Is Jealousy Proof I’m Not Cut Out for Polyamory?

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Kitty Chambliss with Jessica Fern, guest on the Loving Without Boundaries podcast

No. And I want to say that clearly, right up front, because I have heard some version of “maybe I’m just not built for this” on more intake calls than I can count. It is never true.

Jealousy doesn’t mean you’re broken. It doesn’t mean you picked the wrong relationship structure. And the reflex to think “let’s just go back to monogamy” the second things get hard isn’t proof that ENM isn’t for you — it’s usually proof that you haven’t built the skills yet. There’s a real difference between those two things, and mixing them up is what keeps so many good relationships stuck.

Jessica Fern, a psychotherapist and coach who specializes in working with people exploring non-monogamy, put language to something I see constantly in my own coaching: it’s rarely the jealousy itself that does the real damage. It’s the shame that shows up right after. One partner melts down over a jealousy episode — completely repairable, completely human — and then shame gets in the way of the repair. Instead of coming back and saying “I really lost it there, let’s talk about what happened,” shame makes people shut down and pull away instead. The relationship doesn’t fracture because someone felt jealous. It fractures because nobody came back to clean it up.

And here’s the part I really want you to sit with: Jessica sees the exact same reflex I do in my own clients. When someone suggests going back to monogamy the moment things get scary, that suggestion deserves real curiosity, not automatic agreement. Is this genuinely the right structure for this particular relationship? Or is this someone grasping for the nearest thing that feels like safety, because they haven’t yet built the skills — or the secure attachment — to feel steady inside something less familiar?

Love is not enough on its own. It never was, in any relationship structure. What actually makes ENM and polyamory work is skill, capacity, and the right tools — the same things anyone needs for anything hard and worth doing. You are not missing some innate trait other people were born with. You’re missing training nobody ever gave you. And training is something you can absolutely get.

You are not broken. You are not behind. I get you, and I’ve got you.

About This Episode

Jessica Fern is a psychotherapist, coach, and national speaker who specializes in working with people navigating non-monogamous relationships. She helps clients move past reactive relational patterns, cultural conditioning, emotional triggers, and insecure attachment styles so they can build new possibilities in how they love. (At the time of this recording, Jessica went by Jessica Fern Cooley; she now goes by Jessica Fern.)

In this episode, Jessica and Kitty talk about the shame that gets in the way of repair after a jealousy episode, the difference between an insecure reflex toward monogamy and a genuinely considered choice, and what it actually takes — skill-wise, not just love-wise — to make a non-monogamous relationship work.

Full Episode Transcript

Coming up on today’s show, Jessica Fern is a psychotherapist, coach, and national speaker specializing in non-monogamous relationships. Jessica loves working with people who no longer want to be limited by their reactive relational patterns, cultural conditioning, internalized stories, emotional triggers, and insecure attachment styles, so that they can embody new possibilities in life and love.

Welcome to Loving Without Boundaries, where we hear inspiring stories, share actionable advice, and talk about the challenges and the joys of ethical non-monogamy and polyamory. I’m your host, Kitty Chambliss. Coming up after the break, my conversation with Jessica Fern.

Welcome back to Loving Without Boundaries, where I am super excited to be here with Jessica, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Beyond the Love in 2018, and I also got to go to one of her amazing and stupendous workshops. So welcome, Jessica.

Thank you, Kitty. I’m so happy to be here. Yay.

I’d love it if you’d introduce yourself in your own words.

Yes, thank you. Well, I am a psychotherapist, and one of my specializations has been working with polyamorous folks, working with people exploring non-monogamy. I live in Boulder, Colorado, and I have a little four-year-old that is, other than my business and my career, sort of my other big focus right now.

I’d love to know — was there a light bulb moment for you, when you realized a traditional, heteronormative monogamous life wasn’t going to work out for you?

It’s funny, I had my answer of non-monogamy, but then as you just asked, another light bulb moment went off. When I was 14, I remember kissing my best friend, who was a girl, and that was a light bulb moment of, oh, I’m not straight. And obviously that created several trajectories through my life. But really, it was several years ago — I had this summer where I had a handful of couples I was working with in therapy who all happened to be exploring non-monogamy, and one of them referenced Sex at Dawn. And it was reading that book that was the real light bulb moment. There was something in reading it that suddenly just gave me permission. I think that’s really what it was — permission. I was like, oh, I am wired to love more than one person, and in many ways, I always have been. I just didn’t realize there was this whole other world I could enter into.

That’s neat. So the “not straight” identity was at 14, but non-monogamy was really just a few years ago, as a grown adult, in the profession you’re already in.

Exactly.

So how did that impact your life or your relationships?

The biggest relationship it impacted was my marriage. I had been in a marriage for years to Dave, and we had been monogamous. That sparked a lot of conversation, as you can imagine. Thankfully, he was on board — we talked, we read, and he was like, yes, let’s do this. So that has drastically changed our relationship, transitioning from monogamy to polyamory together.

What are some of the challenges you’ve experienced, and how did you overcome them?

Yeah, there’s a lot of challenges. I think definitely learning how to manage jealousy — what I call jealousy episodes — has been a challenge. Figuring out the metamour relationship has definitely been a challenge I feel like I’ve come through the other side of. But the one I want to highlight is really shame.

When I look back on some of the losses, the loves I’ve had over the last few years, and what happens to those relationships, I can see this theme or thread of shame — usually sparked by a jealousy episode, but then shame gets in the way. One partner I had — there was a jealousy episode, a meltdown, a lot of reactivity, and that would have been repairable. But his shame got in the way of him actually repairing it.

Oh, wow.

I think he was so ashamed and embarrassed of how he reacted that instead of taking accountability and saying, “okay, I really melted down there, let me have the conversations I need to have to repair this,” he more just shut down and pulled away. I see it with clients too — shame is a big factor even in having open, honest conversations about STI testing and status. People just don’t know how to have those conversations because there’s such a history of shame around those issues.

So the way I’m thinking of it now is: I don’t think it’s about eliminating shame. I think it will come up for all of us. It’s more about what our shame-to-self-worth ratio is, and how much shame resilience we’ve cultivated. Because there’s a lot of hard conversations we need to have in polyamory, and a lot of things we learn retrospectively where we have to be like, “I’m sorry, I totally messed up.” And is shame getting in the way of that, or not?

I’m so glad you brought up shame, and put a few of these things under that umbrella, because I’ve used different words to describe some of what you described. I often talk about our “shitty first draft” — those negative stories we make up. But I like the way you’re putting it under the shame umbrella, because that’s really what it is. When we make a negative interpretation, it can be due to feelings of shame, or not having developed shame resilience. It’s really powerful that you named that — you could have repaired a relationship, but the person feeling shame couldn’t get to a place where they could take accountability and have the hard conversation.

Exactly.

(Jessica and Kitty go on to talk about a book on apologizing that resonated with Kitty, and Lynn Forrest’s work on the “drama triangle” — the perpetrator, rescuer, and victim roles people fall into, and how the “seduction of blame” shows up in relationships. Jessica mentions she’ll be giving a talk on it at an upcoming conference.)

Where would you say you’re currently at on your journey, personally or professionally?

It’s so funny — if you would have asked me last week, I feel like I would have had a completely different answer. My husband and I are actually in dialogue about legally divorcing — not because we don’t feel like life partners anymore, but because we’re looking at the ways marriage as an institution hasn’t served us. We feel like the best of who we are together has, in some ways, gotten eclipsed by the idea of being married. So we’re allowing relationship fluidity, and allowing what’s truly best for each of us, instead of the idea that because we’re married, it’s supposed to always look a certain way.

That’s a big shift.

Yeah, but we’re really at peace with it. We do everything as a good team — that’s not something we’re losing. There’s a life commitment, we’re just letting the form of it change as it needs to.

And I think that touches on one of the other challenges I didn’t mention yet — really wanting to figure out how to do secure attachment in polyamory. What does it actually take to dive deep and bond with someone when there’s more than one person, and there’s not as much time as you’d have if you were just monogamous?

That’s fascinating. I loved how you touched on that in your workshop too, because I think when we don’t have language for something, life and relationships can feel really scary. Being able to talk about it in terms of secure or insecure attachment styles makes it a little more understandable.

Yeah — my other forthcoming talk is on attachment and non-monogamy. Because polyamory, structurally, is inherently insecure. Even if you personally have a secure attachment style, the structure of poly is pretty insecure. So how do you navigate that, and how do you navigate it if you also personally have an insecure style? It’s a different game.

(They talk briefly about how attachment patterns show up outside romantic relationships too — in friendships and other close bonds, not just the intimate ones.)

What’s been one of the most rewarding aspects of living a consensually non-monogamous life for you?

Definitely receiving more love and support from multiple perspectives has been a big one. Having the intimate perspective of multiple partners, multiple minds. And getting to explore the diversity of sexual expression in a way that felt more conscious and fulfilling than it did dating in my twenties.

Is there anything that surprised you along the way?

(laughing) I didn’t know I’d get so many dick pics.

(They share a laugh about the comedy of online dating and unsolicited photos, and Jessica mentions using OkCupid, which she found had better filters and functionality for people exploring non-monogamy than other dating apps she tried.)

I’d love to touch on your workshop — the one on couples transitioning from monogamy to polyamory and staying together. I loved the idea you used of a “paradigm shift” — the monogamy-to-poly culture shock.

Yeah — for people who don’t know the phrase, a paradigm is the lens, the frame, the way we’re perceiving and experiencing the world. Our paradigm can literally create our reality. So that transition from a monogamous romantic paradigm to a polyamorous one — it’s a different paradigm, with different rules and expectations, different ways we define everything. Even if you’re choosing and opting into a different paradigm, there can be a shock that happens. There’s kind of like finding your feet, being on a different planet with different gravity. And I think a lot of people are struggling with that without realizing that’s what’s going on, especially since we still live in a mono-normative paradigm at large.

I loved that you put a spotlight on that. It helps people feel normal — it’s normal to have this kind of shock, and also be shocked that you’re shocked.

Exactly. Right. And grief, even — a lot of people don’t realize there can be grief in that transition. Even if you’re wanting to be polyamorous, there can be a loss of what was, of monogamy. And that can be hard, because people don’t even want to let that grief out — they don’t even want that thing, and yet those feelings are still there.

(Kitty shares a related story about attending a party with one of her partners and realizing some guests weren’t accepting of their relationship structure, and how that connects to shame — “it’s almost like sometimes other people want you to feel shame.”)

You’re breaking the rules, right?

Yeah, exactly. And I think sometimes people don’t believe they have any choices, and so you shouldn’t have any either. But that holding onto “couple privilege” is a big one. And I touch on that with the resistance to the paradigm shift — poly can’t just be an add-on to the original relationship. It actually needs to be a transformation of the relationship.

That’s beautiful — that acceptance that your relationship will change. A lot of couples try to make rules to preserve the relationship and keep it from changing, but it will change whether you want it to or not. So you can suffer through it, or do it with grace.

Exactly, yeah.

I also loved the graphic in your workshop about whether polyamory is an orientation or a lifestyle choice.

I see it as existing on a spectrum — actually two axes now, emotional exclusivity and sexual exclusivity. If we just look at one line, poly on one end and monogamy on the other, people on the far ends usually describe it as their orientation — this is how I’m wired. People in the middle are often doing it more as a lifestyle choice. I don’t think it’s either-or. It depends where you are on the spectrum, and even people who feel it as an orientation can move through different places on that spectrum throughout their life. But the important thing is, when a couple opens up, or two people come together, and they’re in different spots on that spectrum — someone more “lifestyle choice” paired with someone more “orientation” — there can be a lot of misunderstanding about how fast to go and what it all means.

I thought that was very helpful — being able to make something more concrete instead of just these scary feelings.

Yes, good.

Before we wrap up — one thing I wanted to circle back to, because I saw it happen with some of my own clients: when a partner gets scared and says, “whoa, let’s just be monogamous again.” You highlighted that isn’t necessarily the solution, and I was so glad you said that, because I’ve watched that exact knee-jerk reaction happen and struggled with how to navigate it as a coach, not a therapist — trying to just light the pathway rather than tell them what to do.

Right. People suggest going back to monogamy for a lot of different reasons, and that’s what I try to help people tease apart. Is this really what you think is right for you individually or as a couple? Or is this not having enough skills to deal with jealousy, or your attachment style not being worked through enough, where you’re grasping at monogamy to feel safety and security — instead of having that safety and security within yourself and within your relationships? That’s always what I want to guide people toward.

I love that. Really beautiful stuff. Well, I want to be respectful of your time — are you okay if we jump into the lightning round?

Yes.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, or the best thing you’ve done along your journey?

I think it’s realizing that love is not enough. I think that’s the case in monogamy too, but definitely in polyamory — love is not enough. We need the skills, the capacity, and the right lineup of life circumstances for it to work.

What tip would you share with somebody thinking about opening up an existing relationship, or dipping their toe into a different kind of relationship?

I’d say go slow. Me included — I wanted to just pioneer ahead. Go slow, get support, get help from people who actually know about this — not your monogamous community — and work on your attachment stuff. Read about attachment.

Is there a book, movie, or resource you’d recommend?

They’re kind of the classics at this point — More Than Two, Sex at Dawn. I got a lot out of the Showtime reality series on polyamory too, actually. It’s a little racy, but I got so much out of watching people process real polyamorous issues on camera.

And for fun — is there a particular song or music that moves you?

It’s not so much a song, but I love choreography and dancing — I’ll follow different choreographers on YouTube for inspiration.

That’s fun — I do pole dancing myself, so dance is definitely something I enjoy too. How can everyone find you and your work?

You can find me at jessicafern.com.

You are just amazing — every topic you brought up is something I’m completely fascinated by. Thank you for sharing your knowledge so willingly with all of us.

Thank you, Kitty. So are you.

Thanks for tuning in to today’s show. If you like what you heard, are struggling with some aspect of your relationships, and you’re interested in seeing if you’re a fit to work with me as your relationship coach, here’s what I invite you to do next. Head over to lovingwithoutboundaries.com/apply — that’s lovingwithoutboundaries.com/apply — and book a call to speak with me. I’ll get on the phone with you for about 45 minutes, and we’ll get you crystal clear on three things. Number one, exactly what’s not working well in your relationships right now. Number two, ideally, where you’d like to be and what might be getting in the way. Number three, the exact strategy to get you there, helping to close that gap. Remember, creating healthy, open relationships does not typically happen by itself. Many often need expert guidance to make it happen. We’ve helped clients all over the world feel safe, happy, and secure in open relationships while not losing their mind or their cherished partners. To see if we can help you do the same, head over to lovingwithoutboundaries.com/apply. I’m Kitty Chambliss, and let’s talk soon.

If This Is Where You Are Right Now

You don’t have to white-knuckle your way through this alone. I wrote the Jealousy Survival Guide for exactly this moment — the one where jealousy hits, and part of you starts wondering if it means you picked the wrong path. It doesn’t. There’s a path through it.

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KITTY CHAMBLISS, Master Coach (ICF-Certified), CPC
Relationship Coach | Speaker | Educator | Trauma-Informed
Author of “Jealousy Survival Guide: How to feel safe, happy, and secure in an open relationship”

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