Parallel Monogamy
When Compersion Runs Dry
One night when he was over for dinner and my husband left the room for a moment, he leant over and kissed me.
“You know that you can kiss me when Liam is with us.” I said with our lips still touching.
“I know, but it feels somewhat disrespectful to him for me to do so. I just feel more comfortable being affectionate when he’s not around.”
People often ask me to share my most difficult non-monogamous moment, relationship or story…especially journalists. This is understandable. Everyone wants the juice and the drama. There is a thirst for tales of jealous rage and failed connections.
“Who is the villain of the story?!” “See, Non-monogamy doesn’t actually work.”
Perhaps hearing about the downsides of Non-monogamous relationships can validate a persons choice for smooth and easy monogamy?
But is monogamy that much smoother? I guess this depends on who you ask.
There have been times in my Non-monogamous journey where things have not gone well. Even with the best of intentions and with lovely people, things do not always work out.
As a writer, I share as honestly as I can, even if it means laying my own mistakes or misjudgements to bare. I am not a ‘how to’ and I don’t rewrite my stories so that I am shown through a softer light. Mistakes and heartache have existed in the stories of love since the beginning of time. No amount of instagram meme consumption can make us immune from the reality that we too may cause, or be on the receiving end of pain.
My husband and I have been practising non-monogamy for long enough to have experienced a wide range of experiences, many of which I don’t share, out of respect for the people involved and the moments that were ours. I am also conscious to avoid scaring away future lovers due to the potential worry of perhaps ending up in my writing!
The truth is that whether or not I directly share the stories of lovers, these experiences will always shape my writing and approach to relationships. Because almost each and every non-monogamous connection that I have ever had, whether it be a partner or a metamour, has impacted me in someway. And sometimes these impacts are born out of a story that was one of the more difficult relationships or connections to navigate.
I had a partner once who was uncomfortable with being affectionate with me in front of my husband. He was loving and romantic with me when it was just the two of us, but as soon as my husband was in our presence, he would completely close himself off to me.
Even though my husband was encouraging of our connection, my boyfriend couldn’t relax when we were all together, even though they both got along incredibly well.
One night when he was over for dinner and my husband left the room for a moment, he leant over and kissed me.
“You know that you can kiss me when Liam is with us.” I said with our lips still touching.
“I know, but it feels somewhat disrespectful to him for me to do so. I just feel more comfortable being affectionate when he’s not around.”
I nodded and smiled, trying to hide my wince. Of course I knew that his feelings were completely valid. We feel how we feel. We are comfortable with what we are comfortable with.
I kissed him again, reaching for hopes that perhaps he was still relaxing into this relationship, whilst pushing down the reality that this might be foreshadowing of much larger incompatibilities that were yet to come.
When Liam entered the room again, my boyfriend took his hand off my leg. I smiled at Liam, confronted by how everything suddenly very seperate. I had a sick feeling in my stomach, due to the intentional hiding of our connection from my husband. I also felt as if I were two different women, in two different monogamous relationships where we were denying the reality that I was with both of these men.
Later that night, Liam said the words that I had been dreading.
“Babe, he isn’t comfortable. He isn’t comfortable that we are married. He gets it in theory but he isn’t Non-monogamous and he is trying his best because he is now in love with you. I know that you want this to work out, but I can see the storm clouds ahead with him. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but you need to look at the bigger picture here. I’m sorry.”
“But you two get along so well, I am sure that maybe he just needs time? And he did go on a date recently with another girl.” I replied with strained hope.
“Him and I are great, we could be really good friends, but he can’t reconcile the fact that you are married. He is looking for a life partner and with him being so clearly monogamous, he will hurt in this dynamic. He might get another girlfriend, but I know that he would only be Non-monogamous because he wants to be with you. If you broke up with him, I am almost certain that he would be monogamous again.
My compersion for your relationship with him actually makes him uncomfortable. You can keep on trying if you like, but I am starting to feel uncomfortable with this. I don’t feel emotionally safe with you dating a monogamous person and I can see how close you two are becoming. I don’t really have compersion for you two anymore because I know he doesn’t want me around, even though he likes me.”
I knew that my husband was right. And I knew that I shouldn’t have let things go on for this long with someone who was so new to this type of dynamic. I felt like I had found myself in two monogamous relationships at once… running in parallel.
Of course Liam saw the flags of incompatibility before I did. My intense feelings of New Relationship Energy made me blind to the reality of it all. Just because I wanted it to work, didn’t mean that it was working.
“He might not cope if you meet someone else at some point. I doubt that he would be comfortable if you and I go to a sex party together, or if you hook up with a past lover. You dating him will actually hinder our relationship and experiences. If he isn’t comfortable with me, he won’t be comfortable with you being with anyone else.
You might ‘technically’ be in a polyamorous relationship, but you will stop being open, and I want you to fully be yourself. I’m sorry babe. We are not relationship anarchists and your relationship with him is going to impact us and any other connections that you might want to cultivate. You have to really think about this and think about how you are going to balance this out now. He is already stretching himself because he has feelings for you. If you two break up, he could have a really negative reaction to this because he might have already gone beyond what he is comfortable with.”
I barely slept that night. Knowing that I needed to break things off with my boyfriend who wouldn’t fully understand the nuances and the incompatibilities that we had but that he perhaps couldn’t see. These were subtle incompatibilities that Liam and I could recognise through the lens of our own lived experience and knowledge of what does and doesn’t work, for us as individuals and as a couple.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I spooned Liam, thinking back to all of the small moments that he had flagged to me. He was right. And now I was in deep enough with my boyfriend for this to cause significant pain to us both. This was going to be rough and I could only now hope that we might all transition into a friendship.
Staying with my boyfriend was no longer a thought for me to humour. If my husband wasn’t comfortable, I was no longer comfortable. The life and family that we have built together will always be my priority. I will be the first to admit that the couple privilege in this situation was inescapable but the truth is that a new relationship was never going to have the anchoring that my marriage has.
Making sure that other partners are genuinely comfortable with this reality is important and there are people who might find genuine compatibility with me as a partner and with my husband as their metamour. But it could never be with a monogamous person who was being polyamorous just for me.
Nobody should try and be something that they are not… even when love involved.
Women’s Retreat
25th-27th October, Yass Valley, NSW
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This retreat is for women who have an interest in non-monogamy and conscious relationships.
Thanks for sharing this 🙏🏻