568 - When You Want More Time But Your Partner Won’t Give It

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Slash recess twenty twenty-six. Bubble time. This idea that I want time where it feels like you and I are the only two people who exist. Now, this is the type of time that people tend to crave sometimes if I don't know if I would wanna say if they're feeling over integrated, but I see this often where they feel like their betas are always around. You know, like it's always kind of a kitchen table poly situation or

We're always going and hanging out with your friends and like that's fun and all, but I don't feel like we're really getting like one on one time together. That yeah, sometimes people can crave this sense of Even if we're non-monogamous, even if we're happily polyamorous, it's very normal to have the sense of, yeah, but sometimes I wanna enter this space where it truly feels like we're the only two. Welcome to the Multi-Emery Podcast. I'm Jace. I'm Emily.

And I'm Dedeker. We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past. Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.

On this episode of the Multi-Emery Podcast, we're talking about what to do if you and your partner keep fighting about how much time to spend together. Maybe you're dating someone who's quite busy and you feel like you have to fight for every last shred of their leftover free time. Or maybe you're the busy one and you have a partner who keeps asking for more time and you're not sure if or how you could offer that.

Today, we'll talk about what the research says about shared time together. We'll also be looking at the many different types of time that could be lacking in your relationship. Is your partner wanting supermarket time or Disneyland time? If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory Essential Tools for Modern Relationships.

It covers our most used tools for all types of relationships, and you can find links to buy it at multiamory.com slash book or wherever you like to buy books.

Okay, kids, have either of you ever fought with a partner about quantity of time spent together? Yeah. Sorry, yeah. Yeah. I mean it's not always fighting fighting. Like I I hesitate to use the word fighting, but it's definitely been a point of contention or an area where someone was dissatisfied. Like I've I've often run into this recently where I'm the busy one.

And feeling like I feel a lot of guilt about not having more time to offer to partners, feeling like they want it, even if they're not actively asking for it. Sometimes they are, but even if they're not, I sometimes feel bad. And then I've definitely had times in the past where I felt like I had to really fight for a partner's time.

sometimes feeling like I I was having to fight pride time away from their other partners so I could get some, or sometimes just like getting their attention felt hard. So I guess that's getting a little bit into quality of time, not just quantity, but but yeah, I definitely have had that experience. In terms of quantity, I go to Hong Kong every year by myself and I had a partner or my my job, let's clarify. For a job, yeah.

Not just for fun, not just for fun. Yes, uh it is for a job, but that job takes me away, of course, from my normal situation in the United States. And I had a partner towards the end of our relationship say, I don't want a part-time girlfriend.

So that was fun regarding my being away for, you know, two and a half, three months at the end of the year. But I I do think it that's an interesting one, right? The kind of time that you spend with someone can vary and I think we'll get into that regarding quality time. But for instance, I'm about to start new work situations and my partner is as well. We currently work together and so some of our time that we get together is spent at work and that might be changing soon.

And so it's a question of, oh, how am I going to then be able to like get some of that time back? Because that is specifically work time, but it also is time that I get to spend with them. And so that might be get taken away and therefore the amount of time we spend together might be lessened in the near future.

When I think back about like arguments that I've had with past partners about time, it's pretty much either either I'm the busy one, right? I'm the one who's hard to pin down and so there's conflict about that. Or if I'm not the busy one, I'm the one who tends to want more alone time. And wants them to leave more frequently and is more frustrated when that doesn't happen. So like that definitely has colored. That's been the through line when I think about

past conflicts about time. But yeah, the two of you sort of danced around also that there's this other dimension of quality of time as well. Like talk to me a little bit about conflicts you've had about quality of time. I do think that if you are with one partner, perhaps a nesting partner, where the two of you tend to have similar time together when you're at home, maybe making dinner together, maybe like watching a movie together, but that that quality time spent somewhere outside of the home.

is lessened when you're kind of in a routine with someone. And I've found conflict around another partner gets to be the partner that goes out on a date, does something fun and adventurous. And then the uh you know, the more established partner perhaps is the one that stays home or whatever with you. And that that sometimes can be a a conflict point for sure, just because

the established partner might say, Well, I want to be the one also that gets to go out on fun adventures. Why don't we do that as often as you do that with some of your newer partners? Yeah, I feel like m for me it's most often come up as a conflict in a similar way. I think I've definitely had times in relationships where we've

Well, because we do radar usually talk about the quality of time we spend and maybe deciding, yeah, let's try to spend different qualities of time. But if we're just thinking about conflict over it, it's pretty much what Emily said. That feeling that like, oh, this other partner gets this different, better part of your time than what I get, even if I get more of it or the same amount or something like that.

Yeah, I I've often gotten into that conflict too. I I think it's very understandable, right? That if you feel like you're the boring established one and somebody else is the new shiny, that like that's a very easy place to see the difference.

Right. And see like, well, we're just like hanging out and doing the dishes together and you're going out on like a fun walk or a date or or whatever. But I've also been on the other side of it. I I think this counts as a similar type of conflict around quality of time in that So like I was raised in a family where we tend to be very pragmatic around and very non sentimental around things like holidays and birthdays. Right. You know, where it's just kind of like

Okay. Yeah, if we celebrate your birthday, you know, several days after the actual day, if that makes it more convenient then that's fine. Or if we just completely blast past celebrating certain holidays, like that's totally fine. And so that's something that I've historically tended to carry into my adult relationships as well. And yeah, I did have a partner who had to confront me on that.

basically approaching a Valentine's Day, him having to sit me down and be like, Hey, can can you like take Valentine's Day seriously this year? That's so funny to me. Yeah. Because it's so historically not a guy if this is a heterosexual relationship. Who would be saying that to the woman? That's just fascinating. I know. I think I've gotten better at that, at embracing ritual more so as I've gotten older.

But yeah, the reason why I wanted to write this episode is'cause this is a common point of contention in relationship and I think especially with non monogamy because the fact that time is limited and we have to make all these decisions about how much time to spend with whom and what type of time.

to spend with somebody as well. And in my practice, all the time I'll hear from the busier person, right? Who's like, oh my God, like this partner keeps asking for more of my time. And I literally just have no idea. how to offer them more time And then I'll hear it from the other side as well. Like often it's this sense of

Yeah, I can see that my partner's busy, but I could see that they spend time doing this or they spend time doing that. Like this is time that could be for our relationship and why won't they offer that to me? Right. And so that's why I wanted to dive into this today.

Okay, so To start out We're gonna look at two studies that I found. So this first one is a 2015 study by Anne Milleck. This is actually a doctoral dissertation out of the University of Zurich. It's titled Spending Time with One's Partner: The Interplay Between Dimensions of Shared Time. External stress and couples relationship functioning. So she lays out these three

key dimensions of shared time, which some of this is like pretty common sense. You know, she does the distinction between time quantity, right? The amount of time that we're spent together, measured in hours for this particular study, and the time. Quality, which is the nature of the shared time, which includes things like the intensity of communication or self disclosure.

during time spent together, engagement in what she calls quote weaness enhancing activities, so eating a meal together, going out together, having sex together, and an absence of conflict or contention. So those are all factors that she says kind of ties into how we perceive the quality of time spent together. But then this third one is. The satisfaction with shared time together, as in the subjective evaluation of whether our shared time together meets our needs.

or meets our expectations. So she compiled findings across three studies, a total of 367 individuals. It was 90 couples. In one of her studies, she was looking specifically at mothers as well, so 92 mothers. Is that quality time with the child? No, with their co parent. Oh okay. Okay. They just had to be a mother, I say. Yes. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. For for one of these studies.

And so the first finding here, again, I think that this is something that we have felt into and maybe could be argued to be common sense, is that quality of time tends to trump quantity of time. Right, that the quality of time was responsible for explaining most of the variability in specifically women's relationship satisfaction. While time quantity didn't matter as much.

So at least looking at the way that women felt about time spent together there in their relationships, quality really, really did matter. And it was the same with men, just the difference wasn't as stark as it was with women. Now this is interesting. The the fact though that when you say it mattered less the quantity of time, that it was like two percent.

Of people, like that was actually what ended up mattering more was quantity. So yeah, like that's really low. Yes. Yeah, for sure. That's a very big difference. And then what's funny is she found specifically women on weekdays that if they had more time with their partner, but it was low quality, that actually decreased. relationship satisfaction.

That's interesting. Can we talk about why that might be?'Cause i to me it feels like, well, on the weekdays if you're a more traditional woman who has children And maybe also as a job, dealing with all of the activities that are involved in a weekday, like getting the kids to school and then all of the maybe after school activities, and then also having to wrangle

a spouse potentially and then do your own things, like all of those things together. If you somehow had like a low quality time with your partner, that would make it even worse. Or that feeling would be even worse because perhaps you're overwhelmed during the weekdays more. Yeah, I'm not sure. I I saw a really sad post a few weeks ago where someone was posting about how this mom was posting about how when her husband is away.

sometimes that makes it easier because then she's not like hoping for help and then not getting it. Instead she already knows heading into it that that like she's on her own and it's a little bit easier to coordinate and plan and just kinda pull things off, which like was really, really sad, but I've also heard that as a complaint, right? That for some people, especially with a very traditional division of labor that go along gender lines, there can be this sense that like

their husband is another child to manage or take care of or stuff like that. I know that's not everybody's situation, but it this could that could be a factor here. Yeah, follow up questions about that where I'm like, Yeah, but could we segment this group into different categories based on various things like how active is the other partner in terms of taking care of the children. Were these ones specifically the ones with children or not?

was this more time together because they're both unemployed and they're also both grumpy at this time? And so you know, it's like there's a lot of other factors and this is definitely not a large enough study that she probably could have gotten that kind of information and that wasn't really what she was looking for. But it does raise a lot of other questions of like where could we dive into that more.

And the other thing that she found is that partners who had high self-disclosure during their shared time together needed less. quantity of time in order to feel satisfied. And partners with low self disclosure during their time together needed more time, more of a quantity of time to achieve the same satisfaction level. So I'm gonna talk really quickly about what counts as

self-disclosure. So an example of, you know, one of the items that the study used to measure this was this statement, when we spend time together, we talk about the day and share our thoughts. You know, and that was rated on a Likert scale from, you know, one to five. And basically this researcher

is highlighting that partners who regularly share personal information, share their feelings, share their thoughts about their day, and then also respond meaningfully to their partners' disclosures as well. That counts as high self disclosure.

And then low self-disclosure is partners who maybe spend time together, but they're not engaging in much personal sharing. Like maybe they're doing activities side by side or in the same room, but they're not conversing and they're not conversing intimately. And that makes total sense. It it does make sense, but I'm I'm a little bit surprised that it was such a significant difference that she noticed between those.

'Cause you know, you think about the couple that's been together for a very long time, especially if they're around each other a lot. then you might think, oh, but there's less of that catching up to do.

But realizing it's not really about that, but it's about kind of sharing your feelings and like checking in with how those are. And that yeah, it is easy to slip into that pattern of not having those kinds of conversations. I think especially When you assume that you already know those things about your partner?

And we've talked about that a long time ago on the show about those studies showing that the longer we've been with someone, the better we think we know them and the worse we actually are at predicting what they're thinking and feeling. And that I could see that contributing to this as well, because there's kind of this assumption that you don't need to do that if you think you know that person so well that you already know.

Yeah, I mean this seems to track pretty closely with like the Gottman Institute love maps. concept, right? This idea that something that's actually very foundational to healthy relationships is that we regularly check in with each other in order to continue to know each other rather than to assume that we know each other. And

it doesn't necessarily mean we have really, really deep personal, emotional conversations every time we hang out with each other, but it is checking in on those things like, what's on your plate for the day? What are you stressed about today? What are you looking forward to today?

Right. Like how did that meeting with your boss go? Or how did that meeting with your friend go? You know, that again, even if you've been together for a long time, that you can still engage in this practice of being able to check in and share with each other. And it seems like that has this effect on how much quantity of time is actually satisfying to you.

Yeah, that's really interesting. It's making me think about the question that Dedeker and I often ask each other, which is just like, How's your heart? And we actually got that from a podcast, from this podcast called Good Christian Fun. That's about like Christian pop culture stuff.

But the hosts always ask each other that at the start of the show. And honestly, as a podcast segment, it kind of sucks'cause you're like, No, just get to the point, get to the conversation. But we did take a bad question and ask each other that sometimes. Just as like an open prompt for how you feeling, what's on your mind, what are you worried about, what are you happy about? How are you feeling overall? I do think it's nice to be able to ask.

More pointed questions, not just like how was your day as opposed to really getting to the heart of something. So that's a lovely question. Maybe I'm gonna steal that one. Yeah, I know you should. Definitely. Everybody steal it. Everybody steal it from the Christian fund.

Okay, so this next study, so this is a twenty nineteen study by Amy Muiz et al. Broadening your horizons. Self expanding activities promote desire and satisfaction in established romantic relationships. This was published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Okay. We're gonna be talking a lot about self-expanding activities and self-expansion. And so I just wanna at the top here give a moment for all of our inner middle schoolers to giggle.

At talking about self expansion and the self expansion that you do to a partner, with a partner. I don't know. Really did it not? No. It didn't. Like I feel like I mean now it has. I'm surprised'cause I feel like Emily is the one who always has the dirtiest, like middle schooler brain.

If we're using the word tumescent or something, but that's not happening here. Expan like self expansion to me feels like, oh, you're working on yourself and you're making yourself into a better person perhaps. Because they're part of the overtherapized generation. So they're

If I were a middle schooler in like the Gen X era, uh that would have been a different time. Yeah. I would have been laughing my ass off. Okay. So so this researcher It was kind of building this hypothesis based on self expansion theory, which is this idea that

people are motivated to broaden or expand their sense of self through novel experiences, through learning new perspectives and through gaining new skills. And When we're early on in a relationship, the opportunities for this are much more numerous. Like, yeah. usually presents itself in the form of we're learning about each other.

Right. So not only learning who you are, what do you like, what's your story, where did you come from, but also learning what is it like when we go on a date together? What is it like when we have sex together? What is it like when we meet each other's families or each other's friends? That there's a lot of novelty. And a lot of newness.

And then of course, those particular baked in opportunities become less frequent as we get to know each other better and as routine sets in. And so this theory is that if we engage in novel activities and exciting activities together, it kind of revitalizes that sense of self-expansion. So in this study there were actually two studies. Um, and they were specifically looking at whether self-expanding activities would boost sexual desire in couples who'd been together for a long time.

So these were like they did diary studies with a number of couples for twenty one days and So, you know, these couples would individually track what they got up to together, basically, over the course of three weeks. And then the researchers had these follow-up questions like, how much did being with your partner result in you having new experiences?

Did you feel a greater awareness of things because of your partner? How much did being with your partner expand your sense of the kind of person you are? How much did your partner provide you with a source of excitement? How much did you feel you gained a larger perspective on things because of your partner? Or how much did your partner increase your knowledge? Yeah. How much did your partner expand to you? Yes. Good job. Well done. I know it's I know it.

And so they did find that You know, the couples who did engage in these self-expanding activities together or felt a sense of self-expansion from being together did have increased sexual desire, which did lead to greater relationship and sexual satisfaction. They also found that couples were more likely to have sex on the days that they engaged in self expansion uh like self expansion activities. It's not necessarily

Might as well keep going with that. Now I've created a monster. Yeah. We wouldn't have even thought of this if it hadn't been. I know, Donna Gar, this is all your fault. I know it's all my fault. Uh what's really interesting is they found that both partners benefit even if only one person had that experience of self expansion and So l like l to think of an example of this is Maybe it's going to see your partner in their first play.

let's say. Right. You know, and it's their first play and they've always wanted to like do acting and they've finally gotten to a play and like you're gonna go see their first play. And where it's like technically it's your partner who's the one who has been in this self expansion journey, right, of learning new skills. discovering a new side of themselves, but the idea that you might witness your partner experiencing that.

could help generate more attraction, more affection and more desire. And then also just as a quick caveat here, they found that this effect still held true even when they controlled for things like if you were just in a good mood, let's say. Yeah. Okay.

That also makes me think about situations where one partner already does something regularly. Like one person's, you know, an avid hiker or they like to go to the aquarium regularly, but the other partner is doing these things for the first time or going on a particular hike. The first time, I could see that being a case where there's sort of that discovery and expansion for the one doing it for the first time. And they're kind of

learning from the other one, which fits with some of these questions from earlier about like, how much do you feel you gained a larger perspective on things because of your partner, or how much did your partner increase your knowledge? Kinda makes sense because In that case, they already know that thing well, versus other situations where both of you together are encountering something new.

Yeah, so specifically this is the partners doing something together, but one of them is potentially engaging in the self expansion. Yeah, one or both. Because initially when you said that I was like, oh this is related to maybe somebody going out and having a novel experience by themselves for the first time, that then when they come back to the partner, there's still the opportunity for

I don't know, growth or coming back and feeling really good about the partnership, but it sounds like the point here is that they have to be together while at least one of them is engaging in a self expanding activity.

That's what this study was about. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think this tracks with what Esther Perel talks about all the time, this idea that especially in a very long term relationship that could be very enmeshed in very close quarters, that we do crave that distance, that distance is connected to desire and so I would theorize that

provided you're feeling like like you're not feeling like your partner's dropping the ball or just trying to escape from you, but like having a sense that your partner's leaving the house and engaging in something that like really lights them up and they bring that energy back home to you, that I could see that also having a positive effect. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

And while Dedeker was researching this episode, she did encourage me to sign up to do a croissant making class on my own next weekend. That's awesome. And I'm already so excited for your future self-expansion. Like I'm already so turned on. Actually a little bit. I'm ready for you to come back and just like put croissants all over my body. That's what that's what I was expecting. That it was just gonna become a croissant extravaganza that you get to partake in.

From his knowledge and self expansion. In the course description they did say you will come home with croissants as well as frozen ones to pick up later at two, I think. So So many chrysants. Amazing. Now this is interesting because they did get into the nitty gritty of what these couples identified as activities that produced this sense of self expansion. And so the top one was outings slash special events, which makes sense. But then the next highest one was household tasks done together.

Which we would not expect that. You would not expect that. And so I think that definitely threw the researchers off and they sort of theorize that that could mean that this might be a little bit less about the activity. It could be about the mindset, right? Like maybe it links back to the self disclosure thing, right? That even if you're doing household activities together, but if you still have a really stimulating, as the Gottmans would say, a stimulating exchange of ideas.

even while you're c cleaning the kitchen together, maybe that that's just as good as doing a special outing. Interesting. I I wonder if we should change how we do our house cleaning. Because our normal strategy is we go to complete opposite ends and you know, so that we're kind of each in our own area, but maybe we should change our minds so that we can have more stimulating exchanges of ideas while we do it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh after our break I wanna get into

Some more specifics about this because something that I think the research doesn't quite cover is I think there's actually many, many different flavors and colors and types of qualities of time that at least I've seen come up in my own practice that I wanna dig into.

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Okay, so so I made this big old list. This big old list. of different qualities of time that your partner might be craving. So like let's say you are in that position where you're you have a partner who keeps asking for more time and it feels like they're just like not satisfiable and you're busy and you just have no idea what to do. In this situation when I'm working with people, most of the time, not all the time.

But most of the time it is linked to a particular quality of time that somebody feels like they're not getting rather than it just being about we need to add an extra date night or we need to add an extra couple hours a week or or things like that. I'm trying to come up with a good name for this. Your like your time zone that you're looking for. Kind of the time zone? What do you mean? Your time what time zone does your partner want to be in? Yeah. Your

I was gonna say your your time your time animal, but that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Your time language, like a love language, but a time language. Yeah. Or your archetyme. Oh that's okay. All right. Like really doing the whole airport self help book treatment. Exactly. That's how we'll finally finally start making some money in some of those airplane books.

I pulled these straight out of the air, not based on nothing. It's all based on the recurring issues that I see come up with clients, but like none of this is empirically backed. Most of this is anecdotal and I think common sense. And also diving into these different types of time. Of course, these can overlap. They're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes people want

multiple types are craving different qualities of time. And also just really quickly, yes, they're arc they're archetyme. Thank you, Jay. I will be creating a PDF of this if it's helpful to folks. Um that's going to be available to our Supercast subscribers, so you can go to multiamory.com slash join or I'll be linking to the PDF in the show notes as well. Okay, so the first one is

Supermarket time. Any guesses about supermarket time? Gotta be chores, errands, that kind of thing. Boring boring shit, yes. How many of you just said before that boring shit is actually one of the better ones for connecting? I was gonna say how many people actually want those, but maybe a lot of people. A lot of people do.

Okay. So yeah, I I categorize supermarket time as yeah, I want to just like live daily life with you. I want to run errands with you. I wanna be quotidian with you. And usually this comes up because often it is a non nesting partner that to somebody who has a nesting partner who is craving this type of time. And may some sort of grass always greener. Yeah, grass is always greener. But but like I but I don't say that to dismiss it, right? Because like

Yeah, there is something special about this type of everyday time. And often people can feel really frustrated feeling like, oh, your nesting partner gets all this time with you and I really want that. It's interesting. I I can see, especially in that situation like you described, where that is kind of a novel

self-expanding experience of like seeing how you go about those things, how you do those might be different for me. I know that early on in a relationship, when you get to maybe not early, early on, but at some point when you get to that like

we're grocery shopping together or something, there is kind of that like, oh, oh interesting. Like those are the brands you go for. Like you walk down these aisles this way or oh I do it that way. And sometimes that could be a conflict, but also sometimes it can be that, oh, that's a neat

trick. I never thought about that. Or like, oh really, is that okay, we'll try we'll we'll get that. I've I don't usually get dried beans, I always get canned ones. Whatever it is. I know that sounds so mundane, but it still is expanding, like you're expanding your thinking to go, oh I c I see how they see the world different from me. And I think that could be valuable and that could be romantic. So I think I appreciate supermarket time more than I would have guessed.

if you had just tossed this out to me at some point in the past. Now a counterpart, not necessarily a direct opposite, but a counterpart to supermarket time is what I call Disneyland time. Yeah. Yeah. Where it's I'm craving something special and playful, you know. I want us to get dressed up and go somewhere or I want us to have like sexy, playful kinky time or want us to have a romance. Like you do at Disneyland. No No you do not. Not there. Um

Or like weekend getaway time and and again I call this a counterpart because I often see this, that is sometimes the nesting partner or the long term partner who craves that. Like you talked about Emily is this idea of Like we've become too quotidian together. Like maybe we even take each other for granted and we don't have moments where we have that. sparkle or that playfulness or that time to step out of being roommates or being co-parents together. Sure.

Another type of time someone might be craving is unstructured time. So this idea that I want a day where we can both just follow our whims about what we want to do. Like we're not overscheduled. There isn't the time pressure. There's not, oh, you have to be back home by eleven o'clock or whatever. You know, feeling this sense of we can move. freely it can feel like there's an abundance of time because it's unstructured.

This one I I feel like especially comes up with people who are where where both people are quite busy. there can be that craving for we just want some downtime with each other. But at the same time it can be so hard to actually experience it because as soon as you have that downtime

Both of your minds start going to, oh, but we should use this time to finally clean under the couch that we haven't done in a while or like, okay, yeah, we we could do that. But on the in the back of my mind is this home improvement project that I need to do, or, you know, keeping in mind like, Oh, I wonder how the kids are doing if they're over at their friend's house, like those sorts of things that keep you from being present.

So maybe I would add that to this, that it's like unstructured, but present in that unstructured time would make that feel higher quality. Yeah, and I feel like there are probably moments in your life where this is something that you crave more and that is less attainable than other times, perhaps

you're m starting a new job or ramping something up in your current job and you just are without any free time whatsoever. And so of course, that unstructured time where you just get to do whatever it is that you want with your partner, it feels like something that that you really, really want to have and really crave, but it's not necessarily always attainable.

Now I'm gonna jump a little further down on the list because I think related to unstructured time, but a little bit different, is unscheduled time, or maybe you might think of it as spontaneous time. So this idea that I wanna be able to find some stolen moments with you where we're able to see each other, even if it's just briefly, without us having to plan or schedule three weeks out. I think this is a very common complaint.

among certain non monogamous folks because yes, like we all make the joke about how like we love Google Calendar so much and it's crucial and that is true. And it does mean that like for some people, you know, especially if you're dating someone who's really busy, it can feel like

Uh like we have to schedule. Yeah, the spontaneity's completely gone. Yeah. Right. Um I've experienced that for sure. Yes. Or it's just like impossible to be like, hey, like let's just go get lunch today, right? Or let's decide something on a whim. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I almost feel like the unscheduled spontaneous time could

could definitely overlap with these others. It's almost like an extra qualifier you could put onto it of like, oh, we're spending some unstructured time that was also unscheduled. We just both spontaneously had meetings cancel at the same time. So let's get on a call. Or it's, you know, oh, spontaneously, we're both free at the same time when we need to get groceries. Let's go together and make a little trip out of it. Something like that.

I you know it's so funny when you say that. I think something that I crave all the time in our relationship, but both of us are just too weak to do it. Too weak. I was gonna say w I was gonna say a worse insult. Um But now there's how the guts to do it is is like I fantasize about both of us having like a last minute playing hooky kind of day.

Oh. I'm like stressed. I'm like instantly stressed right now, thinking about it. No, trust me. I get stressed too, but like I fantasize about it, about this And we joke about it sometimes in the morning. We're like, What if we just like both didn't go to work today and just like hung around and play video games and sometimes I'm like, Sounds amazing off someday.

But we the heist time. The heist. Let's pull it heist. Heisted time, I like that. Yeah. Uhhuh. But like it feels so naughty. It does feel very dirty. Yes. Yeah.

So another type of time is parallel time. So maybe you might be craving something like I want to be in the same space with you, but without the need to be on or to be constantly engaged. I know for myself personally, when I am early in the phases of a relationship or dating someone, I think this is the time I crave the fastest.

Interesting. Where I'm like, yes, this is great. Like so exciting. Getting to know you. Yeah. Love it. And also like can we get to the phase faster where I can just like hang out on your couch and read a book while you do something else? Um that for me sometimes like the social energy drain gets a little tiresome quickly. Yeah. I think this can also cover the category of people who really like body doubling together. Where it's that I just wanna be around you and that'll help me

Stay seated, stay focused, whatever, but I'm working on my own thing, you're working on your own thing, we're not doing something together. And I I do it is a kind of time I do really enjoy. Even even if that's relaxation time, not just work time. But it's like we're gonna play games, but we're playing separate games right now. Or I'm gonna listen to a podcast while you

play a game or something like that, that it's we're together, but we're kind of doing our own thing. It is it is nice. There is something really special about it. And there is something nice about not needing to keep it on all the time, but still like be with a partner. and turn it off, like turn off the need to be absolutely brilliant and wonderful at every single moment. But instead just sort of exist with them and do the tasks that you need to get done and they can also do that as well.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. That's that's where real intimacy comes in, I feel like. Hmm. Interesting. Say more about that. Oh, I don't know. I think it's a very intimate thing to not need to always be on for your partner.

And to like letting you on your guard a little bit. Yeah, to show them who you really are without like needing to sparkle all the time, I guess. But just be like, I'm gonna lay here in my pajamas, do some work while you're playing Hollow Knight next to me or silk song or whatever. And Yeah, I don't know. It's lovely. It is, I think, very intimate. Okay, the next one is uh I'm still workshopping what this is called. Like initially I thought family time.

or clan time or integrated time. I think maybe integrated time perhaps is the best label for it, but basically, you know, I want time where I feel like I'm a part of your social circle. I get to be your plus one at the wedding. I get invited to family events. I'm integrated into holidays, into your friend gatherings. You know, I think a lot of people who really want something like kitchen table poly often are wanting this sense of

Inclusion with the whole group. Yeah. So not family time like our immediate nuclear family, but being part of your family, whether that's a larger family-ish kind of group or your actual family. That makes sense. Interesting. When when do you feel like you see people craving this one the most?

Uh when their levels the when two people's levels of outness are different. Oh, interesting. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. When if you feel you know, if you're dating someone who isn't let let's say they're not out to their coworkers or they're not out to their friends and so y then you feel like

Okay. I'm not the one that everybody knows. Yeah, I'm not the one that everybody knows. Um That's hard. Yeah, or or just yeah, I can't be invited along to your work events or like I can hear about all these people in your life that you love and that are important, but I can't really be a part of it or I can't meet them. That's often the people who understandably really crave that the most. But but I've also seen it come up with people even if outness isn't necessarily

The case, you know, like I think people move at different paces when it comes to introducing a new partner to their family or to their most important people or even to their, you know, other partners, right? And so sometimes there can be differences or conflict there.

Also I think that this comes up around any sort of like relationship escalatory thing because this sort of represents a shift into we're a little bit more serious now to when potentially you are introducing someone to any of those people, including established partners. that oh, you are somebody that's important enough in my life that I want to introduce you to established partners or close friends or especially family, I think. Yeah.

And again, another counterpart to the integrated time is what I call bubble time. So you just get together with a couple of little jars of bubbles and you blow bubbles together. Jars of Bubbles, is that how they're sold? They're like those little glass canisters. I don't mean like a glass. Jar? What do you call that? It's in the shape of a jar. Right? It's like a tiny jar. Like a bubble blower. A container? I don't that's a good question, actually. Yeah. A crucible. Okay. Crucible bubbles.

That sounds like it should be in like a Halloween store or something like that. Then you definitely have a console of bubble solutions. That's maybe a bubble crucible that you're scooping the bubble juice out of it. Well the yeah, yes. Hensity is a class. I'm just trying to think about like the intensity of a crucible, right? Where you're melting down metals like that. Oh, you mean like we're straight up forging smelting.

You're smelting bubbles. Yes. Anyway, back to this podcast that we know and love, Bubble Time. This idea that I want time where it feels like you and I are the only two people who exist. Now this is the type of time that people tend to crave Sometimes if I don't know if I would want to say if they're feeling over integrated, but I see this often where they feel like their betas are always around, you know. Like it's always kind of a kitchen table poly situation or

We're always going and hanging out with your friends and like that's fun and all, but I don't feel like we're really getting like one-on-one time together. That yeah, sometimes people can crave this sense of even if we're non monogamous, even if we're happily polyamorous.

It's very normal to have the sense of, Yeah, but sometimes I want to enter this space where it truly feels like we're the only two. Yeah. Love that. That's very necessary, I think, with any relationship where you just get quality time by yourself and not with anyone else. Yeah.

And then the last one I came up with is ritual time. We always have our morning coffee together, or we always chat on the phone right before bed, or there's a particular cafe that special to the two of us that we like to go to all the time and they know our orders there and we know the other regulars that

I think any type of relationship can be supported by a sense of ritual. Our brains really, really do like repetition. And You know, I think if you're in a relationship with someone and it feels like they're too busy or you're too busy or it feels like your lives are chaotic together, like maybe you are nesting partners together or co parents together and it just feels like you're constantly running around trying to plug holes

in the boat, you know, and that's what your life is, that yeah, I think it's understandable to want to crave this sort of repetitive time to ground together, even in these really simple ways of just morning coffee or just the goodnight text or something like that. Yeah, I think there's something comforting to it of kinda like a feeling of maybe security or safety in the repetition of something. It's like, oh well there's there's this though. I still have this.

And so that can help kind of ground you even during those times when it's like, I know we're both really busy right now, they're working on a new project or just got a promotion or whatever, but at least we still have this. Like we've still got something that we can kinda look forward to as a way to connect. Definitely. Do the two of you is there anything you think I've missed here? Anything that comes to mind?

No, I think these are broad enough that they can apply to a lot of different types of things. And how they kind of hit opposite ends of the spectrum, right? Like we have the supermarket time and the Disneyland time of like the the everyday versus the special. And then we have the parallel time versus the

kind of more unstructured but together time versus parallel, which might be structured but we're not really interacting, and then like the integrated versus bubble. I think it makes a lot of sense. that you could kind of have these. And I could even see overlap in some surprising ways, where sometimes going on a trip like doing the Disneyland time together is also kind of bubble time.

Right. That it's like, yeah, we're here, we it's just us in a new land, even if that land is like the outlet mall an hour away or something like that. But it's like you're out doing something special and unique together. I guess the only one that I maybe don't see here is like task time. where you have to maybe get specific tasks like taxes done, for instance, where you're like, okay, we need to sit down.

and do a structured thing together that will enable us to do bigger and better things in our lives as time goes on, or sit down and talk about our finances if we are integrated in some way. Or even do a radar together, for instance. Yeah, I'm gonna call it team time. Team time. Yeah,'cause I think that can expand to'cause some of that is a little bit of the quotidian, you know, supermarket time. Like maybe it's a little bit boring, but I also think it comes to, yeah, how can we

connect together, feel like we're on a team, put our heads together. And it's less frequent, I think, than that supermarket time. Yeah. Where is that a special project or a special thing? Yeah. That would be re recurring maybe the supermarket time is, but this might be something like that you would like a radar do once a month, which is still ritualistic, I think, in a lot of ways, but maybe less frequent than some of these other things.

No, I'm glad you highlighted that though, because yeah, I think I can already think of a bunch of anecdotal examples. where yeah, that is something very particular that people will crave. It's like there's almost this sense of can we just like get on the same page? Can we reset together? Can we plan together? Can we look at what's gonna happen next? Can we get ready for the week together? Yeah. No, I think that makes sense.

Yeah, I think that creating together kind of fits into that as well. It's like we're on a team making something, right? Whether that You know, it could be a household project, right? Of like we're gonna paint our living room, right? Or like we're gonna paint a mural on this thing, or like we're we're making something, we're doing something, creating something together. Or, you know, this could be something silly, like We're gonna make uh

podcast for our friends and send it to them. You know, some sort of silly idea we had. Like Dedeker and I made a spontaneous podcast for Emily once about eating Like bitter salted plums in Japan. Oh yeah. That was actually like relaying it was it was actually more of a YouTube video. It was a YouTube video, but it was good. It was very silly. It was very good. Yeah, but like things like that where you're kind of doing a little project together. Yeah.

Yeah, so I I hope that thinking about this in this way is really helpful for folks because I I do think that you know, if your partner's coming to you and just saying, I really want more time, that you can be making a whole number of assumptions about what they're talking about when they're asking for time. and they may be asking for something completely different actually. And so I just really wanted to give people at least a palette of options to start that conversation from. So again,

If you go to multiamory.com slash join, we're going to be offering this whole list as a PDF. There's also going to be a link to that in the show notes. And hopefully you can use it as a tool just to like start some discussion if this has been a point of contention in your relationship. So be sure you click that link in the show description so that you can get the PDF and find out your archetyme. Or find the archetyme you're looking for. Have a good time with your archetyme. It's not

I don't know if I love arca time now though, because I feel like people will want all of these at different times in their lives. It's not like an arca time. Exactly. It feels like this is your time boy, time table. What about time taste?

Yeah, your time taste, your time love language, your time language. But love language also implies you would just have the one, right? No, you're right, you're right. And we we all know famously that that's not the case. You want to paint with all the colours of the time. something alright. That is something, yeah.

Okay, we're gonna take a quick break before we start talking about some practical tools besides just getting that PDF and discussing it. But first we're gonna take another quick break to talk about some sponsors for this show.

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All right. So let's first talk about what not to do if you and your partner are in constant conflict about time. I think that maybe strategy number one to not do is to respond to your partner's request for more time by presenting them with a detailed Spreadsheet documenting just how many hours you spent together in the last week in an effort to prove to them that they shouldn't want more time because you're giving them as much as you can.

Yeah. Dadaker and I frequently threaten each other with spreadsheets. With but in that way or wa in what way? Anything that there's a disagreement about about like who's you know, loaded the dishwasher more recently or something where like I I'll start a spreadsheet if you'd like or let me pull up the spreadsheet I've been preparing for weeks. Like here you go. Wow.

Yikes. Neither of us have ever actually weaponized a spreadsheet against each other. It just stays in the right. Spreadsheets should be a force of good. I I worry about spreadsheets being used for evil. Mm-hmm. Another thing that I see people do, which is not very effective, is they'll respond to a partner's request for more time by telling them that they need to find

somebody else to date, as in they need to find another partner. Often this is framed in the sense of I think you need to go get your own primary partner or get your own nesting partner. Now like Maybe in your estimation, if you're dating someone who you feel like is constantly pulling on you for time and you feel like that would be the solution, even if that's true.

They're not gonna wanna hear it from you. No. Yeah. And that's probably not what they're wanting to hear from you in that particular moment. Yeah. Another one not to do is to hear this complaint and then solve the problem by overpromising your time to the extent that you grow exhausted, overscheduled, and resentful, or usually in my case, like tired and depressed. 'Cause I'm not sleeping enough or I'm overly stressed. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, I kinda have this built in

guilt already that I'm always not giving enough time. And so I'm very susceptible to this one, to just like trying to find ways to do that. And I find this one applies not just with partners, but also with like my mom. Or friends or other people too where it's like Yes, you're right. I do want to give you that'cause I know I would want that.

too and it sucks when you don't get it. And so don't go to the mistake of completely over promising over scheduling. I've tried to get better at that, of at least not doing it to the extreme that I'm having negative health consequences and negative emotional well being consequences from it. Very wise. Also, avoid bringing up any kind of stressful or conflict producing topics because you're just like afraid of compromising quality time.

people also in long distance relationships, especially. I think often if you come together and finally get to be together after not for a long period of time, if something really rough is going on and and you want and need to speak about it, Take the time to do so. Even if it might rock the boat a little bit, i it's probably more important to do that than let something fester and get out of control and then perhaps lead to even more resentment later on.

Yeah. No, that that one can be really hard to do. Especially if you really feel like you don't get a lot of time to talk to each other at all. It can be hard to feel like, Oh no, we've wasted it with talking about this heavy topic instead of just having fun. But Radar those are the times when you really get to know each other better and I would argue you might actually have more of a self expanding experience than you think.

Overall, maybe not the first time if there's a big backlog of stuff, but over time that actually can be really valuable. Definitely.

And also the last thing not to do is to spend all of your time together arguing about your time together. Very well ironically, in in counterflux to the one before that. Two do I think the first one is if you're locked in a struggle with a partner where one of you feels like there's just no way you can offer up more time and the other one feels like you're just like desperate, you're not getting enough time.

This is a good opportunity to examine your fears. So like if you're the one who's busier and your partner's asking you for more time together, sit down and explore, okay, what is my fear here? What is the worst case scenario that comes up in my brain if I agree to offer up more time? Is it I'm afraid of dropping the ball and all my responsibilities at work? Is it I'm afraid that

You know, my partner that I live with is gonna get upset with me or I'm afraid that I'm not gonna be able to get any alone time and I'm gonna feel smothered. And then same thing if you're the partner who is asking for more time, what's your worst case scenario if things stay just as they are?

Right. If your partner says, actually this is all that I can offer right now, like what are you afraid of happening? And it doesn't necessarily mean that your fears are true, but it also doesn't necessarily mean it's it you know, you're supposed to just dismiss your fears. It's like this is just really interesting information, interesting data of like what comes up for you, especially if there's an emotional charge.

to this particular conflict that this can be an opening to have a deeper, more productive conversation with your partner around like what actually concerns you and maybe what's actually keeping you stuck. Yeah. And I think that one of the fears that can come up if you're the one who feels like you have less time to offer is this fear that.

Well, if I give them more time, they're still not gonna be satisfied and they're gonna want even more. Sure. And I think that's actually a good segue into this next tip, which is to get curious about your time taste, your archetyme, your whatever it is that that you're looking for and also what your partner might be craving. And the best way to do this is

Through experimenting. Like maybe you heard that list and you've got the PDF and you're like, oh yeah, oh, clearly it's this. This is the thing I'm craving. Now I have a name for it. We can work on that. But if it's not so obvious as that. then do a test of it. Ideally you're having some kind of a regular check-in, like a radar, where you can say, Okay, my partner wants more supermarket time with me. So for the next couple weeks

I'll plan that. I'll invite them along when I'm running errands for a few hours and then we'll check back in and kind of see how did that feel? Was that fun? Was that nice? Was it Too much of a burden? Was it actually

That worked out well. They were fine with driving over to my grocery store. That also saved me a little bit of time for us to do that and they got their own shopping done at the same time. Whatever it is. But just check it out and then maybe you determine, actually, you know what? Let's try instead that when we do spend time together we wanna go out more instead of just sitting on the couch.

watching shows together. Or, you know, maybe it's that we want more bubble time instead of it always being with our social group. Like just experiment and see which one. Because if you're having that feeling, like no matter how much time I give them, they're always wanting more, it might be because of this. It might be that they're missing a certain quality of time that they might not even realize they're missing.

Given what we learned from one of the studies that Dedeker was talking to us about Self-expansion activities are really important. So with your partner, try to deliberately seek out novel new experiences where maybe you're learning something together, maybe going to a salsa class, for instance. It and it doesn't need to be grandiose or expensive. It you can do a free museum day.

most big cities will have something like that. They have a ton of free museum days here in New York City. Uh you can, you know, maybe find a hike that you've never done before, or even just try out a recipe that you've never made before, see what happens.

Even if the two of you don't know how to cook. Go take a croissant class and then throw the croissants on your partner. See what happens. I guarantee something will happen. Yeah, I do that. That I can guarantee something. It won't be nothing that happens. Something you might try, especially if you identify as like the more busy or more overwhelmed partner, is you might do a time audit, but privately.

So not necessarily something that you sit down together with your partner for the two of you to create a spreadsheet together. The whole point of this is not for it to be ammunition. It's not for you to come clap back at your partner and say, see, here I can prove to you how busy I am. This is information for yourself and for future collaboration. So the way that this could look is You might take a week or two. I recommend two to three weeks.

to map out where your time goes over the course of a typical day. Now I have done this and I did this because this was an exercise in the designing your life book where they also had you track for like each activity that you engage in, like how energized or drained each one makes you feel. And let me tell you like the results of that were actually really, really illuminating.

Oh wow. Yes. Yeah. It was actually quite surprising. Because like it helps you to be able to see where your energy and time is going. It helps you to determine are there things where I might have more flexibility? Or on the flip side. it could reveal to you where you might be keeping yourself too available for a partner, for instance, right? Like instead of pursuing something that would fill you up and expand you, as it were.

Like you might just be sitting around trying to catch this other partner's time, right? Or you might feel this pressure, like, well, I have to be super flexible because they're very busy. And so I can't commit myself too much, right? And I think doing a time audit Could help you see that. I'm curious, Dedeker, when you did that, what was the method of it?'Cause I've heard a few different ideas for keeping like a time journal or something like that. Sometimes it's

you know, have a timer so every hour you write down what you were just doing and how you felt. But Whoa. I've always worried it would be just too disruptive to do something like that. So how did you go? Yeah, yeah. I couldn't do that if it's if it's like by the minute, right? Like that is definitely too much. Which I mean maybe some people could pull that off, but for me it was just a log of activities.

Right. So it wasn't necessarily about like me logging this was the two minutes I was in the bathroom. Or something like that. It was just like activities, right? So yeah, I had this meeting for work and then I had this client call. And then I took a walk and then like I went to a workout class and then I met up with my friend or whatever. So for me it was more just like going activity to activity throughout the day.

And then instead of logging necessarily how much time it took, I sort of just logged like how I felt really. Um interesting. Yeah, which for me was super helpful because it helped me to have a sense of like what to prioritize and what to lean into more and what I could maybe stand to cut out if it's like truly being a drain and and if it's something that is possible to cut out, right?

So like that could be helpful for people, for other people it might be helpful to do something that's a little bit more like quantitative, I suppose, to have a sense. Um, because something that also happens and and we'll get to this later is I've spent a lot of time thinking about this concept and I didn't come up with this, but This idea of confetti time.

Which is the the like what is that? The little the like five minutes here or ten minutes there or like fifteen minutes there that you lose usually to shit like Uh confetti time. Yeah, confetti time. Interesting. Like I know for me that's how it'll go from like, oh, I have two hours'til I have to be on my next call and then like, oh my God, where do the two hours go? Yeah. And it's sort of because I've confetti it up to some of it is like on my phone and then some of it is just like

Like doinking around, you know, puttering around like procrastinating, like that kind of stuff. So that could be something that could be helpful for some folks to track. possibly of like where are you confettiing up your time. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Ultimately the whole point of the time audit is So that you can make your negotiations with your partner around time slightly more data-based than feelings-based.

I know for myself as someone who tends to be busy and tends to seek out busyness and tends to put things on my plate. I can go through periods of time where I just I personally feel overwhelmed in this particular moment. And therefore, if someone comes to me asking for more time, I can like knee-jerk respond with like

Hell no, there's no way. I can't. Like I'm just like way too overwhelmed and so I can't when like maybe by the next week that's not actually true. It's just like in that particular moment I was feeling overwhelmed. And so yeah, I think that's that's the whole purpose of that exercise. Mm-hmm. Yeah, makes sense.

Kind of going along with some of what you were just talking about, Dedeker, it's really important to get off of your phone when the two of you are together. And this also applies to long term nesting partners. Cause I do think that if you're spending a lot of time on your phone when you're together, that just feels like the opposite of quality time. It feels like you're simply leaning yourself away from your partner into something else.

And i it's almost like one of those turn away from your partner things that the Gotmans talk about as opposed to turning towards. So I think that's a really important thing to just at least be aware of and think like, okay, am I on my phone just scrolling through and looking at what's happening on the New York Times or can I maybe put that down and ask how my partner's day was? what is on their hearts.

Hm. Yeah, I mean this is one that just in general, I think learning how to spend less time on your phone is just such a valuable thing. And it's a It sounds so simple, so easy to do, and yet it's not, right? Because if you just notice yourself And pay attention. There's like this magnetic draw to it of

Oh, I stopped focusing on something for a second. Boop, out comes my phone. Right. Or I'm at the restaurant. My partner got up to go to the bathroom. Whoop. I get my phone out and start looking at it.

Some people it's even while we're talking, get my phone out, look at it. Because it's just it's like calling to you all the time of saying like, Hey, I've got some stimulation here that you could be getting. You should get it. And It's honestly like kind of a surreal, a little bit magical experience when you don't and you experience just. waiting and just kinda

thinking about stuff like looking around while you're, you know, waiting in a line or while you know, waiting in line to check out at the grocery store or something, or if your partner got up to go to the bathroom while you're at the restaurant or something like that. Just Try it. It's kind of fun and novel, which is so wild that that's the case. Uh, but definitely worth trying. It didn't used to be a thing back when we didn't have phones.

To distract us so much, they weren't as compelling, but uh Uh there's some good overlap with this topic with our episode five fifty two. why your partner doesn't plan stuff and what you can do about it. Again, these are two separate topics, but there's definitely some overlap particularly in the action point. So definitely go check out episode five fifty two.

And we're gonna be running a poll on our Instagram stories because I am curious to hear from people how many of you fight with your partner about quality of time together or about quantity of time together. Really curious to see how that breaks down. Also, the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners about this episode is in our episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can also post about it in our private Facebook group.

You can get access to these groups and join our community by going to multiamory.com slash join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram at multiamory underscore podcast. Multiamory is created and produced by Jace Lindgren, Emily Matlack, and me, Dedeker Winston.

Our production assistants are Rachel Shenewer and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from The Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.