Polysecure

by Jessica Fern

  In nonmonogamy, expressed delight is imperative. The paradigm shift from the monogamous mindset of I am with you because you are the only one for me to the nonmonogamous view that I am with you because you are special and unique, but not the only one, can be difficult to grasp. Even when people don’t want to be, the hangover of monogamous thinking often leaves people feeling competitive with their metamours and/or doubtful as to why their partners would want to be with them if they don’t have the specific qualities, circumstances, sexual interests or physical attributes that other partners have. Even when people have a healthy sense of self and esteem, they still need positive feedback as to why their partners cherish them and choose to be with them, especially when, theoretically, they can choose to be with many others. There is nothing wrong with needing to hear why you are wanted and valued by your partners and it is important for you to be able to communicate to your partners why they specifically matter to you. Experiencing expressed delight and knowing the ways you are precious in your partners’ lives can be an important resource to lean on when feeling jealous or threatened by a metamour or potential new partners. Instead of spinning out into doubt and fear, being able to recall the ways your partners experience you as special, even irreplaceable, can soothe the anxious mind and allow for more compersion to arise.

  Questions to Consider

  How do you already show expressed delight for your partners?

  Would your partners like more or different expressed delight from you? How can you provide this?

  How do your partners let you know that you are unique, special and precious to them?

  Are there additional or different ways that you would like to experience expressed delight from your partners?

  Are there certain situations (e.g., before or after your partner is out on a date with someone else) that expressed delight is more or less supportive to you and/or your partners?

  Things to Try and to Experiment With

  Let your partner know in spoken and/or written word how they enrich your life.

  Let your partner know in spoken and/or written word how unique and special they are to you.

  Let your partner know in spoken and/or written word the specific things that you love and appreciate about them. These should be based on who they are versus the things that they do for you.

  If you are less of a verbal type, make a meal, do a dance, create a piece of art or do something fitting to your style that is effective at intentionally representing and expressing to your partners how unique and precious they are to you.

  After spending time with a partner, let them know the things you enjoyed about your time together and what specific things they did that were meaningful to you. You can do this either right when you are saying goodbye, as you are going to bed together or within a few hours or days after you were together.

  With your partners, take on a gratitude practice where you set aside a regular time to each appreciate the ways in which they’ve been supportive or shown up that have been meaningful to each of you. You can share something your partner did that you are grateful for at the end of each day, or you can set aside a few minutes once a week to share your gratitude from the week.

  Flash your partner the eyes! You’d be surprised what just three seconds of the attachment gaze/beam gleam can do to fortify your attachment bond. When in a new relationship with someone, we rarely have to remind ourselves of this because everything in our body is easily oozing that this person is the eighth wonder of the world to us, but bringing this back in our longer-term relationships can support feeling that spark again. Seeing our partners giving the attachment gaze to other people might be painful when we are no longer in new relationship energy with that partner. Try intentionally sending the beam gleam to your partners and you will be pleasantly surprised at what it can do to feed each other’s attachment systems and strengthen your connection.

  A: Attunement

  Our attachment bonds are emotional bonds, and being able to emotionally tune into and connect with our partners is at the core of feeling safe and secure together. Attunement is a state of resonance with our partners and the act of turning towards them in an attempt to understand the fullness of their perspective and experience. Attuning to a partner does not mean that you have to agree with them and take on their experience as your own, but it does mean that you are willing to join them in their internal emotional world and their inner state of mind in order to empathize with what they are going through. Attunement is meeting your partner with curiosity, wanting to understand their feelings and needs. It is the feeling of being seen, understood and “gotten” by the other. As children, it is through being attuned to by our attachment figures, by having them mirror and match our experiences and help us make sense of our inner experiences, that we are able to then develop the ability to identify our own thoughts and emotions and subsequently self-regulate these emotional and mental states. As adults we still need to be met and understood in order to best regulate ourselves. It is through being connected with others, and through feeling held, understood and supported by others that we are able to tolerate and regulate our own emotional responses.

  There are certain challenges with attunement that can surface in attachment-based relationships. They include how to stay attuned to your partner when they are upset with you and how to stay attuned if you get triggered by them. In nonmonogamous relationships it can be additionally challenging to stay attuned to your partner when they are talking about one of their other partners, when jealousy arises or when the things they are sharing about others have implications for your relationship with them. When you are with multiple partners at the same time, you might also feel confusion around how to stay attuned to each of your partners. Just as the wants and needs of each relationship are different, the ways that we attune to each of our partners can also be different.

  Questions to Consider

  How do you experience your partners as attuning to you?

  How do you know that your partners “get” you and care about your experience?

  In what ways do you already attune to your partners?

  How could you better or differently attune to your partners to support them in feeling even more seen and understood?

  Are there ways that you would like your partners to better or differently attune to you that would support you in feeling even more seen and understood?

  Things to Try and to Experiment With

  Listen with your heart. When listening to your partner, put your solution-orientated brain aside for a few minutes. Soften your eyes, bring warmth to your face, open up your heart and listen.

  Ask questions from genuine curiosity and the desire to truly understand, rather than from preconceived notions about what your partner has already done or what you think they should do. Be careful about asking questions that are really just searching for evidence to either make yourself feel better, to prove them wrong or to expose them as lying in some way. Also, be careful not to interrogate or manipulate through your questions.

  Make an effort to track something that your partner is going through. For example, if you know they went to an event or have an aunt in the hospital, follow up by asking them how the event was or how their aunt is doing.

  Genuinely ask your partner about how they are doing, whether in general or about something specific. Use open-ended questions that encourage them to share any feelings or needs they have surrounding the situation, what their experience has been, what it means to them and how they have been impacted by it.

  Bring your bodies into attunement. Sex can be a great way to do this, especially if you take turns just focusing on what one partner likes and wants. You can also explore techniques and exercises such as sitting or spooning and breathing together, bringing your bodies and breath into harmony in nonsexual ways.

  Take a pause in your day, think about something that you know one of your partners is grappling with and put yourself in their shoes for a few minutes.

&
nbsp; When listening to your partner talk about another partner (or something else that has the potential to trigger you) put your friend hat on instead of your partner hat. Any concerns or questions that you may have can still be brought up eventually, but do your best to initially separate what they are sharing and what it means to them from how it impacts you.

  Slow down your conversation by taking turns paraphrasing what you just heard the other partner say before you respond to what they said.

  Learn non-violent communication or other empathy-based techniques that encourage you to empathically reflect back to your partner what they are feeling and needing.

  Check out John Gottman’s book The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples.

  R: Rituals and Routines

  Our attachment system is comforted by routine and regularity. In our relationships with our attachment figures, we tend to prefer partners who are more reliable and situations where we can experience the ease of generally knowing what to expect and not be surprised to the point of disruption. The mundane rituals of everyday life can put many of our worries to rest and remind us that we are an integral part of our partners’ lives, and the profound rituals of commitment ceremonies and rites of passage can significantly deepen and strengthen our bonds. The outer commitment we make to a relationship through ceremonies or officially asking someone to be our partner can offer structure and definition, and the day-to-day ways that we engage with one another—the micro routines and rituals of relationship that we create—can be seen as the inner commitment we make to show up for the relationship wholeheartedly and not just because there might be an outer, more explicit commitment to rely on.

  In monogamy, the daily routines of a relationship can be easier to fall into. There are only two people to consider, and the larger rituals and relationship rites of passage such as marriage, having children or moving in together are more obvious, culturally expected and supported. In nonmonogamy, socially recognized ways of honoring the relationship can be less clear, and it can be more difficult to find our rhythm with a partner, especially when we don’t live with our partner and/or when one of you already lives with other partners. Nonmonogamous relationships do have their own relationship rites of passage, like first sleepovers, trips away together or having sex without a barrier for the first time, but the significance of these events can be easily missed by normative standards. However, it is just as important in our nonmonogamous relationships to find the special things, big and small, that we do with our partners. The routines that we can rely on and look forward to are an important part of secure functioning in our CNM attachment-based relationships.

  It is also important to create rituals and routines that honor the transitional moments when you and your partners are parting or reuniting. Our attachment systems are very sensitive to comings and goings. Abrupt departures and sudden arrivals can all be jarring to the nervous system, and hellos or goodbyes left unacknowledged can be disconnective. Understanding what we need to reconnect after being apart from our partner and what we might need to feel secure when saying goodbye might seem like subtle things to focus on, but they should not be underestimated in their impact. One polyamorous colleague of mine intentionally knows the love languages† of each of his different partners, and when they reunite after being apart he does his best to immediately give them their primary love language as a way to reinforce their connection and set the stage for the rest of their time together.

  Additionally, how partners say goodbye before one of them goes on a date with someone else or how they reunite after having been with other partners can make a big difference in feeling safe and sound with each other. Some people don’t want much pomp and circumstance when saying goodbye, while others need moments of connection with each other before their partner goes off on a date with someone else. If partners live together, they may request that the partner who has been with someone else shower before coming to bed, they may desire emotional or physical contact after being apart or they may prefer to sleep in separate rooms on date nights with others.

  While having routines is definitely important in our attachment-based relationships, having times where we also break out of our routines can be just as significant. We can easily fall into default patterns and ruts in our relationships. Remembering the importance of stepping out of our day-to-day cycles, focusing on some novelty, play and adventure can revivify and strengthen our connections with partners.

  Questions to Consider

  What are the routines my partners and I already have that are meaningful to me and support me in feeling safe and secure together?

  What rituals have we participated in or what relationship rites of passage have we gone through that have brought us closer?

  How do I like to be celebrated or to celebrate others?

  Are there any daily or regular routines that would support me in feeling more secure with my partners?

  Are there any relationship rites of passage or rituals that could further deepen our bond?

  What do you and your partners each need to reconnect with each other after being apart?

  Are there ways of checking in or saying goodbye before going on a date with another person that would create more safety and security? How do you want to connect or be approached afterwards?

  Things to Try and to Experiment With

  Create bedtime or waking rituals with your partners, whether or not you live together. Make sure to also support and allow space for your nesting partners to create their own bedtime and waking rituals with other partners.

  Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and accomplishments with your partners. When it comes to birthdays, communicate ahead of time about what your hopes and desires are for your birthday and be careful about expecting your partner to be with you on their birthday just because that’s what you would prefer. Give your partners the autonomy to spend their birthday however and with whomever they would like. It’s not your day to claim.

  Grieve losses and transitions together.

  Create holiday rituals that honor the relationship, whether or not they are on the actual day of the holiday.

  Create standing dates and dedicate time to regular activities together. Be transparent with partners about any standing dates you already have with other partners or any standing dates that you are looking to create. Also, be transparent with your partners about specific activities or terms of endearment that are designated just for certain relationships. Some polyamorous people believe that you should never have certain things or places that only belong to one relationship, while other people have few qualms about this. I take the middle path on this issue because I don’t know if it is completely realistic to abolish all expressions of “what’s ours” from a relationship (some forms of couple identity can be very healthy in polyamory) and I’ve also seen the powerful healing effect that can happen when people are allowed to ask for something they want to stay within a certain relationship. As long as it’s transparent and understood to everyone involved what things belong to a certain relationship and why, it can work well. It is additionally important that all relationships have the freedom to be able to organically create their own version of the things or activities that are theirs. It’s key that requests are reasonable (e.g., we like to listen to this specific podcast together or please call only me “sugar puff” rather than limits such as you can’t go to Mexico with anyone else or you can only do this sexual position with me). Allocating certain things to relationships can be workable, but definitely tread carefully and transparently, because these waters can become dangerous and hierarchical very quickly.

  Create pet names and special terms of endearment for each other. It’s OK to ask that some names or terms of endearment are only shared with each other. But again, be reasonable and very conscious and inclusive of as many partners as possible when setting up such agreements.

  Have a commitment ceremony with your partner. Currently in the United States, people can only get legally m
arried to one person at a time, but there is nothing that stops you from having commitment ceremonies with other partners. You can create your own ceremony that you conduct together, you can have friends, family members, mentors or other partners officiate a ceremony for you, or you can find an officiant friendly to nonmonogamy to help you co-create and perform a ceremony that is meaningful to you and your partners.

  Step out of your routines and rituals. Set aside a day that is unscheduled to spend together, whether at home or doing something out in the world that you normally don’t do together.

  T: Turning Towards after Conflict

  In any relationship, ruptures are inevitable. Relationships are not static but an ongoing flow of harmony to disharmony, rupture and repair, connection, disconnection and back into connection again. We are all different from each other and so we are all eventually going to slip up, make mistakes, say things that we wish we could take back or forget things that are important to our partners. Even if we wanted to be, we can’t be perfectly present and attentive to our partners all the time, every time. What matters is not that we have ruptures, but how we repair them. When there is conflict and disagreement or when attunement and connection have been lost, it is how we repair and find our way back to our partners that builds secure attachment and relational resilience. Conflicts left unrepaired can leave lasting effects on our sense of trust, safety and security. In terms of attachment styles, people functioning from a secure style are more likely to use constructive and mutually beneficial problem-solving strategies than people who are more anxiously attached. They are also more likely to accommodate their partners than people who are avoidantly attached, demonstrating their joint concern for their own interests and their partner’s interests as well as for enhancing the relationship.