566 - More Than a Numbers Game: Dating Truths from Feeld's Data Team

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We've partnered with our friends, I guess our digital friends, at normalizing non monogamy. They feel like real friends, but I guess we haven't met in real life yet. So we're not meeting them at the same time as you. Yeah. Okay, so our digital soon to become actual real friends, Emma and Finn from the Normalizing Non-Monogamy podcast.

and also play consultant Gary Ware. It's gonna be taking place May 1st to the 3rd, 2026 at the incredible Great Escape Lakeside in Claremont, Florida. So here's what to expect. We're gonna do some speed friending to help break the ice. We're gonna be facilitating small group sessions about some of our practical tools like microscripts and radar. And then it's gonna be all the wealth of activities that the property has to offer us. So Emily leading some karaoke.

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But every study that we do, we have that gens versus non-gen perspective. And the differences are wild and they just can't be underestimated. I mean they range from everything from like different mental models of how people actually physically interact. interact with a dating app. I think sober culture is another kind of rising trend that we really need to account for. But also anxiety

Loneliness and kind of fears around monogamy but this desire from monogamy and a lot of the anxiety that sits around that, but also this desire to explore elsewhere. There's lots of different data points and then as we kind of came out of Gen Z we kind of moved. of moved away from this desire for monogamy. So the differences range from everything from

Actual interaction in tech to lifestyle choices, to different anxieties, to kind of different yearnings and desires. You know, there's a myriad of things and we have to keep our eye on all of them. Welcome to the Multi-Emory 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 diving into data with our special guests from Field, PsyDusk, who is a data analyst, and Alexandra Kilpatrick, who is head of UX research at Field. Cy and Alexandra helped to analyze some of the data from our co-sponsored research study on consensual non monogamy community.

If you listen to last week's episode, you will have heard a lot more about that. And today we're going to explore what the data reveals about how consensually non-monogamous folks Date, what labels mean and don't mean, how polycules are actually configured, and some of the biggest challenges and frustrations facing our community.

So to give a quick recap for those of you who haven't listened to last week's episode, or maybe you have and you just want a quick reminder, there was a survey done by Open that was actually a real peer-reviewed study that was done by Dr. Amy Morris. And that was co-sponsored by Multiamory and Field. And we got responses from almost 6,000 people, the largest study of non-monogamous people to date that are consensually non-monogamous.

The overwhelming majority of respondents, around 89%, have used or currently used dating apps, and the plurality of those currently use field, which is why we're so excited to be able to talk more about the data that we got from that. And then the survey was Pretty in depth. A lot of you in the audience took it. So we're excited to be able to share that data back with you.

And it covered everything from relationship structures and dating preferences to challenges, identities, labels, how people conduct their relationship. And if you want to read more about that and also get links to the full report. as well as there are some future updates and additions that Open is going to be putting out with Dr. Amy, that you can find at multiamory.com slash study.

That will give you a link to that and from there you can link off to the open page and you can find all of the in-depth information there. So with that, Cy and Alexandra, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having us.

So to start off, let's just let's just cover why we're even doing this. So why was Field interested in data? Why does Field care about data? I guess let's start there. Well, we say uh feel that data is the voice of our members at scale.

And so there's a lot you can understand about people's individual experiences and Alexander can speak more to that. But what I love about working with data at field is that you're really taking the multitude of experiences that so many different people have on the app. And you're crafting it into a story and a mental model and a picture that can be really, really useful for research, for design and ultimately for, you know, building a product that comes back and serves the rest of the community.

From uh from a quality of research perspective data's like the It's our radar, it gives us an early warning signal so we can see kind of peaks of activity behaviours that are happening at scale and it gives us directionality in terms of understanding the why. So it highlights trends that we want to dig into and understand what was the behaviour, the motivation behind the fluctuations in the data that we're seeing. So we we work hand in glove.

And UX research really takes its cue from data and kind of points us in the right direction. And we kind of really hit that sweet spot when Qual and Quan are working together in harmony, that's when we get our best results. So we work together on a lot of large projects.

So to start to dive into this, I I imagine it might be hard to pick out like what is the most important thing that you feel like you've learned from looking at this particular data set that we collected. But like where would you start as like at the top of that list? I think the most important

important thing that I personally learned was that there are as many ways of practicing dominog me as there are people. And there was just such a huge variety of responses that we got. The community is not a monolith, not even close. And then Within the context of dating as well, I think the biggest thing that stood out to me is that. Most of our respondents are interested in dating as individuals, actually. Maybe contrary to popular stereotypes about non monogamous folks.

Actually 70% of our respondents in the survey who are on dating apps use individual profiles and are looking as individuals. I wanted to speak on that because when I saw that I was really surprised because back in the day, gosh, almost twelve years ago when I was using OKCupid, I remember linking to Jace's profile. And I remember Dedeker linking to her partner's profile. But hold on. But or if you recall, if you recall back in the day, like okay Cupid back then didn't have like an official

linking mechanism built into their app. You had to do this workaround where you sort of like Hyperlinked to somebody else's profile within your own profile. This is way back in the day. Yeah. You had to do all this this hacky stuff. But to me that was kind of a way in which to show, okay, I am non monogamous and here's a partner if you want to check them out.

But this really shocked me because I was like, oh, okay, I guess that's not cool anymore. People aren't doing that. They're deciding I'm just gonna be my own individual. entity and therefore you have to look at me first before, you know, I even show you my partners or before they become part of the discussion as well. Well actually I'm curious to ask a little clarification on that. So

that, you know, there's the option of making one profile that's for both or multiple people. Usually it's two people, right? You could have two people on one profile in the app, which is the thing that we're seeing less of. And I do think that a little bit moved out of fashion. I feel like there used to be a lot more of that. Just anecdotally from me. But I'm curious from Field, if you have this data of does that also mean that people aren't even Like linking to indicate that I have

I guess that's not the cool thing to do anymore. Emily, you're so hung up on whether it's cool or not. You know, I don't think it's a matter of like how cool or not cool it is. What we see on field is that The people who tend to share a profile tend to be looking together. And so, um, like swingers, for example, are disproportionately more likely to share a single profile.

That being said, being able to link individual profiles together on a field we call a constellation, that is three to four times more popular. than sharing an individual profile. Got it. That m that makes sense. That tracks with my Yeah, so to understand like so people who have like a shared profile, they're more likely to be swingers.

And then the constellation feature where we can kinda like link to multiple individual profiles is like second most popular and then most popular is people still just having an individual solo profile. Yeah, so it really depends on your flavor of non monogamy. And we saw that in this study as well. So respondents who labeled themselves as solo poly

were ten times more likely to use an individual profile than a linked or a shared profile compared to other flavors of non monogamy only really being, you know, two to three times more likely to use an individual profile. The only group that really is more likely to use a shared profile than an individual one is swingers.

I think having having the kind of nuance in the data that Asai talked about has been really exciting for us because it allows us to take a step back and look at the features and affordances that we've built based on kind of less information a while ago so now we've got this nuance, we've got a new lens to actually assess what we've been doing for a while and see where maybe we've been hitting the mark and missing the mark and understanding kind of

What is cool, what is common parlance, how are people actually behaving? And it and it allows us to take a bit more of a forensic view on what we're creating for people. So it's you know, it's gonna stimulate a lot of new thinking about how we support this.

Well I wanna ask about the the constellations feature and like what you found and like so you publish a a fantastic data science blog that's all about this and so I wanna direct people to like go check out like Field's data science blog about this, but like once you added this feature of being able to let people link to each other, like I'm really curious about like what were like the polycule trends that emerged from what you saw.

Oh, it's a great question. The data blog is called Uncharted Territory, and the piece that I did is called Polymath. So uh I was just I okay. We're big fans of puns and portmanteau on this show. So yeah, you're in good company. Love it. When this constellations feature launched, I had this opportunity to do this deep dive on a data set that frankly no one else has.

Right. Like I love working on data field because we have the most interesting and unique data set on non-monogamy of anyone, like in the entire world. Um and it's at scale too. And so I took a kind of network analysis approach to understanding the kind of shapes and sort of topology almost of relationship networks that people form on field. And On Field, you can sort of set up your constellation where you pair your individual profile with up to five other profiles.

And you can add a little relationship label to that pairing as well. And it can be a partner label, it can be dating, it can also be a friend label or a metamor as well. Um, so there's a lot of flexibility there. And what I really learned from looking at the topology of the way people kind of structure these constellations.

is that first of all are many, many different shapes and configurations and ways of connecting, but also there's one style of polycule or relationship network, that is really the most common. So if you take an example of three people who are connected together in relationship in some way. There's sort of two ways that that can look. One is like a triad or a thruple where every single person in the group, all three of them, are connected with everyone else in the group.

And then there's also a sort of chain structure where there's one person who's connected to two other people, but those two people themselves are not connected. Um, maybe their metamores they're not directly in relationship with each other. And What we found is that when you look at three person groups, four person groups, five person groups, even and above, the most common type of structure, eighty-two percent of them, are these chain structures.

rather than fully connected dense networks where everyone is dating everyone or there's a kind of high amount of saturation to those linkages. And so what this says is that the majority of people in constellations on field. are, you know, maxing out at like one, maybe two connected partners on the app, and maybe because they're on field, probably are looking to date or add in a third. And this was kind of the first to my knowledge, quantitative, empirical,

sense of polysaturation. The idea of like how many partners you can kind of sustainably keep in your life and want to have. And that number seems to kind of float around, you know, between one and three.

And that's the kind of stuff that we can learn from looking at these, you know, really interesting network patterns that aren't really visible necessarily maybe to an individual. But when you kind of zoom out and look at the data and its totality, you can see those patterns and those connections emerge. So you're saying we have a scientifically validated set point for polysaturation, like it's official.

I think this is probably the first indicator that we've seen in the numbers that's probably not self reported, which is really cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I I also feel vindicated that this tracks with

our experience just from talking with our audience and doing this for so many years, that we've kind of always said that, but we didn't have the data to back it up. So I love that you were able to share that eighty two percent number where we've often said, Yeah, it's not these group relationships, despite the fact that

any media coverage at all is pretty much exclusively those sorts of three or four person altogether configurations. And so, you know, we've always said, no, it's actually much more interlocking dyads and it's great to have that backed up with research. So we were right all along.

That being said, there are some configurations where I kind of call them almost like a hub and spoke. sort of model where there is one person in the network who is really central and kind of keeps the whole network together. And those hub members are far more likely to be sexually flexible, so for example, bisexual, pansexual, or queer. And they're far more likely to be women as well.

So it's really yes, up to three hundred percent more likely actually. Wow. Um, to be bisexual women. And so Yeah, in in the community it really is flexible bisexual, pansexual women who are the kind of glue holding these constellations and these relationship networks together. Wow. I feel like that's very different than the narrative as well that a lot of people in the media might think of like

sort of a male cult leader type person that all of these different women are glommed on to, but that's not the case at all. I love that. It's actually lady cult leaders. There you go. That's the reality of what's happening here. Yeah.

It's it's interesting because at first when you started talking about that, it made me think about some data that came out years ago about social media in general and also I think even not on social media, but just general social connections that there tend to be there tend to be certain people who function as hubs. that have more friends than other people and tend to be the connectors between others.

And so I thought it was just gonna go that direction in general, that there's just naturally certain people who tend to be those hubs, but then to put it in that romantic and sexual context and to kind of see, oh no, it's it's specifically bisexual women or pansexual women that function as that glue. That's really interesting. That's a different take than I was expecting. Mm-hmm.

Well, it also connects to like the friendship paradox, right? Like this idea that like on average your friends have more friends than you do. Right. big popular extroverts who have a lot of friends are more likely to be in more people's friend groups and so it's more likely that like you know someone who does know more friends than you do. And so it's like I'm wondering I was thinking of, yes. Yeah, there's like this

This parallel that like it on average your partner probably has more partners than you do. Which seems like it'd be impossible, but One of the beautiful things that really emerged also from this same piece on constellations is is that you yourself as an individual may, you know, you have partners and those partners may also have other partners who are your metamors that you may or may not know, right? And they're sort of like first degree metamos.

But if you continue that logic out and think about the partners of partners of partners of partners, you can have sort of second and third degree metamores and even further out. And what we saw on field is that actually Some of these relationship chains and networks extend so far that you yourself might have a tenth degree metamore who's a partner of a partner of a partner that you might not even know. And

In some really beautiful examples, we saw that this can actually bridge and transcend all types of relationship structures, including like marriages and also sexualities. And so I saw one example of a relationship network. where, you know, on one end of the network you have gay men who are in relationship together and that sort of moves through a bisexual man, which moves into women and moves into um more like genderqueer folks.

And so you have genderqueer people, nonbinary people, trans folk, women, gay men, straight people, bisexual people all in the same network, um, just removed by, you know, one or two or maybe three degrees of separation. Fascinating. Well Yeah, that's so interesting to think about it in that way. I'm curious, you know, Alexandra, you mentioned something earlier about how it's it's so valuable to look at

these insights and try to figure out like, okay, where are we already hitting the mark and where are we not hitting the mark? And so just looking at this particular corner of like all the ways that people connect with each other and the constellations, like

Are you able to share a little bit of at least, you know, high profile the sense of like where you feel like field has been hitting the mark with serving this particular population versus where you think things might need to be like shifted or adjusted?

Yeah, I I mean I I think if we kind of take a step back historically, I think we were the first at that we're serving this population in a meaningful way, full stock. So I think, you know, we started to really speak to the needs of an audience that was being ignored by other dating app. So so that that in itself was a really strong beginning point.

I think, you know, the features and offering itself offers a lot of promise but we now need to kind of revisit that and think about layering in this nuance and and how we can make that deliver to to this degree of complexity that Sai's talking about. And I want to be really clear, I think we've done s some things kind of spectacularly well. I think we deeply cherish this

audience, you know, people who are exploring non traditional relationship structures are are torchbearers. They made field what it is and they kind of ease the path for other people.

But we really are at the beginning of this journey of deeper understanding and like I said, we've got this kind of radar signal that actually we haven't been speaking to the degrees of complexity and now size kinda teed us up I'll be working with my team to actually walk in the shoes of these people, do really detailed research with them and actually listen to their kind of lived embodied experiences.

And that's everything from kind of one to one to one interviews and more kind of longitudinal studies where we actually get to sit on the shoulder of new users and kind of watch people navigate through the app and kind of explore it and tell us what's good and bad about the experience. So, you know, I think big picture the deep care and respect for this member base is there, but we're at you know, we're really at this really great inflection point where we can lean in and start doing a lot more.

So, you know, we're extremely excited about the the kind of follow up research that will come from Sci's work. So we we're at the beginning of another journey. Um one of the other kind of really big challenges that we have is kind of this dual track audience that we have. Obviously there are people

you know, that have been exploring alternative relationship structures, you know, other aspects of sexuality that are deemed as to be for a really long time. They're quite confident, they're used to tackling some of

kind of the scrutiny that they may be under from general society. So we've got this uh call we call them the torch bearers, this audience that kind of leading the way. Because of societal shifts we've got so many people that are just dipping their toe in the water for the very first time and they're deeply curious

about what's on o on offer. They're really starting to question the status quo and they wanna try new things. So we we have to design features and affordances with this kind of dual track in mind. So how do we keep delivering for the people that made us

what we are, whilst also creating this very safe space for people to go on journeys of discovering. And what we see is the the kinda learners, the the kind of news they are using the broader community And more experienced people as a kind of mirror to learn from all the time.

And we're trying to kinda help them get there a little bit faster'cause quite often they'll spend months and months in the community and suddenly have these insights about themselves and we wanna we wanna give them the support structure to get there faster. So yeah, it's it's the beginnings of a of a huge amount of new research for us.

No, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, that also reflects I I know the challenges that we run into in m producing this show over the years is the same thing, right? Is that by the time that we started the show in, you know, twenty fourteen, like there were already the torch bears that existed.

people who had been who had been doing this and living this way. Um even at a very particular like different like social time and cultural time But then it is kind of funny that yeah, like as we make content that it's it's always trying to find a way how to serve those people who are the torchbearers while also not completely alienating the people who are coming in to explore and are trying to figure things out about themselves and then how to

care for those people without totally boring the people who are like super experienced. Yeah. Definitely yeah, can relate to that. It's a very similar set of challenges for us. Yeah. Yeah.

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So I wanna shift gears just a little bit and go back to talking about labels'cause Saya, you were talking about this a bit before that there are so many different labels that people use for their non monogamy in general. So Can you talk about what some of those were and kind of how those labels specifically relate to the practices of non monogamy that people are choosing to do?

We did something really interesting in this survey, which is that we asked people to multi-select whatever non monogamy label they identified with, and they could select as many as they want. And then in a follow-up question, We asked. Then to choose just one. And in the first question, most people actually responded with like four or even more choices.

Yeah, it's a big you know, it's a big ass to boil that down into the right. And so what we learn from that in the first instance is that There obviously are a lot of label choices that people identify with and that overlaps. in some degree. And what we learned from asking people to narrow it down to just one umbrella term. Is how those multiple labels get folded into just a single one. And it turns out that, as you might expect,

You know, labels like poly, ENM, CNM, even relationship anarchy are the most popular umbrella or single choice labels that people make. However, what was surprising to me is that not all flavors of nom monogamous folks pick those labels equally. as their umbrella term. So what we saw in the survey is that there's a bit of a divided preference for poly versus ENM or CNM as umbrella labels.

We had variations of poly folks such as like kitchen table, garden party, and then also kink and fetish respondents and triads or thruples were most likely to choose the poly umbrella. But Swingers, monogamoush, open respondents were more likely to choose ENM or CNM as their umbrella label of choice rather than poly. Right. And that that makes sense. That that tracks and I think It's interesting to me though that

'Cause if you think about in terms of nesting umbrella terms, right, that there's a lot of things that fall underneath polyamory, right? Like you mentioned, all the different sort of kitchen table, parallel, garden party, all that sort of thing. But then all of that's underneath

how we use these umbrella terms. So it's interesting that for certain categories, they're more likely to go for the larger umbrella. And then there's these other things that kind of pick the smaller umbrella of polyamory underneath that. Even though I would say if polyamory weren't a choice, those people would probably end up picking CNM or ENM as theirs. So it's kind of interesting to see like.

you're trying to find like the smallest umbrella that still feels like it covers all of what you do is kind of how people might be approaching that type of label selection. Absolutely. And some flavors of non-monogamous folks. prefer to hold on to more niche labels as well, even in a single select response, rather than going for a more generic, you know, sort of like poly kind of thing. And like for example, we saw swingers do that quite a bit.

really standing by the swinger label rather than switching over to poly ENM, CNN as an umbrella term. Right. One interesting thing about labels too, and I want to reference a prior study that we did at Field. About relationship anarchy. is that although a lot of folks don't necessarily choose that label for themselves, when you actually ask them about how they build their relationships and what principles that they have.

It turns out that they really are following relationship anarchist principles. Oh, interesting. And Yeah. So we did a previous study where we asked folks, hey, you know, do you use the relationship anarchy label? And of the people who said no, we don't, we then gave them the definition of relationship anarchy, which is bucking with societal expectations of how relationships should be structured.

It's about kind of defying the relationship escalator. It's about creating relationships on a kind of personal one-to-one basis based on, you know, the needs that you and your partner have. And we ask them. Do you do those things? And they said, oh yeah, actually we do do those things. And we've actually been doing those things. 50% of people who said they don't practice relationship anarchy did say that they do have those practices in their relationships.

And so even, you know, just asking a simple question like a, you know, checkbox, do you identify with this label or not, doesn't always capture really the full nuance of the practices that people in the community already have and are living with.

We got a lot of listener questions around labeling, right? Because I think there's there's been a a history of this among like multiple dating apps over the course of the past what, it'd say like fifteen years or so that like when we go back in the day, like the available not only relationship labels, but also like sexuality, gender identity labels that are available or like pretty light on the ground.

Right. And then eventually like more and more dating apps start to get with the times and start to add like more options or foys for their for their users to identify and to self-categorize and things like that.

And we got a a couple of listener questions around How do you resolve the tension between wanting to continue to improve labeling, right? Improve the options for your users, uh whether that's about sexuality, gender, relationship, preferred relationship style, things like that.

The tension between wanting to improve that and add more versus not wanting to overwhelm and end up with a list of fifty five, a hundred different labels because we're trying to be so granular and appeal to absolutely everybody. like what's the thought process on that?

This really speaks to another huge project that we're running at the moment, which is revisiting the wording behind our desire tags. So one of the things that makes us unique is obviously we offer up tags that allow people to signal relationship tags they're interested in or different kings.

And it is a really, really big challenge for us and it is uh a cross functional challenge. So we'll have UX writers, we'll have data points at scale, we'll then do quality of research, but The project that we've just done actually went out to five thousand members and non members and used like a generative approach to get them to share the tags that they thought should be in the app and then we have to put that

Through another analysis to try and boil down so we capture the nuance and meaning but that we don't have this absolutely exhaustive list. that kind of makes matching and connecting people through those tags impossible. So I think it's one of the knottiest design challenges that we have. And I think as well if we get it get it wrong, we risk making people invisible. We risk alienating people.

certain practices. You know, one of the big things that came up was like how we speak to different power dynamics using our tags. That's a challenge we're gonna be working on. for the next few months and it's not simple and it's and it's a big one for us. But sorry, I don't know if you yeah had anything to add to that, but it's a it's a big one for us.

When we look at field profiles, we see that a lot of people use the free text space of their bio to really elaborate on all of the details of their non-monogamous situation. And One thing I've noticed is that it tends to not be as label driven as practice. Driven. Um, and so there's almost like a nuts and bolts aspect to, you know, when you're looking for new connections to kind of describe what

sort of rules you have in place um for yourself and for partners, like, you know, what sort of contract you're looking for with someone else. Are you dating together with a partner? Are you dating separately? That kind of information. tends to come through as more important even than just throwing a label down by itself.

Yeah, I that's what I was gonna ask about, like'cause what you shared about what you found with the relationship anarchy label is that there's almost like this Maybe this is overstating it, but like this quote unquote like invisible population, let's say, where it's like if I'm very hung up on like I identify as relationship anarchist and I only want to connect with other people who also identify as relationship anarchist and so I'm

dependent on any other profile that I want to match with, also using that particular label when there's actually this whole population that's maybe invisible to me of people who would align with my values and my relationship practice, but because they haven't necessarily attached that label, then you know, then it's like ships passing in the night. No on a population level. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, like an over reliance on labels can lead us to miss people who might actually have more aligned values than we realize.

I think there's one interesting thing that I think about too, which is that labels are really circumscribed by your identity in other areas as well. So one interesting example from the constellations network research that I did is that I looked at the symmetry of labels. between people and how they label their profiles. So if

I connect my profile in a constellation with someone else on field, I put a label onto that relationship. And then they independently put a label onto that relationship too. And it turns out that, you know, in ninety percent of cases Actually ninety percent. That's not a made up number. Ninety percent of cases the labels are symmetrical, which is great.

But I did look at cases where they weren't symmetrical as well. And there was one case that kind of stood out to me that I thought was really interesting, where we had a larger network and within that there were two men connected to each other. One was a heteroflexible man and a bisexual man. And the heteroflexible man had put the label friend on their relationship. And the bisexual man had put the label friends with benefits.

on their relationship. And I think that's a good example of how sexuality and gender can really circumscribe and determine the labels that we choose for ourselves and for our relationship. Absolutely. I think that too, I mean, going back to the early days of this podcast, I remember at the time there were a lot of people who, for whatever reason, I think be having to do with some press that had been around recently were kind of feeling less attracted to the label polyamorous.

Or poly, like that kind of had a negative vibe for a little while. And so a lot of people were moving to relationship anarchy or the other way of saying, Oh, I just I'm non-monogamous or I'm ethically non monogamous, which was kind of more popular back then. And then we saw this shift a few years later, where now

a lot of kind of irresponsible fuckboys started using the label relationship anarchist to just mean I don't want to care about anyone or like have any responsibility for anyone that I'm trying to have sex with. And so then that label became Tainted, or it became something that people didn't want to use. And so there was this move away from that to using polyamory again. And so it's just been interesting to see.

how those trends change and also that really varies by your community, by how deep in this community you are, how sensitive you are to those articles coming out. And also varies a lot by country or geography of where you live too. I really want to shout out the survey respondents. because looking through some of the free responses, just the amount of care and consideration and nuance and thought that you all are giving to these questions.

how to relate to your partners, how to ensure that there's fairness, how to ensure that there's equity in in all the different relationships that you have really, really came through. in those comments. We got a lot of comments that were like, you know, the different relationships in my life are just different.

But I try to commit to mutual care as much as possible, you know, even though relationships look really different for different people. So our survey respondents really have these questions about like how to do relationship anarchy, how to do bomb monogamy well. And they're really thinking through these issues very deeply in a lot of cases.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now d in mining through the data, what were the trends that you noticed as far as what like non traditional relationship practice looks like at different stages of both the journey, right? So as in the people who kind of have their awakening versus the people who, you know, like you called them the torchbearers who are very experienced and also curious about just different stages of life as well, right? Of kind of like

what we're seeing as far as average ages when people get into this or or things like that. Like what are the trends that you notice? It's a great question. So on field, one thing that we noticed is that non monogamous daters are on average about five years older than the general dating pool. And oh interesting what that yeah, it is interesting because you know, what it tells me is that a non monogamous dating practice might be something that you tend to grow into that

you experience while you're already on a dating journey. It's not that you enter the dating world. already with a sort of pre-formed practice or or stance or kind of ideology about non-monogamy, it's something that you actually might come to over time. And that's also sort of related to the labels that people choose as well. We saw in the survey data that certain labels are more popular with certain age groups.

So for example, Swinger as a label choice was associated with some of the oldest age groups in the study, whereas poly, kitchen table, garden party were more intermediate. and relationship anarchy was one of the kind of youngest labels that people chose. And that might

say something about stage of life or age. It might also say something about generational shifts too. And, you know, we'd love to be able to do kind of more longitudinal studies to be able to understand that and tease apart that distinction more clearly. Yeah, absolutely. That that's something that I'm I'm particularly proud of on our multiamory.com slash study page where I did my own analysis of some of the data that we had where I looked at because people in the survey put down their age.

And then they also put down how long they had been practicing non monogamy. And so by looking at that, I was able to get kind of an estimate of when they started their non monogamy journey. And you know, it's not perfect because maybe they started and stopped and there's a lot of other factors, but at least gives us kind of a proxy for when they may have started that.

And looking at that starting age was really interesting because the the median age for starting a non monogamy journey was twenty nine. So it kinda backs up what you're saying, Sai of it's not something you jump into right from when you're, you know, fifteen, sixteen, starting your dating life, but that It's actually later in life. And you can see a lot of people, it's around this kind of twenty five, twenty-six-ish age. But then

I broke it down by primary label that people chose. And yeah, relationship anarchy by a pretty good margin is very much the youngest. Starting age. versus Swinger, which is by far the oldest starting age on average, even though all of them had a big spread across from quite young as, you know, as young as I stopped looking younger than like

sixteen, fifteen, but there's some even that reported longer than that or earlier than that, up to people in their fifties and sixties. But it's just interesting seeing that average at least, how that changed so much based on identity. I think it's really interesting to think about the societal pressure as well that might slow people down who have their training wheels on in terms of taking the first steps to

thinking about different choices in terms of relationships as well. And I think that's something really interesting that's come back from the data. It's like how can we make it easier and safe and more permissible for maybe some younger people that are less confident. to, you know, begin to think about these things and also give them the lexic you know, the lexicon that they need. You know, the conversation around terminology is really interesting and I think sometimes

knowing a word and a meaning gives you kind of space to explore that and go into that and see if it's for you. So I think I think that kind of age data point's really an interesting one for us to explore a bit further.

Yeah. What I'm realizing is is I think that there was an era where, at least my anecdotal experience of it, is it felt like different dating apps slash dating sites appealed to different generations. Right. So it's like we always knew that like match dot com and eHarmony were a little bit more like boomer focused or like maybe Gen X focused, right? And then like our generation, like you know, OkaCupid, Tinder.

was like our generation's dating apps and then, you know, Gen Z tends to favor, you know, I know Hinge and Bumble like launched around the same time as like okay Cupid and Tinder but I feel like the trend I tend to see is like

Yeah. Yeah. I've never even been on Raya. I'd barely even heard of it. I didn't even know what it was until I heard about it on a TV show. You know, and s so it's like we still are a little bit in this era of like associating like, okay, yes, different apps appeal to different generations.

But I'm curious about how Field approaches that because like as you see in the data, it's like you have a pretty widespread as far as like who your youngest users, who your oldest users are. And then it also gets a little bit more complicated because of the fact that like older users might be Drawn to field for like a particular style of connection versus like your youngest users. So, like what what are your thoughts on that?

I think not making assumptions about different segments is absolutely key for us. And just anecdotally from doing research with kind of gendered versus non gendered and that's quite a clumsy split, but the differences are so stark. And again, you know, just thinking about people that have also kind of lived through the pandemic in really formative years and kind of like had maybe the way that they interact and date really shaped by that experience and some of The different anxieties.

that Gen Z feel and also completely different attitudes around how they socialise. You know, this kind of leaning into lifestyle and dating, i it's just a different world. And we it's kind of you know, if we don't understand those differences, we really do uh at our peril. So we have to make sure that we're keeping an eye on the trend in those those bigger segments and then also kind of segmenting our

qualitative research to make sure that for every study that we do we have that Gen Z versus non Gen Z perspective. And the differences are wild and they just can't be underestimated. Can you speak to some of those in terms of what the wild differences are? I mean they range from everything from like different mental models of how people actually physically interact with a dating app. You know, I'm I think I may be the same generation of you or maybe

It's getting slightly older, but I didn't grow up, you know, using TikTok and social media. The way that I interact with this device is very different from a Gen Z. So there's kind of like behavioural patterns in terms of how they interact with tech.

I think sober culture is is another kind of rising trend that we really need to account for. But also kind of anxiety, loneliness. Cy did an amazing study around kind of what Gen Z fantasise about and kind of fears around monogamy, but this desire from for monogamy and a lot of the anxiety

that sits around that, but also this desire to explore elsewhere. Yeah. It was you know, so there's lots of different data points and then as we kind of came out of Gen Z we kind of moved away from this desire for monogamy. So the differences range from everything from actual interaction in tech, too. Lifestyle choices, two different anxieties.

to kinda different yearnings and desires and it's you know, there's a myriad of things and we have to keep our eye on all of them. So I I don't know if I've just done a horrible job of talking about your beautiful Kinsey work first.

No, not at all. I think one finding that has surprised us in the past about Gen Z, and that's something that we've seen at Field, and also external researchers not related to Field have found this to be true as well, is that

Gen Z seems to be expressing a preference for monogamy, for monogamous relationships. More so than older generations. Yeah, it is a little bit surprising, isn't it? But I think one core question that hasn't really been answered yet Is that desire for monogamous relationships? A generational shift. Or is it more reflective of just where someone is at in their life in their early twenties, which is where Gen Z happens to be right now. And I think time will kind of tell.

Right. If um if you pair that with the data point that I shared earlier, which is that nominist folks on field tend to be older by about five years than the average dating population. I think that does give us an inkling that Monogamy might be more of a default preference for people when they're younger and entering the dating scene and that there's room for that to evolve and change um as people have non monogamous awakenings when they're a little bit older.

Fascinating. Yeah. It's like, yeah, Gen Z's not there yet. It'd be interesting, I think, to if we were able to look at that data and kind of normalize it to the people that are non monogamous now, if you rewind them to the age that they were Yeah. If they had been a Gen Z person now, what age that is, like when they were that age, were they monogamous or non-monogamous? And I wonder if you

twist the data that way. Like if you analyze it differently, if that would still hold, or if you'd actually go, Oh wow, actually Gen Z is way more non monogamous just because that's more in the cultural zeitgeist now in a way that it wasn't even ten, twenty years ago.

It's a study I would absolutely love to run. Those are questions I would love to ask. Yeah. Let's do it. Real quick, before this next section, did you know that you can get ad free early releases of this show as well as access to monthly video processing groups? and exclusive private channels on our Discord server.

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I I wanna rewind Alexandra, you mentioned how the rise of sober culture is something that you're considering. Like how how is that relevant to designing a dating app? I mean, it's kind of reflected w first of all we see it reflected in BIOS. Uh so when people are talking about themselves and what they want and kind of deal breakers and and things they're looking for, we also see it reflected in kind of free type interest tags. I think it not only speaks to what's happening in the digital space

But you know, we also run aero elements as well, so we have to think about the flavour of those and what types of experiences people might want. But I think generally A few things muddied in here. I think we've been misperceived as being at times just a hook up. app, which is absolutely not what we are. We are so much more th than that. And I feel there's also a kind of a misperception of that kind of hook up culture being

you know, really hedonistic, sometimes very boozy, you know, and having a certain flavour. And what we're hearing from younger members is that they're really seeking to connect around interest. kind of like shared ideology, kind of common characteristics rather than kind of dating of old. Again, I think this is a generational thing where you it is kind of very much alcohol fuelled and that is the social kind of lubricant that gets you to kind of sexual interaction and discovery.

They're looking for more structured experiences that kind of bubble to the surface, kind of common interest, commonality. So I think things are just moved on so much. And it's fascinating for me as a as someone who probably skills skews older in terms of the field team to kind of constantly keep my on what's what's going on, particularly in terms of

that desire to to hang out in sober spaces'cause that definitely wasn't something that was happening when I started dating. Who was clear is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I feel very much a a baked in part of dating culture for our generation is like, well of course, like your first date you go get cocktails. Right. If he times that by being English as well, then you have this kind of like perfect this perfect sort of stereotypical storm of like been binge drinking and dating. Right.

Yeah. I think what Alexandra is highlighting as well is just the power of looking at quantum and qual data together because it really keeps us honest in terms of our mental model of what the non-monogonous community wants. what needs that they have and what challenges they face as well. And to keep our finger on the pulse of that and really, you know, respect not just the nuances and the kind of different subtleties of opinion, of lifestyle, of labels. But also stay current with it too.

So we discussed this a little bit. in our previous episode with Dr. Amy C. Moores and Brett Chamberlain, but from the data that you all looked at, what does it say about the most pressing challenges for non monogamous folks out there? So The one thing that we really heard loud and clear in the survey is that non-monogamous folks do fear discrimination, particularly in healthcare settings, housing, legal matters like divorce and child custody.

Over a third of our respondents also reported stigma in like social and familial settings as well within the last year. And that actually results in the majority of respondents not really being open about their non monogamous identity to landlords, to religious community, work supervisors, and even family, especially extended family. And actually when it comes to family in particular. whether people are open or not about their nominogamous identity was very, very bimodally split.

So we have a camp of people who are very in the closet about their non monogamous identity and a camp who are very open about it with few in betweens. And that's especially true with parents. And so Yeah, makes sense. Fear of discrimination is the biggest stressor that non-monogamous folks reported in the survey, but a very close second is actually lack of community and lack of non-monogamous resources.

And so about half of the respondents said that this was a stressor in their lives. And almost as many said that it was because of location actually, that there's a lack of access to communities and individuals in their specific area. Yeah. And so um that's kind of what Alexander and I are trying to accomplish at Field, a solution that can bridge that location gap, that distance for a lot of non-monogamous folks.

Because um we know it's not just about dating, it's also about friendships, it's about community, it's about resources and education as well. And so, you know, at the end of the day, like that's why I do what I do. Um, we're trying to build something that kind of closes those gaps and mitigates those top stressors.

Mm-hmm. We see that again and again. I was gonna say in the qualitative kind of work that we do too, we see that kind of yearning for community and new opportunities to connect come through really strong. So it's it's come through in previous research before and we hear it anecdotally.

you know, all the time. And I think thinking about building out if audiences that speak to community and digital spaces and beyond is is a again a very kind of nuanced challenge to think about how we might do that in ways that really meaningfully land for people and don't feel

it's like some sort of kind of cynical grab. But you know, experiences that really have meaning and kind of give people what they need. And I I d I also think it's a really good question for all of you in terms of you know, the types of community experiences that you see that are most valued and most delivering for people that are exploring non traditional relationship structures because we'd love to learn from that as well.

Yeah, again, anecdotally I think what I see is it and this is probably a a broad oversimplification, but As far as access to community and community events, it's like I see two desires that emerge. And one of them is a desire for I wanna connect with the people who are very, very similar to me, right? So as in like I'm polyamorous with with multiple partners practicing non-hierarchy and I want to connect with other people who are also

practicing that in that particular way, not to try to date them, but to, you know, share our struggles, share our victories, right? So it's like there is this desire for like, yes, I wanna find the local polygroup, the discussion group, or go to the workshop or whatever it is. But then there's this other desire that I see from people, which is like, I I don't wanna go to the workshop, I don't wanna go to the discussion group. I wanna go

with a bunch of people who like won't think that I'm a weirdo and where I don't care what their relationship configuration is necessarily, but I don't want it to be weird for me to bring both of my partners along. Or I wanna be able to uh openly acknowledge that you know, I had a wonderful weekend with my wife and she went on a date, right? When I'm at the hike or whatever. So it's it's sort of this like

I think that people do want this very like concentrated focus sense of community, connecting with people who are similar to them and kinda understand their struggles. But then I also see that people want what I would label as like maybe the more quotidian experiences of it doesn't have to be about my relationship practice. It's just that I want my relationship practice to be welcome in this

space. That's a yeah, a really interesting and useful distinction. One is just to exist peacefully and socialize without kind of scrutiny and questioned. Yeah. I think those are really I think those are two very interesting and different threads that I'm sure that we will say to pull on some more. So Yeah. And again, it's like easier for people to well, I say easy. It's it's not necessarily easy, but maybe relatively easier for people to

again, filter by, okay, I'll find the local polyamory meetup group, right? And that can deliver on that very like concentrated community experience. But like just having a particular relationship practice in common doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna gel with that group of people or that you're gonna love

hanging out with them at a potluck or that these are the people you're gonna want to go hiking with necessarily, right? So so yeah, I think that is a little bit of the the challenge that people run into. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

If I heard you correctly, you said that people are also looking for resources out there on non monogamy or starting their non monogamous journey. That I guess.

surprises me a little bit considering I feel as though there are so many resources out there, especially now that we are in the era that we are in of social media and everything is kind of at your fingertips because when we started our journey back in, you know, two thousand twelve, thirteen, fourteen and then started this podcast, we were one of very few resources out there, period.

But I'm surprised that people are still And that makes me wonder what is it exactly that people are looking for that isn't out there necessarily and how can we tap into those communities or populations in order to sort of give them what it is that they need and want.

I think it's very overwhelming for people and I think you've you know, you've just spoken to the exact problem. We've gone from kind of zero to hero in terms of the amount of information that's out there and people just don't know where to start.

And we ran a survey over a year ago now, and forgive me, I can't remember the exact data points around that, but it was asking around uh asking members around sort of feature favorability and what they wanted to see and there was this desire to see more resources. So

I don't think that there's a lack of information out there but they want it to be curated by trusted voices, you know. And if you have that affinity with field already and you see it over as a safe space, there's kind of championing your wants and needs. We have this opportunity to kind of funnel

to aggregate information from across the board to kind of vet it and deliver it in a way that really speaks to our members. So yeah, I I suppose Clumsily, but we've got an opportunity to be an aggregator here if we have that trust with our members just as just as you all do in terms of in terms of the podcast and what you're doing.

And it's definitely a no not about one voice, it's about a pulling together of multiple voices and telling a story and kind of like making it digestible in ways that don't feel overwhelming. Well, but I think that challenge speaks to what you're talking about of like how do we all uh, you know, appeal and serve the needs of both the people who are at the beginning of their journey.

the people who are like maybe a few years into their journey and the people who've been doing this for ten, fifteen, twenty years. And that's the same thing with resources, is that again, from what I see is I think that

There's a lot of one on one content out there. And again, it's it's it can still be an issue if that feels overwhelming or people don't know where do I turn to first or there's all these kind of competing resources or contradictory resources or things like that. The recurring question

or ask that I think we constantly get from people is is there's definitely a big chunk of this population that wants the two oh one content, the three oh one content. But then the trickiness comes down to like figuring out what is the two oh one content and the three oh one content because sometimes when we press people on that or ask follow up questions about that.

something that happens quite often is people will say things like Well, I just really wish that you had an episode about like what to do. When you're in the situation where like your brother in law has like outed you to the rest of your in-laws, but then you realize like one of your in-laws is like actually dating someone who's like,

your metamor and then like that also happens to be your boss and I'm just like really wish that there was a resource that spoke to that situation where I'm just like, okay, that's like a six oh one very particular situation. And so yeah, it is like this challenge of of I think massaging out what lives in that level. level where it's not quite one on one but it's also not uh like just like personally helping each individual person sort out their their individual nominography.

We have that we have that resource and that resource is the community. So when it bec when it comes down to those kind of really personal lived experiences, like my my brothers, neighbours, etcetera, you know, wh whatever that story may be. We're creating a community where people can interact and share experiences and learn from from one another and and that's where I think that learning happens. We just need to kind of ensure that that is a

safe and stigma free place, so the right people are there having those conversations again, coming back to this torchbearer idea that there are you know, that there is so much to be learned from people that are further along in their journeys. So I think I think that resource is there. It's just in a slightly it's in human form, en masse and it's about finding the right people to connect with and talk to.

Getting people to understand that is the challenge for us because it takes it can take them a little while to start having those conversations and seeing things in people's profiles and and learning. But what we have seen is if we if we take people talking of longitudinal studies, we kinda put people through diary studies of like five days, seven days and we find people that have a little interest that's peaked in field and they might be like, Okay, I'm questioning things

in how I'm relating or my sexuality and I have a little interest here, but they're quite intimidated by it as a as a concept in the first instance. And we we kinda make them stay for seven days and we make them hang out on the air, we make them talk to people and have these interactions.

You know, the first couple of days these people are saying, Okay, I I may have left by now. If you weren't making me stay I may have gone this is intimidating, there's a lot going on. By day seven, the transformations that we see in these people are wild. You know, someone that's gone from never ever considering anything beyond a traditional relationship is like

I really wanna have a threesome. I wanna introduce a third. I wanna open up my relationship. People that are really you know, have been really bound by traditional sexuality and what is seen as normative in the bedroom and saying, Okay, I really want to broaden my horizons and try something neat So we see that, you know, the tool being the community instead of a set of static resources. If people stay and have those conversations, it can be transformative.

At a rate of not. And I think that's the thing that we've been really surprised when we've seen. It's like it happens so fast if there's a spark of interest and you put people in the right environment, like wild wild things bloom and it's really beautiful to watch. Huh. That's really cool. That's a great insight that you're able to see that.

I I wanted to go back briefly. Just this question occurred to me earlier about when it comes to stigma and concerns like that. Is there any chance that you've done any analysis or have any data about the occurrence of headless profiles on Field and how that has changed over time? Cause I feel like that comes from a fear of stigma, right? Or a fear of some kind of negative repercussion to you if people can identify you. So I'm curious if you've noticed that changing or seen any trends with that.

On field, we know that there are a subset of people who, yeah, don't want to show their face. Um, common things that we hear from people is that they're quote unquote professional. which means that they maybe fear retribution at work or socially in other parts of their life. So professional can sometimes be a code for discreet, essentially. That being said though, I

not prepared to share any data about the number of headless profiles or uh that kind of information right now. But it is something that we, you know, care about deeply and, you know, it matters because there's a trust signal there to other people as well. Um

you know, you want to know that the people that you're potentially connecting with are real people, right? And, you know, something about a face photo is just like so important to that, right? Yeah. Um And fortunately, you know, we have developed some tools on the field um like photo verification that allow people to kind of confirm their identity.

But yeah, it's a thing that we think about a lot. Yeah. Anecdotally, we know it's the biggest in terms of the biggest deal breakers for people where they're looking at profiles. No no face photo can be l like a hard start. It is for me. Yeah. I just swipe past those and like, nope, sorry, can't can't do it.

Yeah, so it's a b we have this challenge of try you know, because of the n nature of field and it being slightly different b you know, having a slightly different spin to it. It's like how do we balance anonymity with this deed to actually you see if there's that initial initial spark if you're looking at someone y y you could potentially feel an attraction to and then again it's an is another really interesting tension for us. But we really do

Again, this is uh to listeners, we really do encourage people to include pictures of yourself because it w it will have a dramatic difference in terms of how people interact interact with you. So We want to preserve people's privacy and anonymity. if that's what they need in their lives. But at the same time, there is a certain amount of vulnerability that we require and that is actually beneficial, as Alexandra was saying earlier.

to the rest of the community because that's how we learn from each other, right? Like that's how we need to see examples of other people. in order to feel like we can reflect that back from ourselves. It takes a bit of bravery, I think, as well, you know, and we we really want to encourage that bravery and that is

the beginning, you know, the continuation of breaking down stigma. It's like, okay, we wanna we wanna give you a space where you can put your head literally put your head above the parapet and say, I stand by these values, I stand by these lifestyle choices. And make it safe for people, but we know it's more complex and than that in terms of people's working context. Yeah. Other society effective. So

This has been super fascinating so far and I know that we're all data nerds and so we would love to just like keep going and prying you for all these questions. So maybe we'll have to do a future episode, but we have Asked our audience for questions.

for the two of you and some of those we actually got to organically, some we've already addressed, but I wanted to get a few more in. So if we could do a quick little bonus round, a little lightning round, if you will, uh of some of the questions that we got from our audience. for Cy and Alexandra to answer. So first we have quote.

Anecdotally, I've always heard slash experience that typically guys aren't putting in the effort, but I've never seen a good stat for it. I'm curious what proportion of male slash masculine profiles have five words or less. And then what about that compared to female FEM non binary? It's a great question and your perception is the reality. Although what I will say is that it's not as dramatic of a difference as you think.

And actually, the overwhelming majority of men on field at least um put a great deal of effort into their profiles. And the one statistic that I will share is that the overwhelming majority of field profiles are not empty. So people are filling them out and I guess, you know what, since it's a bonus lightning round, I'll share a second statistic, which is that the average number of characters in a field bio is over one hundred.

Okay. All right. That's helpful. So it's like there's some truth to it, but maybe not as universal as we think. The difference between genders is not as dramatic as you think. Nice. So maybe kind of a follow up question to that would be is there a profile length sweet spot for interaction? So how much is too much information versus too little? Is that hundred characters you said the right amount, or is it more or less? Yeah, great question.

This sounds like a question from a listener who maybe writes a lot in their bio and thinks really really deeply um about what to cut and what to keep. And I think the main thing to keep in mind is that the most important indicator of dating success on an app like Field is to not leave it empty, not leave your bio empty, have at least one face photo, and so on. Because you get marginally

less return, you get decreasing returns from adding more and more and more. More photos, more words to your bio, etcetera. So just focus on having something in there and keeping it concise is totally fine. It's not a downside at all. Good to know. Uh next one is Is there a gender difference between how frequently users swipe that can be interpreted into useful strategies of any kind?

So it seems like men are more likely to hit yes and play the numbers, and women might expect to instantly match if they're just going through the queue. Any any data you can share about that? I think a lot of people can sort of feel that there's a gender difference on dating apps in general and that is true on field as well. So I think the stereotype is that men have to like work very, very, very hard.

to make connections with women in particular. And women sort of just get to sit back and like receive a flood of attention and can kind of Make their make their pick and just easily be able to make connections with people. And while that is true somewhat, There are counterfactuals to those two. So we have a lot of women on field who do just receive a lot of attention and just get to make those picks, but we actually have an almost equal number who are working very, very hard to make connections.

And spending a lot of time um sifting through profiles and uh sending out likes and not having them instantly reciprocated. And so the thing the statistic I will tell you about that is that those are actually equal groups of women, equal size groups. Oh interesting. Fascinating. Fascinating. Okay. So I'm paraphrasing because this

question came up multiple times in different forms from multiple people. But the gist would essentially be if I'm on field and I swipe left or like I reject somebody's profile, then I'm never gonna see that profile again. When in reality Maybe our polycules could entirely change in six months. Maybe our capacity for taking on new partners could shift, or maybe even our preferences could change. Is there a reason that I can't bring back a profile that I may have rejected previously?

Mm-hmm. That this is a challenge that we've been thinking about a lot and we've been hearing this feedback from our members consistently in lots of different contexts and Field is all about Self reflection, transformation. We know that people's preferences can kind of flip on a dime through one serendipitous meeting with someone, one formative experience. You can go from thinking

I want to meet these kind of people. So I'm absolutely open to very different things. So we're really aware of that. So as well as kind of y you know, the polycule shifting and changing, we have people that go from completely monogamous to Okay, I want to see profiles at E E and M over I. Well we will have a feature that enables people to see past So they can almost go to the the kind of top of the tray again and see people that they previously passed over.

So kind of speak to this need and it comes up in in so many different contexts. So we we hear you, we're we're listening, we feel you, we know it's really important. And we want to create that space for people to completely evolve and change. So yeah, it's it's coming. It it should be there by the time desires. Excellent.

That's that's great.'Cause that one was actually a big discussion in our Discord of people talking about how often do they delete and recreate their whole profile to try to get back to that and stuff. So that's awesome. I need to hang out in your Discord boo as well, because it sounds like a fun of really useful information. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Well, thank you both so much for joining us today. Like I said, we love nerding out about data, so this has been awesome to get your insights and to get to share in this together. So thank you both for joining us. And in closing, could you both share with us One, like is there anything that you wanna point people to? Any cool resources or things you wanna share? And what are you excited about at Field right now? Uh let's start with Sai.

I would love to point you nerds to the field data blog called Uncharted Territory, where we really Explore these kind of deeper questions about the community and about desire and identity formation and really cool topics like that. From a data perspective, you'll find work there.

that you just can't find anywhere else. We have such a unique and special data set and opportunity of field. And I'm just personally really passionate about working with that data and doing research. And I love sharing it back with you all. So check out um field dot co slash uncharted dash territory. Nice. Awesome. Yeah, can definitely second that recommendation. It's really cool. And Alexandra, how about you?

So so I had one for the nerds. I've got I speaking of the people that have got their training wheels on that are taking the first steps, I have something for them, please, please try out Reflections, our self discovery tool.

It's a really interesting take on the sort of questionnaires you see in traditional dating apps that are all about kind of getting you to a life partner. This isn't about kind of matching necessarily. It's about self reflection, self discovery, thinking about what you want and need. In terms of relationship structures and desires. And it's a completely different take on that kind of questionnaire format that you see in Danger. This is a new thing?'Cause I haven't seen this before.

It is a neat thing that will be in the air at time of this airing and it's it's rooted in social science. We work with a really amazing team of social scientists at the University of Michigan. to kind of borrow from existing scales around sexuality, kink, relationship structures. We wove all of that together into this really amazing tool that allows people to just stop, take a bee, think about what they want. So they can then take those insights into the community.

And we know that it doesn't stop with the insights. They kinda come to life when they're enacted with other people in the community, when they kinda stimulate conversations and different ways of behaving together. So reflections plus taking taking what you learn forth and actually speaking to people on field. We think it's a really kind of sweet spot that's gonna change a lot of people's lives actually. That's cool. And help people have fun um and connect.

Wonderful. Well, thank you too so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing so much insight. I think we'll have to have you back for sure because I know that our listeners are gonna have many, many more questions for you. But in the meantime, we have questions for you listening. We actually are gonna have two questions for you this week. If you go to our Instagram stories, so one question that we're asking, the first one is how have your identity labels changed over time?

And then the other question we're asking is what's the one feature that your ideal dating app would have? Again, go check out our Instagram stories to respond to that this week. Also, the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post in our private Facebook group.

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

Our production assistants are Rachel Sheniwork 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.