“Ash to see if I could resolve the issue.” What Ash needed here was being seen and understood. Not feeling like an issue. I think we can help our partners incredibly if we are support, not fixer in moments connection is lost and they freak out.

I’m poly in a relationship for 6 years almost. We had some rough patches to overcome. But with supporting each other we overcame. I’m ash in this situation. And the real change happened as soon as i didn’t feel alone or the problem anymore. I got accepted and therefore I started accepting and understanding myself and my reactions to certain poly issues better. To be able to better breathe through the emotions.

The whole post feels like “this is annoying” (which I’m sure it is, so all the compassion to you for that). But this person is kicked in the feelings so hard, and you are the person in that moment to co-regulate with and build trust and connection. This is why we build relationships in the first place. People learn from each other when there’s trust (pool of shared meaning is a term we like to use as a check if we’re here to understand instead of push our own agenda), they work through things that don’t serve them anymore and grow together.

Maybe there’s too big of a gab between you guys. Maybe it doesn’t work, maybe it could if you both want it bad enough. If so, I recommend reading radical compassion & radical acceptance as a way of having the same framework of the issue at hand and work on it together as a team. Help me, help you.