Intentionality vs Passive Avoidance

There are questions that circulate in nonmonogamous relationships that sometimes come with a kind of low-grade dread attached to them. “So what is this, exactly? What is this new person to you? Where is this going?”

And it’s usually a fair question. A person who loves you and is navigating their own feelings wants to understand where you are. But something complicated often creeps into the space between the question and the answer.

There’s a couple I see with a history of infidelity at play - one of the partners cheated in a prior relationship. He disclosed to his former partner that he had been unfaithful, and his confession was met with vitriol and even physical violence. Understandably, confronting his new partner’s feelings - really any feelings at all - is terrifying. Because he’s learned that when he’s honest, he’s attacked. His nervous system operates on the basis that being open and honest with someone is literally dangerous.

This creates a challenge for both he and his new partner. Let’s call him Mike, and his new partner Becca. For Mike, it is an incredibly daunting and overwhelming experience to hold his new partner’s feelings. He wants to behave differently than he did in the prior relationship, to be honest and forthright. And on a rational level, based on the nature of this new relationship, their understanding and agreements, he can trust that his new partner likely won’t react to anything the same way his ex did to any information he might disclose. (Especially when the updates he’s sharing uphold agreements…) But his nervous system fires up anyway - at the first sign of any difficult feelings.

And for Becca, it can be hard to trust that she’s getting the full story from Mike. She knows he has a history of betrayal, of withholding as a way to avoid his prior partner’s reactions. So she’s grappling with anxiety and her own delicate dance too. She knows that she needs to create safe space for Mike to share information that might be difficult for her to hear. But she can’t self abandon - she can’t pretend to be ok when she might be struggling. Because that will build resentment, and would also prevent opportunity for mutual growth and understanding.

This is where it can feel like a chicken or egg scenario. Relationships require reciprocal generosity and courage, and for both partners to work to self regulate.

If Mike withholds information in order to avoid difficult feelings from Becca, he’s perpetuating the same patterns. And if Becca is highly reactive when she receives challenging information, she’s reinforcing Mike’s lingering beliefs that he can’t or shouldn’t be honest. So what this requires is room for imperfection, for both partners to invest efforts, and to stumble and recover and try again.

As work with Mike and Becca evolved, I saw progress. I could see Mike’s commitment to honesty. And I could see all the work Becca invested in approaching him with a certain kind of gentle, open inquiry. And that her trust for him was building.

Together, we started to cultivate our practices around intentionality. Which brings me back to those questions above. Sometimes we’re tempted to ask our partners to predict the future. And we can apply undue pressure here. But even when we’re the ones demanding these answers, we know that feelings can evolve. That a situation might look one way and turn out another. And we know that we shouldn’t force our partners to define new relationships before anyone has had the opportunity to let anything develop. I use Mike and Becca as examples because it’s the most potent demonstration of how these elements interact. That when prior issues sew distrust (read: when our anxieties have practical evidence to support the fearful or protective narrative) it’s all the more challenging.

In our work together, we discovered how impactful it was for both Mike and Becca to understand his behaviors in the past and to engage directly with the new choices he was making. Understanding and awareness are necessary in any change process. The more Mike understands his impulses, the better equipped he is to make different, more intentional decisions going forward. And the more understanding Becca has for Mike’s journey and growth, the more she can witness and trust that a different version of Mike is showing up for her, day by day. That he’s not perpetuating his problematic people pleaser habits, but instead reinventing the way he operates in relationships entirely. In the process of unpacking and sharing and repairing, we made a habit of naming intentions, with the caveat that circumstances and intentions change.

And when that process evolved from clunky mistakes into more fluid back and forth, we continued fine tuning and calibrating. And we unearthed one particular, subtle way that patterns persisted. I work with a lot of people who are learning, in real time, to navigate nonmonogamous relationships with integrity. And this is a common, sneaky issue. I’d call it a kind of passive avoidance.

Avoidance by Angie Kang

Sometimes Mike would share information with Becca - laced with just the slightest hint of avoidance. He’d let her know he’d matched with someone on Feeld, that they might hang out soon... “But probably not. We’ll see if it plays out.” Or he would downplay details. Or he’d frame certain situations like they were happening to him - that he was simply reactive but not intentional in his actions. He’d focus on the new partner’s actions (“she wanted” or “she invited me”) while leaving out whether he’d been flirtatiously texting prior, for example. And when asked what might happen with respect to someone specific, or where something was going, he’d almost always respond with: “I don’t know.”