Communication Triangles in Polyamory: The Subtle Dynamic That Creates Drama EP. 151
Have you ever found yourself holding feelings about a relationship… that technically isn’t even yours?
Like your partner shares something about their other partner…and suddenly you f eel protective… or tense… or a little off around someone you didn’t have an issue with before?
Yeah… that’s usually a communication triangle.
In this episode, I’m breaking down how triangulation actually shows up in non-monogamy, why it’s so easy to fall into, and how it can quietly create tension and distortion in your relationships.
We talk about the difference between venting and processing, the “emotional telephone” effect, and how to stop carrying emotional weight that was never yours to hold.
And I share one of my favorite grounding practices for this:
✨ stay in your lane, stay in your truth ✨
Because when communication gets cleaner, your relationships get lighter, clearer, and way more sustainable.
💜 In this episode, we get into:
• What communication triangles actually are (and how to spot them)
• Why triangulation happens so easily in polyamory
• How emotional “telephone” creates misunderstanding and tension
• The difference between venting and processing (with real examples)
• How we accidentally recruit partners into conflict
• A simple practice to clean up your communication: stay in your lane, stay in your truth
• How to stop carrying emotional dynamics that aren’t yours
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Music: Composer/Author (CA): Oscar Lindstein
STIM IPI: 572 393 237
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Have you ever found yourself in the middle of something that technically isn't your relationship, but somehow you're still holding onto a bunch of feelings about it? Maybe your partner vents to you about their other partner, and now you feel, uh, like protective or annoyed or tense around someone you didn't even have an issue with before?
Or maybe you've caught yourself saying like, well, here's what they said. Or I think what they're feeling is this, and suddenly things feel like, like murky and distorted. So we're gonna talk about communication triangles today, what they are, why they happen, how they start to create disconnection in your non-monogamous relationships.
I'm Ellecia Ellecia Payne, your non-monogamy coach. And welcome back to, Nope, we're not monogamous. Uh, let's talk about this First, let's talk about like what is a communication triangle? Okay. Or triangulation, A communication [00:01:00] triangle is what? What it sounds like. Instead of communication flowing directly between two people, it moves through a third person.
So instead of Anna talking to Bob, it becomes Anna, Kathy, then Bob, and that middle rule feels like. Subtle. Sometimes it feels helpful, uh, like, like you have a mediator or a translator, but over time it starts to create like confusion, um, misinformation or misinterpretation, and starts to feel like heavy, like emotionally, like it's, it's not yours.
It's not even your problem. But you're trying to be helpful. Uh, and it, and it happens really easily in polyamory, right? Because non-monogamy naturally creates more relational connections. There's more people, more emotions, more opportunities for overlap. [00:02:00] And when something deals hard in one relationship, it's so normal and natural to turn to another partner for support.
Like you wanna be seen. You want validation, you want comfort, you want emotional support. And there's, there's nothing wrong with that, right? In general, but the lines start to get a little bit blurry. Because one of the biggest issues with triangulation is, uh, like a, a game of emotional telephone, right?
You're no longer hearing directly from the person involved. You're hearing a version filtered through somebody else's perspective, their emotions, their interpretation, their history, and then you're reacting to that version. Not the actual person that you're dealing with, not the full context of the whole story and not the repair that might happen later actually.
And so this is how you like tension starts building in places that it doesn't need to be.[00:03:00]
One of the hardest parts of triangulation is what happens after the original conflict resolves. Right, because usually it does resolve, right? Two people repair whatever conflict they had. They reconnect, they move forward, and the third person that maybe was vented to or uh, was giving advice or trying to help out what they usually weren't a part of that repair.
And they're still holding the emotional residue. They're still holding onto like the frustration or protectiveness the judgment.
And,
and now their energy has shifted a bit in a way that nobody, like, it's hard to, it's hard to name it, it's hard to know what really happened there. Right. And that's, that's the [00:04:00] cost of being pulled into a triangle of communication. Like you end up carrying relationship history that isn't actually yours that you weren't a part of.
Right.
Especially if we're talking about a hinge partner, right? Let's say my, my nesting partner is venting to me about my metamor, and I'm trying to give them advice, but I'm also feeling a little blah about the things that they've got going on. I'm like, whatever. And then, and then. My, my nesting partner and, and their other partner, my metamore, they make up, and here I am, like still feeling not so awesome about my Metamore or, uh, you know, maybe, maybe my partner is telling me how my metamore is feeling about things and making their decisions in my relationship, my nesting partners making decisions about our [00:05:00] relationship, but telling me.
That it's because of all the things my metamore is feeling. And now I'm in this weird position of like, this is actually an issue between me and my partner, but I want to blame my Metamore, right? Because they're not the person I'm in love with. And it's really not on them. It's on my partner, but, but here I am just getting this like secondhand information.
Uh, it's hard, but, and then there's another extreme that happens, right? When people start to recognize this, then they tend to swing really hard the other direction. So then they're like, okay, I just won't talk about anything at all. I just won't share any information. No sharing, no processing. Everything stays separate completely.
And that can feel really rigid. That can feel isolating. It also can feel like, uh, like, but I thought we wanted transparency in our relationships, and now here I am hiding things. [00:06:00] Right. Like, like most of us want some level of openness and emotional transparency, and so, so that's swinging too hard in the other direction, right?
So like, we don't, we don't wanna turn this into like, silence and saying nothing. So the, the healthy connection, we're looking, uh, nope.
The healthy communication that we're looking for in non-monogamy isn't. About saying less. It's about owning what is yours, your feelings, your experience, your perspective, right? Instead of sharing like, oh, they're upset about X, Y, Z, you might share, I'm feeling tension because of a thing that happened with my partner.
Or instead of like, they think you did this. You might say like, I noticed the reaction I had to the, to this situation. And this keeps the communication grounded in reality [00:07:00] and with the right people instead of somebody outside of it making assumptions.
And this is something I come back to a lot in my own life and with my clients. Stay in your lane and stay in your truth and stay in your lane. Meaning like stay in your experience, your feelings, your reactions, and, and staying in your truth means like what is actually yours to share, not what someone else said or what you think someone else is feeling, or what your interpretation of, of a situation is.
Not a story that you're filling in the blanks on, right? Because. As soon as you step out of your own lane, you start speaking for other people and things can get really messy then, right? Things start to get a little distorted. That's where you get [00:08:00] triangles, triangulation. So, um, so when you stay in your lane and you stay in your truth and the communication gets cleaner, a little more grounded, a little more direct, a little more honest, it's easier to know what to navi, how to navigate it.
Uh, it allows everyone involved to own their part of the relationship.
So one of the important distinctions here is the difference between venting and processing, right? 'cause they kind of sound similar on the surface, but they actually land really differently in the nervous system of the person listening. The energy is different.
So venting is like they did X, Y, Z. They always do this. Can you believe they said that? I don't think they respect me at all. Right. Um, an example is like, [00:09:00] they canceled on me again last minute. They're so inconsiderate. I don't think they even care about my time. Right. And now the person you're talking to that you're venting this to, they're pulled into something.
They're pulled into some drama, and they might start feeling protective of you or defensive of the other person. Right. Or, or annoyed at them. Um, and they're being invited into choosing a side into a, a role into, uh, an emotional alliance, right. Versus processing. Which is things more like, I'm feeling overwhelmed.
I'm trying to understand my reaction to this. I noticed I got really triggered when this happened. I'm not sure what I need yet, but I wanna move through this thoughtfully, right? Maybe I can bounce some things off of you on what I'm feeling. So the same example I gave might sound, if we're processing, it might sound more like I noticed, I felt [00:10:00] really hurt because they canceled on me last minute.
It definitely brought up some feelings around not feeling prioritized, and I'm trying to understand what I need from them before I talk to them. Do you feel the difference, like, like one is pulling someone into the story of who's right and who's wrong, and the other is staying connected to your internal experience and maybe getting some feedback to process it.
So another example of venting might be. Uh, they're being so jealous and controlling right now, I don't even know how to deal with them. Right. And processing with someone would be more like, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by how much reassurance they're needing right now, and I'm trying to figure out how to respond and be compassionate without shutting down or putting up walls,
right? And this, this difference between those two matters a lot. Because [00:11:00] we don't wanna pull someone into drama, right? We don't wanna make them choose sides. Uh, although a lot of us really enjoy that. It's a lot of fun, but it's not helpful for relationships long term. Right. Once someone is like, recruited into your little alliance, you're, you're like siding with you versus the other person, which.
Uh, you know, in this, in this context is your partner. You don't wanna be against your partner, right? And, and so once you've recruited someone onto your side, into your team, their nervous system starts to organize around protecting you and defending you.
Maybe may also, maybe around judgment, right? Around making sense of who's right and who's wrong. Uh, whereas processing helps you get to clarity it, it keeps the focus on your internal [00:12:00] experience. It creates space for curiosity instead of certainty. It allows the person listening to support you without being, becoming a part of the conflict and a part of the drama.
And, and while vent venting builds like alliances and teams, those alliances are formed usually around incomplete information, right? Everyone has their side of the story. I know we've all heard that. And so what they're getting is like a little piece, a little incomplete information about a moment in time, about a version of a story that hasn't gone through repair yet.
So when, when those things shift, when the repair happens. That alliance turns into a lingering sense of tension. One person has moved on and another is still holding the emotional imprint with actually no opportunity to move on and repair because it's not their relationship. Processing builds awareness.
It helps you understand your own triggers, your own needs, your own patterns, and it keeps the [00:13:00] responsibility where it belongs. It allows the relationships to stay cleaner and, and over time. The difference adds up. Okay? Because when, when triangulation is your communication pattern in your relationships, the relationships feel heavier.
They're more confusing, they're more charged, they got more drama in 'em. But when we, each of us practice ownership of our feelings, of our story, of our communication, all of the relationships have, um, more clarity, more trust, more, uh, emotional safety. Right. There's less guessing happening. There's less carrying things that weren't yours to hold.
There's less tension, and that little shift can completely change how your relationships feel day to day.
So if you're ever unsure in the moment, this is where you come back to that anchor. [00:14:00] Stay in your lane, stay in your truth, and then ask yourself, am I sharing this to process my own feelings? Or am I recruiting someone to my side of a conflict? And that question alone can really change how you're communicating in all of your relationships.
So if you're navigating any of this right now, I want you to know you're not doing anything wrong. You're not wrong or bad. This is a very human pattern. We all want support. We all wanna be understood. The goal here is not perfection. It never is. It's just like having awareness because when you start to notice.
The triangles, you, you can step out of them, right? When you notice what's happening, you can change it. And when you step out of those patterns, you create space for cleaner communication, stronger boundaries, relationships that feel a lot lighter.
And of course, as always like, take what resonates from this. Leave the rest, right? Your relationships are uniquely yours. [00:15:00] I'm, I, I don't have the answer for everybody, but if you do want support that's tailored specifically to your situation, that's where one-on-one coaching can, can really make a difference, right?
You can book a clarity call with me, uh, at Ellecia payne.com/call or grab the link in the show notes. And if this episode gave you some new perspective, follow the follow. Follow the podcast, leave a review or a comment and maybe share it with someone else who's navigating non-monogamy as well. It, it really helps people find this work.
Thank you so much for being here. Bye.