You're listening to the Loving BDSM podcast. Kayla Lords here with the one, the only, give me a minute, lasted about ten minutes, jump around. So Yeah. Moving slow. I think we're all moving slow today. Yeah. Florida heat done now. The lack of sleep certainly doesn't. Nope. The state of the world never did. So Yep. Yep. But that's not what we're here to talk about.
That debauch quick? Yeah. It usually does. This week, we're answering a question from my kinkster who previously tried nonmonogamy in their current relationship, did not have a good result. And now they they're thinking they might wanna try again. Welcome to the Loving BDSM podcast. If you're new here, we help kinksters like you have happy, healthy power exchange relationships. How's the podcast your favorite podcast app where you never miss an episode? Where you never miss an episode
so you never miss an episode. What are words? Oh, god. If you're new here, it is always like this. I'm can't even make that up. If you have a question that you'd like us to answer, you can submit that to us through our contact page that is literally labeled ask your questions. You'll find that contact page in the link in the show notes as well as at our website, lovingBDSM.net. That's lovingBDSM.net. Okay. So question is Mhmm. My daddy and I have been together for almost two years
now. We're twenty four seven and engaged. We have both wanted to practice polyamory since the beginning and tried to branch out early on. It did not go well because I started to feel insecure. Insecure. We have grown in our relationship since then, and there has been talk about possibly joining field. It is something I'm excited for and want. I'm just afraid that it will go like last time. How do we know when we're ready? When you know, you know. Also, you might never know for sure Right.
Positive, a % guaranteed that you're ready. True. True. You know, it it's different for everybody to say when, you know, you're ready. And, you know, you all tried it before and didn't work so well. It doesn't always. I I know we had some, bumpy times in the beginning Mhmm. Of ours and, you know, what it really meant for us that we had to do, we had to, kinda step back, reassess our our boundaries and and different things, and and renegotiate.
Mhmm. It's a sort of a constant renegotiation until you kind of find and settle into what works, assuming that it legitimately works for you Yeah. Because you go into it thinking it will be this, and then you do this, and something about it, you know, is not working, whether it's feelings of insecurity or something else. And so then you just adjust. You renegotiate. You go, what can you live with that makes both, you know, people happy ish with what's happening? Right?
One of the things I would say though is you talk about feelings of insecurity being what hampered you the last time. There's a very good chance, unless the past bit of time has been specific to working on your insecurities and even then, even if that you have, there's a very good chance all of that's gonna crop back up again. Because if you never sort of faced or thought through or or worked through those underlying feelings, they might not just have gone away.
That was probably our and I say our, it was my biggest issue, when we've done non monogamy in ways that it was not the two of us with somebody else. It's when JB has a separate partner and separate experiences, you know, the thing I deal with and what it bring less so now, but what it always brought up for me in some way was insecurity.
The thing about my personal insecurity, and that might not relate to you, in the same way, but it's what I know to be true for myself, was it was never about what JB was doing or who he was with. The insecurity I felt brought up things that I believed to be true about myself that I had never worked through, faced, dealt with, figured out, and found a way to kinda get through and overcome.
And that was difficult, but I decided once I figured out that is what was happening, he was not doing something, that other person was not doing something to make me feel the way I felt. I felt that way and would feel that way in almost any similar situation. Right? That's when I decided that had to be my problem to handle. Not that I couldn't talk to him about it. Not that I couldn't come to him with, you know, how I felt or ask for comfort or let him know I was struggling,
but it needed to be my problem. So what that meant in real practice was if he was out, you know, at a kink party with somebody or at a dungeon or on a date or whatever whatever and I started feeling away, I had to sit with those feelings. What I was not gonna do was interrupt his
time with his other partner. What I was not gonna do was beg for his attention and sort of guilt force or otherwise make him as, you know, the person who loves me, take his attention off of the person he's with to focus on me because I was struggling with how I felt. That was not easy to do. The first couple of times that I had decided that's that's what felt right for me and I I needed to just get on with it, those were sleepless nights. I cried myself
to sleep at night. Why? One, because it hurt and those feeling those insecure feelings sucked. Right? Two, because JB is my my comfort person. He is my safe person. When I don't feel happy, he unfortunately gets to be the first person after myself to know. You know? But it did not feel right to me to interrupt his time when this was not an emergency. I was not in harm's way. There was nothing he could do short of interrupting his time and coming home to make me feel
better for those feelings to go away. I needed to sit with them, work through them, figure out where they came from, think about how I felt. What ended up happening over time I still deal with some feelings of insecurity. You know, I think some of that is a bit of internalized misogyny.
What, you know, growing up, and being socialized as a woman in in The US has done to me, like there's all kinds of places that comes from, but none of it is about JB's actions or the actions of a partner he might have. Right? So that's my problem to deal with. So what we figured out over time was there were things he could do to mitigate some of that for me, and I figured out that, yes, I can actually make it through a night, you know, feeling sad and sorry for myself, and I will survive that.
Some of the things that that we did, that helped, you know, I did not I did not know I would imagine you did not want, me to command a lot of attention while you were with another partner. That time was meant for that other partner because I get him all the time. He lives with me. That person might get him for a weekend out of every two months or a day out of a month. Like they don't get a lot of time. That needs to be their time. Right?
So we figured out that I needed to get a text when he arrived wherever he was going, when he was on his way home. Mhmm. And in the couple of instances where there was, like, travel involved, just let me know you made it to the travel place and you're leaving from the travel place. My in my mind, I and not everybody will feel this way, but this is what worked for me. I kinda needed to to be able to place JB geographically somewhere in the universe.
And if I knew where he was and kind of what the semi plan might be, I just I felt a little bit more grounded. Now you might not need that. That might not touch on your insecurities at all or the the hard feelings of getting through this. They're going out doing this thing and I'm not. The thing to do is to try to figure out what you do need in order not for your partner to make you feel more secure.
If your insecurities are coming from within you and your past and things that have nothing to do with your partner, right, if that's where the insecurity comes from, then you just find little little things that are touch points that can give you a sense of that's still my person and I kind of know where they are and and I can I can live through the discomfort because if for me it was like I know where he exists in space and time right
now? Okay. I don't know what it was about that information that did it for me. The other thing, some people would say the opposite, but for me, the thing that helped was not getting too many details. I might wanna know where you were going, and I'm a I'm a nosy bitch. So it's like, got any plans that you feel like you you feel free to share? But I didn't ask a lot of details because I knew me. I would start comparing our experiences to the experiences JB was having with somebody
else. And the one time I caught myself doing it, I hurt my own feelings. And it had nothing to do with the actions of the other people. This was about my insecurities and my feelings of self worth and my low self esteem. And I hurt my own damn feelings. So I went, okay. That is also a thing I won't do anymore. So you did not ask how to deal with the insecurity, but I share all of that because there was no single point in time I could point to and go, I'm
a % ready to try this. It was that I was willing because it was important to JB. I was open to it. I had never experienced non monogamy prior to, you know, JB going, oh, this is who I am. I would like to do something about that. Right? And so to me, the answer is you may never be a % ready in the sense that you won't have hard feelings, it won't be difficult, you know, there won't be challenges.
The the reason I share all of that and everything that I've kind of found that works for me is because that's kind of what you've got to do. You've got to go, hey, I'm ready enough to give this a try, but I'm also realistic enough this could bring up stuff that that I haven't dealt with in my own, you know, inner psyche now. If the insecurity is because there has been a lack of trust, less than pristine honesty,
consent issues. If there are problems within the relationship and the person you're with, you do not feel secure in your place as their partner, then I would say, you gotta work on that before you can try this. Right? Because that's the thing. The thing was I never didn't trust JB. I never thought for one second he didn't love me. My insecurity did come from, oh, he he's gonna like what he does with that person better than he he does with me, but I'm the one
he fucking married. So what I'm the one he was willing to be twenty four seven with. So that really was my own inner fears talking. That was not based on reality. So if you're, one, expect to feel some semblance of whatever you felt before, and two, you're ready when you also you won't know until you're in the middle of it, but when you just also understand that, oh, this is probably gonna bring up some stuff for me, and I'm gonna have to work through it, deal deal with it, and figure out how to
navigate this. And it is entirely possible that you will feel ready and the feelings it brings up for you are not things you can navigate easily or that you are willing to navigate while, you know, being non monogamous, that's that's valid. That's fine. But there is no % ready. Yeah. For somebody who already knows that they have had they've gone through hard feelings and it's
been uncomfortable before. Maybe for somebody who just knows that's exactly who they are and this is how they're wired and, you know, this is not their first time at this rodeo. Sure. That person might be able to, like, go, yeah. In this relationship, I'm a % ready. But when you're sort of new to it, you've never really done it, you haven't yet had the experience of confronting your own inner mean voices about certain things, then, yeah, I don't know that there is a %.
No. You there's just a % willingness to go, I'm gonna be sitting with some tough feelings sometimes. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you know, you you sometimes you gotta when when you have feelings like that, whether it's insecurity, whether it's jealousy, sometimes you need you just need to to sit and look at where is this coming from? Mhmm. What what is fueling this feeling? Mhmm. And it is uncomfortable while you were sitting
with it. Mhmm. Because, you know, the vast majority of people, we will do what we can to make an uncomfortable feeling go away. Yeah. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But if you're gonna try to do the same thing in your relationship, like non monogamy, and you're gonna have the same feelings come up again every time, if you do not figure out how to sit with them, think through them, and try to, like, figure out
Right. What kind of help you need or what might help you, whether that's therapy or it's something else, you're never gonna move forward and you're kind of either always gonna be miserable or always be stuck and not able to go to the second step of whatever it is you're trying to do. Mhmm. So yeah. Yeah. Because truly, you know, hopefully, you know, with with the time in between from when you first tried it to to now, you know, hopefully there were some learning lessons Mhmm. In between there.
You know, if not, you know, you you want to be careful, because history could repeat itself, so to speak. So, you know, you you you kinda wanna go into it, you know, like I said, where are these feelings coming from? Finding where they're coming from, you know, looking at them, you know, introspectively on yourself, and even talking with them about you to your partner. Absolutely. It was never that I didn't talk to JB about how I was feeling. It was that I did not interrupt
his time with another partner. Short of there being an emergency Right. I was not interrupting his time. And I one especially once I recognized that those feelings were coming from within me and they were not caused by, you know, stuff happening to me, I then I was a little bit careful about how I brought it up up to JB. I made sure I did not place blame. Will you going out for this weekend made me feel that no. No. No. No. No. No. When you were out, I had
these feelings. These are some things that I kind of went through. The first time, and it's been years now so I can't quite remember the first time, the first time it was more like, this was really hard and I'm still happy for you and I'm willing to try. I didn't have much to go on other
than I I survived this. Right? By the second and third time, by the time he would get home and and I could talk to him about it, I could say things like, here's how I ended up feeling, but here are some things that I thought about, and here's some discoveries I made. And, you know, and if there was something I could pinpoint that I thought might make me feel better that JB could do that would not take away from his time with another partner, I would I would ask for it, negotiate it, you know.
Yeah. Right. Because, you know, with with all that, we also kinda needed to to renegotiate, you know, from from boundaries to, you know, how we are approaching non monogamy. So, you know, there there was truly a lot involved. And, you know, I I I thought about this at the beginning, you know, when it when it comes to to non monogamy, it's almost like consent, because it's ongoing. There, you know, there's Yes.
I think there's things, you know, with it with with the involvement of it that, you know, it it's an ongoing thing. You know, you you negotiate it the best you can. Okay? You know? And and then you move forward and with the reminder that no plan survives contact For the enemy. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, we thought in the beginning, you know, when we first talked about doing this, you know, we thought we sat down and and we talked about things and, you
know, we thought, man, we got this. We we we wrapped it up. No. No. No. You'll have to be I think the the terms that come into my mind are are being fluid and flexible. Mhmm. You will start with a plan. This is how you you imagine it will go, best case scenario. You will try it, and you will find some things that don't work or that you didn't think were possibilities to try to have to
negotiate through. Or you'll discover, hey. I thought I wanted to do it this way, and I hate everything about this. And you'll just you'll shift and change and adjust as long as it's something you both still want to do. But, you know, for for anybody who knows themself well enough to know that they're probably gonna have to, like, come feel hard things as they learn more about themselves in non monogamy, I don't think there's a % ready. Like, that
doesn't exist. Yeah. There's ready enough to give it a try Mhmm. And to under and what I want you to be a % sure of is that I'm probably gonna feel something that's very uncomfortable. Yeah. And what am I gonna do with that feeling? So, you know, I think the the any initial hard feelings that you go through, I think they they knock you for a loop because you think, well I want to be non
monogamous so surely this will be easy. Well no, because you are you encompass everything you've ever been through in your whole life, the good and the bad and even the neutral. Right? And some of that bad, we tell ourselves as adults, oh, I've worked through that. I'm not a kid anymore. I'm not a this anymore. That I don't even think about that anymore. Mhmm. And then you do something that goes against everything you've already experienced for and what
you believe to be true Mhmm. About who you are and your relationship and your place in this world, and then you get to confront some stuff that you might not have even thought was within you. I I learn late in life that things I thought I had, put to the side and and moved on from hadn't as much as I thought so. Mhmm. So you're, ultimately, you're ready when the thing I like to do is I go, you're ready when you can't stop thinking about it and you really wanna try it.
Mhmm. If you need, like, a backup, you're ready when you can admit to yourself and each other that either there's gonna be some it's not gonna be easy, and there might be some tough things you gotta work through. And you're willing to do that work. Yes. Yeah. That's when you're ready. Yep. Mhmm. Mhmm. Thanks for listening to this week's q and a episode. If you want us to answer one of your questions, just use the contact page on our website at lovingBDSM.net, or you can find the link in the
show notes. Big thanks as always to our kinky community over on Patreon. We're able to do this podcast and keep it going and help kinksters due to your support. If you'd like to be part of our community and get access to extra content and a Discord server with a group of super cool, super nice kinksters, you can do that. Just join us at patreon.com/kaylalords. That's patreon.com/kaylalords, or use the link in the show notes.