go to the imagery and to this nightmare version of the story. Oh, my God, they're having so much fun and the sex is so good and they look so young and free and romantic or whatever it is. And then seeing if you're able to either in your mind, you know, as a visualization, or this is something that you could write out, you could kind of write out what's the sort of, I guess I would call it the ideal ending to the story. And maybe this is something like, yeah, they have this really, really wonderful date, and then my partner says goodbye, and then he drives home and on his way home, he's so excited to come back to me and to hug me and he misses me and he walks in the door and he swoops me up in this big hug and crafting for yourself, like even if it is this uncomfortable thing of thinking about my partner having this really wonderful date, what's the ideal ending to that story that brings me back into safety and security and happiness and stuff like that, if that feels accessible. So again, I wouldn't suggest this to everybody. I think that if you're listening, you know yourself whether or not you have the capacity to try experimenting with leaning into this or not, or you know, ooh, if I do that and I'm by myself, that's going to be really, really bad, you know, maybe I should kind of take this to my therapist first. Again, you're the expert on how this is going to go for you. But I just like to offer this as the counterpoint to like, sometimes, yes, distraction is really good and sometimes distraction and self-soothing in that way is the best thing that you can do. And then other times the distress might be trying to tell you something, right? Or something might be trying to complete within you. And if you're feeling resilient and brave enough, this could actually be really therapeutic.

Jase: Something just worth noting is that with certain types of PTSD responses, there can be a situation where it actually gets worse when you're distracting yourself. And so not to say that this is a PTSD thing, but just that there is a certain aspect of if your body or your brain is like, there's a threat, there's something wrong, and you try to distract yourself, your brain's going to try extra hard to get your attention back to be like, no, no, no, no, no. You have to pay attention to this threat here or this potential threat. And so that could also be a way that trying to distract yourself could backfire in that way. So I do think that's worth exploring that option.

Emily: I have had a challenging time a little bit with being gone in Hong Kong and thinking about my partner back at home and kind of wondering, okay, is he going to sleep with someone? Is he going to start with a relationship with someone while I'm gone and having a lot of anxiety about that while I've been over here? And a thing that has been kind of helpful for me is writing out my list of fears and then writing out a list of truths and sort of comparing the two. And I think what you were talking about, Dedeker, sometimes those fears can be really illuminating because they can also sort of point to what's underneath the surface. You have your surface level fear of, okay, I am worried that my partner is going to meet someone else, that they are going to decide that that person's way better than I am, way smarter, way cooler, and then they're going to end up leaving me. And why do I feel that way? Is it because there's a lack of security in the relationship? Is it because I have a fear of abandonment due to people abandoning me in my life? Is there, you know, what actually is going on there? And then you can go over to a list of truths. Like, I know my partner is there for me. I know that they check in with me on a daily basis. I know that they show me care in X, Y, and Z way. I know that they have a lot of respect for this relationship, any of the above, and sort of compare the two and see maybe sometimes if those fears are warranted, if they are actually reality, or if they are they're because your body is scared that something that might have happened to you in the past is going to happen to you again. That works for me, and I know that this is not a one-to-one in terms of what's happening here. Obviously, this person is already in a relationship with a new person, but there might be similar fears that come up. And you already listed a bunch of truths, a bunch of amazing things that this person does to show you that they care. And I think in times of real distress, it's good to be able to sort of look at that from 30,000 feet if you can, and say, yes, internally, I'm going through all of this, but what actually is the reality of the situation? And how is my partner continued to come back to me over and over again and show me over and over again how much they care?

Jase: So I want to go back to the question itself for a second. And there was one thing that jumped out to me when you were reading the question, Emily. And as I've thought about this, I think this might be worth exploring. And that's the part about this communication agreement that while Andrew's on this date, that he texts every few hours of their dates, that you feel so team with him. So this one just kind of I wasn't sure why that jumped out at me, but when you read it, I was like, huh, what do I think about that? What do I feel about that? And I think my initial reaction was about as the person out on the date, that feels weird or like maybe disrespectful to the person that I'm on the date with. But then I'm like, no, I don't think I think that's actually what's making me keep coming back to that. It's that I think for you, if you are about, I'm going to take my time to self-care and focus on me, that by getting these periodic messages from him, you're actually making it so all of your time is just focused on him and what he's doing on that date. And then by having that happen intermittently, it's actually the worst possible thing than if he were like live streaming the whole date. It's that there's kind of this timer in your brain that's running kind of waiting for when am I going to get another update? When am I going to hear more? And it's actually maybe keeping you much more preoccupied on that rather than being the security and support that you intend it to be. So I don't know what the circumstances were with coming up with that. If that has to do with, you know, there was some bad history of of him completely forgetting to communicate with you for like days after going on a date or something. And this is trying to go the opposite direction to fix that. But that's one area that I might look at and say, actually, that might not be helping you at all. That actually might be making this much harder than it would be otherwise.

Dedeker: Yeah, I was wondering about that too. I can totally understand the desire for it, especially if it's specifically assuaging any fears of, oh my God, you've totally forgotten about me or whatever. I do think that's nice, but yeah, I do agree that, especially the intermittent nature, I know for my brain, it would definitely be checking compulsively, 'Oh, I thought I'd hear from him by now. Oh, no, I haven't heard from him by now. Oh no, what does it mean?' Oh wait, I heard from him. Okay, I'm okay. But then the next, it gives something for your brain to chew on that's not a good thing to chew on.

Jase: And keeps kind of your whole well being anchored to him and what he's doing.

Emily: That's a good point.

Jase: That's maybe the core of what, yeah, as I've been thinking about it, I'm like, yeah, something there that might not be helpful, might actually be doing the opposite of what both of you intend for it to do. And so that's, I think, something you could talk about together too, and maybe explore other options there. I kind of feel like having the permission to turn off your phone and your notifications could also be a form of self care that we don't give ourselves very often. That could also be a nice present to give yourself that's tied to that. I don't know, just something to consider.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: And as we're rounding this out, I actually wanted to talk briefly about the whole video game thing again, because like we talked about, if distraction is the goal, and we've talked about maybe that shouldn't be your goal some of the time. I remember we did an episode, this was back in 2020, I want to say, and I forget who this was, but she was talking about the types of games that are best for handling depression or anxiety, and that for her, the criteria was that there was a time limit on it, so that there was a certain kind of fast-paced element to it of like, oh, you have to do this thing in time. So like Tetris was an example of the block is falling and you have to make a decision in this relatively short amount of time. And so there's kind of this pressure to stay engaged, to stay on, on versus a game where you can kind of sit there and think about it, or that's sort of mindless, like a slot machine or a gacha or, you know, something like that, but something that's engaging. And I was thinking about that when we mentioned it earlier in the episode about kind of the sorts of games out there and how there are certain times where I find myself really wanting a game that does occupy all of my attention, where I have to be really on and really focused on it. You know, and this could be something like, I guess on an extreme end, could be like a Dark Souls type game. Oh, gosh, that's like really difficult, really challenging, so you have to be so...

Dedeker: I don't know, man. I've seen people playing Dark Souls and it puts them in a really dark place, understanding that. That's true.

Jase: That's true. That's interesting. Or, you know, maybe something that makes you less angry would be something more like a time-based puzzle game, like a Tetris type thing. Or there are other times where I'm like, no, I really don't want that. And that's where maybe a game like Civilization or something where it's turn-based and so there's no time pressure at all. You can kind of, you can get into it or you can drift out of it. And that's okay. Like you can sort of do either one. But I guess just as someone who loves games and has loved games for a long time, not just as a player, as a hobby, but is actually something that I work with and study and, you know, find really fascinating as sort of a psychological and cultural phenomenon. I think it's just worth thinking about, is the game serving you? Maybe look at what are some other games that I might try to see if those would serve what I'm going for right now in a better way.

Emily: I think the point is, is all of this serving you? All of the things that you're currently doing, if the outcome is not what you want, I think going back and maybe looking at every element of it, like we talked about, is the writing him during the date serving? Is the video game serving? Is the self-soothing actually serving? Or should we be pivoting in another direction?

Jase: Yeah, absolutely.

Emily: Amazing. Well, thank you, Little Miss Struggle Town. This is something that I think all of us have been through at one point or another. The struggle of having a beloved partner go on a date with someone else and knowing internally, okay, everything's going to be fine. They are going to come back to me. But then sometimes when it comes to our emotional response or our physiological response, that can be telling a very different story. So we understand we're with you and we hope that it gets better as time goes on. So we have a question that's going to be on our Instagram stories this week, and that is, what do you like to do to emotionally regulate when your partner is out on a date? And I'm interested to know if maybe some of you lean into it, like what Dedeker said. All of this is anonymous, so tell us your truths and maybe we can all get a couple of pointers from all y'all out there as well. And the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post on our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram at multiamorypodcast.

Emily: Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Dedeker Winston, and me, Emily Matlack. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode’s page on multiamory.com.