🤔 Who are they texting?
🤔 Who is this friend of the opposite sex they have?
🤔 What about that one at work who they seem to be getting a little too friendly with?
🤔 Is their behavior crossing the line into "technically" cheating? Am I crazy for being worried about it? Maybe it's "micro-cheating".
💝Monogamy sells us a story that it is valuable because it quells the anxiety that our partner may leave. But all it does is push that anxiety to another place.
⏩Instead of worrying about how you compare to their other partners or options they're interacting with, you worry about whether they're cheating
🚨And if you ask them? Your relationship structure incentivizes them to lie about it, which gives you even more good reason to worry. Instead of an honest answer, which they could give in a polyamorous context, they now may act weird even if nothing weird is going on simply because they worry you're going to interpret it wrong.
🎯In polyamory, you worry your partner may leave you for a better option. In monogamy, you worry your partner may leave you for a better option and lie to you the entire time about it before they actually do. It's clear to me which of those is worse.
😎Your anxieties and insecurities are the problem, not the relationship structure. Choosing monogamy over polyamory to solve your anxieties is no more effective than insisting you can go through your partner's phone, it gives you a very temporary feeling of control but ultimately will likely only end up fueling your anxieties in the long run and doesn't solve the root issue. A partner who knows their phone gets looked through likely isn't going to let themselves get caught cheating this way, but what is likely to happen is for you to see a text your anxiety can latch onto and spiral with.
😘 Real security comes from recognizing and fighting your own anxieties and choosing partners who demonstrate security and commitment on a regular basis. It comes from being the best partner you can be so that your partner never wants to leave. People who put energy there instead of into anxiety have much happier relationships and reduce the chance of cheating in the first place.
🔐 Security also comes from acknowledging that most relationships are temporary, so we should enjoy them while we have them, and that some day we probably, statistically, will be replaced. Or at the very least, even if we stay together, the person we know now will not exist in ten years because they will have changed, loss is inevitable.
#relationships #monogamy #polyamory #dating #anxiety