DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have a weird problem for you and I don't know if it's in your wheelhouse or not.
I (27/F) am married and in an ENM/polyamorous relationship. My husband (26/M) and I both have partners in addition to one another. Before now, things were pretty good; my husband, my boyfriend and I had something of a kitchen table poly relationship going on, while my husband didn't have a committed partner but a string of people he was sleeping with. Most of them weren't serious and didn't really fit into the dynamic we'd set up. We'd try, but since he was more interested in a series of short-term relationships that were more about sex than commitment, they rarely stuck around for long. This could be a bit awkward when they were clearly not comfortable with other people knowing their business (and one person who got very angry to find out he wasn't cheating on me with her) but we made it work.
Well, it worked until his latest girlfriend (29-ish/F). We'll call her Emerald or E for short. E was the first time that my husband got serious with somebody besides me and this is a problem.
I'll be clear: my husband is (was? I'll explain) my primary partner. I love my boyfriend, don't get me wrong, but my husband is the man I built a life with. I thought that we were on the same page: that this was an addition to our relationship, not an "instead of". Then E enters the picture. My husband is smitten with her in a way I've never seen with anyone else. He's deep in the NRE and can't stop talking about how amazing she is, how fun she is, how smart, how gorgeous and how great in bed. I have to be honest: it kind of hurts to constantly hear about how great she is (and the implication that I'm not, because he doesn't talk about ME this way to people) but I understand how the NRE feels. So I try to let it go.
But E actively encourages this. In fact, E seems to be trying to sabotage my relationship and I hate how paranoid and crazy this makes me sound. Except I'm not the one who even noticed it at first. It was my boyfriend who brought it to my attention and now I can't NOT see it.
Here's an example: when we're all together, E goes out of her way to undermine my relationship with my husband. She inserts herself into discussions about our relationship and gives her two cents in ways that make me sound unreasonable. And the problem is that my husband uses this against me ALL THE TIME.
I'm not going to say that our relationship was perfect before E came along. We've had our ups and our downs but we've come through most of it. I say most because… well, I'm the responsible one in the household. We've had a lot of issues early on in the relationship where he ruined his credit score by defaulting on a lot of important bills, even going pretty heavily into debt because he's bad with managing money. He's got a good job that pays well, but he doesn't think much past the moment. He spends the money almost as soon as he gets it without any real regard to things like rent and bills. I'll come home and he'll have a new game console or something but the electric bill is past-due. So I'm stuck in the position of being the one who spoils all of his fun, because I have to remind him that he can't buy the latest gadget he read about on some gear blog that caught his eye because we have to cover rent that week.
(We have separate accounts for precisely this reason, plus a joint one that we contribute to for household expenses. I'll give you three guesses who puts more money in the expenses account and why.)
When we're all hanging out together and my husband mentions some new thing he wants to do or trip he wants to take or whatever, I have a choice. I can either gently remind him that this isn't in the budget (even allowing for the shared account) or I can bite my tongue and not say anything. If I don't say anything then E encourages him to get it or do it, especially if she can take part. "You only live once, you know" she'll say or talk about how this would be a good bonding experience for them. If I mention the money issue, E will chide me for being too serious or not letting my husband have his space.
Similarly, she will make plans that interfere with plans I have with him — including important plans, ones that we've had for years before she was even in the picture. Like, she got angry at me because I was "interfering with her date night" with my husband because she just "happened" to schedule it on the same day as our anniversary. A date that she knew was coming up because we'd mentioned it before AND it was in our calendar. If we're on a date night for just us, she'll text him CONSTANTLY. And I know she's been telling him about how "bad" I am for him because as much as I love him he can't keep a secret to save his life and accidentally brings it up if we're disagreeing about something.
Lately she's been telling me, ME, how I've been failing as a partner and wife for my husband to my face and what I should be doing differently. She'll cite some book she read or some podcast she listened to like she's an authority on the subject (she's not) and of course, my husband eats it up with a spoon. She implies (or outright states) that she knows him better than I do, when she and my husband have been together for less than four months, when he and I have been together for YEARS. Lately she's been lecturing me about all the ways I was falling down in my "duties" as his wife and what I should be doing differently. Sorry, did I say "lecture" I meant "giving friendly advice". Just telling me all the ways she knows my husband's needs better than me in the name of "being helpful".
Of course, I can't bring this up to my husband because if I do, then I'm just "being jealous" or because I have "less experience at being poly" than E does. It doesn't matter that E's last relationship ended in an incredibly ugly and protracted break up because (according to everyone who was around for it) she's an incredibly controlling and domineering "do as I say, not as I do" type. That got so ugly that even her husband eventually threw her out over it, especially after she kept interfering in HIS attempts to date too.
(I should point out that her husband was that poly-under-duress thing that Dan Savage talks about. Poly for her, but she kept vetoing all HIS partners so he never had one that lasted longer than a week)
It doesn't help that she does things that I don't ask for or even want, because "she's just trying to help" or "thought we needed this", which just means that my husband takes her side when I point out how much she's been disrupting OUR relationship. I can't be upset at her because look at what she's doing and i should be more grateful.
I feel like I'm losing my mind, Doc. I swear that she has all but said directly "I'm his REAL partner, not you" but I can't bring this up to my husband because he doesn't see it. At all. It hurts me to hear about how amazing she is and what she's said and how she said this and that and the other thing and I can't say anything about it. We agreed early on that we weren't going to do the "primary has veto power" thing because that's not fair but I feel like I'm stuck with someone in my polycule that's actively trying to push me out and I don't know what to do.
Help me, Dr. NerdLove, you’re my only hope.
The Other Other Woman
DEAR THE OTHER OTHER WOMAN: Hoo boy.
I can't say for certain whether she's trying to take your place as your husband's primary partner, TOOW, but it definitely sounds like she's trying to undermine your relationship with him. Maybe she's the "relationship anarchy" type who thinks that thinks that having primaries is wrong and she's trying to enforce her view of things. Maybe she's just a toxic controlling person and sees you as competition for your husband's time and attention. Hell, maybe she's hoping to push you out of the relationship entirely and take your place.
We can speculate wildly as to why, but honestly? The "why" doesn't matter. "Why", in this case, would give you insight to her motivation… but her motivation isn't the issue here. Her actions are, and her actions are saying that she doesn't respect you or your relationship to your husband and she's treating you with active disrespect under the most charitable of readings. And honestly your husband isn't covering himself in glory either.
Part of the problem is that your husband is allowing this to happen. I don't know if your kitchen-table poly arrangement is a "all part of the chosen family" thing or if it's more of a "we all hang out together regularly instead of having relationships that are entirely separate from our other relationships", but she's his girlfriend; by all rights, he's the person who should be establishing the boundaries with her. He should be the one to say "hey, maybe don't blow up my phone when I'm having a date with my wife" or to remind her that they can't go out because it's your wedding anniversary and you already have plans.
But he's not. And I suspect that, as you said, part of it is the New Relationship Energy. Whether someone's poly or not, when they're with a new partner, their brain starts producing oxytocin and dopamine at an elevated rate. These hormones go straight to the pleasure centers of the brain and make you feel amazing; you are quite literally getting high off being around them. It's why everything about a new partner is incredible and remarkable; even the way they chew their food is adorable.
Unfortunately, NRE also means that you're more likely to miss — or ignore — giant freaking red flags because who wants to interrupt the all-expenses-paid love trip they're on? So, to a certain extent, there's a motivation to… overlook, shall we say… certain things that might put a halt to those amazing feelings. It's like the old Percy Sledge song; he'll turn his back on anyone who says she's trouble.
It also certainly doesn't help that she's the new hotness; she's like the shiny new toy that's caught his eye and he's going to be focused on that for a while.
However, that's only part of it. The other part is… well, it's like you said: you're the Serious One. The Funwrecker. The person who throws ice water on his dreams of owning some new cool gadget or device. It doesn't matter that, y'know, he's got a habit of blowing through his budget on stuff and not having enough to cover his end of the bills. That makes sense logically, sure… but logic ain't here right now, emotion is and emotionally, this feels like you're cockblocking him from the latest Apple product or something. Meanwhile, since E isn't paying the bills and isn't in danger of getting evicted, she can be The Cool One. The devil on his shoulder that says "yeah, you can have the thing you want, ignore the old fuddyduddy who doesn't get it."
This, needless to say, ends up being another reason to not see anything going wrong. It's not necessarily something he's consciously aware of. I don't think he's thinking "yeah, E lets me get all the stuff I want, I'm going to side with her over TOOW", I think that he's going be inclined to look more favorably the person who's currently his primary source of dopamine. All that NRE ends up like a filter that just blurs away the hard edges of her behavior and makes it less of an issue to him.
So that's what's working against you. What should work in your favor is… well, presumably the love and affection and respect you two have for one another. So, for that matter, should the history that you two share. While years together of going through the ups and downs of married life isn't necessarily a guarantee that your husband is going to snap out of this and realize that your relationship is more solid and enduring than the one he has with hers (God knows folks have left spouses of decades for people they've known for months or even weeks), it should give more weight to your end of things.
Now part of what's going on is that E is trading on your politeness. She's doing things that seem generous or thoughtful on the surface because it makes it harder to accuse her of anything. It's like how toxic people will insult their friend "for their own good" or "telling you the truth because nobody else will and I care". She's trusting you to not make a fuss because you're trying to be "reasonable" because how can you be mad at someone who's trying to help or giving you gifts? It sounds like she's the passive-aggressive flavor of DARVO when it comes to conflict — that is, Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. She does things in the name of "just being helpful" because if you tell her to knock it off or lay into her about how she's interfering in your relationship, she can flip the script and insist that you're interfering with hers and look at how generous and giving she's been and she's tried so hard to connect with you and you just throw it back in her face. Now you're on the defensive and having to justify your feelings and how they're not an attack while she acts the part of the offended party.
So what do you do? Well, to start with: you get ready to stop being reasonable. Enforcing your boundaries with her over her "I'm just trying to help" is a good start. Whether it's doing you favors you didn't ask for or giving you unsolicited advice, it's time to tell her you don't want it, you don't need it and you certainly didn't ask for it. The fact that she was trying to do something for you doesn't obligate you to accept it, nor do you need to sit there and listen. Saying "thank you but we don't want this/need this" when she gives something or saying "thank you, but I didn't ask for/don't want your opinion" cuts her off at the knees. She can try to play to the crowd, as it were, by trying to make you out as being unreasonable, but if you refuse to explain or justify things, she has far less to work with. When all you say is "thank you, but no," and refuse to be put on the defensive, you make it much harder for her to shift the argument to how you are doing things to her.
However, she's not the person you need to focus on here. Your husband is. Like I said: if you are his primary — and I presume you still are — then it's really on him to recognize that and respect that. Part of the way you can address this is to point out the ways that she doesn't seem to be respecting your relationship with him. Framing it as "disrespect" is far more likely to reach past his NRE haze than saying "I think she's trying to push me out of our relationship". While the latter may be true — God knows she's acting like she's trying to take charge — it's still the sort of thing that sounds more like the plot to a mid-90s thriller than real life. Disrespect, on the other hand, is a much easier lift to make. It's easier to accept, and, critically, easier to project himself into. "How would you feel if $BOYFRIEND texted me constantly while you and I were out on a date?" "How would you feel if $BOYFRIEND was always making plans that interfered with our date nights?"
Now to be clear: this can still be an uphill climb. It's easier for him to see your concerns as being jealous or reading into things that aren't there; after all, you're emotionally involved here. Whether he comes to that conclusion on his own or E nudges him towards it, it's an all-too easily scenario to see. What may help more is if this information comes from a less-invested third party. Say, another guy.
Like, and I'm just spitballing here, your boyfriend. He's the one who pointed it out to you in the first place, so clearly, he's perceptive enough to pick up on this. The three of you have your kitchen-table poly arrangement going on, so presumably he's close enough to your husband to talk about these things with him. If that's the case, having him pull your husband aside and go "dude, this isn't cool" may mean that your husband will be more receptive to hearing it than he might be from you.
(Also, and I hate to say this, it may play more into some of the systematic sexism we all get raised in. Your husband may take it more seriously if it comes from another man than he would hearing it from a woman.)
Regardless, you're going to have to remain calm and less reactive than you feel. Again, it's sexist, but getting emotional about this plays into her hands; it lets her flip things and pretend to be the well-meaning victim. Sure she may have overstepped her boundaries but she was just trying to help and you're being so mean. The less you react, the less you give her to work with and the less you give for her to use against you with your husband.
But at the end of the day, it's going to come down to how your husband feels. If he's still in it to win it with you, then hopefully the infatuation'll pass and he'll recognize that she's causing drama. However, if he's checked out of the relationship… well, then there's not really much you can do.
So, gray-rock E and see if your boyfriend's willing to broach the subject with your husband. Hopefully that'll help bring him to his senses and make it that much easier to kick this particular cuckoo out of the nest before she does it to you.
Good luck.
Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com