Can you be non-monogamous and still get jealous? And if you love dating other people but struggle when your partner does the same thing, does that make you a hypocrite?
Come on. Can we stop acting like jealousy means you're bad at polyamory?
Here's the thing. Most of us grew up with some pretty deeply ingrained ideas about love, being chosen, and what makes us worthy of a relationship.
And then we start practicing ethical non-monogamy (ENM) and somehow expect all those insecurities to magically disappear?
Yeah, that's not how that works.
In this episode of Nope! We're Not Monogamous, I'm sharing a story about the time my partner started dating a friend of mine, and my brain decided she was better than me in basically every possible way.
Spoiler: She wasn't the problem. The stories I was telling myself were.
We're talking about jealousy, comparison, fear of abandonment, and why your partner being attracted to someone else doesn't automatically mean you're not enough.
Plus, I'm sharing five questions to help you figure out what your jealousy is actually telling you.
And just to be clear, this isn't about learning to tolerate things that don't work for you so you can prove you're good at non-monogamy.
It's about learning to trust yourself enough to know the difference.
💬 Have you ever felt like getting jealous meant you weren't cut out for non-monogamy? Tell me in the comments. I want to hear about it.
Want to work on the comparison stuff?
If you're a woman who keeps finding yourself comparing yourself to your partner's other partners, that's exactly the kind of thing we work on in Beyond Compare.
👉 https://elleciapaine.podia.com/beyondcompare
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Music: Composer/Author (CA): Oscar Lindstein
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TRANSCRIPT:
Okay, can we talk about something that really bothers me? This idea that if you're practicing ethical non-monogamy and you experience jealousy or insecurity, maybe you should just be monogamous. Or that if you enjoy dating multiple people yourself, but you struggle when your partner starts dating someone else, that somehow makes you a hypocrite. I want to challenge both of those ideas today. Because how the heck are you supposed to grow up in our culture and not develop insecurities about love and relationships and your own worth? Right? Like, think about it. From the time we're very, very young, we're surrounded by messages about what makes us desirable. We're taught to compare ourselves to other people. We're taught that being chosen makes us special, that being the most attractive, the most interesting, the most exciting, or the most desirable person in the room somehow determines our worth. And we're taught that if someone really, really loves us, they won't ever desire someone else. And that finding someone who chooses us and only us is the ultimate proof that we're loved. And then we grow up, enter non-monogamous relationships, adult relationships, and suddenly we're supposed to feel completely secure when someone we love develops feelings for someone else, or even has like a desire for someone else, or is attracted to someone else? Come on. Of course, that's gonna bring some stuff up, right? And I think we need to stop treating that as evidence that you aren't cut out for non-monogamy, that someone isn't cut out for non-monogamy. Because what if the insecurity that you're experiencing isn't proof that this relationship style is wrong for you? What if it's revealing beliefs about yourself that you've carried around for most of your life? And what if instead of using those feelings as a reason to abandon something that you genuinely want, you could explore them and develop a stronger relationship with yourself. So that's what I want to talk about today. Why non-monogamy can bring up insecurities that you didn't even realize you had, why jealousy doesn't automatically make you a hypocrite, and how you can begin building confidence without pretending that those feelings don't exist. So welcome back to Nope, we're not monogamous. This is where we're going to talk about building confidence and navigating insecurity and learning to love without losing yourself. I'm Ellecia Paine, your non-monogamous relationship coach, and I help people navigate the like messy, beautiful, weird, sometimes uncomfortable experiences that come with non-monogamy that come with relationships while building the confidence to express their needs and their desires and their boundaries. And as someone who practices non-monogamy myself, I know firsthand that loving this relationship structure or this style doesn't mean that you're never going to experience jealousy or insecurity. You probably will. But I also know that those feelings don't have to define you or dictate the choices that you make in your relationships. Excuse my voice. I had the flu last week, so I missed a week of the podcast. So thanks for sticking with us. Uh, one thing after another, right? Last time we talked, I shared a little bit about some of the changes happening in my life. And I talked about how this next season of the podcast is going to go a little bit deeper. I want to talk about identity, about what happens when relationships change, about learning to trust yourself, and about what it looks like to create relationships that genuinely work for the people in the relationships. Instead of trying to force ourselves into the relationships that we think we're supposed to have, and I think confidence is a really, really important part of that conversation. Because how the heck are you supposed to know what you actually want if you're constantly questioning your own worth and your own desires? Right? How are you supposed to communicate your needs if you're afraid that having needs makes you too difficult? How are you supposed to decide whether a relationship is working for you if you're so focused on proving that you're good at non-monogamy or that you're okay that you're afraid to admit when something isn't working for you? So, over the next several episodes, I want to explore what it actually looks like to build up your confidence while navigating non-monogamy. And I don't mean the kind of confidence where you never get jealous, or the kind where you're so independent that you never need reassurance or support. And definitely not the kind where you become so good at managing your own emotions that you can tolerate absolutely anything. Okay. That's not what we want to do. I want to talk about the kind of confidence that comes from knowing yourself really well, from trusting yourself, from recognizing that you can experience difficult emotions without making them mean something terrible about who you are. And from learning to create relationships where you don't have to abandon yourself to make them work because you don't have to become someone who never experiences insecurity to be confident in yourself. Right? Like you, you get to become someone who knows how to navigate those feelings while staying connected to who you are deep inside and what you actually really want. Most of us didn't grow up being taught that we were inherently worthy of love, regardless of how we looked, how desirable we are, whether someone chooses us. We grew up surrounded by messages about what makes a person valuable. And a lot of those messages revolve around being chosen. Like, think about the fairy tales, the romantic comedies, the love songs, the stories where uh where the happy ending is finding someone who chooses you above everyone else, or the love triangle where you're the one who gets chosen, right? And there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting someone to choose you. We all want to be chosen. Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to feel special or important to the people you love, right? But what happens when we start believing that being chosen is what makes us special? What happens when we believe that if someone chooses another person that somehow makes us less valuable? That's where things start to get really complicated and weird because now your sense of worth isn't, it's not something that belongs to you. It's something that depends on what other people do, right? And when you enter uh non-monogamy, when you're in non-monogamous relationships, you you might find yourself confronting beliefs that you didn't even know that you had. Like your partner starts dating someone new, and suddenly your brain is asking all these questions. What do they have that I don't have? What if my partner likes them more than me? What if, what if I'm not enough? What if they figure out that I actually suck because they have someone to like compare me to, right? And before you know it, you're questioning your own worth because someone you love is interested in another person. But your partner's attraction to someone else didn't create your worth, or their lack of attraction to someone else didn't create your worth. And it doesn't have the power to take it away. Right? Like, I'll I'll share a personal experience with you because I know how easy it is to understand that the idea intellectually and still have a really hard time believing it when you're in the middle of all these chaotic thoughts and things that bring up your insecurities. So I remember when uh one of my partners was starting to date someone that we were already already friends with. Like I knew this woman. We're friends, I admire her, right? I think that she's funny and sexy and wonderful, and I had no problem recognizing all of those qualities in her. But as soon as my partner was gonna go on a date with her, suddenly things started to shift a little bit. I started comparing myself to her. And actually, not just a little bit. Like I started going through this like mental checklist of all the ways that I thought she was better than me, all the things that she had that I want, all the ways that she is that I want to be, had that she was funnier and sexier and easier. Doesn't have kids, so she has more time and freedom, she was more available. Uh, I I even started assuming that she was better at sex than I was, right? Did I know that actually? No. But that didn't stop my brain from deciding that it was probably true. So I went from admiring another woman, a friend of mine, to using everything that I admired about her as evidence that I wasn't enough. And then my brain took it even further. I started imagining that she was gonna want my partner all to herself, that he was gonna realize how much easier it was to be with someone who didn't have all these insecurities that I have. Because why do I think she doesn't have insecurities? That's wild, right? Someone who doesn't get jealous, someone who doesn't struggle when her partner goes out with other people. A lot of assumptions here. And eventually he's probably gonna leave me for this perfect person. I was gonna be abandoned for someone who was just better at this whole non-monogamy thing that I was. And notice at this point, my partner was just going on a date. That's it. That was what was actually happening. But in my mind, I had already created this like entire story about how I was going to lose him. And that story was built on every insecurity that I had about myself. And what I eventually realized as I started looking at what was happening, I realized that this woman, this friend of mine, and I were two completely different people, right? Yes, she has qualities I admire, but there's also so many things about me that my partner loves. Our relationship has its own history, it has its own connection, its own energy, its own experiences. None of those things suddenly disappear because he's interested in someone, right? Her being funny didn't make me less funny. Her being sexy doesn't make me less sexy or desirable to him. Her having more free time doesn't make the time I had to offer less valuable. And her being like different from me doesn't make her better than me. It means we're different. That's it. And my partner could appreciate the things that he enjoyed about her without suddenly losing the ability to appreciate the things he loves about me, right? Like I had turned this woman into my competition, and she hadn't done anything to deserve that. This was my friend. Like I admire her. And because my partner was interested in her, I started measuring my worth and my value against hers. I didn't need to become more like her. I needed to stop treating her desirability as evidence that I wasn't enough, right? Now, let's be real, like realizing that doesn't mean I never experience jealousy or insecurity again, right? Of course not. But it does give me an opportunity to question the stories that I'm telling myself instead of like immediately believing them. I can start asking myself, like, what am I actually afraid of here? What am I making this situation mean about me? What do I actually know to be true? Because what I knew was that my partner was going on a date. What I feared was that he would find someone he liked more and leave me. And those are two very different things. Keeping him locked up in a box isn't gonna keep him loving me, right? The deeper fear underneath the comparison is what is the thing to pay attention to, the thing to notice, right? That deeper fear underneath it, it's an a really, really important part of the conversation because underneath all of that comparison was this deep fear of being abandoned. I wasn't just afraid that she was funnier or sexier or more available than I was. I was afraid those things would make her a better partner than me and that eventually he would choose her instead of me. But something that I have come to understand about relationships monogamy, non-monogamy, doesn't matter. None of it guarantees that nobody ever leaves. We can't build relationships that guarantee we'll never experience loss. And I don't think confidence means convincing ourselves that the people we love will never leave us, right? Of course, I care that the relationship continued. Of course, the possibility of losing someone I love is terrifying. But if someone chooses to end a relationship with me that doesn't want to be in a relationship with me, that doesn't mean another person is better than me. It doesn't mean I'm not enough. And it doesn't erase the love or the history or the value of the relationship that we had. I can care so deeply about keeping a relationship without making it mean something about my worth, without making my worth depend on whether that relationship lasts forever. Right? Like, like that's the kind of confidence I want to talk about. Not pretending that jealousy doesn't hurt, not pretending that loss isn't possible, because it always is. But uh but learning to recognize when fear is telling us a story about our worth and our value, and remembering that we don't have to accept that story as a truth. It's not the truth, actually. Let's pause for just a moment. If something in this episode is landed with you and you're feeling that little nudge inside, I'd encourage you to get curious about it. Everything I share here is necessarily pretty general, right? But our work together is deeply, deeply personal. I don't know your relationships, your history, your patterns, or what your body might be trying to tell you. And so that's why, rather than just listening to the podcast, I also offer free clarity chats. In a clarity chat, I'm not going to tell you what to do. Instead, I'm going to ask you some thoughtful questions and gently guide you to notice what's happening in your body so that you can hear yourself more clearly. Because the truth is we're often too close to our own lives to see the patterns that we're playing out. And we can't always hear what our bodies are trying to tell us because we're busy managing, coping, or just like simply trying to get through the day, right? And sometimes all it takes is having someone ask the right questions, reflect back what I'm noticing, and create a space where you can hear yourself more clearly. If through our conversation it becomes clear that coaching together is the right next step, then I'll share how we combine this deep inner work with practical tools to create lasting change in your life and in your relationships. So if you're ready to move beyond just listening and start listening to yourself, you'll find the link to book your free clarity chat in the description or go to alisiapain.com slash chat. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Bye. And so I want to bring this back around to this whole idea that if you enjoy non-monogamy, but you get jealous when your partner dates, this idea that you're somehow a hypocrite. Because imagine if in that moment someone had told me, well, if you're going to get this insecure when your partner goes on a date, maybe you should just be monogamous. Or like you can't enjoy dating other people and then get jealous when your partner does the same thing. That's hypocritical. What would that have actually accomplished? Uh, it wouldn't have made us monogamous because neither of us want to be monogamous. Would it have helped me understand why I'm suddenly comparing myself to someone I genuinely admired? Would it have helped me to recognize that I was turning her wonderful, wonderful qualities into evidence of my own inadequacy? Would it have helped me examine my fear of abandonment or the belief that I need to be the easiest, sexiest, most desirable partner to be worthy of love, worthy of love? Nope. Wouldn't have given me any of that. It it would have given me one more thing to feel bad about myself about, one more thing to feel ashamed of. So now instead of just experiencing jealousy, I would have been judging myself for experiencing it. That's why we have to stop treating jealousy as this automatic sign that someone is doing non-monogamy wrong, that they're doing relationships wrong, or they just need to keep healing forever and ever and ever, right? Like feeling jealous does not make you a hypocrite. What matters is how you respond to that jealousy, how you behave, how you react. And so, like that, that's what that's what I want to talk about next. This this idea that if you enjoy dating other people, but you feel jealous when your partner dates, that you're a hypocrite. There's a really important distinction here. Having an emotion and acting on that emotion are two different things. You can enjoy dating multiple people and still feel jealous when your partner dates someone else or plays or however it's going for you, right? You can genuinely support your partner having other relationships and experiences and still feel fear when they connect with someone new. You can believe wholeheartedly in autonomy and freedom while also wanting reassurance that your relationship matters, right? Like these experiences can coexist. Emotions are not logical, almost never, right? They don't line up neatly with our values and our beliefs or the relationship structures that we've chosen. And expecting yourself to never experience an uncomfortable emotion simply because you've made a choice, you've chosen non-monogamy, like that's an unrealistic standard. No, you don't get to do whatever you want just because you're feeling jealous, though. Okay. So, like, if you're expecting your partner to follow restrictions that don't apply to you, that's something worth examining. If you're trying to control your partner's relationships because you're uncomfortable, that's worth examining. If you are like you've made agreements with your partner, it's really important to honor those agreements or have honest conversations about renegotiating them. But experiencing jealousy, feeling insecure, needing reassurance, like those things don't automatically make you a hypocrite. They make you someone who's navigating an emotional experience. And you get to decide how you want to respond. Like you can recognize your jealousy and acknowledge it without making your partner responsible for eliminating it, for making it go away. You can communicate your feelings without demanding that your partner stop dating. You can ask for reassurance without believing that needing reassurance makes you weak or means something like bad about yourself. Like confidence isn't about never having an emotional reaction. It's it's about developing the ability to respond to your emotions in ways that align with your values. And here's another thing that I think happens in non-monogamy quite a bit is we can get so caught up trying to prove that we're like good at this, that we're evolved enough, that we're secure enough, that we can communicate well enough, that we can handle our partners dating other people or playing with other people without ever feeling threatened. And then jealousy shows up. And instead of asking ourselves what we're actually experiencing, we start worrying about what that feeling, that emotion means about our ability to be non-monogamous, to behave in non-monogamous ways, right? Like, like what if we stop treating non-monogamy like something we have to be good at? Like, when did you, when did you hone that skill, right? Like, what if we stopped measuring our success by how little jealousy we experience or how comfortable we are with every relationship our partner wants to pursue? Or whether our relationships stay exactly the way they are forever and ever and ever, right? Like we have to start asking different questions. Am I being honest with myself? Am I communicating what I actually need? Am I respecting my partner's autonomy while also honoring my own boundaries? Am I creating relationships that have room for me to be a real human being in them? Because I don't think being good at non-monogamy means never experiencing jealousy. I'm I'm gonna say this over and over, right? I don't think being confident means you don't ever need reassurance. I think confidence is really about being able to recognize what's happening in here within yourself and respond in ways that honor your needs and your values and the people you're in relationships with. It's really, really important. I want to give you a different way to think about jealousy. Instead of a means instead of immediately asking yourself, how do I? Stop feeling this way. I don't want to feel this. Ask yourself, what is this feeling bringing to my attention? Because jealousy shows up for so many different reasons. Sometimes it's connected to comparison. Sometimes it's connected to a fear of abandonment. Sometimes it's connected to a need for reassurance or connection. Sometimes it's connected to something happening in your inside your relationship that genuinely needs to be addressed, right? Maybe your partner broke an agreement. Maybe uh you're not getting enough quality time together. Maybe you've been saying yes to things you're not actually comfortable with because you're afraid of being weird. Maybe you're discovering that uh a particular relationship dynamic doesn't work for you, right? These are all very different experiences and they deserve different responses. So that's why I don't believe the goal should be eliminate jealousy at all costs, right? The goal is to understand what is happening beneath the emotion so that you can respond intentionally. Imagine your partner's going, like getting ready to go on a date with someone new. And suddenly you're starting to feel really anxious. Your mind is racing. What if they have more fun with this person? What if, what if they find them, what if they're more attractive than me? Uh, what if they're funnier than me? What if they fall in love? What if they stop wanting me? Now you could respond by trying to stop your partner from going on the date. You could pretend that you're fine. Everything's fine. And you could spend the entire evening feeling miserable and having lied. Or you could get curious about what's happening. You might realize that underneath your anxiety is a fear that your partner's interest in someone else means that you're no longer special. Now you have something specific to explore. Now you can ask yourself whether your partner's other relationship actually changes your worth. Like you can identify what reassurance or support might help, might feel good. You can decide how you want to communicate those needs. Like that's a very different experience from simply telling yourself to just stop being jealous. Quit being crazy. Shove it down. Right. So I want to give you something practical to try this week. The next time you're experiencing jealousy or insecurity in your relationship, I want you to pause before deciding what that feeling means. Take a deep breath. And I want you to ask yourself five questions. First question is what am I actually feeling? Try to get more specific than saying you're jealous. Are you afraid? Are you sad? Are you feeling left out? Are you comparing yourself to someone else? Are you worried about losing something important? Like identifying the emotion can help you understand literally what kind of support you need. Okay. So the second question you're going to ask yourself is what is the story I'm telling myself? Maybe the story is that your partner likes someone else more. Maybe it's that you're not attractive enough. Maybe it's that you're going to be replaced. Maybe it's that you shouldn't need reassurance at all because you're supposed to be really good at this non-monogamy thing. Just notice the story without immediately accepting it as truth, okay? Because then the third question you're going to ask yourself is, what do I actually know? Like, what are the facts here? Separate what has happened or what is happening from what you're imagining might happen. So, uh, for example, if your thought is my partner's going on a date with someone new, that's a fact that you know. If your thought is my partner's gonna fall in love with this person and leave me, that is a possible future that your mind is imagining and making up and trying to scare you with. Those two things are not the same. And and recognizing the difference can help you respond to what's actually happening rather than reacting to every possible outcome that your brain is spinning out on. Okay. Fourth question that you're gonna ask yourself is what do I need right now? Maybe you need reassurance. Maybe you need some time to yourself, maybe you need to journal, maybe you need to reconnect with your partner, maybe you need to revisit your agreements. Maybe you need to remind yourself that another person's desirability does not diminish your own. Like whatever comes up, allow yourself to acknowledge it without judging yourself for having that need. Then the fifth question you're gonna have: what would it look like to respond to this feeling without abandoning myself? What would it look like to respond to this feeling without abandoning myself? This is the question I want you to really sit with because sometimes we abandon ourselves by pretending we're fine when we're not. Sometimes we abandon ourselves by agreeing to things we don't actually want. Sometimes we abandon ourselves by trying to become whoever we think our partner wants us to be. Sometimes we respond to insecurity by trying to control other people's behavior rather than addressing what's happening within ourselves or between us in the relationship, right? So, so ask yourself, what would it look like to honor my feelings, communicate my needs, respect my partner's autonomy, and stay connected to my own values? But you don't have to have the perfect answer, right? You just have to be willing to start asking the question. Like think through it, journal it out, talk it out with a friend or a coach, just start exploring it. So here's what I want you to take away from today's conversation, okay? You can love being non-monogamous and still experience insecurity. You can enjoy dating or playing with other people and still struggle when your partner dates. You can want freedom and autonomy in your relationships and still need reassurance and connection and emotional security. Like those things can all be true. None of them automatically mean that you're doing non-monogamy wrong or doing relationships wrong. But I also don't want you to hear this episode and think that the goal is to become better at tolerating situations that don't work for you. Because it's not. Okay. The goal is to understand yourself, to recognize the beliefs that you've carried your whole life about what makes you worried worthy of love. To notice when you're comparing yourself to someone else and making their desirability mean something negative about your own. The goal is to learn how to communicate your needs without apologizing for having them. And to develop enough self-trust that you can make choices about your relationships based on what you actually want. Right? Not what you think you're supposed to want. Not what you think a good non-monogamous, polyamorous person should be comfortable with, what you want. Because you don't have to prove that non-monogamy works by sacrificing yourself to make a relationship last. You get to create relationships that have room for the actual human being that you are inside of them. And that includes the parts of you that sometimes feel jealous and the parts that sometimes need reassurance, and the parts that are still figuring things out. You don't have to become someone who like never experiences insecurity to be worthy of love. You get to become someone who trusts themselves enough to navigate insecurity without abandoning themselves, right? And that's what we're gonna keep exploring together. That's the work that we're doing together. So if today's episode resonated with you, if you're tired of feeling like your confidence disappears every time your partner connects with someone else, I want you to know that you don't have to navigate these feelings all alone. You're not alone, literally. Uh, that's why I created Beyond Compare. It's a group program, it's an opportunity to explore the beliefs that that keep you stuck in comparison and insecurity. Develop a stronger relationship with yourself and build the confidence to express your needs and your desires and your boundaries. Because you don't have to become someone who never experiences insecurity or jealousy or fear. Like you get to become someone who knows how to support herself through all of that. So you can learn more about Beyond Compare at ElleciaPaine.com/ Beyond Compare. Uh, and if this episode brought anything up for you, I'd love to hear about it. Like, drop a comment. Have you ever felt like experiencing jealousy meant that you weren't cut out for non-monogamy? Share your experience with me, with the other people listening. Uh, let's keep the conversation going. Share this episode with someone else that maybe it'll resonate for them. And until next time, remember, you are not in competition with anyone for your worth and your value. Okay. Bye.