Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
This is a question I never thought I would have to ask: how do I help someone through a break up when they’re still in a relationship with me? I’m in a polyamorous relationship, with most of our relationships being parallel; my partner’s relationships are their own and separate from ours, just as my other relationships are separate from theirs. We’ve both been on good terms with our metamours, but not close and we generally like it that way.
Recently, my partner has been going through a rough time. Their job is restructuring, so they were let go, their grandmother has gone into hospice care after years of battling a series of illnesses and then their partner broke up with them with no warning or explanation.
My partner feels crushed and blindsided by this, and I understand that. I want to help them as best as I can, but I’m honestly struggling over how to do it.I care deeply about them and genuinely want to be supportive, but what’s making this hard for me is that I’m finding myself tangled up in feelings that I don’t love or fully understand.
On the surface, I know what the “right” thoughts are. I know that their breakup isn’t about me, that loving more than one person doesn’t mean loving any one person less, and that my partner’s grief doesn’t invalidate our relationship. Intellectually, I’m solid on all of that.
Emotionally, though, I keep circling back to a quieter, uglier question: why am I not enough?
I feel embarrassed even writing that. I don’t believe any one person is supposed to be “enough” for someone else, and I don’t resent my partner for having loved another person. But there’s that part of me that feels hurt that the fact that they still have my love and care and concern doesn’t help. Watching them mourn that loss and not being able to help has stirred up a lot of insecurity and comparison in me. It’s hard not to feel like I’m failing somehow, even though I know that framing is illogical and unfair.
What I’m struggling with most is how to show up for them without making their pain about my discomfort. I want to be a source of comfort, not someone who needs reassurance while they’re grieving. At the same time, I don’t want to shove my feelings down so hard that they come out sideways as resentment or withdrawal.
How do I support a partner through a breakup that doesn’t involve me, while also tending to my own insecurities in a way that’s honest but not burdensome? Is this just one of those moments where I sit with the discomfort and let it pass, or is there a healthier way to approach it?
Signed,
It’s Not About Me
One of the worst feelings in the world is feeling powerless, INAM. The idea that there’s something wrong, something that is hurting the people you care about and there’s nothing you can do about it can feel like a rock in your shoe or something rubbing under your armpit or the crease of your thigh and groin – chafing at sensitive skin whenever you move even a little.
It gets even worse when that feeling makes you feel bad – that your seeming impotence says something about you. Like it’s a personal failing, or a sign that there’s something insufficient in you.
Even knowing that this doesn’t make sense, or that the feeling is just that – a feeling – doesn’t necessarily help. What the brain knows and what the heart feels are often different things, even when (or rather especially when) they’re diametrically opposed to one another.
The problem is that feelings aren’t logical or sensible. You can’t reason your way out of feeling something. Feelings just are. You feel things because you feel them. They may be feelings you were trained to feel – through experience, repetition or even cultural upbringing – or ones that you feel because they echo past events that triggered similar feelings… but they’re not rational. The triggers and causes may be, but the feelings themselves aren’t.
This is why the key to managing these feelings is to accept them and understand them as best you can. You may not be able to change that uncomfortable twinge that you recognize as selfish, but you can say “ok, that’s just a moment of insecurity. It’ll pass,” and then refocus your attention elsewhere. And it will pass; it’s very hard to feel something constantly and consistently for very long. Not without focusing on it and reinforcing it. When you’re busy focusing on that uncomfortable feeling, you’re giving it bandwidth. You’re making it more present in the front of your mind, which feeds it the way tinder feeds a fire. If you leave the feeling alone, it tends to pass. This is why people are encouraged to count to ten when they’re angry; it forces you to pause and redirect your attention, giving the anger time to fade on its own.
So the first thing I can recommend is just giving yourself a moment to acknowledge that you’re experiencing those feelings and then turn your attention elsewhere. The pang of insecurity and ‘why am I not enough’ will pass, faster than you realize.
The next thing I think is important to understand and acknowledge is that love isn’t fungible. Your partner’s feelings don’t take away from their feelings for you… but they’re not replaceable by you either. The pain they feel isn’t just that the volume of love has been reduced, but that this specific person is gone from their life. This is the inverse of “trying to fill a hole marked ‘girlfriend’” that I talk about; the person who occupied that space in their life is no longer there, and it’s that specific emptiness that hurts them. Just as shoving any warm body into the “girlfriend” slot doesn’t work, you can’t fill the hole someone else left.
If you’ll forgive an awkward metaphor, when a beloved pet dies, replacing them with another doesn’t make the pain go away. If you have more than one pet, the others don’t pick up the slack. It’s that particular loss, that individual that’s missing that hurts.
It’s admirable that you want to be able to love them so much that you fill that hole. But you can’t. Nobody can. And it sucks. It really, really sucks. The only thing that there is to do is let the hole close on its own.
The last thing is that, unfortunately, no matter how much we may want to, we can’t take away someone else’s pain. We can’t love someone until they don’t feel pain, no matter how much we care. And that part hurts us and frustrates us because it’s a reminder that we’re powerless – the very thing that we hate so much.
Or more accurately… we’re powerless in this specific way. We can’t make the pain go away and we can’t replace what was lost. It’s simply not something that anyone can do. But that’s not what’s needed, or even what helps. What you can do and what your partner needs is very simple: you can provide the security and safety they need. You may not be able to make the loss unhappen, but you can create a space for them to feel, to cry, to just let all their walls down and just be. You can be their security, a reminder that you’re there, you’re not going anywhere, and they’re not alone. They don’t need to fear losing someone else, especially not when they’ve already lost so much and will lose more sooner than later.
Sometimes the act of quietly holding someone so they can just let the tears flow freely and sob like a child without embarrassment or shame is the most loving and comforting thing you can do. Creating a space where they can feel what they’re feeling without judging themselves for it – “I’m an adult, I should be able to handle this”, “I can’t burden my other partners with this”, “I can’t let my partner see me like this, they’ll lose respect for me”, “it’s embarrassing for me to be bawling like a baby like this” – is a gift. It’s a kind of unconditional love we often don’t think of, giving someone a place where they can be their most raw and vulnerable, where they can let down the walls they keep up to protect themselves even from themselves.
It doesn’t seem like much. Just quiet acceptance, warmth, reassurance and a lack of judgement. But when someone’s hurting, having a space where they can let that pain out, without feeling like they have to edit or hold back? Where they don’t have to keep some of that pain inside where it will calcify and make the healing process take longer? That’s huge.
And if you can provide that for your partner, I think you’ll find that you won’t feel like you aren’t “enough” for him. You won’t feel like your love isn’t sufficient. Instead, you’ll be precisely who and what he needs right then. And that is more than enough.
Good luck.
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
I hope you don’t mind me reaching out. I’m writing because I could really use your perspective right now.
So I (26/m/straight) met “Alice” (28/f/straight) through friends at a party. We got along well and had great conversations at the party, but neither of us thought to get the other’s number or contact information. At the time it just felt like one of those “hey, that was cool” moments of meeting someone and having a nice time talking to them. I didn’t think much of it until I randomly ran into her a couple weeks later at a vintage expo when we were both browsing the same records. We talked music, favorite bands, how we got into record collecting, then went to get lunch and just kept talking. By the time we both had to leave, I think we’d spent the better part of the day just hanging out and talking. This time, we actually exchanged numbers and made plans to see each other again.
This continued for a couple of months before I realized I really liked her and asked if she wanted to go on a date. She turned me down and honestly, it kind of hurt but I was ok with it. Then she told me that she wanted to, but she had just gotten out of a relationship that made her realize that she had a lot of baggage and “bad habits” (as she put it) that kept causing problems and she was taking a break from any non-platonic relationship while she worked on herself. According to her, this meant no dating, no sex, not even kissing – at least, not like she would with a boyfriend. She told me that she liked me, she wanted to be friends and would probably still want to go on a date in the future, but she didn’t want to give me false hope, because that was going to be a while and she couldn’t say how long it would be. She told me, specifically, that while she wanted to stay friends, she didn’t want to be unfair to me and that she didn’t want me to wait for her, and I should date other people instead. She also said she could understand if I needed to pull back.
For the record, I believe she’s being straightforward with me, instead of giving me a soft no; I know she’s seeing someone about some of the issues that’ve come up in her past relationships.
Since then, we still hang out as friends and I’m still incredibly attracted to her, but I haven’t really moved on, and I’m not sure I am going to.
That’s why I’m writing. The question I have is: what do you do when the person you want to date doesn’t want to date you, but you don’t want to date anyone else? I’ve read what you’ve written about oneitis and I don’t think that this is what this is. I think she’s amazing, but I don’t think she’s The One. I’m not waiting for her to decide she’s ready for me. In fact, I’ve gone on dates with a couple of other women. It’s not that I think she’s the only person for me, it’s that I’m just not interested in anyone else, even after giving them a fair chance.
The women I’ve met and gone out with (some from Hinge, some I met in person) have all been cute and very nice, and I don’t think I’m comparing them to her. I got along with them well enough to try a second and in one case third date, but every time I eventually had to admit that I just didn’t feel anything for them and after a while it just felt like I was just trying to meet people for the sake of meeting people. When I stopped, I didn’t feel like I was giving up, I just felt like I was just not doing a thing that wasn’t working for me.
Right now, we text and talk regularly, but don’t hang out as often as I’d like. I’d like to see more of her, but I’m trying hard not to feel like I’m going on “dates” with her – out of respect for her progress and also so I don’t get weird about her.
My friends think I’m holding on for no reason. I don’t think I’m holding on to anything; I like her, and I want more, but I think I’m pretty content as it is. I’ve tried to meet other people I like and it just felt like I was killing time, so I stopped.
Am I making a mistake here? Is it like my friends said and I should be taking her “I’m not ready to date” as “I don’t want to date you?” I think if she eventually does decide she’s ready to date someone else, I’ll be able to handle it… am I just fooling myself?
Help me out here. What should I do?
Best,
Move On From What?
If I’m being honest, this doesn’t really sound like a problem, MOFW.
The thing about Oneitis is that it’s less about the other person as it is about you. Oneitis tends to be more about your relationship with yourself. Some folks get Oneitis because they’re afraid the person they’re stuck on is their last and only chance for love; they don’t believe that they could find someone else like that person. Others haven’t fallen in love with a person, so much as what that person represents – often something they feel lacking in themselves. Still others feel like they’re owed something – whether by the person, by the universe, by life. All of it, however, tends to be dramatic, full of longing, pain, anxiety and envy; it has far more in common with limerence rather than love.
It also tends to be a rejection of reality, a refusal to see what’s plainly happening. It’s pretending not to recognize a “soft” no, to selectively hearing what a person says when they turn them down and looking for excuses to not let go and move on. When someone is down to reading the metaphorical tea leaves for signs that the other person’s feelings are changing, what they’re really doing is letting motivated reasoning keep them from accepting the truth – a truth that, on some level, they already know.
What you’re describing sounds more realistic, for lack of a better term. You seem like you really like this person, you’re respecting their wishes, and you’re willing to wait and see what happens when they’re ready to date again.
Which… well, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think that is a great idea. The problem with choosing to wait is that you are basically putting your life on hold for what is ultimately a longshot. Let’s take it as given that Alice is being honest with you about working on herself before she dates again. If that’s the case, that’s great; I fully support people wanting to take care of themselves, make themselves a priority and to be sure they’re in a good place when they return to the dating market. But – and I hate to say it – there’s a non-zero chance that the person she’ll be at the end of this may not be the person who was attracted to you. It’s possible that the things that fueled her attraction to you may also be the things that she needs to change.
This isn’t to say that you’d be a bad boyfriend or that there’s something wrong with you, don’t get me wrong. It could well be that the issue is with her; you may well be a great potential boyfriend for her, but dating you would lead to repeating a cycle she’s been through before where she is the problem. So if and when she’s at a place where she’s ready to date, she may have realized that while you’re a great guy, a relationship with you wouldn’t work and so she has to say “no, thank you”.
Now to be fair (to be faaaaaaaaiiiiir): you aren’t – or at least weren’t – just hanging around waiting. It sounds like you made some good faith efforts to date around and meet other people and it didn’t work out. That’s pretty different from putting her on a pedestal and finding other women wanting in comparison. If you’re avoiding meeting other people or holding yourself back in some desire to be “faithful” to her, that’d be one thing. Deciding that being actively on the dating market wasn’t doing it for you is another thing entirely.
Frankly, I don’t think this is a situation I would be happy with, but I’m not the one dealing with it. What wouldn’t work for me doesn’t really matter if you’re cool with how things are. If you’re ok with maintaining the status quo, you aren’t just pining away like a puppy sitting at the door waiting for its owner to come home and you understand that the odds of getting what you’re hoping for are lower than most people would prefer… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I just think it’s not a great choice.
The only thing I would suggest is that you don’t close yourself off to dating other people entirely. You don’t have to put yourself out there and forceyourself to try to catch feelings for someone else, and I think trying to date someone to get over Alice wouldn’t be fair to the other person. Just stay open to the possibility of meeting someone who might be just as awesome as Alice… but also is in a place where she is ready, willing and able to date you.
Otherwise… do what makes you happy, my guy. If you’re happy like this then hey, that’s all that really matters.
Good luck.
