While writing Jealousy is a Polyamorist’s Best Friend, one thing that kept coming up in my conversations was guilt in polyamory.
Which kind of blew my mind. Over a decade ago, I wrote a personal blog post about polyamory and guilt that I still get emails about from time to time.
Guilt in polyamory comes in many flavors. Today, I want to talk about:
- addressing healthy guilt vs. unearned guilt
- overcoming the “shoulds” behind most poly guilt
- what to do when you feel guilty about someone else’s feelings
Let’s start by getting clear on what we’re talking about.
What is Guilt?
Guilt is a natural, social emotion based in empathy.
Where jealousy points inward to our unmet needs, guilt points outward to where we’ve potentially harmed others.
Guilt occurs naturally in healthy relationships, households, and communities. In these contexts, we experience guilt when we’ve harmed someone.
This is totally normal. In fact, it’s helpful.
An example of helpful guilt
Let’s say I leave my gardening tools on the sidewalk while doing yard work. I would feel guilty if one of my neighbors walked by, tripped on a tool, and got hurt.
In this situation, my guilt encourages me to check in to see if they’re okay, apologize, and do what I can to tend to any harm.
In the future, I’m much more likely to make a point of keeping my tools off the sidewalk. This fosters better relationships with my neighbors.
As uncomfortable as that experience might be, this is guilt working in my favor. As a result of guilt, I become a better neighbor. Thanks, guilt!
Just as jealousy is a notification for unmet needs, guilt is a notification for when our actions or words may have harmed someone. It encourages us to check in and try to make things as right as we can.
What to do with guilt
Assuming you’ve actually caused harm (foreshadowing alert), dealing with guilt is pretty straightforward.
Ask yourself these questions when you’re feeling guilty (and be gentle with yourself if this process is new for you):
- What specific actions or words am I feeling guilty about?
- Who has been harmed by those actions or words?
- How was this person / these people harmed, specifically?
- Am I sorry for any harm I’ve caused?
- What can I make right while still honoring my needs, limits, and boundaries?
- What can I change moving forward to reduce/prevent this harm from happening again?
- Can I apologize for the harm I caused, sharing the answers to the questions above as part of the apology? (If not directly to those harmed, can I apologize to myself?)
- Can I forgive myself?
- Is there anyone I can talk to about any part of this process as I move through it?
Now, here’s a funny little thing: sometimes we feel guilty about stuff that hasn’t caused harm.
It throws a real wrench in the whole poly-guilt puzzle.
Unearned Guilt in Polyamory
If you’re a highly empathetic or sensitive person, you likely experience higher levels of guilt—both earned and unearned.
Unearned guilt refers to feeling guilty when we haven’t harmed anyone.
Here are some common unearned guilt scenarios in polyamorous relationships:
- You’re having a good experience with polyamory that feels uneven or “in your favor”. Maybe you’re getting more dates than an existing partner or developing an additional relationship whereas an existing partner is not. Your existing partner is happy for you, but you feel guilty for some reason.
- Your partner is having a good experience with polyamory and you’re benefitting from it. Perhaps you’ve realized you like having more alone time while they’re away with others. Or maybe you get to enjoy their heightened energy when they get home from dates and feel that energy “belongs to” the person they were on the date with. You might even feel guilty if they feel guilty about their success with poly—guilt spiral!
- You and all your partners are having a good experience with polyamory and people you respect don’t think it’s right, or that will last, or something else. One or more friends, family members, colleagues, community members, or others whose opinion you value says or does something that makes you feel guilty about your happy poly situation.
In these scenarios, you haven’t harmed anyone. Your unearned guilt is most likely rooted in subconscious beliefs about what relationships “should” look like.
2 Big ‘Shoulds’ of Mono-Normative Culture
If, like most people, you grew up and live in mono-normative culture, it’s natural to hold a couple common subconscious beliefs about what love and relationships should look like.
Should # 1:
“If we’re really in love with someone, we should only want them, and they us.“
This belief is true for many individuals, but not for everyone.
If it doesn’t feel true for you, it’s a belief you can choose to let go of if you’d like to release guilt around polyamory. I’ll share one exercise for doing that below.
Should #2:
“If a couple is nonmonogamous, the relationship should be ‘even’. All partners should get equal dates, sex, other partners, etc. to keep things ‘fair’.“
This belief works for relationship agreements primarily based on easily quantifiable things (# of dates, # of sexual encounters, # of sexual partners). Many couples who engage in strictly sexual partner-swapping and/or threesomes do this successfully.
But if your relationship agreements heavily feature things that can’t be easily quantified (i.e., love and other emotions), the even/fair structure doesn’t work. This is another “should” belief you can let go of if you’d like to experience less poly guilt.
Stop ‘Shoulding’ Yourself Exercise
Unlearning monogamous norms is hard, but worth it if you’ve got the capacity for it. It’ll also do wonders for your polyamory journey.
Here’s an exercise that can help:
First, list the “should” and “should not” beliefs behind your guilt. For example:
- “If I really love [x], I shouldn’t desire anyone else”
- “I shouldn’t go on dates when [x] doesn’t have any dates of their own lined up”
- “I should wait for [x] to have a partner before getting serious with someone new”
- “I should get a new partner so [x] will feel less guilty about doing the same”
- “I should stop being poly because my family says so”
Then, argue the opposing side for each item on your list. For example:
- “I really love [x], and I desire others, and I can feel in my heart that my love for [x] is just as strong, if not stronger than before”
- “I should go on dates when [x] doesn’t have any of their own, because dating makes me happy and [x] loves seeing me happy, and [x] and I are each unique individuals who will each have different dating experiences, and I can keep checking in with [x] to ensure their happiness and provide whatever assurance/support they need”
- “I should hear my family out on their concerns, consider whether those concerns are warranted, and decide for myself whether or not to stop being poly”
It can be very helpful to share and discuss your answers with partners and loved ones, depending on your relationship with them and your situation.
Overcoming Unearned Guilt About Other People’s Feelings
Sometimes we feel guilty because being polyamorous brings up difficult emotions for others.
A common example of this is feeling guilty about doing or saying things that make our partners feel jealous, insecure, inadequate, or something else.
Assuming we’re doing our part to:
- speak and act from a place of love, honesty, and in accordance with our “truth” (personal needs, limits, beliefs, values, ethics, etc.)
- assure partners of their secure, valuable, important place in our lives
…our partners’ feelings ultimately fall to them to address.
We can absolutely support partners working on these emotions and feelings, but typically as their partners we aren’t in a good position to help them reach a resolution. We’re too “close to the problem.”
Looping in a third party who isn’t in your polycule or utilizing other outside resources like support groups or communities is generally the best way to make sure partners have healthy forms of support.
I highly recommend having a boundary around serving the role of “therapist” for your partner.
Guilt-Free Boundaries for Polyamorous Folks
Boundaries play a huge role in guilt-free polyamory. I go into more detail about boundary-setting in my post, How To Set Boundaries for Happy, Healthy Polyamory. It’s worth a read if you haven’t checked it out yet.
When we start getting into “I’m having feelings about my partner’s feelings” territory, it’s really, really important to have a clear vision of one’s personal needs, limits, and boundaries.
“But Shannon,” many people say to me, “I feel guilty about setting boundaries!”
I know. With love, and speaking from personal experience: that’s because you don’t have any.
When you have clarity and conviction on your needs and limits, guilt about setting boundaries fades.
It’s still hard to do at first, don’t get me wrong. Every new skill is hard at first.
But feeling so guilty about other people’s feelings that you ignore your needs and limits, accepting less than you need and extending more than you can offer—that’s a boundaries issue.
Why we need clarity on needs and limits
Having feelings about other people’s feelings is totally natural (hello, empathy!). Taking action on those feelings, however, without consideration for your needs and limits is a one-way ticket down the sadness spiral.
I’ll give an example from my own experience:
Early in my poly journey, I could tell that my first partner had a hard time hearing about cute moments with others that weren’t overtly sexual. He was comfortable with me having sex with others, but was still working through his feelings about my emotional connections.
I felt guilty, so I started withholding those details. I’d still mention the dates and sex, but leave out ooey-gooey stuff and romantic moments.
This had many consequences:
- My first partner understandably began to think my other relationships were mostly sexual, which wasn’t true. But I let him believe it.
- I had to micromanage interactions, hesitating to invite new partners to situations where they might interact with my first partner or where he’d see us interact in cutesy ways. If we were all together, I withheld affection from my newer partners.
- I started burning out emotionally, feeling like I was walking on eggshells with him, hating that I was hiding things from him, and building undeserved resentment toward him.
- I began speaking for my partner, explaining that he wasn’t comfortable seeing me affectionate with others even though we’d never had a conversation about it. More lies.
- My newer partners felt hidden, unrecognized, and less important as it became clear I was hiding our emotional connection. They built deserved resentment toward me.
- My newer partners began to pull away as I hesitated to commit to things like going on trips together or meeting their families, because that would reveal the depth of our connection to my first partner.
In short, I was trying to manage others’ emotions and everybody was paying the price. The guilt kept compounding and compounding.
Where I went wrong
What the hell had happened? I hadn’t realized until we started exploring poly that I had a need:
I needed to be able to express joy about my emotional connections.
Why didn’t I speak up and share this need? Because I also hadn’t realized I had a limit:
I couldn’t be happy with a don’t-ask-don’t-tell agreement.
I withheld my authentic self out of fear that my first partner would ask for a don’t-ask-don’t-tell agreement around nonsexual intimacy (or worse, that he’d reveal that he can’t handle polyamory) and force me to decide whether our relationship was viable as it was.
I was more willing to stay a guilty, inauthentic, burnt-out mess in the relationship than to consider it might not be a good fit the way it was.
By the time the issue rose to levels that could no longer be ignored, I was so emotionally strung out that it was really, really hard to have a productive conversation, let alone acknowledge the lies of omission, the conflict they’d created, and how we could move forward.
I’m amazed we got through it, but somehow we did. We had conversations that we could have had before I went on my guilt-and-stress-ridden micromanagement adventure, plus many more to make up for the damage I’d caused.
I hurt a lot of people that year. I made a lot of apologies for legitimate guilt.
But all that hurt was caused by:
- actions I took
- without regard for my needs and limits
- because I felt guilty
- about someone else’s emotions
Boundaries break the cycle
The saddest thing about the mess I created was that if I’d had more clarity and conviction in my needs and limits and had upheld boundaries based on them, the whole thing would have turned out fine.
I would have realized that I needed to be able to express joy and that my limit on don’t-ask-don’t-tell agreements needed to be discussed.
We would have had a conversation and probably landed on the solution we landed on after the dust from the blowup settled: making sure he had everything he needed to feel secure enough to hear about my emotional connections without feeling scared he’d lose me.
That would have still been hard, but much kinder and healthier. But I hadn’t yet learned that other people’s feelings were not my responsibility.
My responsibility is to be honest about my needs and limits, even when it might mean that an existing relationship doesn’t honor those things as it is.
Honesty is Key
As often is the case in polyamory, honesty with ourselves and our partners is usually the key to happy, healthy relationships.
Being honest is how we respect our partners and keep them informed about who they are in a relationship agreement with.
It honors their autonomy by giving them the information they need to decide whether the partnership is compatible with their needs and limits, and the opportunity to negotiate or renegotiate an agreement that works for both/all of us.
Obviously, how you execute that depends highly on your specific needs and limits, your relationship(s), your partners’ communication styles, and many other contextual factors.
Which is why a therapist, coach, support group, or community is so helpful: we generally benefit from outside perspectives when working through internal messes.
If you’re looking for help with identifying needs and limits and setting guilt-free boundaries, book a discovery call with me.
Healthy boundaries are the secret sauce of happy, healthy polyamory and one of my favorite things to coach on. Let’s get clear on yours!
Want blissful poly relationships?
Hi! I’m Shannon, a sex & relationship coach helping people set the boundaries that unlock their hottest, happiest, healthiest relationships.
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