Keeping Your Relationship Healthy: How to Navigate Toxic Behavior from Metamours

Boundaries and active communication are the only way to keep your relationships healthy.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

In my polyamorous relationships, I see the same cycles and patterns. No matter how much I have learned in my twenty-one years of exploring this lifestyle, my partners often have different understandings and experiences. It doesn't matter much for the most part because when we enter a committed, emotionally entangled polyamorous relationship, we forge a partnership where we learn, grow, and evolve together. But there will also be obstacles we must work through that will make or break our relationship. Without fail, one of these challenges will involve the other people closest to us — our family, friends, and metamours.

Last February, I realized I had a major crush on a wonderful guy friend and asked him to be my anchor partner. According to polydictionary.org, "An anchor partner is an emotional support partner with whom you have a strong connection and helps ground and balance you. An anchor partner may or may not be a nesting, romantic, or sexual partner."

After the previous year of developing an amazing foundation of friendship, I felt deep emotional support with him that I haven't felt in a long time. In my case, this incredible guy is a romantic and sexual partner, but he's not a nesting partner because I'm still solo-poly and live alone. However, he is someone I talk to often, who knows the intricacies of my daily existence, and I share more of my life with him than with my other current partners. He's new to polyamory but has read my Medium posts religiously, so with communication, honesty, and openness, we've had a fantastic almost five months together. Our relationship is great, and I'm thrilled!

I believe in compersion, so my role is to support my partner’s other sources of happiness from friendships, relationships, and people in his life.

My anchor partner has another person in their life, who I thought was his best friend, but honestly, I don't know. He doesn't know either, and I don't understand their communication dynamic or why they want to stay in the grey area of relationship/friendship purgatory. But the great part about solo polyamory is it's not my job to understand my partner's other relationships or metamours. Our relationships are more compartmentalized — our interactions with our other partners exist as separate constellations amidst our independent lives. But I believe in compersion, so my role is to support my partner's other sources of happiness from friendships, relationships, and people in his life. I think I have fulfilled this role in spades.

He recently went on a week-long trip with this partner to northeastern Canada while I visited one of my best friends in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He wanted me to chat with this other person on video while I was on vacation, and I thought we had a very positive conversation where we were all on the same page. I was wrong.

During a video call, my anchor partner mentioned, "I have some things I want to tell you in person." I have an "anxiety brain," like the best of us, and this isn't my favorite phrase. Even though I appreciate in-person conversations, I don't like wondering what they are about, as it would still be a week before we could meet in person to discuss whatever he wanted to bring up. And we have developed a chat about anything connection, so this all seemed very strange. But I was busy and had other ways to direct my attention, so I could temporarily let this go until we saw each other again.

My anchor partner and I met this week to exchange stories and sweet gifts from our travel excursions — it was so nice! After chatting for a while, we started to make out, and I realized something.

He never brought up whatever he wanted to tell me in person. He obviously wanted to discuss something more important than his innocuous travel tales, and I believed it was something connected to this metamour. Why wasn't he initiating this conversation?

And then, my "anxiety brain" told me to halt everything. I started catastrophizing, which is not one of my finest mental moments. I was convinced we'd make out one last time, and then he'd finally have a conversation where he'd want to end our relationship. His metamour existed in his life before he and I started our anchor partner relationship, but they are a conservative and monogamous-minded individual. It would be easier to discard me, the polyamorous person. This is a scenario I've experienced in many previous relationships. However, I grounded myself with the final thought that I'd never know what this was about until I asked.

I questioned, "Hey before we continue, what did you want to talk about in person?"

He sighed. "I cuddled with (metamour) while we were on this trip together."

My genuinely enthusiastic response was, "Great! I hoped you both would cuddle together. I mentioned you should ask her to cuddle together on the trip because I know you wanted to do it."

He continued, "Well, (metamour) told me not to tell you that we cuddled together. She told me to keep it a secret from you."

My brain screamed internally, "WHAT????"

I took a couple of deep breaths and continued, "I honestly don't understand why (metamour) would not want you to share this with me. Did you tell them I supported both of you cuddling from the start of this trip and even encouraged you to ask to do it? First, cuddling is not a big deal; I cuddle with countless other friends and occasional partners. The issue here is this metamour is making unreasonable demands about how you and I communicate. Making specific demands on what you can or cannot do with your friends, family, or other relationships is very toxic. I am a kind, supportive, good person who doesn't deserve to be lied to. I feel extremely hurt right now."

My feelings compounded by various emotions, I sobbed for a long time. My partner believed telling me was right, so he initially mentioned chatting in person. However, the more he thought about everything, he felt conflicted. He asked his sister for poly advice, who told him to respect (metamour) 's request. I know little about his sister or her thought process, but that was awful advice! But ultimately, my partner did the right thing and told me the truth. This is what matters to me. He is still learning much about polyamory and relationships but is a good human. We can work through this.

Unless you are a solo-poly person with a monogamous partner, you will have metamours and exist as a metamour in your partner's constellation of their poly life. In parallel polyamory situations, you may know about your metamours but never interact with them. In kitchen-table polyamory, your level of interaction with metamours can vary from group hangouts to video chats or phone calls. In these two different poly lifestyles, one aspect remains consistent — multiple relationships are maintained separately, and the decisions between individual relationships should not affect other partners. However, as Robert Burns once said, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry." When toxic behaviors from your metamours impact your poly relationship with a partner, you can take these steps.

Toxic behaviors from other relationships are ONLY your problem if they affect your relationship with your partner.

One of the hardest scenarios many of us will encounter at some point is witnessing a partner being mistreated by a metamour. It hurts to see someone we love struggling with a partner not worth their time, energy, or effort. The reality, though, is other than listening or offering a shoulder to cry on, there isn't much else we can do. Suppose you badmouth or interject your thoughts about a metamour who never directly interacts with you. In that case, you become toxic because you are using your opinion or emotions to change your partner's perception of the others they love. Your partner will resent you, and your negative actions will somehow end your relationship.

It hurts to see someone we love struggling with a partner not worth their time, energy, or effort.

One of my close ex-boyfriends had a distant partner during our three years together. Everything seemed off, but I never thought much about it because their weird arrangement didn't impact my relationship with him for nearly three years. Then we started to have some significant issues with sexual intimacy. Later conversations revealed our problems were because his other partner had tried to castrate him for not following their sexual rules. I couldn't understand how anyone could cause this trauma to a partner we both loved. Their traumatic, unhealthy relationship then impacted me and was one of the catalysts that caused us to break up. To this day, I'm in shared social circles with her, and I still wish I could punch her in the face.

If you are in a similar situation, it's time to share your feelings with your partner directly.

Communicate about the behaviors impacting your relationship with your partner without attacking the overall character of your metamour.

Unless you have a friendship or relationship with one of your metamours, you are strangers on similar missions to bring happiness, fulfillment and love into your partner's life. In our mostly monogamous culture, you could watch the last episode of Vanderpump Rules or nearly any other television show to see our society jumps to conclusions to villainize "the other woman." It can feel eerily natural for our brain to find the negative or scrutinize our metamours sometimes, especially as we combine the puzzle pieces to create our image of these other people. However, I often remind myself that both my metamours and I exist to bring happiness to my partner in different ways, and deep down, I believe we are all good people. I am not meant to understand or judge. None of us are perfect; we all come with baggage, different life experiences, and misconceptions.

However, when I'm in a situation like the one I described earlier, it's fair for me to have a say about how a metamour's behaviors affect me. I carefully use "I" statements to define and own my feelings. In my example above, I carefully did not label the person as toxic; instead, I told my partner, "They may be a misguided, inexperienced person, but this is undeniably toxic behavior. I feel sad this metamour wanted you to lie to me. I don't understand this behavior. "

Now, my partner had two choices — he could see my concerns as valid or dismiss my feedback. My partner saw my hurt in this case and promised to look into it. If he rejected my feedback, I would evaluate if I wanted to continue my relationship, knowing my partner didn't care about my concerns.

Remember that as a metamour, you may notice red flags your partner may not see.

When I've dealt with partners that lie or keep secrets, it's a huge red flag that would cause me to terminate a relationship or friendship immediately. Dishonest and manipulative behavior is another major red flag that's a dealbreaker for me. No one tells me what I can or cannot do EVER. Sometimes, I will entertain advice but always make my own decisions. This is the way.

As an external, emotionally distant person, we see everything from a different vantage point. Your partner may be engulfed in new relationship energy (NRE), inexperienced or naive about relationships, or chooses to tolerate other red flags than you would. But circling back to the first point, red flags are only an issue when they affect your relationship with your partner.

Define your boundaries with your metamours.

Long ago, I cherished opportunities to connect with metamours directly. As the years have passed, I desire this type of interaction less and less. But we all have different comfort levels with our metamours, and even our comfort levels could vary. It's important to share this information with your partner.

Your feelings are valid; feel your emotions.

I cried for a long time Thursday and am still very angry and sad. It will take me a while to process my thoughts, feelings, and anxieties completely. I must work through this alone. Life is difficult, but I'm seizing this opportunity to focus on work, personal travel, and my artistic life.

Ultimately, you only have control over your own life. Choosing the people in it is up to you.