Is Your Partner Mismanaging Their New Relationship Energy (NRE)?

Written By Leanne Yau

Your partner is responsible for managing their own feelings of New Relationship Energy, and if they are deprioritising or neglecting you in the process of chasing after someone new, their lack of care and impulse control is not your fault. 

There is a difference between your partner going overboard with their NRE to the point of neglecting other relationships (not good!), and your partner making space for a new connection and things feeling different because of it (uncomfy, but a normal part of polyamory). Both are valid things to feel upset over, but they are distinctly different situations! 

New relationships often shake things up in existing connections in big ways and small, and I find that polyamory requires a high tolerance for change in general. This is where I would encourage you to ask yourself - what do you need to feel loved, secure, valued, and committed in this relationship? How can you express your feelings and requests to your partner? And most importantly, how confident are you that your partner will take on the constructive feedback and respond to your requests? 

I don’t need my partners to spend absolutely all of their time with me to feel like a priority, and I accept that non-monogamy naturally means that my partners have other people who are also priorities to them, just like me. But, for each connection, there is a threshold of quality time spent and certain needs that I require to be met for the relationship to feel sustainable - and if my partners don’t meet that threshold, I would feel neglected or like an afterthought. 

My partners know me, and as long as they continue to communicate and honour their commitments to me, I feel secure no matter how many new people they’re seeing ❤️ 

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Leanne Yau
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