A vulnerable story from me today

“I want to have sex with someone but my partner feels uncomfortable about it. What do I do?” 🍆👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏼

Yup. This quote is from me. 💁🏻‍♀️🫠

I'd like to share a hugely personal & vulnerable story with you today.

Why?

Because there aren’t enough spaces where we get to truly & openly peek into other people's relationships 👀 (I mean, I'm lucky I do. But that's part of my job 😂). And I think it can be so inspiring & affirming to do so.

Perhaps reading this will put words to things you experience (even if you're monogamous). Or perhaps you'll learn a thing or two about processing jealousy, hard emotions & conflicting needs….. in any case, I hope it's valuable! 🫶🏻🤓

It's also a very interesting "sequel" to my newsletter two years ago about "How my pursuit for freedom sabotaged my relationship". It's a good one, if you want to go back and read it!!

But let's not get distracted people!!!....... WITHOUT FURHTER ADO. Here is my deeply meaningful recent poly experience (written with the consent of my partner). 🥰🫖☕

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📚 CHAPTER 1

You might already know I have been with my partner, Nic, for over a year and he has another partner in Amsterdam. We are long distance and happily poly. I love him to bits.

Since we fell in love in February, it's become gradually harder for Nic to be ok with my sexual freeness. Which makes sense! More attachment = higher emotional stakes= more chance of triggering jealousy.

No points for guessing I'm the slu*t of the relationship. 👯

One day in April this year, I really put things to the test when I decided to live with a good friend of mine. Who is a BOY 👨🏻 that I’ve always been sexually attracted to (everyone knows, it's no secret). 😂🍆 Nic has been impressively supportive, but understandably a bit cautious. 💁🏻‍♀️

Now, ⚠️ I’m a bit of a relationship anarchist. This means different things to different people. For me, that means sharing half naked cuddles with friends, holding hands with friends, spanking butts, air humping, showering together etc. That doesn’t HAVE to be the case, but I’m a pretty flirtatious person so having these normalised in friendships are important to me.

You can imagine this was an accelerated learning curve for Nic 🎢- to have a partner be THIS touch-y feely with all her friends 🙀. It can easily flair up a partner’s “what-makes-ME-special,-if-you-do-this-with-everyone?” part.

Nic has been moving through it beautifully, I have to say.

📚 CHAPTER 2: CASUAL S.EX

And then, The Day came: when my flatmate and I decided we really wanted to have casual sex together.

This was BIG. Nic needed more time/space before he could feel good about me having sex with him. Which was TOTALLY understandable.

Initially ALL my teenage parts flared up - the parts that don’t like to be controlled wanted to rebel. I felt resentful. I felt this indescribable urgency to sleep with my friend NOW. 😂

💡 Lesson 1: oh teenager parts! I see you and all your authority trauma!! 😬🫠

But I quickly soothed my teenage parts and settled into an understanding that Nic is really doing his best. How?

I needed to feel:

1️⃣ empathy for Nic i.e. the impact it was having on him. I’ve never experienced jealousy so my understanding of it was very intellectual. Seeing his emotions & his fears really touched me.

2️⃣ that Nic truly WANTED this freedom for me, that he WANTED to do the work to process his jealousy and that he WANTED to feel compersion! (a poly term for “feeling happy for me”). Knowing this felt important. ♥️♥️♥️

SO

Fast forward 3 months later….. 📆 I had moved out of the flat with my friend for unrelated reasons - and Nic and I had a handful of conversations about what we should do.

💬 What does it look like to work through jealousy?

💬 What’s the magical formula to “cure” it, lol?

It’s not obvious honestly.

Nic said he is happy to share his process (if you want to hear it - let me know!) 👀🐒 …… but what was my experience & responsibility in all this?

Y'KNOW, it’s a funny position to be in. I’m the one who seems to be in the “privileged” role. It’s easy to trivialise my desire to have s.ex with others. It’s easy for me to tell myself “hey, keep it in your pants, cos your partner is going through (more) pain here”.

But I wasn’t being totally honest with myself.

💁🏻‍♀️ How important was this for me?

💁🏻‍♀️ How long was I willing to wait?

I realise it’s not easy answering these questions. LIKE REALLY NOT EASY. Instead I was trying to be patient & show up for Nic in all his challenges, to the point of overriding my own feelings.

📚 CHAPTER 3: PLAYING THE MARTYR

It was like I didn’t give myself a CHOICE. Surely, I had to go at Nic’s pace. Wasn’t I his only resource? Wasn’t I at least partially responsible? (These are all stories I told myself. They didn't come from Nic!).

Of course, it didn’t help that I had a vested interest in Nic “healing” his jealousy obviously so that I could sleep with my friend….. which feels yucky to say!!! 🤢

That’s when things started to go sour. 👎🏼 I could feel myself wanting to accelerate Nic’s process. I felt resentful that I “had” to get involved in Nic’s process around jealousy/masculinity/insecurity. I resented taking on his work. 😤 (Yep. Recovering rescuer here! 👋🏼).

But the reality was I DIDN’T NEED TO. He didn’t even ask me to. I just thought I HAD to - as a “good partner” (red flagggg, Haneen 🚩). Surely, to be a good partner, I had to be unrelentingly kind and patient to the partner whose pain was “greater”?!) Mmmmm, I LOVE BEING THE MARTYR.

💡 Lesson 2: whenever I next feel resentful, ask myself what I think I HAVE to do and replace it with “I CHOOSE to ….. because….”

📚 CHAPTER 4: WHAT WAS MY NEED?

All of this meant I ignored my (very important) need for self-expression. I wanted to be sensual, dance, have s.ex - I wanted to be able to honour the desires of my body in the present moment. This was soooo important to me.

💡 Lesson 4: This was my why. If you want to apply this to your relationship, my question to you is: what does [YOUR DESIRE] give you, that your partner struggles with? [in my case X = freedom to have sex with others]. What’s your need underneath it? How important is it to you?

Some months later, the question of me having sex with my friend came up again.

We talked about the impact on Nic and his fears. There was a LOT of catastrophising. Hours and hours of hypothetical scenarios were discussed. (Raise a hand if you’re a catastrophiser 🙋🏻😝)

I realised I struggled to listen to all of Nic’s thoughts and feelings around this. I wanted Nic to only share his feelings once he had processed separately, so that I could receive a clear request & need from him. This was because I had a tendency to get sucked into the overwhelm that he would experience (hellooooo boundary work!!).

📚 CHAPTER 5: THE CLIFF!!

Fast forward again - it’s now the first time I’m seeing my friend after parting ways as flatmates. It quickly became clear that I could no longer be in integrity with myself and not have sex with my friend.

I was being a shell of myself, stuck in a ball of helplessness, resentment and frustration. I couldn’t focus at work. I felt trapped. And that’s when I realised - I had no more room to give Nic. 😱 So I did something scary.

I called Nic and explained (with deep care) that I had made a decision to sleep with my friend. That I was terrified of the consequences and that I loved him and that I absolutely did not want it to result in a break-up.💔 I said I would be willing and happy to offer anything else Nic might need (e.g. aftercare, a phone conversation after I had s.ex, a special trip I organise as a celebration of this milestone etc…) but that I had truly exhausted my “tank” ⛽ for giving him more space and time. Was there a way for me to show him my love and care that WASN’T about me giving Nic more space? 🌱

AND THIS WAS THE BIG GAME CHANGER. I took a position and I stopped care-taking. I stopped putting myself in the “victim/rescuer” role.

Words cannot describe how affirming and in love I felt with Nic and his response to my boundary.

He didn’t guilt me, not ONCE. He expressed sadness, fear … and a little bit of anger that I hadn’t been so honest with him about how much I was holding onto before.

And he gave me his blessing.

It felt numb at first. I couldn’t quite accept it. And it only shifted once Nic affirmed that he was giving me this blessing with an open heart. That he wanted me to have a good time and not to carry his pain.

It made me cry. It moved me so much. It was the biggest symbolic gift a partner has ever given me. Not only the permission, but the encouragement and celebration of my agency that my partner gave me.

The trust and love needed for Nic to say that was significant, and a moment I’ll never forget. I was so grateful.

You’re probably dying to know what happened next. So far, the fear has been worse than reality. Nic has been incredible on the receiving end of this. Time will of course tell how this milestone unfolds and how it shifts our poly relationship together. But I am happy.

I feel affirmed in my desire to be poly.

And I feel empowered and excited to share with you all because I know relationships are hard. I'm not perfect, no one's perfect. But when you show up with truth & care, who knows what you can create together.

💡 Lesson 5: My learning here is to connect with my desires more deeply, without trying to make them more palatable to my partner. To strike a balance between supporting my partner, and sharing what’s real for me. And to not take responsibility for my partner’s process (that doesn’t mean I stop caring!).

Remember that you always have a choice. Even if it’s a hard choice. When you keep fearing taking a stance, you stay stuck in the situation you resent!

If you want any support on this, feel free to get in touch!

Love

Haneen x

P.S. I didn’t cover Nic's whole experience of this. It feels rather incomplete. If you want to hear his side, please message me with this desire and I'll dedicate the next blog to it!