Managing Your Nonmonogamous Relationships In Social Environments

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-By Caleb Jones

Today I’m going to address one of the most common questions you guys ask me about nonmonogamous relationships; those addressing how to handle them in social situations. What should you call her when you go to a party or meet your friends? What do you put on your Facebook page? What if people give her a hard time about what she’s doing with you? These are all valid questions, and we’ll address them all today.
As usual, when I talk about nonmonogamous relationships, I’m specifically talking about the three types: FB’s, MLTR’s or an OLTR. Click on those respective links for definitions if you have never heard those terms before.

You don’t need to worry about the social aspect for FB’s, since FB’s should not be going to parties with you or meeting your friends and family in the first place. FB’s are friends with benefits. They are not women you’re actually dating. She comes over to your place, or you go to her place, you talk for a bit, you have sex, and that’s it. There is no going out with a FB, ever. If you do, you are violating the rules of these relationship structures and you’re asking for all kinds of drama, conflict, and hurt feelings down the road.

MLTR’s are when things get complicated. These are indeed women you’re dating (nonmonogamously, of course, since you can have multiple MLTR's) and they can indeed meet your friends. They should not meet your family unless she’s your primary, favorite, high-end MLTR.

OLTR, surprisingly, is where this stuff is actually pretty easy. While OLTR’s take more work and effort than MLTR’s, having an OLTR meet your friends and family is pretty easy. She’s your girlfriend or your wife, and that’s it. OLTR’s look and feel much more societally acceptable than MLTR’s in the eyes of normal people, so if she acts like your wife/girlfriend and that’s how you identify her, you’re not going to get very many questions from others.
So what we’re really talking about here today is MLTR’s. OLTR is not really a problem in this particular area and FB’s shouldn’t be involved in your social life at all. If any confusion or awkwardness is to arise, it’s likely with your MLTR’s only (unless you’re doing something very wrong with your FB’s or OLTR).

What To Call Her In Social Situations

One of the most common questions I get about this usually goes something like this:
Hey BD, when me and one of my MLTR’s goes out to a party, or goes and meets my friends (or hers), and people ask “what she is,” how do I respond? What do I call her? How do I identify her to others in my social or family circles? How do I respond to her when she asks who she is?
It’s important to understand that normal, monogamous people have this exact same problem. Let’s say you’re the typical monogamous person and you start dating a new girl. You’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks. You two go out one evening with some of your friends. One of them asks you “who she is,” or perhaps even she asks you, “So who shall I say I am?”

See? Same problem. You’re both a little confused. As I’ve talked about before, societal nomenclature around these topics is stupidly only designed for the people at the two extremes of completely single or who have very serious partners. It’s silly, but that’s how it is.

The answer to the above question is the same answer for monogamous people. The answer is she’s a “woman I’m dating.” That’s it. An MLTR is a “woman you’re dating.” “Hey Joe! So is this your girlfriend? Or friend?” She’s a “woman I’m dating.”

That’s it. It’s both concise and accurate. Don’t get into a big discussion about it. Most people will just nod and move on.

What if she doesn’t like that term “woman you’re dating?” Just shrug and ask her what she would prefer. I honestly don’t care what I identify an MLTR as long as it’s the truth. If she wants you to identify her as your “girlfriend,” that would be lying (as well as an extremely dangerous boyfriend behavior), so obviously you’re not going to do that. But beyond that, call her whatever she wants to be called if “woman you’re dating” isn’t to her liking. It doesn’t really matter. (Even "friend" can be accurate.)

You don’t introduce her as a “woman you’re dating.” Just introduce her using her name. Only do the “woman you’re dating” or “we’re dating” thing if directly asked.

Obviously, if she’s your OLTR, then she’s your girlfriend, so that’s easy. (Just remember that no woman should be your OLTR until she’s been in your dating life for at least six months and has been low-drama and low-jealousy the entire time and she’s survived The Talk. It took a year and a half of dating Pink Firefly before she became my OLTR. It took my last serious relationship even longer than that.)

How To Deal With Social Media

It has always been my strong advice that you always keep your relationship status blank and hidden on your Facebook page. People who put “In A Relationship” on their social media profiles are just asking for trouble, drama, and awkward questions, particularly when the relationship ends, which it will. Not to mention when other new women you’re trying to bring into your sex life see your relationship status and get confused, or even angry. Putting your relationship status on your Facebook page, even if it’s “Single,” is literally a no-win scenario for the Alpha Male 2.0. On my personal Facebook page, my relationship status has been blank and hidden for literally the entire time I've been on Facebook (almost ten years), and I’ve never had a problem because of it.

The one possible exception to this is if you are actually living with a woman under an OLTR Marriage and you indentify her as your wife. I guess you could put “Married” if you really want to, but I still would not do this. It’s no one’s fucking business what your relationship status is; that’s a deeply personal matter, but I acknowledge this is an old and outdated way of thinking in our new social media-dominated world.

As I’ve talked about in my books, if you’re in sarging mode and building a roster of MLTR’s and FB’s, it’s a good idea to see activity on your Facebook page that involves other women. You don’t want women being too blatant on your page. “Hey Joe! I had a really great time with you on our date last night! Can’t wait to see you again!” That would be too much. But you do want women (ideally attractive women) commenting or liking your posts and pictures. This is fantastic EFA and frame setting for FB’s and MLTR’s alike, without you rubbing it in their faces.

You can even have pics with you and women at various social events, particularly if you’re a younger guy (under the age of about 28 or so). What you don’t want is sappy, beta male, “serious looking,” lovey-dovey pics with you and a sweetheart. (The only exception to this is if you have a very long-term, proven OLTR and you’ve got plenty of long-term FB’s on the side to last you many years. And shit, even then, keep that beta crap to a minimum.)

Defending Her

What about defending her against people who find out she and you are in a nonmonogamous relationship? A lot of you seem concerned about defending your MLTR’s (and/or possibility an OLTR) against things like haters, harassment, and shaming language if the “word gets out” about the sexual nature of your relationship.

I have a decade of experience working with women in serious and semi-serious relationships with me managing this kind of problem. Here’s what I can tell you...

It is almost never as bad as you expect. A lot of guys are really worried about this, but the reality is that it either won’t happen at all, or will only happen with people she already doesn’t like very much. Only on rare occasions does it actually get bad enough where it really concerns her or hurts her feelings. So don’t stress too much about this.

As talked about a few weeks ago, people are getting much more accustomed to nonmonogamous relationships now than they were just ten years ago. Ten years ago, if a woman told her girlfriend, sister, or mother that the guy she’s dating is openly having sex with other women, you’d almost always get a horrified reaction and an immediate demand to drop the bastard immediately. Today, this still happens occasionally, but quite often, women react in a more neutral manner like “Well, that must be hard, but at least he’s being honest. You’ve got to give him that.” Or, “Well, yeah, Amber has an open relationship with her boyfriend. I would never do that, but she seems okay with it.”

So again, don’t worry. It’s not going to be as bad as many of you seem to fear.

The first person a woman tells about her new nonmonogamous relationship is usually her best girlfriend. The second person she tells is usually her mom. These are the two people you’ll have to “respond” to if they give her any negativity. Girlfriend’s reaction will be neutral to negative, mom’s will usually be negative. The good news is that mom has likely been divorced and or cheated on by men multiple times, and her daughter is well aware of it. As always, monogamy doesn’t work, and monogamy and traditional marriage in the Western world has become so thoroughly damaged that even the most pro-monogamy people can’t deny that anymore. The fact that your new MLTR literally has women all around her who have been cheated on, broken up, and divorced gives you more ammo for your side than anything you could possibly say.

In terms of being a white knight and “defending” your MLTR, don’t do it. If you get involved, you’ll just make the entire scenario worse. Instead, it’s better to “coach” your MLTR (or in some cases, OLTR) on what to say or not say when people flip them shit about this.

Here’s what I’ve told MLTR’s in the past on what to do, say, or think in these situations:

1. Don’t try to argue with the person or change the person’s mind. Just roll your eyes and move on.

2. Remember that the odds are almost 100% that the person attacking you for the nonmonogamous relationship you have has had monogamy fail, and fail badly, in their lives multiple times… cheating, drama, breakups, divorces, etc. This person is therefore not qualified to give relationship advice, or even opinions.

Seriously, one of the biggest problems women have is that whenever they need relationship advice, they ask their girlfriends, moms, or sisters, all of whom have had a long trail of horrible, failed relationships. Then why the fuck are you asking them for relationship advice?!? Women, even very intelligent women, never seem to consider the source for their relationship advice. It's simply amazing. (This is one of the things men do much better than women.)

3. Look how happy this person is in his/her current relationship or past relationships. Are they really happy? (Usually they are not.) Then who cares what they think?

4. Remind the person that you are allowed to go have sex with other men if you want. If the person attacking you is a woman, ask her if she is allowed to do that with her current boyfriend or husband. (Note: This only applies to women under 33. Women over 33 will usually lie and say that they will literally never want to fuck anyone else, which of course is biologically impossible unless she literally doesn’t have sex at all.)
Women also tend to assume that "open relationship" means the man can have sex with other women but the woman isn't allowed to have sex with other men. Make sure the woman attacking you doesn't assume this. Alpha Male 2.0's are extremely rare in society, so it's unlikely a woman bitching about "open relationships" has ever seen or experienced such a man before.

5. If the person attacking them is someone they already don’t really like, terminate the conversation with them, block their number on your phone, and block them on social media. Why maintain such a relationship at all? I certainly don’t.

6. If the person attacking them is someone they do like or respect, remind her (your MLTR) that this person is just trying to look out for you and that they can only give advice based on their own (usually false) Societal Programming and experiences. If they’ve never had a nonmonogamous relationship, they've never had experience with such a thing.

That’s about it. There’s more to be said about all this, but the above scenarios will cover 80% or more of the issues or questions you may have about this topic.

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