Why Overprotecting Her From Abusive Poly Men Isn’t Protecting Her

Picture a heterosexual couple with a young child who decide to open their relationship to polyamory. There is little wrong between them. Their communication is strong, their sex life is passionate, and both partners spent months in research and honest self reflection before choosing this together. This is what they whole-heartedly want, and they arrived at it clear eyed.

The man calls himself a feminist. He supports his partner without hesitation and sits comfortably in his own vulnerability. And yet every time she leaves for a date with another man, something in him tightens into a state of alarm.

He does not want her to stop dating. This is not jealousy, and it is not envy. He objects to men specifically but he does not believe in a one penis policy where he alone gets to be the man in her life. No, that’s not the issue. What he feels instead is another type of threat: he does not trust men. He is afraid one of them will hurt her.

I have watched this exact feeling appear in more than one man I have coached, and I have witnessed it up close inside my own polycule. I once had a partner who was frightened for one of his other partners in particular. She was young in experience, sheltered for much of her life, and he worried that the sheltering had left her without a sharp enough sense for danger. He was not worried about me in the same way. He believed my own standards were high enough that I would choose well. But he saw her as unguarded, and every time she went off with a new man, he sat in agony until she came home.

This is what I told him, and what I tell my clients when this same fear shows up in them.