Your partner is attracted to someone else, and suddenly you're wondering...
Are they sexier than me? Funnier? More interesting? What do they have that I don't?
Um... can we talk about why we automatically turn someone else's attractiveness into evidence that we're not enough?
I used to feel like I had to compete with anyone my partners were attracted to. And while that old comparison reflex still shows up sometimes, I've learned that I don't have to be better than someone else to be loved for who I am.
In this episode of Nope! We're Not Monogamous, we're talking about comparison, insecurity, and why your partner wanting someone else doesn't mean there's something wrong with you or your relationship.
Because you can be enough without being everything.
💬 Have you ever caught yourself comparing yourself to someone your partner was attracted to?
Ready to stop comparing yourself to your partner's other partners?
Check out Beyond Compare: https://elleciapaine.podia.com/beyondcompare
Smells Like Humans
Like listening to funny friends discuss curious human behavior.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
📰 Subscribe to Not A Monogamous Newsletter to stay up to date with new episodes and offerings from Ellecia. https://elleciapaine.podia.com/newsletter
❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by following and leaving a review or a note. And if you want more, join our Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/notmonogamous
👀 Find Us Online
🌍 Website: https://www.elleciapaine.com
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elleciapaine
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elleciapaine/
Music: Composer/Author (CA): Oscar Lindstein
STIM IPI: 572 393 237
TRANSCRIPT:
Okay, let's talk about the idea that if your partner wants someone else, it must mean that there's something missing in you. Because I think this is one of those beliefs that gets really, really deeply ingrained in most of us that we don't even realize we're carrying it around. Like somewhere along the way, we learn that if someone really, really loves us, if we're attractive enough, if we're interesting enough, if we're good enough in bed, whatever enough we're supposed to be, they won't ever want anyone else, right? And then we start practicing non-monogamy. We might genuinely believe that people can love more than one person. We might love having the freedom to explore different connections ourselves. We might understand logically, intellectually, that attraction to one person doesn't cancel out attraction to another. But then our partner meets someone new. And suddenly all of that intellectual understanding goes right out the freaking window, right? Because now we're left wondering what do they have that I don't? What is my partner getting from them that they're not getting from me? What if they like that person more? What if I'm just not enough? And so here's what I want to talk about today. What if your partner wanting someone else doesn't actually tell you anything at all about whether you're enough? What if their attraction to another person is not a review of your, I don't know, performance as a partner? And what if we could stop treating every new connection as evidence that there's something wrong with us or our relationship? Because actually being enough and being everything are two very, very different things. And we need to talk about that, okay? So welcome back to Nope, we're not monogamous. We're talking about building confidence and navigating insecurity and learning to love without losing yourself. I'm Ellecia Paine. I help people, you, navigate the messy, beautiful, sometimes uncomfortable experiences that come with non-monogamous relationships while also building the confidence to express their needs and their desires, their boundaries. And as someone who's been practicing non-monogamy myself for well over a decade, I know firsthand that loving this relationship structure doesn't mean that you're never going to experience jealousy or insecurity. But I also know those feelings don't have to define you or dictate the choices that you make in your relationships. Okay, I want to start with something that I don't think we question nearly enough. The idea that one person is supposed to be everything to another person. I mean, those of if you're listening to this podcast, you've been questioning it, right? But I mean, us as a culture, right? Uh, you're supposed to be their best friend, their lover, their emotional support, their adventure buddy, their favorite person to talk to, their favorite person to have sex with, the person who understands them better than anyone else in the whole world ever could. And somehow we're supposed to be all of those things all of the time, forever. And all of us are supposed to be that in our relationships, right? Which when you actually say it out loud is this like really ridiculous amount of pressure to put on another human being. But that is the story that most of us grew up with. We see it in movies, in love songs, in the way people talk about finding the one, the person who completes you. I want my person, my one person out there, the person who makes you never want anyone else. And there's nothing wrong with having a relationship that feels deeply fulfilling. Like, yes, get those. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be someone's favorite person in certain ways, or wanting a relationship that feels really special and deep and important. Like those are all so valid. But somewhere along the way, we started confusing being deeply loved with being the only person someone could possibly ever want. It's over. I don't ever have to look anymore. Checked that box, done. Right? Those aren't the same thing. Being, being deeply, uh, being deeply loved and being the only person they could ever possibly want are not the same thing. Like, think about friendships for a minute. You can have a friend that you absolutely adore. Someone who knows you really well, who you trust, who you have years of history with? And then you meet another person that you really connect with. Maybe you share a hobby, maybe uh you do sports together, maybe they make you laugh in a completely different way. Maybe they understand uh like a part of your life that your other friend doesn't. You have different things in common. Does that mean that your first friendship was lacking or wasn't even worth having? Does it mean that your first friend wasn't good enough? Like, obviously not, right? Like we understand that different friendships can bring different experiences and different experiences into our lives without needing to like rank those friendships against each other. But when it comes to romantic relationships, suddenly we're keeping score. Suddenly we're ranking people. If my partner wants to have sex with someone else, what does that say about our sex life? If they have an amazing conversation with someone else, does that mean I'm not interesting enough? If they're excited about a new relationship, does that mean they're less excited about me? And I think uh one of the things that non-monogamy asks us to examine is why we make those connections. Why do we assume that someone else's desire automatically points to something missing in us? Sometimes people are interested in different experiences simply because they're different experiences. I mean, think about it. We don't expect one person to be the only person we'll ever find interesting, funny, or attractive. I mean, how many of us are watching stand-up comics and laughing our asses off? That doesn't mean our partner isn't funny. So why do we automatically assume that when our partner wants to explore a connection with someone else, it must mean there's something wrong with us or our relationship? Maybe they're just interested in that person. Maybe they enjoy what that connection brings into their life. And that doesn't have to mean anything about what you bring into theirs, right? I I really think we can understand that intellectually while still struggling to believe it emotionally deep in our insides, right? Especially when we're the ones watching our partner get excited about someone new. So consider this. When your partner is attracted to someone else, how quickly do you make that about you? Because I I do this, I've definitely done this. Um, I think last episode I talked about the time one of my partners started dating someone we were friends with. And I suddenly found found myself comparing everything about myself to her. And one of the things that I realized was that I wasn't just noticing her qualities. I was interpreting his attraction to her as evidence that something was wrong with me, or that like I needed to change or be better or be different. Like if she was more available, that meant I wasn't available enough. If she was sexier in my mind, that meant I wasn't sexy enough. If she was easier to be with, that meant I'm too difficult. Right. And the ridiculous part of that is that nobody said any of those things to me, right? My partner had not handed me a list of areas where I needed improvement. This, this, there wasn't some kind of like relationship performance evaluation happening, like, but my brain had decided that there was. And most of us do this. A lot of us do this all the time. We take someone else's desires, their interests, their uh attractions, their choices, and we turn them into a judgment about ourselves. Or or another thing that we do if if they have a hobby that they like, we will suddenly start doing a thing we have no interest in, right? Like things like that. We're trying to change because we think we need to be a certain person to continue to be chosen by our partners. But your partner being attracted to someone else does not mean that they're dissatisfied with you. Like that's those don't equal the same thing. And and even when your partner does have an unmet need or desire, that doesn't automatically mean that you have failed. Because we're not supposed to be responsible for fulfilling every single desire another human being has ever. And honestly, I don't think that's a particularly healthy expectation in any relationship structure. Now, I do want to be careful here because I'm not saying that everything your partner does is completely unrelated to you or your relationship, right? Like sometimes your partner's behavior really does reveal something that needs attention. Um, and you got to pay attention to that. Maybe you're not spending enough quality time together. Maybe intimacy has changed. Maybe, maybe you're both feeling disconnected. Maybe your partner is making uh commitments they're not following through on with you. Like those things do matter, okay? Um, but there's a difference between saying something in our relationship needs attention and saying there must be something wrong with me. Right? Like one is information about your relationship, the other is a judgment about your worth. Not the same thing. So I really, really want you to start recognizing that difference. Okay. So I think this is kind of the the heart of what I want to talk about. Because when we say like, I want to feel like I'm enough for my partner, what do we actually mean? Does it mean I want to feel loved, valued, desired, important, secure in the commitments we made to each other? Because those are all completely valid and reasonable things to want. Totally normal. Or do we mean I want to be so completely fulfilled that my partner never experiences attraction, uh, attraction, curiosity, or desire for another person? Like I want to be so completely fulfilling for them that they don't even look because those are two very, very different expectations. Um, and sometimes we don't realize that we've confused them until we're in a non-monogamous relationship, right? You can be a wonderful person without being the only person someone wants to spend time with. You can have a like a really beautiful, deep sexual connection without being the only person someone finds sexually exciting. You can have a deeply meaningful relationship without being the only person someone falls in love with. None of those things automatically makes your relationship less valuable. Also, this is a relationship structure, I assume that you're choosing, right? So it's really, really important to remember that being enough doesn't mean you don't ever have needs of your own, right? Sometimes in an effort to be like a secure, evolved, grown, non-monogamous partner, people start acting like needing anything at all is a problem. Like needing reassurance makes them clingy. I'm so guilty of this. Uh, wanting more quality time makes them demanding, having boundaries makes them controlling. I don't buy into that anymore. I definitely stuffed down my needs for a really long time because I couldn't figure out what was a problem with me and what was like valid requests, right? Like, like you can believe in your partner's autonomy and still have needs. You can support their other relationships and still want to feel prioritized in the ways that you've agreed to in your relationship. You can understand that your partner has feelings for someone else and still need to talk about how their choices actually affect your relationship, right? Like being enough doesn't require you to become someone who needs nothing at all. And and being confident doesn't mean you stop caring about whether your relationships are nourishing you. It means you can recognize your needs and communicate them without immediately making yourself wrong for having them. Let's pause for just a moment. If something in this episode has 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 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 www.elleciapaine.com/chat
Enjoy the rest of the episode. Bye.
So I'll share something with you that's really changed for me over the years, like personally, because I used to feel this so, so, so deeply. If someone else was funnier than me, I felt like I needed to be funnier. Which sometimes made me less funny because I'd got weird. Uh, if someone else was sexier than me, I felt like I needed to be sexier, which then led to me like performing and again being weird, right? If my partner was attracted to someone who had qualities that I felt I didn't have, I would start wondering what I needed to change about myself. Like somehow I was failing at my relationship because another person had something to offer that I didn't, or just that another person existed. And when I say that, I say I felt that, like I mean I really, really felt it. It wasn't just like a passing thought. It was like this deeply ingrained belief that I needed to compete to keep being chosen. And um, it's interesting because I still experience those emotions sometimes. Like they didn't just go away. I still notice when someone is incredibly attractive or funny or charming. And sometimes that old comparison like reflex shows up. But I've spent years working on my confidence, myself, my relationship with myself, and that has shifted something. I don't have to turn, I don't have to turn someone else's wonderful qualities into a list of things that are wrong with me. I can look at another person and think, holy shit, they're amazing, and that's it. I don't have to follow that up with like, so what does that mean about me? I can celebrate the things that make someone else wonderful without feeling like I need to compete with them. Right? Because I know who I am. I know what I bring to my relationships, and I know that my partners love me for the person that I actually am. And not because I'm the funniest person that they've ever met. Not because I'm the sexiest person in the whole world. Um, not because I'm somehow better than everyone else they might be attracted to, because that would be ridiculous. They love me because I'm me. And I think that is a really, really important point to hold on to. Confidence doesn't make me stop noticing how amazing other people are. It really helped me stop making their amazingness mean something terrible about myself, right? And that does not mean I never feel insecure. I promise I feel insecure often. Um, but it does mean that when insecurities show up, I don't have to immediately believe everything that my insecurities are telling me. I can recognize the feeling, I can get curious about it, and then I can decide what to do with it. And that really has given me so much more freedom in my relationships because I'm not constantly trying to win an imaginary competition that nobody else ever knew we were having, right? I just get to be myself, my partners get to be themselves, and other people get to be wonderful too. There's room for all of that. And I think I think this is where the whole idea of being enough gets really interesting because I used to believe that being enough meant being the best option, the funniest, the sexiest, the most desirable, right? Um, but being enough doesn't mean being better than someone else, actually. It means recognizing that your value is not determined by how you compare to the other people that your partner loves or desires. And that doesn't like that doesn't mean that you don't get to want and ask for reassurance or attention or connection. You absolutely do and you should. Um, but it means that you can ask for those things because they're important to you, not because you're trying to prove that you're more deserving of them than somebody else, right? Not because you're competing for them, but because like you're in a relationship. Those things make sense. Uh okay, let's also talk about something that that often gets overlooked in these conversations like this. Because sometimes people hear hear like the phrase, like your partner wanting someone else doesn't mean that you're not that you're not enough. And then they interpret that as meaning everything's fine. You just got to work on your insecurity. That's a you problem. No, that's not what I'm saying. Okay. Sometimes something really is missing from a relationship. Sometimes things, sometimes things are actually wrong. Maybe you and your partner haven't been connecting. Maybe there's a difference in sexual desire. Maybe you want more uh emotional intimacy than you're currently experiencing. Maybe you're discovering that your relationship agreements don't work for you anymore. Um, sometimes your partner dating someone new makes those things a little bit harder to ignore. But even then, I want you to notice the distinction. A relationship having an unmet need does not make you an inadequate person, right? You can be loving and thoughtful, wonderful human being and still be in a relationship where something isn't working. You can care really, really deeply about someone and discover that you want different things. You can love each other and still need to make changes. Sometimes you're just in a shitty relationship, guys. Like don't skip over that part. Sometimes you need to make changes and have difficult conversations. Sometimes you have to renegotiate your agreements. Sometimes you have to find new ways to reconnect. Sometimes it means recognizing that the relationship you have isn't the relationship you want anymore. That does not automatically make you a failure, the relationship a failure. And it certainly doesn't mean you aren't enough. Okay. Uh I said something in my last episode that I want to bring back here. When I work with people, I especially couples, I don't work in in service of the relationship. I work in service of the people in it. And so that means that I'm not interested in convincing you or helping you convince yourself that everything is fine when it isn't. Okay. I am interested in helping you understand what's actually, actually really true for you. Because the goal should not be to preserve a relationship at the expense of the people in it. The goal is to create and co-create relationships that work for the actual human beings involved with each other. And sometimes that requires us to stop asking, how can I become enough for this person? And start asking, like, what do I want from this relationship? And is that something we're able and willing to create together?
Okay.
So what do you actually do when your partner connects with someone new and your brain is immediately uh saying that you're not enough? Okay, I'm gonna give you some like questions. I'm gonna give you five questions to work through. You can, you know, pause or come back to this. Um, so the first question is like, what has actually happened? Not what you're afraid might happen, not what you've imagined your partner is thinking. What do you actually know? Maybe your partner told you you're attracted to someone. Uh, maybe they went on a date, maybe uh maybe they're excited about a new connection. Start there. Okay. What are the facts? Two, what am I making this mean about me? Am I telling myself I'm not attractive enough, not interesting enough, not adventurous enough, not important enough? Get specific. About the story that you're telling yourself. Three, is this about my worth? Or is there something happening in my relationship that needs attention? Okay. Maybe this is an old insecurity showing up. Maybe you're genuinely feeling disconnected from your partner. Maybe it's both. You don't have to force yourself to choose one explanation. Okay. Just reflect on it. Fourth question is what do I actually need? Do you need reassurance? Do you need quality time? Is it a conversation about agreements? More consistency? Maybe you need time to process when you're process what you're feeling before you decide what to do. What do you need? And five, what would it look like to respond to my partner, the situation, without abandoning myself or trying to control my partner? Maybe that means telling them I'm feeling insecure and I'd love some reassurance that we're okay. Maybe it's uh I've noticed we haven't had much time together lately. I'd like us to make that a priority. Maybe it means acknowledging something about the relationship isn't working for you. The point here is not to find the perfect like response or the perfect thing to do. It's to stop treating your insecurity as proof that you're inadequate and start responding to what's actually happening.
Okay.
And I really, really want you to remember your partner wanting someone else does not automatically mean there's something missing in you. And it doesn't make you uh less attractive, less interesting, less lovable, less valuable, less worthy of being chosen. It doesn't mean your relationship is um less real or um wrong or bad. Like you can be enough without being everything. Okay. But I also want you to remember that you get to have needs. You get to want connection, you get to want reassurance, you get to be loved, you get to decide what kinds of relationships actually work for you. Because confidence is not about like convincing yourself that you should be okay with everything. Okay. That's that's not confidence, like easy peasy, no problems over here. It's really about trusting yourself enough to recognize what you need and being willing to honor that. And if your relationship needs attention, you can address that without turning it into a judgment about yourself, about your own worth. You, you, you don't have to be everything to someone to be worthy of love. Okay, I promise you. And you don't have to abandon yourself to keep that love. And if you are a woman, a femme, who's constantly comparing yourself to your partner's other partners, wondering what they have that you don't, or feeling like you're never quite enough. That's exactly the kind of uh work that we're doing in Beyond Compare. Uh, it's a group coaching program for women in non-monogamy to feel more confident and stop comparing yourself, right? Because you deserve to feel confident in who you are without constantly measuring yourself against somebody else. Uh, if you want to check that out, you can go to elleciapaine.com/beyondcompare or check the show notes. Thank you for being here. I hope you enjoyed it. Go check out all the other episodes. Subscribe, like, comment, do all the things that you know we need you to do to keep showing up in the algorithms. Bye.