Polyamory Week 2021: Envy and Imbalanced Relationships
You can find all posts for Polyamory Week 2021 here.
When my ex-partner and I were first exploring non-monogamy, we both eagerly began hunting for people to play with. But while she had plenty of interest from day one, I found myself having absolutely no luck and dealing with a lot of envy.
Both online sites and dating apps were a dead end. If I hit it off with someone at an in-person event I’d find myself ghosted as soon as I tried to follow up. I researched tips for dating profiles, copied layouts from friends who seemed to have no trouble making connections. I was doing all the things I needed to do but getting nowhere.
Why I was doing so badly? Exactly which parts of me made me so seemingly undesirable?
This is a part of ethical non-monogamy that I don’t see talked about a lot. But it happened to me, and it’s happened to other people.
Because the non-monogamous community isn’t a catalogue of objects to pick from. You don’t look through the available selection and pick someone to be delivered. Even if you go to play-parties where everything is there for one reason only, that’s no guarantee that anyone there will want to have sex with you.
It’s not personal. And it’s also something that can happen after you feel you have done everything “right”.
And it hurts. Oh boy, does it hurt.
What we, as a couple, were not ready for was the potential imbalance of polyamory.
And by “not ready” I don’t mean I wasn’t aware it would be a possibility. What I wasn’t ready for was dealing with the reality.
It hurt, not finding anyone interested in me. And it hurt seeing my partner having people lining up to meet her. And it hurt again when friends I made in the scene, who seemed to be doing nothing I wasn’t doing, were meeting new people with no problems.
And it stalled our journey. The negative emotions I was going through hindered my looking, and they also made my partner uncomfortable pursuing her own opportunities. She didn’t feel good seeing new people if I was getting nothing out of the arrangement.
Some people say jealousy is real. Sometimes they even argue it’s healthy in a relationship. In both cases, I would argue they are wrong. Very wrong.
What people call jealousy is, in my opinion, merely insecurity. If you are “jealous” of any part of your partner's life - maybe one of their friends, or perhaps a situation they find themselves in - what it really means is something about that part of their life creates a risk you might lose them.
But envy? Envy exists, all right.
And I consider envy distinct from the concept of jealousy. Envy is seeing someone with something you want. You might not resent them having it, but it hurts that you don’t have it as well. Especially when you can’t understand why not.
There will always be things in life you want, that others have. And ethical non-monogamy is no exception.
Our journey into ethical non-monogamy was stunted by our not preparing for this imbalance and the envy it entailed.
We did not do a great job communicating our insecurities at the start. Instead, we focused on the things we were fantasising about, and what our limits for each other were. And we also didn’t balance that out with research and education.
We thought it would be easy. We didn’t look deeper into the scene and the healthiest ways into it.
It’s natural to be envious of what other people have. Not easy, but natural. But the important thing is to prevent it from becoming toxic.
In non-monogamous relationships, there is always a good chance one partner will be having more “success” than the other. It might be what I encountered, where one partner finds it easy to meet new people while the other struggles. Or it might be further into your journey, and one of you finds themselves going through a dry spell and the other not. Or it might be external, with both of you having issues while watching friends having no trouble at all.
If you’re not prepared for it, it’s all too easy for that envy to burn, hot and ugly inside you.
So how did we get through this?
The simple answer? Time.
It took us a while, but eventually luck turned and I started to meet one or two people. Then real-life events forced us to put aside seeing other people to one side for a couple of years. When we were ready to get back into it we were older and wiser. We communicated better at the start and changed up what we were looking for and how we looked for it.
We started working better as a team.
We still weren’t doing things perfectly. There is so much I’ve learnt since then. But we were better prepared and it showed. Both in how successful I was at meeting people - still not easy, I will add - and in handling my mental health when things don’t work out.
Coming into ethical non-monogamy is a wonderful experience, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. But as with any relationship model, there is a very high possibility of getting hurt. You are putting emotions and self-confidence on the line, and rejection hurts. Especially when it’s ongoing.
Relationships are never fully equal. Not everyone gets the same things at the same time. But they must be fair. And it’s important to ensure that all parties involved are looking out for each other.
It can be hard seeing a partner getting more attention than you, and it’s important not to resent them for it.
It can be hard seeing a partner failing to get any attention, and it’s important not to resent them for holding you back.
The only advice I can give is to communicate, do the research, find people in the community who may have been through the same things, and communicate.
(And yes, the repetition of “Communicate” is intentional.)
