Should you flirt with someone if you don’t know if they’re poly?
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Reid:This just in. A writer or commenter writes in. It’s very detailed and I’ll just summarize it but I just want to thank all of you who leave comments and leave questions or email us questions and comments because we get to answer them and it makes for a good video. We also have gotten lots of feedback that answering your questions is helping other people figure out and learn things about themselves. Keep the comments coming ladies and gentlemen. We love you for it. Thank you.
This person is in a non-monogamous relationship. They identify as poly. They have a primary relationship with somebody who is also poly and they have their first non-long distance crush on somebody because they’ve had other crushes before with people who don’t live around them but they have this person they keep running into in social situations and getting to spend a lot of time with that they really have a huge crush on but they don’t know if they are non-monogamous. They don’t know if it’s appropriate for them to flirt with this person even though they so want to.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: What do you do? Cathy Vartuli, your advice to this fabulous human being who wrote in a comment.
Cathy: Reid Mahalko.
Reid: From ReidAboutSex.com. This is Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com in case we forgot to tell you that.
Cathy: It is really scary and unlike Reid, I tend to be a little shyer and I don’t ask things as directly as he does though maybe in a year or two … I usually …
Reid: If they’re watching these videos, they know a lot about you.
Cathy: They do know a lot about me, yes.
Reid: You could start a YouTube channel, I guess. That would be one thing to do and talk about this dilemma and then have them find it.
Cathy: One thing … If you’d like to, when you’re talking to them, share a story about a friend who is non-monogamous and see how they respond or start talking about a show that you saw and see how they respond. That’s something I will do often because I get a feeling …
Reid: It gives you some shield or something like that?
Cathy: A show that has polyamory married and dating.
Reid: Oh! That’s great advice.
Cathy: I’ll talk about this video I saw with this weird guy and this overwhelmed woman who hangs out with him. We’re talking about poly relationships and what do you think about that? It’s a way to open it up without diving in head-first.
Reid: Another bit of advice is you can ask them their views on flirting. If you’re … if you’re like listen … What are your views on flirting with people when you already have a relationship? How do you feel about that? Then you could reveal, “Surprise! It’s me I want to flirt with you.” There’s a lot of different variations on that. Well, flirting is very fun and I don’t think it’s cheating and this and that and you’re like, “Well, how do you feel about me flirting with you?” You know, kind of take baby steps and then eventually you can then drop the P-bomb of, “What are your thoughts on non-monogamy and polyamory?” That can be a little bit, not tricky but understand whenever you initiate an conversation about a topic that you really want to come out to that other person about, if you drag it on like a romantic comedy and don’t come clean, it can feel really weird.
Cathy: Yeah. People can tell. It even can work like, “Hey, I really enjoy hanging out with you. I haven’t been saying something and I’m afraid I’m going to come across weird if I don’t share it. Can I just share that I’m poly and I like flirting with you and I was wondering what you thought about that.”
Reid: The difficult formula … The difficult conversation formula on my website, so ReidAboutSex.com/Difficult-Conversation-Formula/ is a really good …
Cathy: We’ll put the link below.
Reid: … post that will give you a formula and a script for how to have that conversation. Again, if you are surrounded in a community that’s very conservative and not poly like you don’t live in San Francisco or another place where there’s just a lot of non-monogamy and can talk about non-monogamy. I.e. might be at a very conservative church or something like that. Coming out to somebody about being poly may or may not be appropriate so I would lead with the, “There’s something I want to tell you. I want to flirt with you but I don’t know if it’s appropriate or not.” Again for a shy person, that might be hard to even get that out but again, just blame us. Be like, “I saw this video on YouTube and it was about flirting with people who are already in relationships. What are your thoughts on that?” That might help because you’re basically creating an icebreaker and you’re feeling them out. At some point, if you really like this person as a person, like you’d hang out with them even if you didn’t have a crush on them, you not revealing that you’re poly and you have a crush on them for a whole year, now you’re in … We’re in romantic comedy movieville and that’s probably going to feel really weird a year later when they’re like, “So you wanted to have an open relationship with me for a whole year?” That … It could end badly so do the opposite of romantic comedies is really the advice here.
Cathy: Yeah. We hope that works well for you and we’d love to know what you think and what your suggestions might be for someone in this situation.
Reid: Awesome. Comments, suggestions now.
Difficult Conversation Formula article: ReidAboutSex.com/Difficult-Conversation-Formula/