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The Hook Up: 8-18-2011

Dear Anna, my best friend and I have always had an ambiguous relationship. She is straight and engaged, but we are often flirtatious and over the top with each other. Well my birthday was a few months ago and I was extremely intoxicated, After the Jager started pouring and the dancing continued, I guess, I began to come on to her. Nothing sexual happened, but she felt awkward in the morning. Although she is a beautiful girl, I do not have any romantic feelings for her. Things have been weird since that night and we haven’t really had a talk about it. I don’t want to lose the friendship, but I don’t know how to confront her about the situation. Was I in the wrong? –Jagered and Confused

Anna says: Ahh, yes. The last time I drank Jager I woke up wrapped in a throw rug and dressed as some kind of slutty lobster. This was yesterday and I still feel bad about it. Just kidding. I empathize though. I hit on my friends all the time while drinking. Usually, it is laughed off the next day. “Oh that Anna! She tried to take my bra off through my shirt again, El Oh El!”

Obligatory advice columnist PSA: I’m going to assume this was a one-off experience, but I am compelled to mention that if this is a frequent occurrence, and you often feel guilt or shame after drinking, it may be indicative of a larger problem. Roger Ebert, of all people, wrote a really compelling long read on AA that you might be interested in reading.

My first bit of advice is to forgive yourself. Most everyone has been in a similar situation, though that can manifest in several different ways. Some people drink too much then vomit on their friends/clothes/strangers. Some people sob hysterically to ’90s R&B. Some drunk dial or text their exes about how much they missssssss dem sow mush! You get the idea. Drinking impairs our judgment, but it does little to beat yourself up over something you can’t change.

Secondly, you should definitely bring it up with your friend. Not because it’s a huge, life-changing ordeal or anything, but because ignoring it will be more damaging to your friendship in the long term. It’s already been a few months, so you need to do this sooner than later. How do you bring it up? Simple. “Hey, remember the night of my birthday? I just wanted to apologize for my drunken behavior. I got carried away and I’m sorry it made you uncomfortable. Your friendship means a lot to me, and I promise I’ll do my best to ensure such buffoonery won’t happen again. Are we cool?” Feel free to modify if you feel like you sound like a math teacher from Saved by The Bell.

The longer both of your discomfort festers, the harder it will be to recover from what is essentially not that big of a deal. So get on that. And don’t worry so much about questions of right or wrongness. Just focus on repairing the awkwardness between the two of you. And if you find my lobster claw, would you give me a shout?

I have been in a relationship with my girl for half a year, and recently we discussed opening up our relationship. She has always been interested in polyamory and made it clear to me from the beginning that this was something that she would want to act on. I am intrigued by the idea, but I am also concerned about jealousy. Is this something I will be able to get over? How do people keep their jealousy in check? Any advice for a successful, healthy open relationship?

Anna says: I’ve written about polyamory before, but haven’t directly dealt with the jealousy aspect, so let’s grab that green-eyed betch by its horns and go to town.

First of all, everyone experiences jealousy. Some people experience it less frequently or less intensely than others, but it’s an emotion just like any other, like being tired or frustrated or scared. That said, it’s not something that you can “get over,” per se. But it’s definitely something you can confront, and if you do so in a direct, unabashedly honest manner, then it is something you can learn to make manageable, even if doing so scares the crap out of you. You seem to be pretty self-aware already about what your potential triggers might be, so you’re one step ahead of the game.

Jealousy is often the manifestation of other types of awful feelings, including, but not limited to possessiveness, insecurity, fear that our partners will leave us, lack of confidence, vulnerability, etc. The first step in dealing with these unpleasant feelings is to admit when you have them. (Ah look, another AA tie-in. Go theme!) It’s not helpful for you to lie about jealous feelings or to suppress them. Seen from slightly different angle, if you were feeling hungry, but repressed the urge to communicate that for whatever reason, you’d wind up erupting later. Bottling up unpleasant feelings leads to worse fights later on, and is, incidentally, how one (hypothetically) ends up consuming a whole plate of chocolate chip mini muffins in one sitting. Communicating your fears, even if they are irrational, is a really important way of helping to curb those fears. It takes the oomph out of them, that sucker punch to the gut feeling. It also allows you some distance from the fear when you can verbalize it. “Yes, I am jealous of that girl you are flirting with on Twitter. I know she lives 8,000 miles away and is straight, but that is how I feel.”

Another key aspect of all this great communicating you’re about to embark on is setting boundaries. This doesn’t just involve sex, but everything that could cause a potential snag. Do you care if someone spends the night? Are certain people off limits? How frequently will other dates occur? Etc. If you live together, there’s a whole ‘nother set of questions you should be prepared to ask yourself. In my column about threesomes, I talked more about this, and setting up a spreadsheet that entails what is/might be/and is not OK. I suggest you take a look at that.

My friend and poly veteran Dan suggested meeting your partner’s partners to keep jealousy in check. “This should ideally happen early and, if you get along reasonably well, often. Not only is this a way to defuse your imagination running wild on you, it could also lead to you finding out that you want this new person to be your partner as well.”

DeeDee added, “Realizing that the situation is not an invalidation to your current relationship is helpful. It’s actually a bonus! That bond with the other person makes your partner happy and, in return, aren’t you happy seeing them happy? That’s got to count for something.” And Andrea suggested that, “As long as you keep the lines of communication open and go at a pace both of you feel comfortable with, it’s entirely possible that – by dealing with stuff as it happens, in small chunks instead of in one big glurt – you’ll find out you’re not as jealous as you thought, or that your jealousy is more localized around certain actions than you expected.”

If you want more in-depth takes on jealousy from people who are much smarter and more experienced in the ways of polyamory than me, I’d suggest you read Opening Up, by Tristan Taormino and The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt. Both are excellent primers filled with stories and practical tidbits for dealing with jealousy.

And what about you all? How do you overcome jealousy in your relationships, poly or otherwise?

Hailing from the rough-and-tumble deserts of southern Arizona, where one doesn’t have to bother with such trivialities as “coats” or “daylight savings time,” Anna Pulley is a professional tweeter/blogger for Mother Jones and a freelance writer living in San Francisco. Find her at annapulley.com and on Twitter @annapulley. Send her your Hook Up questions at [email protected].

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