DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Big fan of the blog, insert fawning here. Blah blah, hello! So a little background on me to start. 40ish gal who is Solo Poly with 3 regular partners, and a few other lovely people who I hang out with on a much more casual basis. I generally prefer my partners to have a primary partner already so that they have a stable relationship in place where the majority of their emotional needs are being met. I, as a hard core introvert, (yes I know how weird that sounds) burn out a relationship super-fast if someone is relying solely on me for emotional support. Everyone that I date long term is understanding about my idiosyncrasies and it generally makes me a very good partner. I want everyone I am in a relationship to be able to get their needs met!
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Now on to my current issue… one of my partners was just dropped unceremoniously by their primary and it’s been rough. Now as the sole partner, I am dealing with all the fall out of their primary relationship. We probably only saw each other every 2 weeks to once a month due to scheduling, and we only texted a few times a day. Now with the break up, it’s texting and talking and lots more in-person time and lots of rambling 3 am messages about how much he’s afraid to go out because he’s going to run into her.
This has been going on for over a month. I want to be there for them as much as possible, but I end up answering the phone and texts while I am out with my other partners or when I am on work trips, having to leave meetings to talk them out of a spiral. I am used to people only calling me when it’s an emergency, so I always answer. But now I getting to the point where I dread looking at my phone because I don’t want to see who’s calling. I am worried to tell them to stop, because I feel like the last line of defense (not true I know) but it’s starting to impact my other relationships and my work life and it’s getting harder to be kind and understanding and present. Now I just mostly feel drained.
How Tired is too Tired?
DEAR HOW TIRED IS TOO TIRED: I’m of two minds here, HTITT. I empathize with your partner; getting dumped out of what feels like the clear blue sky by someone you care about is going to throw you off kilter. His primary partner, someone he presumably cared strongly for, has just dropped him like 5th period French and now he is trying to realign his world view. Before he was part of a couple and now he has to relearn life without his primary partner. That’s going to be a really rough time and it’s understandable that he’s reaching out for comfort and reassurance.
At the same time however, you’ve got your own balancing act that you’re trying to perform and you know yourself well enough to know that you have very limited spoons. This is also presumably something that he knew going in, seeing as you mention that your partners are aware of how you prefer to handle your relationships. So while you’re being a good and caring person and partner, you’re running out of bandwidth and his behavior is cutting into your life as well. That’s a very understandable issue and one that can have negative effects for you and your other relationships. When you’re the focus of all someone’s emotional needs – especially when you weren’t before – that can be a lot. There is such a thing as caregiver burnout, and everyone’s going to have their own threshold before it sets in. It sounds like you’re getting close to yours.
Having been on both sides of this issue in my time, as the person feeling like a pile of emotional slop and the person helping people I’m close with deal with their own worlds falling apart, I can understand how exhausting it can all be.
For him, yeah, it’s really f—king rough and he’s dealing with not just the loss of his partner but the loss of the future he thought he had and – to a certain extent, his identity. But at the same time, there comes a point where it starts feeling less like trying to process one’s feelings and deal with the loss and starting to wallow instead.
It sounds a little like he’s hitting the wallowing stage of things.
(And trust me: I could wallow for the Olympics. I have been a world-champion wallower. I know from which I speak. Thankfully the really angsty LiveJournal posts from that era are long gone.)
I get that break ups suck – trust me, been there, done that, inadvertently ended up starting a new career over one – but there’s a point where you have to stop weeping and wailing and rending your clothes and start to get back on your feet and get back to the business of living again. My usual rule of thumb is that you get two weeks to feel sorry for yourself and feel the f—k out of your feels and cry to your friends, but after that you have to start pulling the pieces back together. You don’t need to be over the break up by any stretch, but you do want to be moving onto the part where you can still have a sad but without it completely derailing your life and the lives of the people in your immediate vicinity.
On the one hand, you want to help your partner, who’s in pain and who you care about. On the other, there comes a point where it feels like you’ve become their sole source of comfort and reassurance and you’re veering into the “setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm,” territory.
So how do you thread this needle?
My suggestion is that there needs to be a combination of practicality, compassion and boundaries. You’re already doing the compassionate thing, so the focus should be on the other sides.
On the practical side, it can be helpful to find ways to take his mind off things and encourage him to occupy his time so he has fewer chances for his jerkbrain to poke him in the sad feelings. You could also, give him some actual tips for dealing with some of the anxieties that’ve been keeping him up at night, such as running into his ex if they have overlapping social circles.
It’s an understandable worry, but the fear of it tends to be worse than the reality. And to be perfectly frank, the attempts to avoid ever encountering that situation only makes the fear worse. It’s better to prepare to deal with the inevitability than it is to try to plan your life around trying to avoid the possibility. All this does is serve to make your life smaller and smaller, as you begin to be afraid not just of running into your ex but the possibility of it and from there to just the feeling of discomfort that comes with fear of the possibility.
Having an actual plan for seeing her means that he’ll at the very least have something in his back pocket to manage the situation. He can freak out later, but knowing what to do, even in vague terms, can make it all easier.
This is an area that I actually had to deal with back in my bad old days. During one particularly rough break up, that was an issue I dealt with; the classic “Six Degrees of Austin” all but guaranteed that I would run into my ex. When it finally happened to me, there was the shock of the realization and the second shock of seeing her with her boyfriend at the time. But having a plan – say hello, be polite but keep it brief and move on – meant that things weren’t nearly as shattering as I’d feared they would be. In fact, that moment probably helped me move on in a way that I had been able to before.
But while you’re offering a sympathetic ear and advice on request, you’re also well within your rights to say that “look, I feel for you, but I can’t be your only sounding board here. I appreciate what you’re going through, but this is becoming more than I can reasonably manage. I really think that you should be talking to more people than just me about this.”
You can even say “I’m not saying you can’t be sad, that you have to hide your feelings about this or you can’t ask for a little reassurance, but I can’t keep being the only person you talk to about your ex. I don’t want to declare the topic off limits, but we’re really approaching the point where I may have to.”
I would also suggest that you make it clear that unless it’s an actual emergency, the 3 AM texts and phone-calls need to cease. You can say it with care and sympathy, but it needs to be said, directly and unequivocally.
Now, it’s possible that he doesn’t have other people that he could talk to about this. The poly aspect adds a layer of complexity to the situation and one that his friends may not necessarily grok. Or they might be of the “don’t know what to say, so I’m just going to give platitudes about fish and seas” type which… honestly, isn’t that helpful to anyone.
If that’s the case, or he’s so plagued by the pain of this that he’s having these regular long dark nights of the soul – hence the 3 AM rambling texts and messages – then it may be good for him to talk to a counselor or other professional sympathetic ear. If it’s hurting this badly, then he may need someone who actually has training to help talk him through it.
And of course, you can also send him my way if he needs to get advice on moving forward and getting over this break up, because that’s literally my job.
I’d also recommend saying, straight up, that you’re going to have to stop taking his calls while you’re at work or with your other partners. You’re allowed to have your life without having to constantly accept him intruding onto the areas he’s not a part of.
Just remember: having boundaries doesn’t mean that you don’t care for him, nor that you don’t empathize with him while he’s dealing with this pain. Having those boundaries is what allows you to continue being in a relationship with him. Otherwise, it’s as you said: you burn out and now he’s left with even less.
Good luck.
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Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com