By Jen Joseph, MA, LMFT, CST | AASECT Certified Sex Therapist
You’ve had the big conversations. You’ve talked through your fears and hopes, and you’ve landed on some agreements. Then one of you goes on a first date, and it goes really well.
This is where many couples get a surprise. Opening a relationship is hard to plan for in the abstract, because the real feelings only show up once things are actually happening. One of the most common, and hardest to plan for, is new relationship energy, or NRE, a familiar experience in polyamory and ethical non-monogamy.
I’m a licensed psychotherapist and AASECT Certified Sex Therapist offering online therapy to individuals and couples in California and Oregon, including those exploring or practicing polyamory and ethical non-monogamy.
What Is New Relationship Energy?
NRE is the rush that comes with a new romantic or sexual connection: the butterflies, the constant thoughts, the urge to text, the sense that everything is brighter. It’s one of the best parts of being human. It’s also, to put it kindly, not known for good judgment.
When someone is swept up in NRE, they can become distracted, impatient, and a bit self-centered without meaning to be. Meanwhile, the partner at home may be feeling something very different.
How It Can Show Up
Checking the phone during dinner with your partner
Pushing for more time with the new person
Bending an agreement “just this once”
Forgetting to ask your partner how they’re doing
The partner at home feeling invisible, replaced, or anxious, and not saying so
None of this makes someone a bad partner. It makes them human. But left alone, it can wear down trust quickly.
If You’re the Partner at Home
If your partner is in the thick of NRE, it’s common to feel invisible, replaced, or anxious, even if you agreed to this and want it to work. Those feelings don’t mean you’ve made a mistake or that you’re bad at non-monogamy. They’re information. Try to say what’s underneath, whether that’s fear of being replaced, loneliness, or anger, in a way that invites your partner in instead of pushing them away: “I’m happy for you, and I’m also scared I’m slipping down the list. What would help me feel secure right now?” If the feelings are too big to say, that’s a good sign support could help.
Treat the Early Months as an Experiment
One idea I find useful comes from sex therapist Martha Kauppi, who encourages couples to think of their first explorations with non-monogamy as experiments. An experiment can be adjusted, paused, or reimagined without anyone having “failed.” In practice, that means:
Expecting to revisit your agreements regularly instead of setting them once and hoping for the best
Checking in about what’s working, what’s hard, and what needs to change
Giving yourselves permission not to have everything figured out in advance
That framing takes a lot of pressure off. Agreements become something you shape together as you learn, not rules to defend or loopholes to find.
Ways to Protect Your Partnership
Talk about NRE before it arrives. Ask each other now what you’d want and need when one of you is swept up in a new connection.
Keep showing up for your partner. Attention and appreciation matter more, not less, when a relationship is being stretched. Kauppi suggests writing yourself a letter about what you value in your partner, to reread when you feel pulled away, and sharing a copy with them.
Question the urgency. The feeling that you must see them right now is often the rush talking. A relationship that feels safe at home matters more than any single date.
Make check-ins honest. They only work if they include “this was hard for me,” not just “everything’s fine.”
Don’t manage your partner’s feelings for them. Trying to shield your partner from every uncomfortable emotion is exhausting, breeds resentment, and assumes they can’t handle reality.
Stay direct. Small omissions and loopholes are where trust starts to erode.
What’s Often Underneath the Hard Moments
What derails non-monogamy is often not the structure of the agreements. It’s the feelings that don’t get talked about. A partner may agree to open the relationship because they’re afraid of losing the other, then swallow their fear, hurt, or anger. The partner swept up in NRE may feel guilty, or may avoid closeness at home because it’s easier to stay in the glow. Those feelings don’t disappear. They come out sideways, as resentment, withdrawal, bent agreements, or fights that seem to be about scheduling.
In couples therapy, I help each person get in touch with what they’re actually feeling underneath their reactions, and then share it with their partner in an emotionally open way. That’s how a couple faces the experiment as a team, instead of as opponents.
Support for Couples Opening Up in California and Oregon
I work with individuals and couples exploring or practicing ethical non-monogamy and polyamory, online throughout California and Oregon, including Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles. If NRE, or something else about opening up, is creating distance between you, I’d be glad to help. Learn more about my ENM and polyamory therapy, or schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
Some ideas here were inspired by sex therapist Martha Kauppi’s Psychology Today article New Relationship Energy: Polyamory’s Double-Edged Sword, and her book Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients). If you’re at the start of the conversation, you might also like my post We Want to Open Up Our Relationship. Where Do We Start?