374 - Friends to Lovers and Other Relationship Escalations
Escalating a relationship
We’ve talked a lot in the past about how to peacefully and maturely de-escalate a relationship, but this episode focuses on the opposite. Deciding to escalate a relationship, or become more entangled, can be scary for some people and there are different emotional, social, and logistical aspects of it that deserve to be considered.
Escalating a relationship could look like:
Making more intentional long-term plans together.
Spending more regular time together.
Saying “I love you.”
Adding sex to an otherwise nonsexual relationship.
Adding a check-in or a RADAR.
Making your relationship more visible to others.
Attaching more of your identity to it.
Consequences of escalation
Escalating a relationship when it is perhaps not the right time to can result in things such as:
Putting pressure on a relationship.
Leading to its ending earlier.
Creating new conflicts in a relationship that was previously relaxed.
Making it harder to de-escalate later.
Trading an awesome FWB relationship.
These are all things to keep in mind when determining if now is the right time to escalate a relationship.
Common expectation conflicts
There are advantages and challenges that come with escalating a relationship. Some of the most common conflicts that arise around discussing expectations are:
Sex: How often? What kind? With others?
Money: How does our spending line up? Does it matter? How expensive are dates? Do we entwine finances?
Outward Appearance: Do we present differently to others? More couply? Plus ones? PDA? Outness?
Life Decisions: Children? Adopting Pets? Buying furniture? Lease? Moving to a new city? How involved are we in each other’s life choices?
What do we provide each other?
Tools
Some ways to mitigate any conflict around escalating a relationship:
RADAR is good, especially if you are entwining a lot more.
Discuss each of the expectations above (and keep and eye out for any secret ones that slip in later!).
Pull up the Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord (optionally, check out episode 339 to learn more about it) and go through each bubble and discuss:
Talk about what you both expect/hope for in each one. If you are PERFECTLY aligned, keep going. If you differ at all (or just want to discuss more) write down a quick note, like “Public Displays of affection: Social media and Work” or “Family events/obligations.”
Go through each item on your list and ask each other these questions:
What is your expectation about this and why is that important?
Have you had experiences of this being met or not being met in the past? Work on understanding the purpose behind them first before trying to agree on them.
NOTE: You may find certain areas that you just need more time before you can figure them out. That’s ok, too! This is a work in progress.
Validate and understand each other and evaluate:
Do we feel more aligned now?
Is this an area where we need our expectations to match? Or is it possible to have different expectations of each other?
Hopefully this does not happen, but it’s possible that one or both of you have hit a deal-breaker for this type of relationship. That can be discouraging, but you’ve already had another type of relationship so maybe you’ve just discovered that your previous relationship situation was the right one.
Make some agreements on what to try and set a time to revisit and see how they are going. This is an ongoing process that all relationships will benefit from but you may want to do it a little more frequently at first.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about shifting an existing relationship into something more entangled or somehow escalating that relationship. This could be moving from friendship to dating, from friends with benefits to more romantic dating, could be a comet or secondary partner moving to being a more primary type of partner, or any number of other escalations.
Regardless of whether you think of these in terms of getting more serious, which is the more traditional way to think about this, or if you're a total relationship anarchist, we can't deny that there's emotional, social, and logistical aspects to increasing our levels of entanglement with others. In this episode, we're going to get into all of that and talk about some things that you can do to help make that transition better.
I guess to start out, let's just clarify a little bit about what we mean by this. It's challenging because trying to look it up, the term that gets used in pop psychology-type stuff and random blogs is getting more serious.
Emily: We're going steady.
Jase: Right. Exactly.
Dedeker: Those, all those blogs from the 50s, we’ll say–.
Emily: We're going steady.
Jase: Exactly. That tends to mean serious brings with it all these other implications of-- Well, it wasn't meaningful beforehand. Generally, it's tied in with serious means serious about getting married, at some point, tends to be the association there with serious means, we might get married.
Emily: I guess that makes sense.
Jase: We're headed in that direction. It's the traditional way of thinking about relationships. If it's headed toward marriage, it's serious, and if it's not, then it's some casual thing. That's the only place relationships can exist.
Emily: Either it's serious or it's just silly.
Jase: Serious or silly. You're right. Exactly. This is why I wanted us to do this episode is because the stuff that comes along with that, some of the challenges and benefits of becoming "more serious in a relationship" apply, but so much of what's written out there is so focused on this one way of looking at "seriousness of relationships" or how legitimate a relationship is, or whatever. The goal with this was to look at a lot of those sources, what the little bit of research that there is, what kinds of advice is being given, and then how can we apply that in a way that's less based in just this, "Things only matter if they're headed toward marriage," way of looking at it?
I do want to clarify a couple of things. One is that, this is, we're talking about shifting up. I don't even like using that term, but like escalating or becoming more entangled, or more emotionally invested.
Emily: That's a good way of describing it, more entangled.
Dedeker: Yes, entanglement, entwinement. I think about almost like a proximity thing, as opposed to we're headed up the escalator.
Emily: Like amount of time, perhaps.
Dedeker: Escalator. Up the escalator.
Jase: Well, let's talk more about the escalator in a second because I think that's worth comparing it to. What I did want to clarify is just that in this episode we're talking about increasing that entanglement or emotional investment, whereas we've done other episodes in the past about other types of shifts. Fairly recently, we did an episode on de-nesting without de-escalating. Just changing whether you're living together or not, so that's 353. We also, aways back now, did our episode 209, that's on cohabiting, so, specifically just moving in together.
Then we did 289, which is on de-coupling, how to kindly and maturely de-escalate, I guess, or disentangle those relationships. Those are all other kinds of transitions, but this one we're talking about is becoming more entwined or more invested.
Emily: I like the idea of being super intentional about our entanglements, because I think that a lot of more traditional relationships tend to skip perhaps that intentionality, or they just fall into it, and that's not to say that all of those types of relationships do. I'm sure that people still do have these conversations where they're like, "Okay, are we going to be exclusive or whatever," whatever that type of conversation is, but I think more often than not, so much is just predicated on, "This is the way that things are, and this is how relationships move forward, and if you're going to move backwards in any way, then that means we're probably going to break up."
When you are super intentional about it, which I think non-monogamy has more predisposed to potentially, that's nice. It's good to have really specific conversations.
Jase: Yes. When we first started this podcast almost eight years ago or whatever, I remember I posted about it on my Facebook and stuff like that, and a dad of a friend of mine from college, who's a pastor, super, super cool guy, a Church of Christ pastor, but he wrote to me being like, "Hey, congrats on your podcast. It's really cool." The thing that he really liked about it, and he gave this very political answer. Well, he didn't want to weigh in on what he actually felt about polyamory or anything like that, but he said, "I really appreciate that it's about being intentional about your relationships."
Dedeker: Oh, that's nice.
Jase: That was his big takeaway. He's like, "I think that's a great thing that everyone could benefit from." Yes, I love that.
Emily: Something we talk a lot about on the show is the relationship escalator, and I think, to a degree, we poopoo the notion but there's nothing wrong really with that idea of the relationship escalator. It's not bad. Entwinement, in general, is not bad, but it's when there's just this default, that this is the way that things are, this is unavoidable if you want to continue growing in a relationship or becoming more entwined in a relationship. That's where we tend to take issue, I think, and where we tend to question like, "What is it that you really want in a relationship? Do you think that cohabiting is what's best for your relationship, for example? Or maybe you're in a relationship where having kids is not something that you want to do, or becoming financially entwined or married or any of those things. Again, that intentionality, I think is really important to have, rather than just doing this default relationship escalator-style thing.
Jase: Yes. I've been trying to come up with a different image for it, because the idea with the escalator, and why I think it's so smart of Amy Gahran to come up with that metaphor for it, as an escalator. One is that it only goes in one direction because it's an escalator. It's moving you up. It's the idea that you're being forced along it, hence, that there's no going back down. You get on and you just got to follow it or jump off the side. That there's not another option.
Emily: And that could be a problem, depending on how big it is.
Dedeker: What if it was like a relationship teacups at Disneyland? You get on it, you spin around, you hop off, you puke?
Jase: I think sometimes when I'm just doing too much dating, I do feel like that's a little bit.
Dedeker: Right? Thank you.
Emily: A very merry unbirthday to you. Yes.
Jase: I was thinking that, what if it's that you're building a staircase out of big Lego bricks? The idea is that it's not like I want to get to that step so I've got to go through these intermediate ones. It's like, "Oh, let's agree. Just let's grab that Lego brick and we'll just click that on here, and maybe we can veer off in different directions if we want. It's a more freeform, build your own staircase."
Emily: Yes, or just build your own whatever, like your relationship Lego creation can look whatever you want it to look like. It doesn't have to be a staircase, it can be a castle or a dragon or something like that.
Dedeker: You can follow directions or you can just freestyle it. Just make whatever you want.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: Your relationship Lego kit.
Emily: Love it. That's cute. We could make that and slap a TMTM on it and then--
Jase: We'll talk to Legos licensing people and we'll license the Multiamory--
Emily: Relationship Lego.
Jase: Relation Lego kit. I love it.
Emily: It's going to be a bunch of random Legos. Love it.
Dedeker: No, but we could put things on each of those Legos, like all the stuff that's on the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, and–
Emily: Oh, I like that.
Jase: That'd be fun.
Dedeker: The creative challenges, "Okay, you just have all these bricks and now you have got to make like a pleasing shape to both of you out of the bricks--"
Emily: It's a amoebic form, or something.
Jase: Then it can look like anything you want. Yours could be a big amoeba, it could be a castle, or a dragon, or whatever, like the things you said, Emily.
Emily: Love it.
Dedeker: All right. Let's continue to clarify. When we keep using these terms, escalate, or entangle, or entwine, we're just going to give some examples of how this could look like. We can't quite put a specific definition on it because, again, I think the whole point of this podcast is we're not necessarily going with the traditional means of defining relationships or what seriousness or entanglement maybe looks like, but just to give you listeners a sense of what we're referring to here.
It may look like deciding with a partner, maybe we're going to make more intentional long-term plans together. Maybe I know that this is someone I want to keep in my life for a long time in some way. Maybe when I finally buy my commune, I know I want them in it. Something like that, or I know I want to live with this person eventually. It could look like just choosing to spend more regular time together when you haven't before. It could look like dropping the L-word, lesbians.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: Like a very serious moment in a relationship. It could be deciding to exchange those kind of verbal means of affection very specifically. It could involve maybe adding sex to an otherwise relationship that has not been sexual up to this point. It could involve doing something like adding an intentional check-in or a radar. It could involve deciding to make your relationship more visible to others and that can look a number of different ways. Just we're going to be out about the fact that we're in a romantic relationship together, or we're going to use the term partner with each other, or boyfriend, girlfriend, date friend, whatever it is that you want. You may attach more of your identity to this particular relationship.
This is a deep well here, because there's a lot of implications psychologically of the amount of cognitive room that we dedicate to this particular relationship and how much it entangles with our own identity, but there may be a very particular shift there where you decide to escalate a particular relationship with someone and that may just change your own identity.
Jase: There's a big difference between thinking about my future plans and my life decisions in terms of how they affect someone else and how that's part of my identity, I guess, which goes into both the future planning, as well as identity. Versus someone else who it's like, "Yes, I care about this person, but I'm not going to quite identify as much with them when making those kinds of decisions or plans or just introducing myself to other people or whatever."
Again, as Dedeker mentioned, the point is that there's a lot of different ways this can look and really it's whatever it is to you. If you're making some change that feels like, "Oh wow, this is a little more significant somehow, or this is more entangled, or whatever," that's what we're talking about. It's not about defining what this is or isn't but giving you the sense of what we're talking about here.
The first thing that we're going to talk about now before we go on to some things like some pros and cons of escalating a relationship, as well as some things to look out for and some tools to help with that, is just this question of, is this the right thing to do at all? Is this the time? Maybe I'm starting to think, "I've got some feelings for my friend or my metamour," or, "I've had this comet relationship with this person for a long time and I want it to be something more, fill in the blank, serious entangled, whatever it is".
What are some things to think about to determine that? I think the place to start here is to look at what are potential consequences of escalating a relationship when it's not the right time for that and then what are some consequences of not escalating it. Helping to make a little pros and cons board, I guess. One of the things to think about with escalating a relationship is that this might put pressure on a relationship that maybe part of what's making this relationship so enjoyable and great is that it doesn't have that pressure on it. Now this one, we will talk about a little bit more in a bit when we share some personal stories and things like that.
There's this thing of, we have this great friends with benefits arrangement and now we've decided, "Oh, this is great. We should date each other and make this into something else." Suddenly now there's this pressure and there's expectations and things, and we'll cover these more later, but that's something to be aware of that that may change some of your favorite dynamics of this relationship.
Along with that, this could lead to that relationship ending sooner. It's possible that by putting some extra expectations or some extra maybe obligations is another way to think about it, that this could cause this relationship to end in a way that maybe this could have gone on much longer without those obligations being involved.
Dedeker: I think I've definitely seen and also personally experienced that when you're escalating with someone that you don't really know very well, and I know that's pretty common in traditional dating, where it's like, I don't know, you go on three or four dates and for some people it's like, "Great, awesome. I'm going to make this person my boyfriend or whatever," but I think I've mostly seen it where people haven't given really enough time to even evaluate, "Could I even see this person as my friend?" That doesn't necessarily mean
Emily: That's a really interesting question. That's a really good plan.
Dedeker: Well, because the research shows that's a huge part of successful ongoing long-term relationships is the quality of the friendship. That's really the thing that keeps us going more so than like the attraction or the passion or compatibility or things like that. It doesn't mean before you escalate with someone you need to have a years-long friendship necessarily, but I do think that there's something really valuable in being able to give yourself time to evaluate that and put it through that lens of like, "Could I even see being friends with this person?"
Emily: I think I've heard a lot of anecdotes out there that, "Oh, I don't want my significant other to be my friend." I have my friends for that and my significant other is something else, but I so appreciate that idea that, I think they should probably be both in a sense. You want to like this person not just want to sleep with them or entangle yourself financially or whatever, have kids with them or whatever. You also want to be able to have a nice time with them and enjoy their company.
Dedeker: I don't need to be your only friend. I think that's where we start to get into trouble.
Emily: That's right. Of course, but a friend at least.
Jase: I think that's a good point though, is that idea that saying, I don't want them to be my friend is maybe more getting at, I have my friends that fulfill certain things and my partners fill other things, and that those don't have to always be the same subset of things that they all fulfill, which we talk about a lot on this show. I think something else to think about though since the topic of this episode is more about, "We did have that established friendship first and now we're changing it into something else rather than that I've only known this person three months and we're still all in this NRE, getting to know each other, and we're escalating, escalating, escalating every day." That's a little bit different. I think a lot of this still applies, but that's a little different than what we're talking about.
I think the other thing is that thing of, I've got this friend and I have feelings for them and I'm attracted to them, but that conventional wisdom of, "Oh, but don't sleep with them or try to date them because then you might ruin your friendship." I've got some thoughts about the social baggage that we attach to that and how we're kind of, I would argue--
Dedeker: What sex ruins friendships or something?
Jase: Yes. I would argue that we're putting that on it, that that's not inherent in sex, but it's those social pressures that we're putting on it and those hidden expectations and things that we're talking about in this episode. We can't deny that that's a thing. It's a pretty widely known phenomenon. It's a concern a lot of people have because there is that social pressure and there are those unspoken obligations and expectations that come with it. That is worth being aware of, and considering even if you disagree with that in principle, it still does affect you.
Let's see. Another one is that this could create, again, what those expectations could create, some conflict in a relationship that was super chill before. Maybe we just saw each other occasionally or maybe I have an expectation that, well, my friend, they show up late to something or cancel on me last minute. It's like, "That's annoying, but not a big deal," but if my partner does it, that is a big deal to me. Some stuff like that may come up, could come up on the other side as well, so something to be aware of.
Another is we've done several episodes now on some deescalating or disentangling relationships. The reason why we've talked about that a lot is because it's really hard largely because there's so much social pressure that tells us you can't do that. That if you're deescalating, you should just break up, and so I think that's part of it, but it's also just difficult to untangle the ways that your lives are connected with each other. Just something to be aware of here is that if you're choosing to get more entangled with this person, it's harder to go back than it is to wait and do that later. Does that make sense?
Emily: Yes. Absolutely.
Jase: This is something that this escalating too quickly, or maybe just when it wasn't something that relationship was for at all is something that I've done so many times in my life.
Emily: Really?
Jase: Oh, gosh. There's so many relationships that I look back on, especially before I was non-monogamous, but even after that, looking back and saying, Gosh, that was such a fun, cool, fulfilling relationship that I liked a lot," and so I wanted it to be more "serious." I was like, "Oh, well, this is a good relationship so I should want this to be more serious," because that's right, it's a good relationship. I want it to be that.
It didn't make it either falling apart right away because the other person wasn't interested in that, but we didn't have the communication tools for them to just say and feel like they could say, and probably I wasn't in a place to hear it if they had, but have just said, "No, I don't want that, but I do value this way that our relationship is." Sometimes it's just ended right away when I've tried to escalate it like that or within a year or so after that. Just those expectations and pressures of it made this thing become a source of stress that used to be just a source of friendship and enjoyment or sex or whatever it was. This a topic near and dear to my heart because I've screwed this up so, so many times in the past.
Dedeker: We have to be fair and look at the other side of this of, there could also be potential risks and consequences of choosing not to escalate a relationship that you are interested in escalating. The way that this looks in traditional default relationship escalator monogamy is the idea of, we got to get 'em while the getting's good. The idea it is that you should have put a ring on it. The idea that if you don't escalate, if you don't strike while the iron is hot, then eventually the window's going to close. They're going to find somebody else and your opportunity's going to be lost.
I don't know if there's the same fears in non-monogamy, necessarily. I do think that there are the logistics of thinking about if this person that I'm interested in goes and suddenly acquires a bunch of other partners that they're then escalating and entwining and entangling with, and then there's really no room left over, no energy or time left over for me as a partner. Like that could be a concern, I think. What do you think?
Emily: Yes. Too poly-saturated.
Jase: I think also just if they're looking for more of these kind of entangled relationships and they don't think that you want to do that, they might go seek those out, and like you said, can end up with their schedule all filled up because of it. Yes, that makes sense. I think that still applies.
Dedeker: You could be in a situation where maybe you have some feels, maybe the other person has some feels, but you're deciding, "I'm going to hold back. I'm not going to escalate. I'm not going to go there right now, or maybe I feel a little afraid of escalating or afraid of having that conversation," and the other person who also feels afraid of having that conversation may feel a little slighted or maybe interpreting it as, "Oh gosh, maybe they're not that interested in this. Maybe I also shouldn't bring this up. Maybe they don't have feelings in the same way and so I got to be cool." This happens all the time because I've done it all the time, to be quite honest.
Emily: Like not escalated when perhaps you should have?
Dedeker: Well, it's so hard to know in retrospect.
Emily: Yes, coulda, shoulda, woulda.
Dedeker: Yes. It's the whole coulda, shoulda, woulda thing, but I've had many, many experiences. First of all, people should know that for a lot of my dating life, and a lot of my 20s, I was very, very avoidant, very much the withdrawer in most of my relationships and also most of my dating relationships. I would really withhold a lot of affection, keep people at arm's length, even if I was interested in them, even if I had feelings for them, even if I wanted to be close to them, but I pretty much always erred on the side of, I just better not, or maybe they're not into it or I don't even want to have that conversation or I don't want to be vulnerable.
I've had many stories of people approaching me years later to say, "Yes, I didn't say anything. I was really into you but I thought you weren't into me or I thought you were not interested in that, or I totally would have, but then you were acting all cold and weird," and so that was my bad. That's some potential consequences is there could be some opportunities missed. Again, I can't rewind and say 100%, "Oh, If only I had, then it would've been a wonderful relationship and it would've been all perfect," But there was an opportunity to maybe have some love or some connection that I passed up.
Emily: I'm totally the pursuer so I have no idea what you're talking about.
Dedeker: I think I've switched now. I think I've become a little bit more of a pursuer, but I don't know. I haven't really been actively dating in quite a while so who knows what's going on in there now.
Jase: Yes, that's fair. That is interesting to think about though kind of looking back and which one did you gravitate more toward. I was saying gravitating more toward escalating quicker than maybe I should have and Dedeker feeling like the opposite of maybe kind of staying back from that when she could have pursued it and might have wanted to.
With all of this though, I think just that's it's all stuff to think about and weigh up. None of it is saying definitively if x then you should or shouldn't, but it's valuable to think about these kinds of lists of some of the consequences on either side because we tend to get caught up more in what we think the advantages are. It's like, "Oh, I'm excited about moving this relationship into some new chapter." I'm excited about that, so I tend to think about that and not so much about maybe I should wait a little bit, what are some of the consequences here, or we might be so caught up in our fear of escalating the relationship that we ignore like, "Well, maybe I could also be hurting this relationship or missing out on something because of overly emphasizing the fear." I think whichever camp you're in, spend a little time thinking about that list in the opposite category to help balance that out.
We're going to go on to talking about some of the cool, special advantages that you have when escalating from an existing relationship versus finding a brand new relationship that's going to be however serious or entangled or whatever it is within a short amount of time, and we're also going to look at some of the challenges that come along with that, some of which we've already talked about, but then we're going to get into a tool for discussion for how you can help to avoid some of those expectation mismatches.
Before we go to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some awesome sponsors for this episode. If you could take a moment to listen to those, if any seem interesting to you, go check them out because that directly helps support our show and lets us keep this content coming to everyone for free.
Emily: Now we're going to talk about some advantages that you may have when escalating and specifically, again, this is advantages. If you've already sort of had a relationship with this person that we're talking about before becoming more entwined. If you've had like a long-standing relationship or maybe a friends with benefit relationship with them or a friendship, something along those lines.
A whole lot of times in traditional dating, we have an idea and we've talked about this in past episodes of a type or a personality or something that we're interested in. If we find someone who sort of fits that mold, then we may quickly grab them and try to start dating them and put them into that slot in your mind that is this person that you want to date. That sometimes leads to a great relationship and sometimes doesn't, but when you have had a really long-standing relationship with someone, that often will lead to continuing that relationship in a more entangled way and having it continue to be fulfilling and awesome in your life because you've already established something with them for potentially a long period of time.
Also, if you were non-monogamous, you might have an easier time with a future relationship that this person may have. Because probably you've seen them have relationships before with other people, and so it's not going to become like such a shock to your system, especially if you're new to non-monogamy or if you don't know exactly how you're going to feel in terms of jealousy or any other number of feelings that come up when a person starts to date another person.
Jase: I do think that's an interesting one to think about there and this is something that a friend of mine told me this story that I thought was interesting and I hadn't really considered this before, but was that he had recently started dating someone who had been kind of an off-again-on-again friends with benefits for years. For maybe seven years before this point that they decided to enter into a pretty serious relationship. Again, "serious" in quotes, whatever that means to you. A very entangled relationship. Spending a lot of time together, very emotionally connected, all that stuff.
What he mentioned was really helpful about it was that when he had been in previous non-monogamous relationships, she was an occasional friends with benefits during those and that she was able to see that while they had that kind of relationship, that he never tried to hide his partners from her and that he was respectful to her, like wasn't shady about sleeping around. I think for a lot of people who are new to non-monogamy, especially, that's the fear. It's this, "Oh, I'm worried you're going to hide me from other people," or maybe they've had a partner who's done that to them before, or you're going to be dishonest to the other people you're dating because you're just using them or whatever.
He was saying that because she was the other woman, she was that other person that she got to experience, I know how you treat these other people and I know how you talk about your existing partners. I don't have fear of you treating other people badly or hiding me or downplaying your relationship with me because I've been on the other side.
Emily: There's precedent already.
Jase: Yes. I had never considered that before but it makes a lot of sense that you're actually getting to see that reality or that you've already seen it. It's not like, I need you to keep proving to me. It's like, "No, I've seen this for years and have some evidence of that." This could also go badly the other way too, where it's like, "I've been your friend a long time. I've seen how you've hidden this person you're dating or been a little bit dishonest. I'm going to know to look out for those things."
Dedeker: I see people not pay attention to those red flags all the time.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: I think the situation I see playing all the time--
Emily: It's going to be different with me.
Dedeker: Exactly. Yes, like that situation you're describing where maybe someone's like the "secondary partner or less serious partner" and they see this person treating their other partner badly or talking shit about them, or being really irresponsible, or breaking or-- I'll just straight up say breaking rules because usually it's like a safe sex rule. This is what I see all the time is where someone broke their safe sex rule but it was for me and so it's a little bit more romantic and not paying attention to the fact that you need to pay attention to the fact of this person is okay with doing that. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to change when it's with you, but I'll get off my soapbox about that.
Jase: I think the point here though is not that, "Oh, if that happened, therefore I've never be in this relationship," but you can't ignore those realities. You have those data points.
Dedeker: Maybe something to talk about.
Jase: It might be that that's the advantage. It's like I've been friends with this person a long time and I know that they do this thing that upset their partners but that doesn't bother me. Okay, cool. Maybe you have a perspective on this person that someone who just comes along and starts dating them wouldn't have going in. Maybe that's an advantage, or as Dedeker pointed out, maybe it's, "Hey, this is a red flag that actually is why I don't want to take this certain step," or If I do, I'm going to know not to try to make that type of rule with this person because I know they're not going to follow it, so instead I'm going to make other decisions based on the assumption that I know they're not going to do that thing. It's like, take advantage of the strengths you have. Don't just ignore them or think, "Oh, well, it'll be different."
Now, on the other hand, there are some extra challenges that come along with escalating or becoming more entwined in a relationship that's already existed for a while in one state. Some of these are relatively low consequence, more of just something to be aware of. Others are potentially more serious. We've been hinting at some of these as we go here. Let's start with a relatively low consequence one that can still be frustrating. That's having to update everyone else in your life about this change in status.
Now, maybe you don't care and that doesn't matter, but if you think about, "This person has been my friend or maybe my friends with benefits or something for a long time. Now, I'm wanting them to be this much more entwined person who is-- I want to be my plus one to things and we're going to make a lot of life decisions together." Your other friends and relations and work people and parents and whoever, might still think of them as this more casual person.
I remember that this was a challenge for me with my mom, that in her mind for a long time into the relationship, she still thought of Dedeker as someone who was more of a secondary-ish, less entangled partner to me even years after that was very far from true. Whether we've done trips together and we're very entwined in our relationship, that that was just in her mind, and I had never thought to update her about it. One day I came to her, I was like, "Hey, mom. What would it take for you to take my relationship with Dedeker more seriously? Would it be-- We're not going to get married, but with some other kind of ceremony or something?" Her answer was just, "You just have to tell me. I didn't realize. I just had always assumed it was still that same type of relationship it was before."
Emily: It would be chaos if there are few guys had like a little, "Mom, we're more entangled ceremony."
Emily: Like get the whole family together and go out to dinner or something.
Jase: A good excuse to go have a dinner, right?
Emily: There you go. Yes.
Jase: Anyway, this can show up in a lot of different ways. Just something to be aware of that other people may treat your partner or your relationship in a way that feels maybe a slight or disrespectful. It could just be because for how many years they've had it in their head that it's this one type of thing. Just something to be aware of like, "How do we update people?" Also, you could like announce it to everyone and they're like, "Oh, I thought you already were. I didn't realize that." It could go any way. Then we get into expectations. I think this is the real challenge here. This is the one we've been hinting at. I think this shows up in two ways. There's just our normal expectations of, "Hey, I want to start living with this person or start making life decisions with this person or just start being more romantic with a person I haven't before." I've got some clear expectations in my head of what that means.
It's like if I'm going to be dating someone, I expect them to show up on time for our dates in a way that I'm more forgiving of with friends, or I expect them to make plans further ahead of time. Whereas like right now maybe it's like, "Hey, you up?" That's fine right now. I might have a different expectation if we have a different type of relationship. Those are what I'll think of as your-- What's a good word for this?
Emily: Built-in expectations?
Jase: No. The expectations you're aware of because then we have this other category of hidden expectations.
Dedeker: Maybe you're aware of expectations or your speculations.
Jase: Okay, your speculations is good. Then we have all these hidden ones. These are the ones that I think can really get us, especially when we're making a change in a relationship. That's that I think, "Hey, we've got this super cool friendship. Everything's so chill. Let's just make this official." Again, all these terms are so hard to use because they don't always apply to all contexts.
Emily: We need to find different words for them.
Jase: Right. Let's start calling each other partner or boyfriend, girlfriend or whatever or just saying I love you. Something as small as that. We're just deciding to start using a label now that we hadn't before. What you may find, and I would argue almost certainly will find, to a greater or lesser extent, is that unconsciously you've got some expectations that go along with that based on what you've seen that relationship look like in other people. Maybe it's your parents, maybe your past relationships, and maybe just what you see in movies and TV, that there's going to be these hidden expectations that suddenly now I'm hurt by this person doing or not doing something that before wouldn't have bothered me and I wasn't even aware that I had that expectation.
Emily: I think that's a good distinction a conscious versus an unconscious expectation.
Jase: Yes, there you go. That's the term. That's what I was looking for.
Emily: Good job. You came to the answer yourself.
Jase: There's both these conscious expectations and these unconscious expectations. The advantage of the conscious ones is that we could discuss them earlier on in the process, whereas the unconscious ones, even if we try to think about what those might be, maybe we could come up with some looking at past experiences, but you're going to miss some. Some might just sneak up on you and one day you realize like, "I'm upset about this thing that I wouldn't have been before." What's that about? I guess I had this expectation I didn't know about.
This, for me, was a game changer when this concept was introduced to me. It was suddenly like this, "Oh, God." When I look back, it's like, "Absolutely, that's happened to me. I've 100% done exactly this and not known what that was about because I just wasn't aware that that could happen." That the power of that different label or different mental category you've put something in can activate all these different expectations that you have and with these expectations, if those don't match between the two of you, because especially the unconscious ones, you might not even know to express that that's a thing. That's where some conflicts can come from and that's what we've talked about a little bit with, maybe this causes a relationship to end that could have been a great friendship for a long time, or causes conflict that wasn't there before. It's like why, why all we did was become more entwined? Why is there more conflict, that that's often almost always because of some form of mismatched expectations from either side.
Dedeker: Speaking of that, we've highlighted five common areas of conflict around these particular expectations. This is far from an exclusive list but these are things that are just really, really common and the first one is sex. It may be a situation where maybe this is a friendship that we're deciding to add sex into. Maybe this is a friends with benefits, where we've already been having sex, but we've changed some other aspect of the relationship, maybe deciding to become more entwined, but deciding to become more romantic, deciding to move in together, whatever. Maybe we've been kink partners up to this point, and have not done any kind of genital play or anything involving how either of us actually defined sex and we're deciding that we actually want to add that into our relationship and again, that can come with a lot of hidden expectations around how often are we having sex?
What kind of sex are we having? Are we still open to having this particular kind of sex with other people, either people together with us or separately? The next area we want to highlight is money, which is already, again, another deep well, so many feelings attached to money in all kinds of different relationships but we may be looking at how does our spending slash saving lineup, maybe this is something you've never ever, ever had to consider with this person, especially if it's been an ongoing friendship where you've never talked about money before?
I figure it doesn't matter for us to talk about money. How expensive are the dates that were going on or the activities that we're doing together? How do we feel about splitting up that expense? Are we ever going to entwine finances? How do we feel about that, like, and this is something where if you don't talk about it on your way up to escalating, especially if you're escalating in a direction that is eventually going to involve some kind of financial entwinement. Like deciding to own property together or open a bank account together, stuff like that. A lot of--
Jase: Or even signing a lease together?
Dedeker: Exactly. That's--
Jase: Even just one of you is on the lease and the other pays the other person part of their rent. Like all of that is some kind of you're meshing your finances. Sharing a cell phone plan is a common one.
Emily: Yes, buying a TV together.
Dedeker: Another one is our outward appearance, not like our what clothes you wear, necessarily but we like--
Jase: We had so many conflicts over my fashion expectations of me. Now that you're my girlfriend, I have fashion I stick to.
Dedeker: Okay, now you're my girlfriend, we need to talk about the issues.
Emily: That jeans are not okay.
Dedeker: How we present the relationship to others? Do we need like, are we comfortable with others preceding us as a couple for instance? Are we comfortable with public displays of affection? Are we comfortable with being a plus one to a wedding or to a work event or things like that? How comfortable are we with different levels of outness about if you're non-monogamous or if you're queer, or whatever it is, like what are different life contexts and how out are we each and how do we rectify that together? Like, do we want to be unified in that, like a lot of potential hidden expectations around this.
Jase: Yes, and there's expectations with it, Dedeker, you phrased it as how comfortable are you with public displays of affection, for example, but also on the other side it's like, how much do I require public displays of affection in order for me to feel appreciated by you and to feel valued by you or again with the plus ones, am I comfortable with you being my plus one is one question but another is, do I expect that I will always be your plus one to events or most of the time or whatever.
These are important things to talk about because that could easily get missed, especially moving from one type of relationship that you didn't have those assumptions to one that maybe you do and with all of this it's worth taking into account things like maybe your relationship could be very entwined and very lifelong type of relationship making a lot of life plans, but you're not out to anyone about your relationship existing because you have concerns about child custody or your job or your partner's job or something. Like there's other factors, but it's just talking about it is the important part and realizing you might have different expectations.
Emily: Then we get into the even more and more entwined life decision questions that may come eventually or even immediately if you're starting to move in that direction like children is not going to be a thing in your lives, Is that a thing that either of you want, to point your point if you have children already, what kind of entanglement questions are going to arise from that? Things like adopting pets? Also, I love the two of you sort of have taught me like questioning the potential of disentangling and what is going to happen in that regard as well. Like, if you have a pet or if you have kids, or something like that, what's that going to look like? Where are those people or even objects or whatever, if you for instance, have like a TV together, like I said.
Where's that TV going to go? Who's going to get it? Buying furniture, a lease, or even buying a home together. Things like moving to a new city. Is that going to be a thing that I'm going to be involved in? Am I going to come with you or you're going to come with me or is that not even going to be a question? Like, is that not going to happen at all? Also, how involved are we in each other's life choices in general, I'm changing jobs, leaving a job, things like that. I elder care, even stuff regarding other people in your life, things like that.
There's so, so many different life decisions that you may or may not have specific expectations regarding your partners and regarding this new person who may be becoming a more entwined partner, and then finally, what do we provide each other? Maybe you were super close in terms of being friends and it is this new entanglement going to change each other's confidence, I guess, and one another in terms of are you still this close confidant or are we potentially going to have other friends who fulfill that role because now you're entwined romantically, perhaps or do you have--
Jase: That's an interesting question of like, are you now, or am I now expecting that you're more my confidant now that we're more romantically entwined, or less so because I want to have my friends take on some of those certain roles in certain areas. Great question.
Emily: That may be mismatched for sure and I think that that's something very interesting to discuss. In terms of any type of entanglement that you change, what layers and areas of that relationship are also going to change simply because the way in which you interact with each other and that means like, yes, I mean, how close you are in terms of, "I'm coming to you because I had a really shitty day," or "I'm coming to you because I'm feeling hurt over something that occurred in our relationship. Should I be talking to you about that or should I be talking to someone else about that?"
Also, yes, expectations about things like sick care. If you are sick, or if another person in your life is ill or is this person going to be helping out with that? If you have illness that is chronic in your life? Is that something that you're going to be helping with? Things like retirement? I mean, for some of us, that's perhaps a ways away. Maybe a long ways away, but is that going to be something that both of you are working towards, even investing?
Do you have different investment accounts or is this something that you're doing together, and then just generally being a safety net for one another, I think a lot of people get into relationships and expect, like, Oh, I'm really entangled with this person, maybe I even live with them and therefore, if something happens to me, I can rely on this other person to be my safety net, and that person may have completely conflicting or differing opinions about that from you and that's a really important thing to get clear with anyone that you're entangled with, especially if for instance, you live together or if you have finances together or something along those lines.
Jase: I do think it's worth pointing out that none of these are unique to transitioning from one type of relationship to a more entwined one and if you're not in that situation, and you're listening to this, these are still great things to go through and look over in both new and existing relationships because this will change over time as well but just some reminders of things to look out for when doing this kind of transition. How do we do this?
Dedeker: How do we do this?
Jase: How can we help to have these conversations in a constructive way? We have a little system here that's combined from a lot of different things. It combines doing radar, which is our regular relationship check-ins. You can check out multiamory.com/radar if you want more information about that. With some other different blogs and pieces of advice out there about how to have these kinds of expectation conversations all combined. You could think of it as a plugin for your radar, or an expansion pack or a DLC for your radar. Something like that to add on, maybe in an ongoing relationship to do occasionally, maybe a couple times a year to reevaluate some of these expectations, or if you're transitioning or just starting a relationship, maybe you have this more often.
Essentially it goes like this, first thing is this should be something you're going to do more than once, because that's part of it, and you'll see when we get there. The first thing is to pull up the relationship anarchy Smorgasbord. If you want to go listen to our episode 339, we talk more about that, and we've got links on our page for that and stuff, but basically, the point of it is to find some list to help you come up with what are some expectations you might have. What are aspects you may or may not have in this relationship, and the relationship anarchy smorgasbord is just a really nice resource for being able to look through those instead of having to come up with that list on your own.
Dedeker: I recently discovered the non-escalator relationship menu, that's the name of this particular graphic and same idea as the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, but I really like it because it's laid out very neatly and it goes a little bit more granular than the smorgasbord does, or some versions of the smorgasbord have, I think to each their own. Pick the one that works for you, but that's the one that I've been really digging on recently.
Jase: That's awesome. Whichever resource you have, find something so that you're not just trying to come up with these, because going through a list will help you to hopefully identify some of those unconscious, hidden expectations, because once you're actually presented with it, it's like, "Oh yes, I do have an expectation about that that I wouldn't have just thought of, it didn't pop to mind." Here's the deal. You pull up one of these lists, , and you go through each of the items on it. Either each of the little bubbles or plates or whatever on the smorgasbord, or each item in each category on this non-escalator relationship menu, and talk briefly about each one, about what your expectations or hopes are for that category.
If you two are just perfectly in agreement right away on that thing, great, check mark, move on, but if you come to any where you either have a little bit of a difference, even if it's just a little bit or that kind of huh, I guess I want to ask you more questions about that, or I don't quite understand, I'll have to think about it. Write that one down, put it on a list. That's step one, is you're just creating a list of what are things that may possibly have some mismatch or at least lack of clarity and expectations. That's the first step, is just generating that list.
Emily: Second, go through each item on the list, and then ask each other some questions. The first question is going to be, "What is your expectation about this and why is that important?" Secondly, you ask, "Have you had experiences of this expectation being met or not being met in the past," and then try to understand and work with your partner about figuring out the purpose behind this thing that is important to them. There's a lot of things that you can do. Asking questions about their past, asking questions about past experiences that they may have had.
Try to delve a little bit deeper into history, and that will probably help in terms of figuring out why this thing is important. Especially if it's not important to you necessarily, you can get some context, clues as to why that thing is important to them. You may not agree on this, you may not necessarily be completely matched just fully in that thing, and that's okay. Also, just a note for this specific step, you may have to take some time to learn internally and the other person as well before moving on to a next section of this, because a lot of times you may just need a moment or a day or something to think about a thing before being able to definitively say an answer regarding that.
Jase: Right. That's also part of why we emphasize that this is part of an ongoing process. Something you'll check back in about, because we change all the time as humans. These expectations could change for us over the course of a day or a month or a year or our lifetimes. One is that they could change. Then two is that if we haven't thought of these before, we might not have clear answers like Emily was saying. Just be aware of that and that this is going to be ongoing, so you don't feel like everything needs to get solved now, but the point that Emily was trying to make is it's about understanding why they're important to each other more than it is about clarifying every last detail of it. It's more about, I want to understand why this matters, what's the heart of this thing for each of us?
Dedeker: It's also more important to come to understanding rather than trying to persuade each other, that's also not the point of this exercise. It's not about, "We're going to square off and I'm going to try to persuade you why you should want this in our relationship," or you're going to try to persuade me why I shouldn't want X, Y, Z in our relationship, not the point of this particular exercise. Once you've gone through and you've reached a point where you feel like you can validate each other, you can understand each other, now it's time to evaluate.
You can ask yourselves, "Do we feel more aligned?" Or maybe even take stock of, where are the areas where we do feel aligned. In each area you can ask, "Is this an area where we absolutely need our expectations to match, or is it possible that it's okay to have different expectations of each other," and that's okay. There's no wrong or right answer there. I'm just thinking off the top of my head. I know one of the examples on that non-escalator relationship menu is, I'm following each other's social media accounts for instance. Maybe you're like, "Yes, I don't know if I'm at this particular level of entwinement with someone, I'll probably follow their social media accounts."
Maybe someone's like, "I hate social media. I barely use it. I really don't want to stay connected. I don't want to have another reason to be checking my social media accounts." Maybe that is a deal breaker for someone. Like that's okay. Maybe that's like, "I don't know if I can be at this level of entwinement if this is not on the table." Or maybe for someone else it's like, "Okay. Yes, that's fair. That makes sense." Now, again that's a relatively low stakes example. There can be higher stakes examples, but just to say that everyone's different and you need to evaluate.
Again, just are these deal breakers or are they not? It is possible as part of this discussion that you have hit a mismatch or a deal breaker for the type of relationship that you're thinking about escalating to. Of course that can be really discouraging. It can be really sad. It can be disappointing, but if you're coming from a history with this person where you already have a particular type of relationship, maybe we've already had an ongoing friendship, we've already had an ongoing friends with benefits, whatever it is, maybe it's just that you've discovered that previous relationship was the right one for you.
That as you delve into this and think about escalating, you're like, "Actually, I don't know if we're aligned enough. I don't know if we value enough of the same things. I don't know if we have enough of a similar vision of the future." Maybe that means that's okay, we can stay friends, or we can pick a different version of our relationship.
Emily: Something that I remember a researcher M talking about is that they have the relationship anarchy smorgasbord and they bring it out during every single radar to just go through yet again and check and see, has the state of this particular thing changed since the last time we had a radar. I do really love that idea, because again maybe this particular moment in your life is not the best time in which to entangle further with this person, but that may change in a month, in a year or something along those lines. If you do want to revisit it, you can. It's not set in stone, you do this exercise, and it's like, "Well, shit this isn't going to work out." But, that also may be the case.
Jase: Right. Again, with this when you're talking about potentially shifting an existing relationship, you've got an existing relationship that you like. Like this deal breaker, it's not like I'm starting dating someone who I either want to fit this entangled box or nothing. It's like, you still have your existing relationship that you could keep doing too, because you do like that and that's why you're even considering this. It's great to have these conversations as honestly and openly and caringly as you can upfront.
Okay. Now we've gone through this list and we've talked about this and really worked on understanding each other and figuring out where we are and aren't aligned, then the last step is to make some agreements about what we're going to do about these. Maybe it's just cool, yes, this all sounds good to me. Great. Let's check in in a month and just revisit and make sure everything's good, or it could be, this is an area where we're mismatched on this, but what if we tried this solution that hopefully gets you what you actually want out of that while still being comfortable for me, or vice versa and try it.
Again, with the understanding you're going to check back in, in a month, or a week, or however long that you want so that you can try things. It's not like this, we've got to get it all right now, perfectly figured out, and it can never change. We're signing the contracts, and now we're contractually obligated to do all these things. Instead, just try stuff. We always like to say, put on your scientist hat and be like, "Let's see how this goes, let's do an experiment, see how we feel about this."
Let's recap some of the takeaways from this. One is that this type of shift happens and can be awesome, but also might not be the right thing to do right now. The key part is to be aware of some of the pros and cons of that, and then to have some good communication. A lot of that communication needs to be about those expectations. Those mismatches in general in relationships are one of the leading causes of ongoing recurring arguments, is mismatched beliefs or mismatched expectations of each other.
Having these kinds of conversations more often is a great way to help avoid that becoming a blowup or being a resentment that grows over time, or just catching you by surprise, is having these conversations. Hopefully, using this framework to go through it makes that a little bit easier. Gives you some resources and some tools for doing that. For our question of the week, this week on our Instagram Stories, we want to know, have you ever transitioned from friendship to dating, and if so, how did it go? I've got lots of stories of this. I'm sure all of you do too. We're excited to hear those.