June 25: What a polyamory coach got half right (and what I'd change)

A polyamory coach posted something online recently, and it made the rounds.

It was long.

Evocative.

She painted a whole picture: the quiet that descends when your partner pulls away, the warmth that fades, the texts that get shorter.

The way you become a detective in your own relationship, scanning for clues, trying to figure out if it's stress or money or resentment or something you said three weeks ago.

Then you finally ask, "Something feels off. Is everything okay?"

And instead of honesty, you get: you're imagining it.

You're being needy.

Or worse.

She described how the person withholding becomes the reasonable one, and the person who noticed something was wrong becomes the problem.

She talked about sitting with countless women who ended up apologizing for accurately reading the room.

And then she ended with a plea to her partner:

"Tell me when something's wrong. Don't make me sense it, decode it, manage it, and then apologize for noticing it."

I read the whole thing.

I felt it.

It's a real experience and she described it beautifully.

And I'd do it completely differently.

Not the feeling part.

The response part.

I'm not a fan of telling people what to do—not even people I love.

Because here's what I know: you can't ask someone into being right for you.

A "fine" when something’s clearly not fine?

That's information.

It's a boundary, even if it doesn't look like one and I don’t like it, not one bit.

I accept it.

And then I make my decisions accordingly.

The burden of their feelings is not mine to carry—not because I don't care, but because I won't accept them handed to me that way.

And if they keep trying to hand them to me, I will change my relationship choices with them.

Not with a plea.

No attempt to decode.

No apologizing for noticing.

Just clarity about what I will and won't do.

Does that mean people can't grow and change?

Oh god, no. I'd be out of a job! LOL.

What I believe, though, is that people grow for themselves, and then their relationships benefit.

Growth to save a relationship is not growth that sticks, in my view.

Which is why this week I'm giving away a copy of my book, Fight Less, Love More: Simple Steps to Transform Tension into Togetherness.

All relationships will have conflict.

Not all of them have to have fights.

And the ones we do have hurt less when we've done the work on ourselves—on both the giving and the receiving sides.

Reply with "Fight Less" and I'll send it your way.

--
Rev Heather, aka Nookie, LUQ
https://my.curiouser.life
+1-855-712-5433 (toll-free)

P.S. Where do you land on this? Is asking your partner to communicate differently the right move or is the real work in what you do with what they're already showing you?

Hit reply. I want to know.