Just a Polywog...

Shiny

New member
Hello, I'm fairly new to the forums as I am to poly, although you could argue that my fiance and I have been poly for quite a bit now given that we kinda stumbled into it. The experience has and continues to be an exhilarating one, but I've hit my stumbling blocks that I'm working through with my lovable Leo. For example, last summer we met a couple and things really seemed to work out between the four of us. Yet now, 4 months later, after having permission from my fiance to pursue things further with the gentleman from the couple, my poor Leo is suffering from a bought of jealousy because instead of having a quad-type relationship its looking more and more like a Vee.

But enough of my troubles, I was simply posting here today to finally introduce myself as it seemed rude of me to continue lurking. :)
 
It's a common misconception that having your own other partner will somehow prevent you from feeling jealous about your partner's other partner. It seems like a lot of people new to polyamory fall into that trap.

It's not hard to see where that thinking comes from. I think fundamentally, it's mistaking "jealousy" for "envy." Envy is like... you have cake, so I want cake. If I get cake, then I will no longer envy your cake. But jealousy is more complex. It usually stems from insecurity. I made you cookies. Oh, that guy just gave you cake. His cake is probably better than my cookies. Now you won't want my cookies. I'm sad because my cookies aren't good enough for you.

At the end of the day, it will be his responsibility to deal with his jealousy. You can be loving and supportive and understanding, but he'll have to do the hard work to feel better about this. There are lots of threads here and resources online for coping, just search for "jealousy" on here or "polyamory jealousy" on Google.
 
Thanks Schrodinger's Cat! I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Thanks so much for your advice! ^-^
 
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