It’s all fine and dandy to say «just pamper yourself» or «be less codependent» - it’s not wrong, but it’s also not very helpful in the very beginning when you sit there with all these new emotions and no experience in how to deal with them.

So here are a few suggestions of what have worked for me in the start:

• Take some time to connect before one of you go out. It doesn’t have to be long, it could just be having a cup of coffee together on the porch or go for a short walk or eat lunch together. The main objective is for the person staying behind to feel seen and loved, so they feel secure when the other person leaves for a date.

• Make a little comforting mantra you can repeat to yourself if you get intrusive thoughts. I used to have one saying something along the lines of “I am safe, I am loved, he will return to me.”

• If you get filled with nervous energy, move your body. This helps release some of the that energy and makes it easier to relax into your body again. Dance, go for a run, chase your kids around, or whatever, just move.

• If you feel jealous, try to do the jealousy work I outlined here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EthicalNonMonogamy/s/2hEHqQ4Ops

• When the person dating comes home, take a few minutes to reconnect. Some do the whole reclamation (ie sex), but just cuddling in bed or having a talk in the sofa works fine and might be preferable.

• The next day or two, have a little talk about what worked for you guys this time, what didn’t and how you could do things differently next time. Things evolve as you get more experiences, so this isn’t a one time talk.

All of this can be way too much for some people, and this is not intended to go on for every dates hereafter. But for me, with an insecure jealousy streak in me, it helped me learn to handle my emotions, to stay grounded for my kids. I find that it helps to retrain the brain from the monogamous way of thinking and to be comfortable with non-monogamy. There’s a lot of reprogramming that we need to do in order to be comfortable with the new relationship structure, and it takes a little time, but just know that how it is in the beginning isn’t necessarily how it will stay the whole time.