The Hidden Costs of Comparing Yourself to Your Metamour, Ep. 110
You know you’re enough—but the second your partner mentions her, the spiral starts.
Sound familiar?
In this honest, grounding episode, I break down the real costs of comparison in non-monogamous relationships—like the way it quietly erodes your presence, self-trust, and peace.
You’ll hear:
Why “knowing better” doesn’t stop the spiral
How patriarchy conditions us to compete—even in open dynamics
What comparison really steals from you
And the exact reframe and tools that help you come back to yourself
💭 “They’re not my rival. They’re a reflection of what’s possible.”
This episode is your invitation to stop shrinking and start showing up for yourself—even when the spiral hits.
Ready for deeper support?
Join Beyond Compare, my group coaching program for non-monogamous women.
We turn awareness into embodied confidence.
👉https://www.elleciapaine.com/compare
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Music: Composer/Author (CA): Oscar Lindstein
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TRANSCRIPT:
The Real Cost of Comparing Yourself to Your Metamour
[00:00:00] she is hotter? She's newer, he's obsessed with her. Have you ever felt this. I am gonna share with you the real cost of comparing yourself to your metamor and how to stop that spiral that happens. Hey, it's Ellecia, your non-monogamous relationship coach and a host of, Nope, We're not monogamous. Honestly, I did not plan
to do a part two on comparison when I recorded the first one, but I had a bunch of people say, I want more. Tell me more. This is so good. Uh,[00:01:00]
everybody wanted to know what can I actually do when I know that I'm spiraling out? How, what if I can't stop checking my metamours feed? Uh, what if she really is better than me? So here we are by request this one's for you.
Because comparison doesn't just feel bad. It costs us something. It costs you your peace, your presence, your ability to show up in your relationships, like a, the grounded and radiant human that you know that you can be. So today we're gonna go a little bit deeper. We're gonna talk about the obsession loops, the patriarchy, and the emotional price of constantly putting yourself second to someone else's, uh, like highlight reel.[00:02:00]
So if you've ever told yourself, I'm over it, and then you immediately started spiraling, you're gonna wanna hear this, so let's get into it.
First, let's talk about that moment. The one where you're like smiling through dinner, but the second your partner goes to the bathroom, you're suddenly on Instagram again. You already know that it's not helpful. You've already told yourself that it doesn't mean anything, but you still can't stop looking at whatever else this other person has going on.
Because comparison spirals aren't logical. They're a biological thing that happens.
Your brain is [00:03:00] hardwired to protect you, and so the moment that it, it perceives that there is a possible threat at all, like your partner forming a new connection, your brain goes on high alert, there's dopamine and cortisol fear craving. It's the same neurological loop that you'd see in addiction behavior.
And that's really kind of what's happening, right? You're not obsessing because you're weak. You're obsessing because your system is scared and nobody taught you how to respond to that fear with like care in a good way, in a healthy way.
And that actually creates this self-trust fracture, right? Because every time you tell yourself like, I'm not gonna check, I'm not gonna look at my phone and see what they've got going on, and then you do it anyway, [00:04:00] you lose a little bit of faith in your ability to keep yourself safe. And that's actually the real damage.
It's not the scrolling, it's not the checking. It's not even the thoughts, it's the rupture in your relationship with yourself.
So here's one thing I tell my clients to do in the moment. Ask yourself, what am I hoping to prove or protect by comparing right now? Like, are you trying to prove that you're still desirable or d desired? Are you trying to protect yourself from getting blindsided, from being made a fool? Are you trying to prepare for pain before it even happens, before you even have proof that it's coming?
Right? So just identify one layer deeper, a little bit deeper. This can give your body the pause that it needs to start shifting.[00:05:00]
And you're not doing this to make yourself wrong, you're doing this to make yourself right, actually to like do the right things. So, um, next let's talk about where the conditioning really actually starts. I promise you it's older than your metamor or that relationship or that flirtation, whatever, and it runs really deep, right?
But first. Take a breath. Place your hand on your heart, and remember that you're not broken. You're responding to fear with the best tools that you've had so far. And you're here now building better ones. Okay, so let's keep going.
I wanna talk about something that people don't talk about very often and [00:06:00] genuinely don't connect this to their comparison spiral. And I, I touched on it a little bit in the last comparison episode, but I wanna go deeper. That thing is the patriarchy. Okay? The big one, the system. Uh, because this isn't like a pattern that you made up.
You're not the only one who does that. You, you're not even one of a couple people who do this, right? This is a pattern that you inherited.
Most of us were raised either directly or indirectly by women who literally couldn't access safety resources or respect without being partnered. And even if you weren't raised by women like that, you were still raised in a world that is built on that logic. Okay, so whether it was said out loud or it was just modeled quietly, we learned that we need to be the most desirable, that we need to be the easiest to love, that we need to get chosen and keep [00:07:00] being chosen even now in non-monogamy, which is supposed to disrupt all of that, right?
That conditioning doesn't disappear. It doesn't go away. You can make all of these active choices to live your life differently, but the conditioning still exists. It just we're mutating it, we're shifting it, we're, uh, alchemizing it, right? So now maybe it sounds like I need to be the most evolved. Or I shouldn't feel jealous, or if she's more confident, more sensual, more whatever, I'll be forgotten.
And I wanna be really clear, even if you don't identify with traditional gender roles, you've absolutely been conditioned by them. You were raised with them. We all were. You may not fit those roles, but you were [00:08:00] still shaped by a world that expected you to fit in those roles, and that actually matters because the patriarchy didn't just teach women to compete.
It taught men to accumulate, or people raised as little boys were taught to accumulate, to earn value through conquest, through status, through partners. So even if everyone in your poly q in your dating pool, in your friendships, even if everyone has the best intentions, the emotional coding that we inherited still shapes how we show up in our relationships.
Uh, I had a client, Janelle, she said it perfectly, I didn't realize I was auditioning for my own relationship until she showed up. Right until that one over there got my partner's attention, and that hit me really hard because I've absolutely been there like. Whew, so much, right? The, the quiet scramble to [00:09:00] be the one who's the easiest to love, who doesn't rock the boat, who isn't the squeaky wheel?
My God, the number of times I questioned why, why is my metamore getting attention when she's having struggles, but I'm not? And my partner was like, uh, I didn't even know you were having struggles. Like the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I was over here trying not to be the squeaky wheel. I was trying to be chill and unbothered, and someone who never needs reassurance, who's so confident.
But what happens when you spend your relationship trying to like earn your space? You lose yourself.
So try this when comparison hits. Uh, there's a reframe that you can use. Um, things that you can say to yourself are like, they're not my rival. They're a reflection of what's possible. I don't have to [00:10:00] disappear just because someone else shines. Just because someone else is bright doesn't mean I need to dim, right?
You're not here to compete. Genuinely. You are valuable and lovable without competing at all. You were just born that way. You're here to connect to yourself, to your partners, to the life that you actually really want.
Okay, next I wanna talk about what this constant comparison is really, really costing you emotionally, physically, relationally. Um, but, uh. I just wanna say to you like, you're not here to audition, you're not here to compete. You are already enough. I just wanna reiterate that. Okay.
All right. Let's talk about what the spiral really, really costs you, because it's not just time spent scrolling, social media, [00:11:00] uh, convincing yourself not to check your partner's phone, right? Whatever is going on. It's not just anxiety in the moment, it's. What comparison steals from you underneath the surface when you don't even realize it.
So it costs you presence. You're physically there, but you're emotionally absent, lost in what she has, what you are not how to fix it. It costs you joy because even when something good happens, it's filtered through the lens of. Yeah, but she probably dot, dot, dot, whatever. Yeah. I love this restaurant, but like, you already brought someone here and you probably had more fun with them, or, yeah, last night was great, but you probably, your other partner probably did something better than me.
Whatever. Right? It dims your joy. It actually steals it from you. Uh, it costs [00:12:00] you your self trust every time that you abandon your own voice. To match what you think your partner wants. You chip away at your inner safety. You chip away at your self-esteem. You chip away at trusting yourself. It costs you connection,
not just with your partner, but with yourself, with your body, with the present moment. When we're anxious, we are in the future. We're future tripping. We're spiraling out about all the possibilities that could go wrong. And you're not present here now in this moment. And it costs you peace. That deep exhale that says, I'm safe.
I'm wanted, I belong here. Right? Comparison doesn't just hurt. It disconnects you from the things you actually want, from the intimacy you want, from the confidence you want, you wanna have and show [00:13:00] from calmness, from clarity. You're disconnected from all of these things that you desire in your life.
And the worst part of that is it actually tricks you into thinking that this spiral is productive. That you're actually doing something, that you're improving things and, and that if you can just understand. This person, if you can just figure out what makes them so great or if you can outshine them or if you can figure out what they have that you don't have, you'll finally feel better.
But that's a lie. It actually, it never delivers the closure that you want. The comparison just keeps moving the goalpost, and it just keeps getting further and further out while you feel worse and worse about yourself.
And let me pause here and say something really, really important. You can know what's happening. [00:14:00] You can understand what you're doing. You can know where it's coming from. You can name it. You can even have the perfect grounding practice or mantra or therapist or coach, and still find yourself spiraling over and over and over, because knowing is not the same as healing, okay?
Healing isn't about knowing the right thing to do. Healing is about practicing it when it matters, and when things are also feeling good, right? It takes time and repetition and compassion for yourself, for your partners, for everyone in the situation like you have to practice the tools. When you're feeling excellent, when you're feeling good, when your nervous system is in a regulated state, not just try to remember what the tools are once you're triggered, once you're in that like space of feeling insane, right?
Like just like your body was trained to [00:15:00] compare yourself, to shrink yourself, to protect itself, it also needs time to learn new patterns, to learn new ways of coping, and so. This work isn't about never comparing again,
it's about noticing what's happening sooner and meeting yourself with care, and then rebuilding trust with your nervous system. One moment at a time. Little baby steps. This is what integration looks like. It's what real healing actually feels like. It's not instant, but it's honest and it's worth it.
Baby steps. You gotta practice. So the next time a spiral starts, ask yourself, what would it look like if I recho myself right now? Not in a like self-care bubble bath kind of [00:16:00] way, right? Like, like in a radical reconnection kind of way. Not in a reaching out and grasping at your partner kind of way, but reaching in and holding yourself.
Re your truth, re your body. Re your voice, re the version of you that doesn't need to prove that it belongs okay? Because you already do. You already belong in here? Not in my body, but in your body.
Right. And if you, if you need space, if you want space to practice that in real time with tools and coaching and community that gets it, you can come work with me, right? Like, um, that's what we do in Beyond Compare. It's a group, co group coaching program for non-monogamous women. And it's not, we're not trying to pretend that you don't feel these things.
This is, this is about finally feeling. Finally feeling these emotions [00:17:00] with support instead of spiraling on your own and in silence.
So if you're nodding along and you're thinking, yes, I know what's happening, I know where my insecurities lie. I know when I've said a thing I shouldn't have said, that's gonna create more problems than good. Uh, but you, I still find myself spiraling. I want you to know that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, okay?
It means you're human. It means you need practice. It means you need new tools and to practice them. You don't have to be perfect, right? So that's, that's what I'm doing. And beyond compare, you can come join us. You'll have the space and the support and the structure to turn that awareness into actual embodiment.
To actually feel it, to really know it. So you can stop shrinking and start showing up fully. Even when the comparison hits, you can go to the links in all the linky places. [00:18:00] Um, if, if that's something you want, otherwise just hit like, or leave a comment, let me know how this landed for you. Send me an email, shoot me a dm, uh, leave a review.
I wanna know how this stuff works for you, and I wanna know what else you want. What else do you need? Okay, we're trying to build things together that are better.
Bye.