600 - So Your Hinge Sucks at Hinge-ing
Welcome to episode 600!
We’re excited to come back with some updated research and new tools for dealing with situations where a hinge partner is falling short.
It’s hard being a hinge, but there are also a lot of benefits! Hinges have access to:
Double emotional support from partners.
More perspectives and support.
A sense of stability and wider safety net.
Hinges also have some unique struggles:
Giving double emotional support.
Keeping everybody happy and being spread thin.
Sacrificing self-care and solo time.
Paying for double everything.
Managing the image, or the outside-perception burden of proving both relationships are valued and real.
So what are the issues that often come up with hinges? Some common pitfalls:
Defaulting to people-pleasing, or saying yes to avoid conflict, avoiding hard conversations, not standing up for one’s own needs.
Over/undersharing information. No social scripts exist for how much information to disclose between partners. People often swing to unhelpful extremes (full transparency with no privacy, or semi-accidental “don’t ask don’t tell).
Bad PR, or unintentionally (or even intentionally) casting one partner in a negative light to reassure the other, or oversharing relationship conflict with the other partner.
Forcing metamour relationships to look a certain way, perhaps pressuring metamours towards closeness they don’t want, or even keeping them separated.
Double-dipping, or prioritizing group hangouts as a substitute for one-on-one quality time. Partners can usually tell when this is happening.
Triangulation, which is a family systems theory: a two-person system under stress will naturally pull in a third person to either stabilize or destabilize it. The third person becomes a substitute for direct communication (think the telephone game).
However, triangulation isn’t always bad! A therapist, for instance, can be a stabilizing third point. Triangulation is also rarely intentional, it’s a natural human pattern that requires active awareness to counteract.
What makes a good hinge?
A good hinge partner has these qualities:
External support, either from a friend, mentor, or therapist.
Good time management and plans further ahead than feels natural.
Follows through on plans, not canceling for non-emergencies.
Expressible, upholdable boundaries.
Doesn’t compare partners negatively, both externally and internally.
Sensitivity to structural imbalances and willing to counterbalance.
Shares information ethically and appropriately across relationships.
Awareness of what “belongs to you,” like ownership of your own decisions versus muddying agency.
What can we do about a bad hinge?
This is for the person who came to this episode frustrated, whether it’s the hinge partner or one of the others.
First, ask yourself if this is a skill gap (a skill gap is learnable, usually responds quickly to a direct ask), or a repeated pattern that persists even after being named clearly? If the latter, it may be something more structural. Figuring this out for yourself makes the below list easier and is kinder than an endless list of behavior notes if the real issue is more than just poor hinge skills.
Name the specific behavior, not the character trait. "When plans get made without checking with me first, I feel deprioritized" lands very differently than "you always people-please."
Pick one pattern at a time.
Ask for something specific and observable, not vague improvement.
Push for real disclosure and open dialog about jealousy, not just eventual honesty.
Don’t let secrecy slide. Reputation management and secrecy is one practice that research predicted worse outcomes across the board.
Encourage metamour closeness, but don’t force it and don’t block it.
Watch for triangulation and name it early.
Know the difference between a request and a boundary. "Please give more notice" is a request. "If plans change with under 3 days' notice more than once a month, I'll stop holding that day open" is a boundary, it's about what you do, not just what you're asking of them.
If the pattern persists after clear, repeated, specific asks, that’s information. It may be less “this hinge partner needs practice” and more a bigger-picture conversation (perhaps with outside support) than this checklist can solve.
Transcript
If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: If you're listening to this episode and realizing, shoot, we either have one of these bad habits already that's very ingrained, or maybe we're lacking one of these good habits, like having regular relationship check-ins or frank communication about this. If you notice that there's a pattern and a habit, it could also be worth making sure everyone's on board and realizing we've all got to together make an effort to change this. That's also part of change management is realizing that we're all part of this whole system that needs to change. Again, going back to the Bowen family systems way of thinking of things is that you can't just change one part of the system without all the others changing. Approaching it that way can also be helpful and it can help put less pressure just on the hinge too. Welcome to the Multiamory podcast. I'm Jase.
Emily: I'm Emily.
Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker Winston.
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 to help.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about what to do when your hinge isn't hinging well. If you don't know what that means, stick around and we'll explain. But if you're one of the two partners in a V-shaped relationship, you probably want to feel prioritized, well cared for, and confident that the person connecting you to your metamour is handling that role with skill. But maybe your hinge is dropping the ball, overcommitting, oversharing or undersharing, defaulting to people-pleasing or triangulating messages between you and your metamour, and you're not sure if this is something that's fixable, that they just need some skills, or if this is a sign of a bigger problem. Today we're going back and revisiting a 2021 episode on hinge partners, updated with research that's emerged since then, on what actually predicts healthy multi-partner dynamics and helping you to understand what you can do about it. If you want to learn more about our communication tools that we talk about on this show all the time, check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. It covers all of our frequently used communication tools for all types of relationships, some of which could be quite useful for hinges to have a better grasp of, as well as metamours and everybody. If you want more information about the book and where you can get it, you can go to Multiamory.com/book.
Dedeker: Okay, let's talk about hinging. Let's just lay out the baseline in case you're brand new to all of this. We're going to talk about a V-shaped relationship. As in one person is dating two people, those two people are not dating each other. It forms this nice V-shape. The primary person that we're going to be focusing on today is the hinge, the person who's the vertices between the two legs of the V. Research shows us that within non-monogamy and polyamory specifically, multi-connected dyads are the predominant relationship shape, as opposed to something like a triad, a quad, something like that. These multiple linking dyads, that's why we call it a polycule. As you can envision, there's a chance for multiple Vs to be connected to each other. There's a chance for multiple hinges to be in the mix. There's a possibility that someone may be a hinge and also part of a V at the same time. That's why I think good hinging skills are paramount. Good hinging is like the Uberlube that makes polycules function well. These connecting points between people. How do you like my new tagline?
Emily: I like that because if you have a squeaky hinge, then apply some Uberlube to it.
Dedeker: Yeah. I don't know what the Uberlube would be in this situation. Maybe the hinge is us.
Emily: I think it would be communication tactics or—
Dedeker: Yeah, it's us. It's us providing the Uberlube in the form of good communication practices to hinges in order to make everything go smoothly.
Jase: I like it. Yes.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: I don't even know if Uberlube is sponsoring this particular episode or not. Truly, we do just love them that much, folks. Anyway, hinging. You guys know about it. I think both of you have both hinged and been hinged upon.
Emily: Of course, many times.
Jase: I've been a hinger and a hingey.
Dedeker: Tell me of your hinging and hinging upon experiences.
Emily: Oh gosh.
Jase: Right now in my relationship with Dedeker, both of us have one other partner. Both of us are acting as a hinge in our own two relationships and then also being hinged upon.
Dedeker: Yes. There it is. We got a hinging and hinging upon polycule going on.
Jase: Doing it masterfully on both sides. I think honestly, the fact that we do our radars and that we've been doing them for so long is a big part because one of the topics in that is other partners.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: There's this built-in way to check in on any big updates or if you're starting to want to make a plan with this partner, or here's how I'm feeling, without us having to find all this extra time to talk about that. The other part is just that we've been doing this so long in our relationship that so much of the early challenges and fears, they still come up sometimes, but they're just so much lighter. They're easier to be like, okay, I see you, it's okay, we put you back in your little cage. Put those monsters away. Would you agree? Does that track with your experience, Dedeker?
Dedeker: Oh yeah, I would think so. I don't think that I'm a perfect hinge all the time, but again, I do think that hinging is a skill. We're going to get into what those skills specifically are and what the specific challenges are. What about you, Emily?
Emily: The most recent time in which I was a hinge was a couple years ago when I was hinging with an ex and my now partner Alex.
Jase: He was not your ex at the time?
Emily: He was not my ex at the time, no. The person who is—
Dedeker: You had two partners?
Emily: I had two partners.
Jase: You had two partners?
Emily: One who is now an ex and one who I am still with. I was with both of them at the same time for a little while. I think it's interesting because both of those people had never engaged in non-monogamy before I entered the equation.
Dedeker: Oh, so not only are you hinging, you're also the more experienced one.
Jase: That's an extra challenge for sure.
Emily: Yes, it was an extra challenge and something that I definitely would hesitate to do again without a lot of communication around it. Sometimes you jump into a situation where you speak about non-monogamy, you have your eyes open, maybe doing some research, giving this person a lot of information on it, and then it just really doesn't work out in the way that you want it to, or their nervous system can't handle it. I think that becomes the challenge. Hinging becomes that much more difficult when you are engaging in a type of relationship structure that that person isn't comfortable with. All of those things combined resulted in the ending of that relationship just because clearly non-monogamy ultimately wasn't for them. But in the past, I feel like I've been a better hinge or the relationships have thrived more. I've also had moments where maybe the hinging was less great. We'll talk a lot about the pitfalls and the things that happen, but so many of us want to save our partners from the heartache and the pain that sometimes comes with being in multiple relationships. That can backfire often because we're not necessarily as honest and forthcoming as perhaps we should be. Down the line, as things progress, as feelings mature, that can actually end up becoming a recipe for disaster. I see that happen with a lot of my clients as well.
Dedeker: We're going to get into all of that. Part one of this episode, we're going to be talking about the unique benefits and struggles that hinges face. We're going to be talking about the common pitfalls, and we're going to be talking about what does make a good hinge. This is going to be a speedrun coverage of our original episode 334 titled What Makes a Good Hinge Partner. Then in part two, we're going to talk about what the research actually says now, because since that episode came out, there has been more research specifically on non-monogamy that helps to clarify this. And then in part three, we're going to bring it home, talking about what you can do about all this, what are the actionable takeaways. To start out here, what are the benefits unique to someone in the hinging position?
Emily: I gotta say, my most recent time hinging, when it was good, it felt incredible. It was like I've got these two support systems, these two people that care about me, and they're at different levels in terms of the amount of time that I've spent with each of them. There was some NRE going on with the newer person, there was some more established relationship energy happening with the person that I had known for longer. It was like I was existing within simultaneous relationship milestone sections of being in those relationships. It was a very unique, fun experience that of course, non-monogamous people have all the time. But that was my first time having it in a very long time, and it felt especially special.
Dedeker: I think a lot of this we can extrapolate just to the general benefits that one gets from having multiple partners, but also in that particular position as a hinge, you have access to things like double emotional support from both partners, or double the attention, or access and options for quality time, maybe more of a sense of stability, a wider safety net of people showing up for you.
Jase: I have a partner with a kid, and they mentioned recently really feeling the power of having this extended chosen family. There are lots of options for people to be supportive and help out. There are tons of ways that can show up as this wonderful thing.
Dedeker: In the original version of this episode, we joked that hinges also receive extra birthday gifts, and it is true. I did appreciate a number of years ago that both my partners and Emily could pool their resources to get me a Nintendo Switch. On the flip side, there are also unique struggles that hinges face. If you have double access to receiving emotional support, often hinges are also giving double emotional support, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes when both people happen to need it at once, and they can feel a little spread thin. What other unique struggles have you found that hinges tend to face?
Emily: I think if there is an issue that is stemming from just the relationship structure in general, it can feel as though I need to make one person work with their emotions and work with the anxieties that may be occurring, while also trying to stay in the moment and present with the other partner when you're with them. There may be mismatches happening in terms of what's occurring emotionally between those two partnerships. That can feel challenging sometimes to remain in the moment with each of them without letting the issues of one bleed into the other relationship.
Jase: Yeah, that can definitely happen.
Emily: Also, as fun as that most recent time in my life of being a hinge was, I felt like I had very little time for myself. I was either with one partner, working, or with the other partner. I barely ever was alone. I am an extrovert, I tend to really enjoy being around people. But for the first time in my life in a while, I was like, I'm kind of at capacity here. I also had just moved to New York and I was trying to figure out where my place in this city was, trying to get myself geared up to know what I was doing here. It felt a little overwhelming.
Dedeker: That's very common to see a hinge feeling spread thin. Especially if things are not going well or they're unstable and the hinge feels like they need to run around to keep everybody happy, often the first thing that goes is their own alone time and their own needs and wants, if they're feeling like they're having to put out fires on both sides.
Jase: That's going back to what we were saying about being a hinge when your partners are newer to non-monogamy. Extra challenging. Or when you're new yourself too. There's a lot of trying to figure out what is the appropriate amount to tell each one, how to communicate best, when to step out of it and say you two need to communicate on your own with each other. That's really hard to get that sense of calibration at first because you've never had a situation like this before. So much of what we've talked about on this show when it comes to polyamory, most of us did not have the privilege of being born into a lot of examples of doing it well. Instead, we spend the first while just trying to figure it all out and calibrate, and that takes time.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: Similarly, maybe you're receiving extra birthday gifts, but you also might be paying for extra birthday gifts as well. You might be doubling up on the gifts, on trips, on dates. For some people with more resources, that may not be an issue. For other people with fewer resources, or less vacation time, it can be a little bit hard to juggle and manage that. I want to go through this list of common pitfalls, the things that we tend to see where hinges, in response to these unique struggles, make common mistakes in the way they're hinging. A big one that we've touched on already is defaulting to people-pleasing, and possibly people-pleasing on both sides of the equation. Saying yes to avoid conflict with the person who's right in front of you, avoiding hard conversations, not standing up for their own needs, maybe not being a good advocate for both relationships. Another common pitfall is over or undersharing information. We don't get a good example of what information you share between partners. When that's a question mark, people often swing to unhelpful extremes. It might be trying to keep this hermetically sealed and not talk to either of these partners about anything that's going on in the other relationship, and try to keep them strictly parallel, or defaulting into a don't ask don't tell. Or swinging in the opposite extreme into full transparency with no privacy boundaries whatsoever. Sharing absolutely everything that happens in each relationship, which can create its own problems.
Jase: I think the version of this that I see most often, that I've done most often myself in the past, is not even this extreme of saying I'm going to share nothing or I'm going to share everything. It's sharing stuff but shaping it, molding it. Softening certain parts, being clearer on others. You end up in a situation where you're doing it to try to protect people's feelings and help them not have to confront stuff that would be hard for them. But you end up doing a lot of mental work on your own. You're making those decisions for them, which isn't always accurate. You don't know what their brain is ready for, what it needs. You end up in a situation where it always feels like you're lying. In terms of the way that information gets received, you can tell this is being a little massaged. Sometimes things don't line up, and where it's not even coming from a malicious lying or hiding something, there is some hiding going on. It feels yucky, which also gets in the way of building trust. That's such an important part.
Dedeker: Related to some of that is another common pitfall, which I call bad PR. The hinge is not managing PR very well. What I mean by that is, all the time I get clients who come in complaining about their hinge failing at things or complaining about their metamour. They'll talk to me about what their metamour said to him, and what she said to him too. I always have to ask, why do you know that? That's too much information for you. I have to get to the bottom of it. Your hinge partner is sharing a lot of private stuff, or negative stuff, or intentionally casting this other partner in a negative light to reassure you. That's a common mistake.
Jase: Early on, before I even knew what polyamory was, trying to openly date multiple people, that was the mistake where you don't want to seem like you like the other people too much. They might feel jealous, and that just is not good.
Dedeker: They overshare their flaws or relationship conflict or the icks. The flip side doesn't necessarily mean that you can only share positive things, but where the hinge is just not being very mindful about how they're talking about one partner to their other partner. Another common pitfall is forcing the metamour relationships to look a certain way. Hinges, in an attempt to control or keep the peace, might pressure both their partners towards a closeness they don't want. Like, you have to be friends with each other, you have to hang out with each other because that's the only way this is going to work. Or sometimes keeping them artificially separated.
Emily: That one I've come across with my clients, which I find interesting within non-monogamy. I would always default to, it would be great if you had some sort of relationship or understanding between one another. But control often comes from fear. Those fears may be, is something going to be revealed? Are they not going to get along? Or is this going to all blow up in my face and fall apart? So maybe I should just keep these completely separate and they never meet and never have any relationship. I think an organic nature of understanding between all parties involved and having the ability for people to meet if they want to is a far better option than just dictating yes or no.
Dedeker: We will circle back to that a little later in the episode. Another pitfall I see is what I call the double-dipping tactic or the maximum efficiency tactic. This happens with a hinge feeling spread thin or feeling like I just don't have enough time to give to everybody. They can be like, I have a brilliant idea, we'll all just hang out together all the time. Let's invite everybody along.
Jase: I've done that move too.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: I don't think that's a bad move sometimes. Sometimes it is nice, sometimes it is efficient. It's not a totally bad move, but it can start to become a substitute for one-on-one quality time with partners. It can become a substitute for having to make hard decisions. Sometimes you would love to invite both partners to a thing, but you really only can bring a plus one. So you need to negotiate this and have hard conversations and compromise. Sometimes that feels hard, so it's just invite everybody, let them sort it out. The theme underlying all of these pitfalls is triangulation. We've talked about triangulation on the show before. This was developed by Murray Bowen, who developed family systems theory. It is this idea that a two-person system under stress will sometimes pull in a third person to either stabilize or destabilize it. The third person can become a substitute for direct communication. There can be some telephone game happening. That's something we see where a hinge can end up being the communicator between two partners, and that pretty much always goes bad. When you're having to communicate through a partner, if it's about anything other than neutral logistics, if it's about anything emotional whatsoever, once you get into that, she said this is how she felt when she saw you at the party, well she said that wasn't her intention. If you're having to do things like that, just stop.
Emily: Don't do it.
Dedeker: Don't do it. I've also seen triangulation go the other way where both partners can triangulate against the hinge. It can become a little bit of a two versus one.
Jase: Interesting. I don't feel like I've seen that as often.
Dedeker: I have seen it sometimes if two metamours realize that they're equally being shat upon by a hinge. They will form an alliance and stage an intervention.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: Triangulation isn't always bad. It's a natural human pattern. An example is going to couples therapy, a therapist is technically triangulating with you in the room, and that can be really stabilizing. It's something we do as human beings. It doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, but it does require a hinge to have active awareness of that to counteract it. Before we move on to our break, let's talk about what things do make a good hinge. It's not quite as simple as just the opposite of all those bad behaviors. The times when I see Vs working out the best and hinges thriving is when a hinge has external support sources outside just both of their partners.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: That's something non-monogamy newbies sometimes struggle with. If no one in the whole system is out and the only people we have to talk to about our struggles are each other, that can get difficult quickly. A hinge who has access to friends, mentors, therapists to talk about the things they're struggling with helps. It helps if a hinge has good time management, scheduling skills, and time awareness. That is going to put you ten steps ahead in the game. It's good for a hinge to be somebody who follows through on plans, who doesn't arbitrarily cancel for non-emergencies or just because the person in front of them asked them to. Related to that, a good hinge has boundaries that they can actually express and uphold with their partners and themselves. Someone who doesn't succumb to that temptation to compare partners negatively to each other. I think a good hinge needs to have sensitivity to structural imbalances and a willingness to counterbalance. Are you aware of couple's privilege? Are you aware of cohabiting with one partner and not the other? Or having kids with one partner? Or having a relationship history with a partner that's longer? What are the ways that we counterbalance that to make sure everyone's feeling cared for and prioritized. Ultimately, a good hinge has an awareness of what belongs to them, they can take ownership of their own decisions versus muddying that agency. The thing we see happen in unhealthy dynamics is, I tell my other partner I can't hang out on Sunday because Jase really doesn't want me to schedule anything on Sunday. Even though the reality is Jase and I had a conversation where I said let's do this thing on Sunday together. I made that decision, but I'm telling my other partner Jase is the one. I'm throwing Jase under the bus.
Jase: Exactly.
Emily: You're
Jase: feeling guilty, so you blame your partner.
Dedeker: Yeah. Just someone who has a good sense of that agency. Any other things that you see that makes for good hinging?
Emily: Don't pit your partners against each other in any particular way. If I'm thinking back to a mutual hinge that we had, that's a bad hinge.
Dedeker: A mutual bad hinge that we had.
Emily: A mutual bad hinge that was not you, Jase, a different one. How he would often talk about his other partners in ways that felt more combative, like you versus them. That didn't foster good understanding between everyone. It made us potentially not like that person as much. There could have been more understanding across the board. Just maybe omit it. Instead of speaking about the challenges he was going through or what that person said about us, just don't. Just be neutral. If we badmouth our partners to our parents or best friends, it leaves this idea that that person is a mess. If you can leave that out—
Jase: They're only getting the bad part.
Emily: Exactly. Bitching about your other partner to their metamour is never a good look. Try not to do it.
Dedeker: If you have to bitch about a partner, find someone who's not among the people that you're dating.
Emily: Along with what you said at the beginning, where we need good support systems, it is really important for the hinge to continue their own interests and keep up their own personal development. That not only makes you a better partner, but it keeps you a little bit more sane.
Jase: More grounded.
Emily: Grounded, being able to take time away from the relationships and the intensity of being with more than one person and focusing on yourself, focusing inward. That's very important.
Jase: And now it's time to get into some research and updates in this field. I'm excited. We have some of those that Dedeker is going to share with us. But first, we're going to take a break to talk about our sponsors. Please check them out. Give a listen to this. Look at our show notes. Use the links and promo codes. That helps support our show, and lets us keep doing this for free every week. If you'd rather join our community where you can get ad-free episodes as well as access to an amazing supportive group of people who have collectively hundreds of thousands of hours worth of experience, go to Multiamory.com/join and we would love to see you there.
Dedeker: And we're back and we're going to dive into what the research says. It's still thin on the ground finding research on hinges specifically, but we do have new studies, we have new data that talks about underlying mechanics in multi-partnered relationships specifically that helps map onto this. A study that we haven't gotten to talk about on the show yet, but it's been on my radar and I'm very excited about it. This comes from Justin Mogilski, who has published a lot of work on non-monogamy. This is a 2026 study called How Do People Maintain Consensual Non-Monogamy? An International Development and Validation of the Multiple Relationships Maintenance Scale. The whole point of this study was to create this multiple relationships maintenance scale, looking at what actually helps consensually non-monogamous relationships continue and flourish.
Jase: I think we may have read a study in the past that was starting early work on that framework. That sounds familiar. So this is fleshing it out further.
Dedeker: Justin has been on this beat for quite a while. This was a pretty large sample size across three surveys, 4,290 people. They built and validated this nine-factor scale of consensual non-monogamy relationship maintenance practices. We're not going to get into the full nine-factor scale. People can look that up, or we might do a whole episode on its own about it. There's some specific ones that I want to highlight that are relevant to hinges. What they found was that what they call reputation management, as in hiding relationships or obscuring relationships from others, trying to keep a little too much separation between relationships, was the one practice that predicted worse relationship quality, worse investment quality. And was associated with more self-reported infidelity-adjacent behavior across the board.
Jase: In the hinge or in the partners?
Dedeker: It seems like in everybody. This was not about Vs specifically. This was about multi-partnered relationships. But I think that's what you were saying earlier, Jase, about how you end up in this context feeling like lying, or having to be a little sketchy about things. That's that infidelity-adjacent behavior.
Jase: Fascinating.
Dedeker: The other thing they found was thoughtful resource distribution, as in being aware of how fairly time, money, and attention are being shared. That was one of the strongest predictors of investment quality. Like we were saying earlier about a hinge who is aware of ecosystem-level dynamics and structural imbalances and is actually working to counterbalance those as best as they possibly can. It does seem like it correlates with better relationship outcomes.
Jase: That makes sense, but that's cool to see that validated in this study.
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: And this probably shouldn't surprise anybody, they found that disclosure and jealousy regulation, open communication about attractions or feelings of jealousy, were consistently among the strongest predictors of overall relationship quality for everyone who is involved.
Jase: This is just more general, not specifically about other partners, but in general, sharing that you're attracted to other people or interested in—
Emily: Or sharing that you are jealous about something and figuring out how to manage that jealousy.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: Honestly, the takeaway from the disclosure piece and the reputation management piece is just, hinge, don't be sketchy.
Emily: Maybe that's everyone. Just—
Dedeker: Yes, everyone, but hinges specifically. I don't want to point this out as a character flaw. I think the unique pressures that hinges can face sometimes means that people respond in these weird ways in an attempt to try to get back a sense of stability or control. They take it upon their shoulders to do intense information management that ends up coming across as being sketchy.
Jase: If you just think about your entire life worth of examples and role models basically telling you, if you're attracted to or interested in someone else, don't let your partner know that, or it's going to be uncomfortable, they're going to be upset and you're going to regret it. Like we talked about earlier, there's so much to unlearn here. It makes sense why we have that tendency. We've all done it to some extent in the past. You're trying to do it to make everyone more comfortable. But according to this study, it's showing evidence to back up what we've anecdotally found. That doesn't help. It actually makes it worse to hide that information, to do the reputation management.
Dedeker: There's this other study I want to hit you with. This is from Sonja Bröning. This was a German study. It was called The Role of Autonomy in Multi-Partnered Relationships. This is a 2025 study that was published in Archives of Sexual Behavior. This is a much smaller qualitative study. It was interviews with 20 different people, looking at how polyamorous people learn to differentiate from each other. Because if you think about it, in a traditional monogamous dyadic partnership, we're very much told to not differentiate, essentially to fuse, to become one, halves of a whole. Get enmeshed with each other. When we see multi-partnered relationships, or specifically when we're looking at a V, you can't really fully enmesh with just one person, or else the thing's going to fall apart. I think that's why we see issues with power dynamics and couple's privilege. The study's core idea is that they called polyamory a learning field for differentiation, because total fusion or enmeshment with just one person is structurally impossible once there's more than one person. They make the case that poly relationships may force a level of self-differentiation that monogamy doesn't always require. I think that is related to what we were saying about hinges. If you're spreading yourself thin, if you feel like you're running around trying to keep everybody happy, I see that as a symptom of a part of you that's been trained to fuse in romantic partnerships and not be independent. You're following that instinct and it's not working because structurally, you cannot do that in this setup. You have to be autonomous to a certain extent.
Emily: I hear from so many friends and clients, and also in our discussion groups, that it is very easy for them to get lost in relationships and lose themselves in relationships. That's one of the great parts of non-monogamy, this sense that everyone to a degree is autonomous and they have their own autonomous structures in their dating lives and lives in general. While in theory that is the ideal, in practice sometimes, especially if you have more hierarchical relationships or own a home with someone or have kids with someone, it can be easier to enmesh with that person more than another. This is a good thing to remember, that if we can spread that a little bit more and understand that enmeshment can sometimes be harmful to the other relationships.
Dedeker: In these interviews, there were four themes that came out that described what being differentiated or autonomous looked like for the participants. The four themes were assertive communication, independent emotion regulation, valuing freedom, and self-congruent lifestyle. That one was really intriguing for me. Basically, participants described non-monogamy as being a style of relationship that let them just be myself, be who I am. It's the idea that your relationship structure matches your actual identity and values. With all four of these themes, we see this in the ways that hinging can go wrong and how it can go well. In the assertive communication piece, if a hinge is not communicating or is being passive, that's where things can go to die. If the hinge doesn't have access to the ability to independently regulate their emotions outside of their partner, that can be a problem. The valuing freedom piece makes sense. But like you were talking about at the top of the show, Emily, if there's someone in the network who doesn't feel like non-monogamy is them, or they feel like they're really having to squeeze themselves into a mold that doesn't fit, that can make it really hard to differentiate and be autonomous within the system.
Emily: Yeah.
Jase: We were just talking with a friend recently about how long that can go on, that situation where someone's really not very happy with this but they're trying to power through it even though it's making everyone less happy, because clearly this person's not satisfied with this way of doing relationships. I would call that incongruent behavior. Your lifestyle and your beliefs not lining up would be incongruent. It's a problem not just for you, but for everyone involved. I think sometimes we can have this sense that giving of ourselves, suffering for the sake of others, is always better for the others. Especially in relationships, that's often the opposite of the case. Sometimes we can think, I'm going to work hard to make this work because somehow the idea of being in a relationship with me is an inherent good that I'm doing for anyone who wants to be in a relationship with me, when that might not be the case if this just isn't a good fit. It's interesting how this lines up so much with that conversation we were just having.
Dedeker: I have a bonus study that I want to share with you before we take it to the break. This is not a study that has anything to do with non-monogamy. This is a 2021 study from Afifi and Parrish called Relational load: implications for executive functioning, mental health, and feelings of unity in romantic relationships. This was published in Communication Monographs. This concept of relational load, I love. I don't like the content of it, but I like knowing about the concept because it refers to this idea of a cumulative wear and tear on a person's emotional, psychological, and relational resources from having repeated stress-laden conversations over time in their relationships. All of us know from our lived experience this is correct. If you're going through a rough patch with a partner, that creates this sense of load. It creates stress on your resources, and it can negatively affect your executive functioning. Basically what they did is they would have romantic partners have a stressful conversation in the lab, and then measure their executive functioning immediately afterwards, and then for five consecutive days afterwards follow up on measuring that and their mental health, and how unified they feel with their partner. A fun finding was that the people who had more ongoing relationship-maintenance behaviors, like day-to-day sharing with each other, repairing affection, quality time, maybe doing something like radars, showed that even though they would experience stress from the conversation, their executive functioning was more protected right after the stressful conversation, and in the follow-ups, their executive functioning stayed higher, their mental health was better, and they felt unity better compared to the people who did not have those relationship-maintenance behaviors, even though they experienced the same amount of stress. This all makes sense anecdotally, but I thought that interesting. The way that I would apply this to a hinge is, make sure that you're staying on top of relationship maintenance and relationship health before you end up having to put out multiple fires. Even if it's not necessarily something super negative, maybe you just happen to have two partners who are both going through some stress right now, and you're having to be supportive to them. If you already have this culture of good relationship maintenance with both of them, it's going to cause less load on your executive functioning. You may feel less drained, even though it's a lot of emotional labor and work. Does that make sense?
Emily: Absolutely.
Jase: I love that it has that preventative, protective quality to it, to have that better communication in place. Let's take another quick break before we go on to putting this all together and what we can learn from all of this. Please take a moment, check out our sponsors. We appreciate them for supporting this show, letting us do it for free every week. Go to Multiamory.com/join if you would like to join our community. It's a really cool place of supportive people, and you'll get things like ad-free episodes and access to our monthly video processing groups. We would love to see you there.
Dedeker: And we're back. Here on this show, usually we like to close out the last part of the episode by talking about takeaways, what we can do. I wanted to take a particular angle on this one because we've talked about what makes a good hinge and what makes a bad hinge. If you're listening and you're a hinge, great, do the good stuff and don't do the bad stuff. Who I specifically wanted to create some takeaways for was maybe the person who's the V who's frustrated with their hinge and feels like they can't get their hinge to just do the good things and don't do the bad things. Maybe the person where you're seeing the ways that your hinge is triangulating or not doing good PR. I wanted to talk about what you can do if you're feeling disempowered here. I think the first thing is a quick reframe. The complaints or frustrations you may have with your partner who is hinging, you need to ask yourself, does this seem like it is a skill gap? As in, maybe they're new to this, maybe they haven't been in this situation before. Is this something that seems learnable, where if I make a direct ask, they'll respond to it? Or is this a repeated pattern that has persisted even after you've named your concerns clearly or made requests? That could point to either something where they're having a hard time making some of these adjustments, or there might be something structural going on. You may need to be the one to zoom out, take a bird's-eye view, and look at the whole structure of what's going on here. Is there an imbalance of resources or time or autonomy that's built into how it is? That can give you some perspective. Second, I highly recommend checking out our episode 534 titled When You're Asked to Change, which is all about behavior change in relationships and how to make those requests in a way where they will actually be heard, how to receive those requests from a partner. Some of this is going to be a review from that. For instance, if there's a specific behavior that you are frustrated by, name that behavior, not the character trait. You could name something like, when you've had an argument with your other partner, you come home and immediately talk to me and give me a blow-by-blow about it, and I think it might be better if we avoid that. As opposed to making it a character trait, being like, you're such an oversharer, you're so careless about these things. Just target the specific behavior.
Jase: Something else I think is related to all of this, if you're listening to this episode and realizing, shoot, we either have one of these bad habits already that's very ingrained, or maybe we're lacking one of these good habits, like having regular relationship check-ins or frank communication. If you notice that there's a pattern and a habit, it could be worth making sure everyone's on board and realizing we've all got to together make an effort to change this. That's part of change management, realizing that we're all part of this whole system that needs to change. Going back to the Bowen family systems way of thinking, you can't just change one part of the system without all the others changing. Approaching it that way can be helpful and it can put less pressure just on the hinge, to say, let's all realize this is what I was doing. Here's why it's out of care. But I've learned this isn't the right way to do it. Let's all look at how we can change this, even though it might be uncomfortable for a bit.
Dedeker: Related, it can be good to pick just one behavior or one pattern at a time, or maybe one or two, as opposed to coming to your hinge partner with a 16-item list about all the things you've been frustrated with, unless they have asked for that. Some people can take that and want it all at once. If that's what works for you, great. But it can be helpful to just pick one or two things to specifically ask for change around. Maybe it is about the way you disclose information about what's happening in your conflict with your other partner, and also about making sure we're getting enough one-on-one time outside of all of us hanging out together in the polycule.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: I would say that related to what we've learned in these studies about reputation management, don't let secrecy slide, because that was the one practice that predicted worse outcomes across the board. If you suspect that you're being hidden or minimized, that is worth naming directly and not just absorbing.
Jase: I would also say if you fear that your partner, or the seriousness of that relationship, is being hidden from you, that's worth bringing up. Again, thinking about it from a systems perspective, realizing part of that is your part to say, it's okay to tell me these things.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: If you are feeling really close to this person, and I'm getting the sense that you're trying to downplay that relationship, and yet I see you spending a lot of time with them. That feels incongruent to me. So to say, hey, you can tell me the truth, I don't want you to hide this from me, let's work together on that, can also help.
Emily: Feels like being a safe person across the board is ideal in terms of whether you are the hinge or the person who is being hinged upon, as you guys were saying. Yes, indeed.
Dedeker: Keep your eye out for those triangulation dynamics and try to name it early if you can. At this point now, after 15 years of non-monogamy for myself, I have a bloodhound's nose for this triangulation stuff. I'm actually a little hypervigilant around it. I really do not want to get messages from a meta through my hinge unless it is something very benign. Benign stuff, sure, but anything that's sharing a little too much juice or dirt or even sharing what my meta thinks about me, I think that's a key—
Jase: One right there. Yes, if it's ever a negative thing that my metamour thought about me coming through the shared partner and not directly, I feel like you're right on the edge of that cliff where if this doesn't go well, you end up in a problem.
Dedeker: Yeah. Just be very careful of that. I always say, err on the side of opening up a channel of direct communication between you and your metamour rather than relying on your hinge to pass those messages, even for good things too. Why not? It really doesn't have to be brokered in that particular way. Based on what the research has said, and what we've found anecdotally, there are good outcomes when metamours feel closer and safer to each other. But be really aware if your hinge is trying to force it into a particular shape. If your hinge is trying to force you to be closer than you want to be, or trying to prevent you from being further apart than you want to be. I always encourage people to sprinkle in a little bit of autonomy there. I think it's important to let metas autonomously figure out what their relationship is going to be and to give as much space and breathing room to allow that to develop into what it's going to develop into.
Jase: I think it also doesn't have to be so serious. The metamour relationship doesn't have to be suddenly you're talking all the time and coordinating all the time. It could be something as simple as, say, you're talking with your partner and they mention some interest that their other partner has, and you have a question about it. Like, are they into this generation of those comic books or these ones? Or which games do they play? What programming languages do they do? Something that you maybe know something about or you're curious about. It's a good, easy, low-pressure opportunity to, instead of them going back to them and asking, to just have them ask, hey, would it be cool if I shared your contact info? Because Jase wanted to ask you a thing about that.
Emily: Yeah.
Jase: That's very low pressure to say, some communication happened and I'll send you a link to this thing, or oh, that's neat. It doesn't have to go further than that, but you've opened that door. So then when there does need to be communication, it's there. And also it's easier for the hinge to step out of the way of triangulation, to say, you know, that's a good point, you should message them about it, instead of feeling the pressure to do that yourself.
Dedeker: Definitely. And again, if you're one of the arms of a V and you're feeling frustrated with your hinge's behavior, you can always come back to good old boundary theory 101, which is about if you feel like a request is not being honored, or you feel like you're in a context where it's going to be hard to get someone to make behavior change, you can always change your behavior. You can always put up a boundary for yourself to protect yourself. Like we were just talking about with the triangulation dynamics, where your partner keeps coming to you trying to talk to you about, your meta thinks this, or your meta thinks that, you can put up a boundary of, 'I'm going to pause this conversation because I don't really want to hear that,' or, 'I am happy to talk about this but only directly with my meta.' So, 'I don't really want to hear any more about that.' You can always be thinking about ways to put up boundaries around yourself to protect your values, protect your emotional stability, and preserve the way that you want to show up in relationships. Of course, we've talked about boundaries a lot on this show. We have a whole chapter in our book dedicated to it. We highly recommend that you go and check that out. All right, y'all listening, we want to hear from you. What are the biggest mistakes that you've made as a hinge? I guess another way to frame that question would be like, what have been the biggest mistakes hinged upon you?
Emily: What?
Jase: I like coming clean for yourself. What's the biggest mistake you've made? We've talked about some of our mistakes here.
Emily: Yeah, no, that's good.
Jase: We'd be curious to hear what you've done.
Dedeker: That's going to be on our Instagram account. That's the best place to go and answer. However, also the best place to share your thoughts about this episode as a whole with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post about it in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to Multiamory.com/join, or you can share with us publicly on Instagram @multiamory_podcast. Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Emily Matlack, and me, Dedeker Winston. Our production assistant is 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.