For women who are in a poly/enm/open relationship, how do you remain emotionally secured with your main partner?
For women who are in a poly/enm/open relationship, how do you remain emotionally secured with your main partner?
r/AskWomen
For women who are in a poly/enm/open relationship, how do you remain emotionally secured with your main partner?
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Not sure if you mean like how do we, together, maintain emotional security or how do I feel emotionally secure on my own.
But, we generally do scheduled check ins once a week, where we only talk about our relationship. Sometimes this involves talking a bit about other relationships, but we don’t talk about logistics or about how other relationships are going. It’s just for us. It opens space for emotional conversations. We used to have a couples therapist because neither of us are very good at expressing emotions. It helped. We try hard to go on dates and prioritize connection. Sometimes it’s easier than other times.
But, I think a lot of feeling emotionally secure really comes from within. Therapy has helped me with that. I also generally try to focus on myself. So like if my partner goes on a trip with his other partner, I try to view it as valuable me time and time to connect with myself. I think if you feel secure on your own, it’s easier to feel secure with others.
It’s all about honesty and trust, as cliché as that sounds I guess.
Like, you have to be really honest with yourself first about things like:
You have to have a lot of trust that this person loves you and isn’t comparing you to others. My husband is on vacation with a girlfriend right now, and… I’m not worried about it because I know it’s not me or her.
Love (and attraction) are not finite resources. But time is. And learning that time management and expectation management are just skills, not necessarily deep indicators of something, is really important.
And then… you just have to learn to talk it out when things happen. You HAVE to be able to talk to each other about your feelings, and take responsibility for your parts without taking responsibility for theirs.
Emotional security is something we both developed in therapy well before meeting each other. That’s a journey but I think it comes from personal work more than anything he can do.
We have agreements built into our relationship that keep us strong: Weekly check-ins, a long hug when we come back from a date, and I think the biggest is we respect the agreements we have created.
I know he isn’t going anywhere, because he is a person of his word, he respects me and regularly shows examples of that respect. I don’t have to beg for affection, or care. But these are all traits he had when we met, and I would expect that in a monogamous relationship too.
Like others have said, I think some of that security comes from within. I am an emotionally-regulated person who knows how to communicate my needs and concerns. I know how to talk myself down when upset, act rationally, and maintain balance in my life.
In my marriage, I have come to trust my partner after years of continued trust-building. He is where is says he is. He does what he says he’ll do. He means what he says he means. We have compersion for each other and go out of our way to make the other feel loved. When he is out on a date with someone else, it doesn’t bother me because I know he loves me. I feel loved and listened to. There have been times in the past 14 years where I have not felt as loved, but in those moments, he listens and we find a way to restore that.
It also really helps that I am not a jealous person at all.
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Reading Jessica Fern’s book Polysecure helped me a lot with this. It’s about how attachment styles apply to non-monogamy, among other things.
Communication plays a very large part. Establishing some kind of agreement/ rules on what you want to share and what shouldn’t be shared.
And idk how common this is, but we have 2 consistent partners outside of eachother and they are more like FWBs, not really dating partners. We all get together and we hangout separately as well. We are all friends and act as any “normal” friends do and would.
We established rules early on and do our best to follow them. We also touch base frequently and address anything that can be bothering either of us. There is also full and complete trust in one another and if either of us break, or bend, any of our rules we are open with the other about it.
Having a good line of communication and having full and complete trust is paramount. I would spend time developing and establishing that before going down any other route