Is DADT ok?

M

MsEmotional

Member
Ponytail is seeing someone else. In all logical respects, this is a good thing. However, it makes me incredibly sad. I have been working though some exercises on jealousy, trying to understand why I feel this way, but I am still really struggling.

In theory, I know it’s okay. It would be hypocritical of me to say that Ponytail shouldn’t date when clearly I think it is totally fine for me to have multiple partners. Besides that, I think he seems more balanced and comfortable now that he has someone else besides me to occupy his headspace. But I feel no sense of compersion, and when he talks about her I want to burst into tears.

Yesterday he mentioned in passing that he and this new girl woud he having “the talk” (about safe sex and risk factors) the next time they got together. I know that he intended this as reassurance, but it made me really upset. One little sentence that conjured up the image of him being intimate with someone else and I felt super sad and upset with myself.

So, I just asked him not to talk to me about her.

I remember hearing (maybe in the book More Than Two?) that don’t ask don’t tell is not generally recommended — that it is a band-aid covering up deeper issues. On top of that, I know how hard it is to self-censor, and I don’t think it is fair of me to tell Ponytail to never mention another important person around me.

Has anyone been in this situation before? Does temporary DADT help? What do you do to concur the deeper issues in the meantime? Is there another way that I can address my feelings?
 
It can be a useful transition tool. I know some folks who had it for six months or so to help them get used to a new situation, new relationship, etc.

I think personally it can be unhealthy if it is used to ignore or not deal with a situation. So for instance, if you put a never ever talk about his other partner with me and that silence allowed you to not sort out your own feelings about it, for me, that would be an unhealthy instance of DADT. So as an avoidance technique I believe it causes more trouble in the long run than facing one's feelings or concerns.

It's ok to have feelings about Ponytail seeing someone else. Keep feeling them. Feelings that are fully felt (and not suppressed, shunted aside or experienced as something else) are more likely to move on. Like when you want to cry when he talks about her. If you keep feeling that fully, as painful and unpleasant as it is, eventually you might get to a place where you just don't want to cry. That feeling of crying has passed. Maybe you still get a little sad but not a desire to cry.

Compersion is not required to 'do' poly. It's a nice bonus if it happens but it's not necessary to feel compersion, ever. I generally do not feel compersion. I want my partners to be happy and I am supportive of them but I don't get joy out of their being romantically or sexually involved with others. So if you feel compersion, that's great but don't feel like you have to in order to be poly. You don't.

Also, finally, there is a difference between DADT and privacy. For instance, I am really uninterested in hearing details about my partner's sexual activities with other people. I'm glad they are having fun and I want a general sense of what's going on with them. But I do not need to hear what position, where, etc. I've had some former partners who really liked hearing that kind of thing and wanted to share that with me. We came to an agreement that because I'm uninterested, they would talk about that with their other partners. And we figured out what was ok for us to share about our activities with others (sexual health stuff, if we were seeing someone new, coordinating BDSM scenes with other people at a party we were both attending, etc.) So there is nothing wrong with Ponytail being reticent about sharing certain details about his other partner with you. You and he can figure out what those areas might be for you two (it varies from person to person quite a bit.)
 
IMO, that doesn't seem to be DADT, just a reasonable expectation that you aren't interested in details. Not wanting TMI is more likely a matter of not wanting his pursuits to impinge on your psychic space.

I'm generally willing to help my partners sort out problems & doubts they experience with others. However, I also don't want to be in "us time" (whether out to dinner or lying in bed naked together) & have this intimacy undercut by being expected to play therapist, much less to be a sounding board for how wonderful someone else is.
 
That's not DADT, Ms. Emotional. DADT is "Screw around all you want, just don't tell me about it." The purpose of DADT is to keep up the illusion of monogamy for one partner. That is very different than where you are, which is working with difficult feelings around a metamor of whom you're very well aware.
 
I do not share details about my husbands with each other. They know they both exist. They have met many times. They each know where I am when I am not home.

I do not share the intimate details of my seperate relationships.
 
MsEmotional said:
One little sentence that conjured up the image of him being intimate with someone else and I felt super sad and upset with myself.

So, I just asked him not to talk to me about her.
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The request is a bit unclear, as in "don't talk to me about her"... this evening? never?
As others have stated, it's reasonable to ask for a certain amount of filtering information, where the healthiest amount will be highly individual for each couple.

It's just that this feeling of sadness, this is not to be avoided. Like, you don't have to let yourself be exposed to it at any random time, but you should certainly give yourself a dedicated time where you can feel it to the full and look at it's roots. You can write it out, draw it, dance, use any method that you know and suits you. Your formulation is actually interesting - you didn't just feel upset, you felt upset with yourself. What's that about?
 
To clarify, it's not that he talks about her constantly. I ask "How was your date?" and he tells me what they did ("She made me dinner and then we cuddled and talked and then we made out for a little while,") but it's not like he gushes about her or goes into a lot of details. I've been asking, "How was your date?" with the expectation that I need to expose myself to some level of discomfort in order to face my feelings.....I was surprised that I reacted as strongly as I did.

So I stopped asking, it seemed like I was borrowing trouble. Then out of nowhere he mentioned that they were going to be having the safe sex talk this evening and I felt extremely upset. So that's what prompted me to ask that he not talk to me about her at all. It feels like even innocent random mentions of her freak me out much more than they should.
 
Tinwen said:
The request is a bit unclear, as in "don't talk to me about her"... this evening? never?
As others have stated, it's reasonable to ask for a certain amount of filtering information, where the healthiest amount will be highly individual for each couple.

It's just that this feeling of sadness, this is not to be avoided. Like, you don't have to let yourself be exposed to it at any random time, but you should certainly give yourself a dedicated time where you can feel it to the full and look at it's roots. You can write it out, draw it, dance, use any method that you know and suits you. Your formulation is actually interesting - you didn't just feel upset, you felt upset with yourself. What's that about?
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Yeah, I don't know what I'm asking for either. I guess I'm really confused. I'm hoping that somehow with time I will just get more used to the idea in my head and then I'll be able to hear him talk about it without feeling so awful.

As far as feeling upset with myself, it's a product of the fact that I specifically asked for this and now I'm rebelling against it. I wanted him to find someone nice and normal (like me!) to spend time with, so that he wouldn't be so sad about us not spending as much time together as he would like. And now he has that and it seems to be working and I want to scream and cry? WTF is up with that?

I'm going to go write more about this in my blog....
 
I deal with insecurity sometimes, and my boyfriend sometimes gives me details that ping the insecurity button. I've given him some pretty concrete requests: "Please don't talk to me about so-and-so unless I ask. And if I ask, please only answer the actual question, don't expand on it." I've also told him a few things I NEVER want to know and have told him that if I ask a question, and he can only answer it with one of the "never know" things, he should just tell me he can't answer my question.

For some people, that would be too many requests and boundaries, but it's what I need to feel comfortable and confident in the relationship.
 
KC43 said:
I deal with insecurity sometimes, and my boyfriend sometimes gives me details that ping the insecurity button. I've given him some pretty concrete requests: "Please don't talk to me about so-and-so unless I ask. And if I ask, please only answer the actual question, don't expand on it." I've also told him a few things I NEVER want to know and have told him that if I ask a question, and he can only answer it with one of the "never know" things, he should just tell me he can't answer my question.

For some people, that would be too many requests and boundaries, but it's what I need to feel comfortable and confident in the relationship.
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This makes sense to me. Maybe I should think about how I can frame this for my situation. Can I ask what some of the "NEVER want to know" things are? (You can PM me if you feel comfortable sharing, but not in a public setting.)
 
KC43 said:
I can't really answer that, because the "never know" things are too specific to other people.
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Ok, no worries. I'll try to come up with my own!
 
Hi MsEmotional,

It sounds like right now it is too intense for you to hear much about Ponytail's new girlfriend. You may not need to hear nothing at all about her, but you definitely need to hear less. At least until you can acclimate to the new situation. A good step in the right direction is to tell him to only tell you stuff that you specifically ask for. If he's willing to do that, it will put you in direct control of how much you will hear. Then you can decide to ask more over time, in small increments. Figuring out how much you'll be able to hear becomes a matter of trial and error.

Hope that helps.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a few assumptions based on what I know about your relationship/s, thus far, MsEmotional. Feel free to correct me if I'm way off base.

You and Ponytail haven't been together all that long, from memory. About six months... or less than a year, at any rate, right? This means you're most likely still in NRE. Those powerful "madly in love" hormones are still zinging, and this can make many people - poly notwithstanding - feel pretty possessive.

In your head and heart, you may still view Ponytail as "your" new person, therefore him taking up with somebody else at this relatively early stage in your relationship may seem somewhat threatening, for want of a better word - even if you agreed or even pushed him in that direction due to guilt over not having enough time for him - whereas you might not feel such overwhelming sadness and confusion about Glasses' relationship with Ginger or others, simply because you and Glasses have been together for much longer and weathered many more storms.

Your feelings of relief that you're no longer solely responsible for providing emotional support and company for Ponytail, as well as your happiness *for* him, may conflict with a deeper, barely-acknowledged desire to be the "most important" person in his life, if not his "one and only". The new person he is dating is still an unknown quantity at this time. You can't know how their relationship will develop at this stage; nor how much time and emotion he will end up investing in her - and that may be causing some trepidation - especially if you prefer to be in firm control of situations that affect your life.

Ponytail telling you of his plans to have the "safe sex talk" probably triggered an excess of negative feelings (sadness, teariness, insecurity) because it's an unambiguous declaration that your boyfriend intends to move his new relationship to the next level. And although you obviously realised they would get there eventually, engaging in sex with actual penetration, as opposed to just "making out" or fooling around IS a milestone in most people's relationships. Perhaps you were subconsciously in denial about whether or not they'd get that serious(?) Perhaps you feel it'll take something away from the "specialness" or newness of your own relationship with him(?)

I know that when my "V"/triad configuration were still contemplating expanding Jester and Boho's involvement beyond mild three-way online exchanges into potential in-person sex between those two, without me being involved... I embarked on a campaign of "desensitisation", in which we talked about our fantasies and I asked each of them for some details about their past relationship (they used to be lovers, before I was with either of them). I figured if I could stand to hear/talk about it, I'd be more prepared for the reality of a fully integrated poly-fi triad situation.

Unfortunately, it ended up having the opposite effect. Any kind of verbal reminiscence re: details of their past relationship or overtly flirtatious behaviour between them ended up causing me intense anxiety and sadness. Things got worse before they got better, as my blog posts show, but we managed to work through it - though Jester and Boho are still only minimally involved on a sexual level (most online threeway sexting). I do believe that MY relationship with each of them was still too "new" and untested for me to feel comfortable expanding on that.

I say give yourself and this situation time. What's more, I agree with the others who say don't completely sweep the situation under the rug, by assuming that not talking about it will make the feelings dissipate. Take it slow, but feel the feelings. Ask only the basics and make it plain to Ponytail you don't want or need to know details or their "cute" dates or sexual activities. You DO, or should, want to know things that directly affect you however, such as safe sex practices and scheduling details. After a few months have gone by, you may feel more relaxed.
 
Thanks Kevin and Lunabunny — you hit the nail in the head.
 
My wife and I had a no TMI sort of agreement. Neither one of us had to hear about cuddling and fucking. It was expected that was going on. We also didn't need to inform each other of safe sex practices because we were both adults and we already knew to be safe. Who or if we were dating basically would just come up in casual conversation. Things that were more important were brought up, such as when Elle and I were looking into sharing a two bedroom apartment. But the minute details never needed to be shared.

It is more or less the same with Mary.
 
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