Shedding Labels and Overcoming Societal Expectations with Alex Cox

Hey , hey , hey , welcome to the show . Today I have Alex Cox with me . Alex is eccentric .

He's been practicing polyamory since 2018 and he helped build an online polyamorous community during COVID , while experiencing multiple breakdowns , seeking therapy for PTSD , getting diagnosed with ADHD , navigating multiple partnerships , parenting , juggling major career decisions , writing poetry and developing a spiritual practice .

He lives in Portland and is building community and being his complete self and enjoying life in all its weirdness , and he's sharing his story with us today , in this world that's filled with love and loss and unexpected challenges .

His journey into polyamory took him to places that he wasn't expecting , but as he took a leap of faith , he soon realized that there's so many rewards , as I'm sure you're finding . I hope you enjoy the show as much as I did and , if you do , please leave us a review .

And if you leave a review on one of the many podcast listening places like Apple or Spotify or YouTube or any of the places that you leave a review . I will probably read it on the air , and if I do read it on the air , you might also win something . Leave me a review , please . Now we're doing it , cool .

You've interviewed a few friends of mine and you recently had the episode with Christina Dynamite , who's a friend and a co-admin on a local group here in Portland , and she was like she's always looking for men to interview and it's like , yeah , I can see why that can be a little bit tough , so I'm willing to do it .

I recently had a dating experience where , like , I started dating someone who wasn't neurodivergent and we get like three , four dates in and I'm feeling like the strain in communication and we go out on another date and we're sitting there talking and we're trying to figure out how our communication style is and she's like you're not asking me any questions and it's

like I feel like I am , but I'm feeling like I'm having to like pull things out and I'm like why am I feeling ? Because we're not pinging , doing the ping pong , we're not doing the ADHD ping pong of like oh , there's this in the tangent light Like so we were missing each other .

So I've been working on separating what we do versus like what we are , and some people practice polyamory as a practice that they do . Some people it's their identity . For me it's my identity and what I do . So and I , you know , like many people , I didn't start out this journey polyamorous .

We started out ethically non monogamous and , to take a step back , I'm married . So my wife and I have been married since 2014 . We had a wild weekend where , you know , we had been dating for three , four years . We've been engaged for about six months .

We got a promotion , we were living in North Carolina , we got married on a Saturday and boarded a plane with our two cats and ourselves on a Tuesday and moved to California , so completely across the country , from family , all of that good stuff . So , and that started our marriage . And you know , up till then we had been monogamous , you know .

So it had been cool and of course , you move out to California , you become a hippie liberal and all that good stuff and but what ended up happening with us was , sadly , a lot more difficult . In 2015 . My wife got sick .

She got sick with a condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome and this is a condition where , like the you know , the myelinated sheath on your nervous system starts getting eaten by your immune system and from your extremities inward you get paralyzed .

So my wife , for about six months in 2015 , she was paralyzed in a hospital for a couple months in rehab and then she was in a wheelchair and then she through 2015 , her healing from that she went from wheelchair to walk her to cane into early 2016 . Wow , 2016, . You'd think we'd be calm , we'd be recovering through that whole position Like we .

You know , when you're married , you're not sure if your partner's ever going to walk again . You know you have conversations and you know one of the conversations is like , listen , we haven't . You know I know you're . You know my wife had said I know you're not like there .

Like , I understand if you and at the time I was kind of like , no , I don't want to talk about like you know , I can take care of myself , you know , and do what I need to do without seeking anything outside of our marriage , you know , for right now , 2016, . You know it was my turn . So 2016, .

I had had an arrhythmia for about 20 years and it worsened as I got older . And in May 2016 , I had this , like you know , big event where , you know , my wife called 911 , went to the ER .

They gave me the paddles , so I got the like nice paddle shock to revert into a normal rhythm and then at the end of the month , I had a surgery that corrected and found this condition called Wolf Parkinson White Syndrome . So for you medical people in the audience , I've already mentioned two really rare conditions that , like you know , most people don't have .

Wolf Parkinson White Syndrome is like an extra electrical pathway around your heart , so I could have died from that in any point in the first 40 years of my life . People just suddenly die from it . So get on the other side of that .

And that's 2015 , 2016 , you know , and , of course , because we're somewhat masochistic , I think , both of us we decided that we wanted to have a kid . So by July 2016 , my wife had already gotten medically cleared , I was learning how to like live with a regular heart and we conceived our son , zephram , and you know he was born in April 2017 .

So 2017 , we were going through the new parent stuff and just like and all of this , and through 2015 , 2016 , 2017 . You know , my wife and I , like like we , I always knew from the beginning that we were going to be married , like when we met in 2010, . You know , that was kind of like something I knew that would happen .

But our romantic relationship didn't really recover . And you go through a lot as new parents . You go through a lot going through health issues we had a bit of , we had co-dependency , we had a caretaker relationship . So in by I think , april 2018 , I was pretty feeling it . Our romantic relationship , our sexual relationship , hadn't recovered .

And you know , there were some other things just going on with myself of you know , holy cow , I'm a parent of a one year old . You know , there's all . You know I had this new lease on life that I haven't had for 20 years where I can like go out and not worry about my heart . You know , going into another rhythm .

You know I started getting out and hiking and feeling better and with that it's also like , oh wow , my libido is like picked up immeasurably .

So you know , to be honest , when we've , you know I did some research because I remember that conversation my wife and I had had when she was in the hospital and I was kind of like , maybe she's open to it , so let's have that conversation and let's do some research . And I did that conversation . Terribly .

I took some bad advice from Reddit and I went to her and I was like , hey , I would like to try non monogamy , I would like to go out , have sex , and you know I want us to still be married and you know I need this for art , for my happiness . And it was not presented in a very ethical way .

My wife was put under pressure to , you know , allow this to happen . And she said , to her grace , she said yes , provided that we get couples counseling , couples therapy .

So yeah , so it's like , thankfully , somebody at some point had turned me on to polyfriendlyorg and I went on there and we found a really great couples counselor in San Jose , in the Alameda , who I credit with saving our marriage , you know , and keeping us married , you know . So we started couples counseling .

I started seeing other people , meeting people , and one of the first people I met was my first polypartner , who lives here in Portland . So we were in the Bay Area . So that was a really , really good thing , that was a blessing , and this first polypartner really just kind of you know , did some unique things .

And I want to pin in that and give a pause , if you have any questions or anything there , before we kind of move into that phase . But that's how we got started .

But I understand that caretaker role Like how do you maintain romance and like passion when you're also like dealing with doctors and caretaking and like , just like here , let me help you Absolutely .

You know , invest a bit in yourself as you're doing this , because you're running a marathon , you're not , you're not doing a sprint . So , and that turned out to be really good advice . She helped me out a lot and my wife went through so much .

Like I cannot understate how much my wife went through Like it's incredible her will to learn to walk again and recover from that .

And then , when we get into polyamorous relationships , how do we break down that line between interdependence , expectations from monogamy and interdependence in varying levels and types of partnerships and in polyamory ?

wrong ? Which one of us is being an asshole ?

You can't control other people , but you can look at yourself and your own actions and you can try and get different perspectives and listen to other people's perspectives on on how they view you , and that can help you . Like answer that question first before you have other conversations .

I think developing community relationships with just average people who are going through stuff I think that's critical too , because we learn and we get support from the community , our partners , our people , and I think that that's an important thing . That's one of the reasons why I came on , because it's like I don't have anything to sell .

I don't have anything that I'm like putting up . I'm just a regular guy out here in the community that , just from circumstances , has ended up talking with a lot of people and interacting with a lot of people who are non-monogamous and polyamorous . So that's why I wanted to come on here and speak .

And when I hear that phrase and I'm sure many of the listeners when I said it , I already have locked up on that first word unconditional , because unconditional is a challenge and it is not something that I can do . I try to do it with everybody I meet , but unconditional . I have conditions . I have past trauma that I will judge people from .

I you know there's experience and there's things where I just lock up and I say I can't deal with that . But generally I try , everyone I meet I try to have some sort of positive regard , for I try to find something .

Even if they're being brusque or aggressive , I try to find something likable about that person , because every person that you meet , everyone , everyone has somebody that they love , has people who love them , has friends like , regardless of what they've done or something there you know or who you think they are .

There's something there that you can find to relate to and that often can make the difference with yourself in how that interaction goes .

This particular person she's still in my life now and it's a pretty interesting story , but she had been polyamorous since she was a teenager . She was well-practiced , well-versed , very experienced in polyanominogamy . She was with her nesting partner , who's now her husband , and you know she blessed me with her Poly Starter Pack .

So because everybody has one , it's like you know when you start getting into it , what is that ? Collection of books , podcasts , you know , just things to learn about . That is the intro starter pack to polyamory . Common one is the ethical slut . So she gave

me the ethical slut . She also recommended the jealousy workbook Yep , you know . And then the other book that she recommended was the Four Agreements .

And I grew up in rural Virginia , like a small town of 6,000 people in the mountains of southwest Virginia , and my first early relationships in high school I was extremely jealous . I was jealous , I was controlling , I was a conservative . You know those people do exist there . It's a valid thing .

And you know I was extremely jealous and that led to a lot of stress . It led to a lot of anger control . It's really toxic stuff that even then I kind of felt like man , this is bad .

And that relationship went on and off for over five years and one of the ways that it kind of started to end because it wasn't really the end of it but the beginning and the end was I'd found out that she cheated for like months , you know , and I found out in a really bad way , like I kind of walked in on them and it was like a whole thing and it

led to this really tense moment and then afterward , you know , I found out dude had a gun that night so I could have been shot . So it's just one of those things where it's like you know , is any of this worth getting killed over ?

And when you look at like the violence , when you look at , when you look at like all the aggression and stuff like that , that happens , a lot of it's . You know people , you know a lot of it is like this scorn lover kind of stuff .

And I went off to college , you know , I did two years of community college and then I went off to my , to my university , and I spent that year . I didn't really date a lot of people .

I spent a lot of time just kind of like thinking through this jealousy thing because I knew I didn't want to carry that forward in my life and so I kind of broke it down early . It's like what is important for me in a relationship and keep in mind , this is like the 1920 in a dorm room in Kentucky , trying to figure this out on my own and what .

What it came down to is that the choice . I wanted someone who showed the choice to be with me . There's no amount of control that you can exert over another person to be with you . There , you know .

I mean we see it all the time like people low jack their partners on Wi-Fi , you know , or on their phones , or they put cameras up in their homes or things like that . Essentially , you're building prisons for your partners at that point , like , if you can't trust somebody , where is that ?

I was like cool , and I met another girl and I told the first girl like hey , I'm dating this other person and this is , you know , probably 2001 , 2002 . And just like the communication around that felt natural Like , and we went several months like both dating these other people , both seeing each other .

There was a lot of emotion and love there and we're still friends like 20 years after . But I look at that , I look back at that relationship from unpacking jealousy then and developing that communication style just between me and this other person . And that was my first ethically nonmonogamous relationship . Yeah , just kind of stumbled into it .

Yeah , my relationships after that didn't follow in that pattern and I always look back at that relationship as one that was really healthy . We were very communicative , we were very like engaging . We still have a lot of positive affection for each other and you know , if we didn't live across the country , who knows , you know .

But yeah , so fast forward back to now . You know the jealousy workbooks .

Honestly , that's something that I've , that I felt I had a handle on pretty early on and through my partnerships that generally is held true that choice allowing the people you're with the freedom to choose , and when they do that , you know it's a natural , you end up in a natural , almost secure relationship . Just enough from that .

Yeah , you know when we later on will talk about the book Polysecure and attachment theory and all that , but you know , but so the jealousy workbook was one resource . The ethical slut I think that's been talked about here before . Like so many people can say so many things about that . I read that and I was like , yes , this is the sex I want to have .

Yeah , yeah , let's do that . And then one I held off on the four agreements because you know I had been what I considered spiritually inert for like 10 years , you know so . So I had had like the shock paddle treatment , you know , in the heart condition and all this . And having a having a child .

Like my son looks like me , like he's almost , except for like his eye size and shape . He is my little clone . And you know I remember in the hospital having this experience of like seeing every family member that I've ever loved on his face . So that's . That was the closest I had to a spiritual moment .

So I had a flight over to North Carolina for work or something like that . I read the four agreements on a flight it was like a five and a half hour flight Read the whole book . Then the stuff about shamanism and shamanic practitioner , I was feeling like , yeah , all right , I'll take that , but let's , let's get down to what these really are .

You know , be impeccable with with your word , make no assumptions , be excellent at everything you do . You know all that and it made sense . It was kind of like some rules clicked into place of like , oh wow , we can , there's something here for me to use . So , and the stuff about shamanic journey and practitioner .

You know , I kind of took in any way because I'd been meditating since second grade , I'd been in Marshall Artson College in high school , college , you know all that , and meditation was part of that . And getting into the journey state and grounding was similar to the exercises I used to do to keep my heart in check .

So so I was like , all right , let's try some meditation , let's do some visualization , let's start picturing some stuff . And it ended up being a really transformational tool for me to start identifying with past trauma . So what happened ?

Because of meeting that first polypartner , because of having that book , I had been in this state where , for some years of my life , I felt emotionally numb and I had this very common thing where , you know , as a man , as a cis male , masculine , one of the most acceptable feelings that any of us are socialized to be able to feel is anger .

Like you know , given most men and I include myself in this , you know , pre-2019 or so , if you give a man a choice between feeling sadness , despair , depression , you know any number of things , we develop our own internalized shortcut to anger . You know , and that's the acceptable social response yeah , you must be angry , you must defend , protect .

You know all these , all these things . And it's exacerbated because , you know , I'm an ex cop , so I was a police officer from 2001 to 2006 .

So I grew up a little bit with violence . I grew up , you know , with firearms . I carried a gun for five years of my life and I have exerted violence on other people . And that's , I think , that you know , in right now , we have so many people who are veterans , we have so many men who have come back from combat and war .

You know we have so many people who are in law enforcement , security . We just have a lot of people who by socialization , by culture , by choice of their own , you know , live in this state of protectiveness , maybe fear a little bit of fear involved and anger and violence that we don't .

We get comfortable in that shortcut to anger and we don't let ourselves feel that full emotional spectrum .

It was the last time I ever lost control of my anger and I identified that that moment , that piece , is when I boxed everything up and I started boggling things up and everything after that point in my life just was this like numb progression of varying stages of anger .

So I started to work with that , started to unpack it , I started to let myself feel different things . What's it like to really be happy ? What's it like to be sad ? What's it like to feel these things ? And there's a wonderful tool , it's like an emotional wheel that has like these , like big , broad feelings in the center .

And you start looking at art . It's like , oh wow , this is a thing of beauty , this is beautiful , this makes me joyful . This , you know . And we have different expressions . We have wonderful tools at ourselves laughing and crying , and laughing and crying . I mentioned these things because laughter can be representative of the whole emotional spectrum .

At any extreme , Crying can be representative of that whole spectrum . You know , maybe not even at any stream . I'm a crier . I will cry if I feel like emotional about something . I will cry if I'm angry . It's something I will cry if I'm , you know .

So so 2019 was this like saying of going back and using some of the tools from the four agreements and the subsequent books to go back and like unpack all that , and that is kind of what I consider the period where I really started unpacking masculinity , so that's so . That led through that and that was my first Holly partner experience .

But , like , every time you interact with new people and have new relationships , you get to become something new , even if it's just with that person , or it changes a little bit with each interaction that you have .

That helps define who I become . You know I wanted to be a police officer . I was fortunate enough to become a police officer and live that dream and do that , and then I also left being a police officer . So when I left I had to go through this whole thing of like what's my life like now that I'm not .

And it's a very freeing thing when you remove a label , because when you remove a label you have the opportunity to transform , you have the opportunity to change and acknowledge that growth . And when I look at my whole life and all that , I've changed drastically . I grew up a conservative Christian .

I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church from the time I was 11 , you know all these different things and these were labels that over time , as I let go , I was able to change and transform into something else , and that was influenced by the people around me , the culture I was in .

The Internet oh my gosh , like for our generation the Internet was like when that turned on , it was like the world suddenly at our fingertips . Yeah , yeah . So separating that being from doing allows us to do more and by what we do become different , not always necessarily more , but different .

I had just left my job at Apple , where I was for 13 years , and I was about to get a job at Metta Facebook it was Facebook at the time and so I was in between and one night I'm sitting there and I'm like I could start a discord . It's like all right , well , you know .

So I popped in chat and I offered to start it and help out and I kind of put together a proposal for the owner of the group and she said , yeah , run with it . So I started up the discord and you know , I had never viewed myself in any kind of like community admin position or anything like that . What ended up happening over the next few months ?

Like it was a journey because , like we all started working from home , we were all at our desks , like discord was up and we ended up getting like when we topped out .

I think we topped out at like 150 people in the discord and I was holding like weekly happy hours on Fridays and you know , just meeting a ton of different people that unfortunately , sadly , I don't think I've been able to meet many of them in real life even afterward .

But like , just I got to see this really human experience across a broad number of polyamorous people through 2020 . And we went through so much together , like , like there were periods where , like I was , there were two times that I just broke down and I cried under my desk . I'm an extrovert , so like leaving the office was tough for me .

It was just like , oh my gosh , like I don't have anywhere to go , I don't have people . That discord community became my , my , my community . It became like the growth . I don't see myself as leading it , I see myself as maybe facilitating and helping and being a resource .

And even now , like I'm very cautious of coming across as any kind of authority , coming across as any kind of owner or coming across as any kind of leader .

You know , sometimes that may happen , but I am very flawed myself , you know , and that's one thing that that , like again , I just want to express like there is being and there's doing and sometimes in life , like , like , we are all messy humans and and you know , we talk about good people bad people talk about .

You know , we put labels on people's just , you know , as , like some of the worst people you know sometimes end up doing something good . Some of the best people do bad things and we are forever inundated in media of people that we put on pedestals that fall . Yeah , it's like unpacking masculinity .

You know , around this time 2019 , 2018 , 2019 , like I'm going through this Holy Cow emotional explosion of stuff . We also had the Me Too movement , you know so it's kind of like the Me Too movement came in all of a sudden .

Every rational man that I've ever known is suddenly like going through the backlog of every interaction that we've ever had in our lives , of where have I been shitty and misogynist , you know ? Where have where have I been toxic ? You know ? Where have I , you know , treated somebody bad ? When have I used a pejorative ? When have I sexually harassed someone ?

When have I abused someone ? You know , and it's like we all had these moments of of just being real with ourselves , of , you know , some of it is a little bit self-defensive , of who's going to come out of my woodwork , who's going to what skeleton is in my past closet ? Some of it is . Is am I a shitty person ?

And it's kind of like like there's some reflection there that I think many of us had and and for me , thankfully , I didn't see too many bad things out there .

I was raised by a single mom , so , like one of the elements of my life has been , you know , seeing women in positions of power and authority and being comfortable with that , seeing women as autonomous people who can make their own independent decisions .

You know , my mom didn't get married until I was like in my 20s , so , like I always saw her as a single parent . So you get through these things and you know we go through the Me Too movement . We , you know I'm starting to unpack , you know , feel emotions and figure this out . And you look at where in your life are you being shitty ?

Where in your life are you treating women differently and or maybe using people , things like that .

And and so you know , I think , being conscious in polyamory , where it is inherently sexual , it is inherently about relationships that transcend gender , that have traditional dynamics of you know , there are some elements of patriarchy that exists , there's elements of toxicity , of unpacked toxicity , that come in and there's elements of abuse that come in .

I've always been careful about any kind of leadership position because one , I am cognizant that I am prone to mistakes . I am cognizant that I am fallible and I will talk with you about my flaws and I will own up to them . You know and I have some that I've made sense . I don't want to say that , like , I became polyamorous in 2018 .

I unpacked masculinity in 2019 . Checkbox done . I've been good ever since . That hasn't happened . I'm golden . Follow me Exactly , exactly , and I would be cautious about anybody who does say that . Right yeah . So what I say is I am a member of the community , just like anyone else trying to figure things out , just like anybody else .

Don't necessarily follow me , but let's have a conversation and let's see how we can learn from each other , because I'm still learning too .

Like that was just it , that's just who I thought I was , and then I was like I'm going to be non-monogamous . I got to figure out how to work with that now . Yeah , but it's like even doing all of that work , it's like it's still there's always things that come up and there's always things that like oh , that's still there a little bit .

Oh , there's a new thing that I didn't know would like create these feelings . Now I got to learn a whole other thing .

Yeah , our partners , our spouses , they become part of that like halo of things that we own around us and our kids and our kids . Oh , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , my child is , let me know , he's six now . He let me know continually that I do not own him , so it's a continuing discussion . Yeah , so 2019 , I had a breakthrough .

You know , I went off into the desert and spent a weekend just unpacking that incident when I was 15 .

And I came back and around the same time I was telling my family that you know , my wife and I were open polyamorous and you know literally the trip I'm coming back from Sequoia National Forest , I'd been camping on my own , and my family decides to have a Skype call . You know so my mom had already been out , we had talked about polyamory and all this .

She had let it leak out to the rest of the family . So I get on the Skype call as I'm driving through the central valley and my uncle gets on , and one of my uncles gets on and he's like I want to talk to you about this . I was like I'm happy to talk to you about this .

How about we do it when you know we're on a regular call and I'm not like driving and we don't have like signal loss and stuff like that ? That call ended up being fairly traumatic . My uncle ended up doing this chant of shame

. Another uncle joined in and it was just this experience of like holy cow , like I just came back from this , like transformative experience where , like I've unpacked anger and all this other stuff and here my uncles are literally doing like the game of thrones scene , you know , throwing shame , saying chanting shame , shame , shame . And it was just .

I was amazed , I was shocked . I grew up with a really supportive family and that's the first time in my life that I've ever like had to kind of reevaluate . So I got back to San Jose and I just sent them a message and I was like , hey , right now we can't talk .

You know , these are the conditions that that we got to put around like future communication , but right now this is kind of like it . This is the way I'm going to live my life and we can talk about that . I can share more with you about that . But you know , the shame stuff , no , it's not going to happen .

It's not going to happen to me , it's not going to happen around my son , it's not going to happen around my spouse . Like no , it took a couple of years , but I'm talking to them now and we're kind of going through that . So it's been , it's been interesting .

So you know , as you come out , as you become public about things like this , as you break away from those labels , the people around you will respond and change .

And one of the interesting things is you is like going through like the four agreements and some of that other stuff around self , around development of self , is you have to renegotiate and sometimes break those expectations of others of you , expectations of yourself of you , expectations of society and culture on you , because our society and culture places a lot of

things on us as men to act in a certain way , behave in a certain way , do certain things . And those are the things that we have to challenge in order to have that personal self growth , whatever that's going to look like for each person .

I think the smallest I ever got was like 195 pounds . In the police academy , I was like 220 . After law enforcement , I hit my heaviest of like 367 in 2010 . By the time I moved to California , I was throwing out a whole bunch of numbers , but you know I was around 300 range . And from yeah , and from 2018 to like 2020 , I got down to 235 .

So at this point I'm losing a lot of weight , a lot of stuff's happening . So I was physically changing because and it's interesting , you know like before I went through this change the clothes I wore . I didn't wear colors I wore .

I got into that , like I'm going to wear black , I'm going to wear black polos and I'm going to wear jeans and I'm going to wear the khakis and dockers and I'm going to like get on this management fast track and just do the thing . And , as you know , I started feeling more myself . I wanted to express myself differently .

You know , I didn't have facial hair most of my life . Of course , now you can tell I have a big beard . I didn't grow out my hair like most of my life , you know and there's some race stuff in there because I'm part black , you know .

But so I had this experience of like holding my son and watching my son grow up in the first like little curl he had come up . I was like I cannot let him feel shame about his hair . I'm going to grow my hair out . So . So at work , I was growing my hair out .

I was changing my appearance , you know , losing weight , I was wearing colors , you know , for the first time in ever , and so there was visible things .

And then when I decided to come out as polyamorous and start telling people about it , it was because , thinking through that piece of how do I want to represent myself , how do I want to show up to other people , so it never became .

Once I , once I figured out that I want to live openly and I want to show up as myself , as my complete self , wherever I am , then that became the thing of I will pay any price for that . Yeah , you know , at that point I was really successful in my career . I , you know , I was , you know , a manager of a team .

I was responsible for a lot and , you know , I came out my boss was from Texas , you know he . He seemed OK , but like he and I , we really didn't , you know , do too well . After that , you know , I can't say that it was about that , could have been about other changes .

It could have been that just my general personality was different and that kind of makes some people uncomfortable , because that's the other thing , like when you start breaking molds , when you start like , like challenging , you know , when you start living differently , you know and I say this as a human , but also like , especially , as a man when , when you can

start having real conversations with men , about other men , about emotions and feelings , and expressing yourself differently , there's a level of discomfort that the people who are locked into that mindset will naturally carry .

As soon as I mentioned that to a buddy of mine like like who was , you know , handling some of the negotiations with the execs radio silence and I determined then it was kind of like a director role would have been like a big jump , like wow , that you know , I've made it , you know whatever .

But I determined then , if I was in a role , if I was in going to make a move for my career where I couldn't show up as my whole self to work , I couldn't show up as as my complete self , I don't need that career . Like like I can , I can find other things to get into .

So you know , I was pretty thankful for that , for it ended up being a blessing , you know , and that was part of the drive to like leave the company I'd been at for like 12 , 13 years and go somewhere else . And you know , eventually getting into the pandemic like again . Removing labels gives you freedom to transform .

In 2019 , there was a lot of family counseling , you know , and that was when the end of 2019 was when my wife and I my wife told me that she did not want to have a romantic relationship with me . So it fit for what our relationship was .

Thankfully , with the counselor , with the marriage counselor , we worked out what we'd been breaking down codependent codependency . But we started to work out like , well , where do we meet ? Where do we overlap ? My wife and I live well together . We enjoy living

together , even without a romantic relationship . We enjoy raising our child together . There's some things about our life where we're like we just , you know , those things work well for us . We're both neurodivergent , you know . We both , you know , have mental health issues that we got to deal and take care of .

So we decided to become nesting partners and co-parents and that's why we are we're non-romantic nesting partners and co-parents and we've been doing that since winter 2019 . And we're still ticking along and we're pretty happy this way .

Yeah , and it's like , at different times we'll check in , you know , and we'll talk about , like well , what would it look like if we were to divorce right now , you know , what would our assets look like ? What would ? How would we make this split if we were to do it ?

That's always an option and that's something I say to my wife , Like , anytime you want out , pull the eject button , we're out , you know , and we'll . We'll figure that out , We'll work it out and we'll do what you need to do .

I think somewhere in I mean , maybe in Texas , there's legislation that they're looking at divorce now and making divorce more difficult again to remove fault from divorce , Exactly . It's another thing . So it's kind of like , you know , institutionalizing against free will and choice is ludicrous . It's , it's , it's an absolutely terrible concept for managing a society .

So and that's that , by the way , is my first bid for you know , someday running for office , you know , I know on here if I anything I say may be used against me in the future , and that is the first one . Oh , yeah , yeah .

You know , I've got these blinders on right and then , as the relationship goes on and you kind of start getting annoyed by things and those blinders aren't there anymore , you're like , oh , okay , now we have to like compromise and coordinate and try and make living together work , because , like , living with people is still living with people .

But what I've noticed is a lot of times people will like the if it's not a romantic relationship , then why am I putting up with these living issues ? Or why am I putting up with these things that I otherwise wouldn't right ?

And for some reason there's it's like if it's romantic , then it's okay , then it's worth tolerating life things , roommate issues , right , but if it's not romantic , then why would you put up with roommate issues , kind of thing . I'm curious how you , how , how you , how you navigate that .

But but I love you , but but no , and there's things I do , absolutely things I do that I know grind her nerves . And when I say that we live well together , you know what I mean is like like we've lived together now for most a decade . I think we moved in together in 2011 , 2012 .

So , like we've been , we've lived together for a decade and we live well together . And you know , after you get past NRE , you know , by the time you go through like the caretaker relationship and stuff like that , it's kind of like all right , you know it's . It's . We see each other's flaws , we share some of the same flaws .

You know , neither one of us are great housekeepers , so that's one aspect of it . You know . So that by living well together , I mean that we , we make good roommates regardless , and so that goes into that choice to continue living together . Because , yeah , like , like , let's take your , let's take your theory , theoretical conversation .

You know your thing here of in monogamy land . You get involved in a relationship , you get on the relationship escalator , you move in together , you start living together . You love each other , madly , the sex is great , everything's positive , but you cannot . You get through NRE , but you can't stand what it's like living with this person .

Like they do things , they put their , they put the toilet paper roll on backward , they , you know , fold their towels the wrong way what goes in front . Yeah , yeah . Monogamy land it's fuck this relationship , we're going to break up and we can't take it anymore and we get away . Polyamory land .

We can say , maybe this person isn't the best nesting partner , maybe maybe we look at renegotiating or changing this relationship and maybe we do something else . And the other thing in non monogamy and polyamory land that we can do is when we meet people and get in relationships and fall in love .

You know , we can say I don't have to escalate this to living together . Like we can be in love . Like like solo polyamory people shout out , like you know , you can be in love . You can have these deeply intertwined , strong , powerful relationships and not live together , and that can make just as much sense , like like one of the beautiful things .

So in the 2019 , beginning of 2020 , I do this shamanic journey thing and I'm like , okay , I need a framework here , because this I'm not indigenous . Like , like I read the four agreements , okay , and I'm just weird about the whole thing . What kind of spiritual framework allows me to to go through ? And , you know , move forward , keep on doing this .

Work on some more of my past trauma . You know how can I figure out a way forward from this ? I end up on . I found I knew one guy 20 years ago who was learning and practicing druidry and that guy seemed pretty cool . He seemed pretty chill and I was kind of like , all right , well , let's take a look at this .

So I went to a jurid ritual that was local . I started looking at orders , talking to people . I was like , all right , juridry is going to be my framework , one of the concepts of juridry . The whole key thing is in what we call , you know , revival juridry your , you know is we focus on fostering love , wisdom and creativity .

I'm like , hey , cool , here's a religious framework where I can foster love , wisdom and creativity . The whole first year of that , what we call the bardic grade , you know , is studying creativity . And I say a year , it took me like two years to get . So 2020 to 2021 , early 2022 , I'm in the bardic grade .

I'm studying creativity and emotion and flow and , you know , I'm writing poetry and story and I'm thinking about how I can be creative across all things . And in polyamory we apply creativity by the relationships that we develop , you know , because every relationship is an opportunity to create . You know what represents that bond between any two people .

I'm not going to repeat here because one of the things that happened with that is last year . You know , through our own development , we decided to move separate ways . She moved to another city , I moved to this city . I took 2022 off from work . I was blessed enough to be able to take 2022 off from work , so I took a career break .

I left Facebook meta and I said , listen , I'm going to take a year . I'm just going to like , live off whatever . Live off investments , you know , spend time with my son , start kindergarten , get this moved up to Portland where we want to live , and stuff like that .

Toward the end of last year well , middle to end of last year , you know , this partner and I had had problems . We had had some relationship issues and things like that , and it culminated when we were on a trip and we got into an argument out on the street .

It was late at night and I said something incredibly shitty , said something so shitty I can't give the context for it here , but I said something incredibly shitty that , no to my core , no version of me in their right mind would say it , but I said it and I take ownership and accountability for saying it .

And then I ended the relationship and I ended that relationship very poorly , very badly , and it's something I've apologized for privately , publicly , like , like .

There's there's a number of different things about the way that I ended it , but I also look back at my journals because I write , and what also became clear when we talk about constructing relationships , what really became clear to me , like as I was breaking down that breakup , is it's also important to us for us to identify when do we in relationships and how

do we end them . Well , yeah because that can also be creativity as well the escalation of a relationship , transformation of a relationship , reconstructing agreements , things like that . So you know , somewhere leading up to that I had read the polyamory breakup book . That's another good book on breaking up .

I did not apply any of the lessons from that book , just to say it . And this is where I get into . We're human , you know . We , you know I've done shitty things , I will continue to do shitty things and I will continue to make mistakes . And the way I broke up and ended that relationship was a really bad way to do it .

But I would not recommend for anyone . For all the work that I've done , you know , on unpacking masculinity , for everything that I've learned , for everything that I've tried and done , that one was one that I did very badly , no-transcript .

And I think with that , when we talk about creativity , when we talk about breaking up , when we break up with people , they don't just fall off the earth , no matter how bad the breakup goes , no matter how they still have friends . You have intertwined lives , you have friends together , you have things that you've done .

Generally , when people break up , they don't fall off the end of the earth . So when we talk about polyamory community , especially in the town like Portland or Seattle , over time , everybody knows each other , everybody knows somebody else who's poly or has dated somebody else , or hey , I swiped right on that person , or hey , we went out on a couple dates .

Figured out wasn't the thing . That's it .

So one thing I think about in terms of polyamory , in terms of creativity and in terms of our lives and wisdom , is and I say this to other people we are poly and throughout our lives we hopefully this is the ideal right Hopefully we will fall in love with many people throughout our lives and we will fill our lives with love , relationships and connection , all

these different things .

So , with as much importance as we place , and as much attention as we place , on building our dating profiles or meeting people or going out on dates , developing communication styles to build a relationship , developing communication styles to maintain a relationship , we also have to work on communication styles in deescalating and ending a relationship , because how we go

through that whole arc will kind of determine our presence and our health and our relationship with the community throughout the rest of our lives .

So , in a nutshell , those relationships you know become when they end . That person becomes disposable , you know . That person becomes somebody that you know , screw them , not going to see them anymore , I'm going to move away , or whatever trauma happened in the relationship for both of you .

You know you end up both trying to separate and block and there's a lot of tension around that Polyamorous relationships , especially when you're dating other people in the community and stuff like that , and if it's a small town , they don't just vanish and over time you build .

You know there's a collection of people that you've had past involvements with that like are there . So I think one thing when we talk about community and we talk about like what we're doing is how do we , long term , begin , have relationships and end them well , acknowledging that we're all just like messy humans trying to figure things out .

I get up here and I start looking at Facebook groups in the Pacific Northwest for polyamory and I start looking for community Also looked on FetLife because I'm in kink and all that and I went to my first coffee meetup . First coffee meetup I went to was pretty flat , nobody asked my name , nobody showed any interest .

It was definitely kink focused and it was like interesting .

Second poly meetup I went to just happened to be with a wonderful group and here I'm going to give a shout out to Delphine Lumen who was a guest on a previous show , who ran that particular coffee meetup , and I met people who I'm friends with and who I've dated and who I'm partnered with and you know who I still know that essentially form the core of my

poly community here Over time . There was another person who you know , gave me a shout out one day and was like hey , how would you like to help me out with a poly chat . So I was like , all right , let's do this experiment , let's do this . If I were to start a poly chat from the ground up , how would I ? How would I want to do this ?

And it's kind of like , when I think of community , what do I want to do ? So I started up this chat with this guy and I told him I'm like I don't want to own this Like . Like , do everything in your name , I will be an admin , I will help out , but I don't want to own , I don't want to do anything that calls me a leader .

But when we started putting people in , I was like , let's be bold , let's do something different . I put in my wife , invited my wife . I put in people I had dated and stopped dating . I had put in . I put in current partners , I put in like just everybody I knew in the poly community into this one single chat .

And when you start talking about like putting your exes in a chat , it's like , wow , no , this is bold and it that was probably three months ago and that's worked out . We have a thriving little private community of about 50 people who interact .

We're starting to have events , we're starting to do stuff and there's a lot of big Facebook groups of like 1200 , 1500 people . We have a couple of admins of those groups in the chat just because we met them . But really we've just formed a little a community of around 50 , 60 people .

That may fluctuate , grow , things like that , but I'll kind of know each other . I'll practice polyamory kind

of a similar way . We've already gone through the unicorn hunting thing and all that . We just really strive for ethical , healthy community . Some of us have kids , some of us like to craft . You know we , you know stuff like that .

And I think when we talk about polyamory community and building polyamory community , you know there's a saying from Druidry and from you know think globally and act locally .

And you know , if you are living somewhere where you know you don't have access to a lot of poly community or you don't feel there's a lot of poly people around and you're in a position where you can be bold and open , I encourage you to try it . Do it .

Be open , you know , pull people together who might not otherwise talk because of the way things are supposed to be Granted . There are got you , you got to watch out for , you've got to watch out for things about abuse . You have to watch out for things about anything around and consent violations or you know , and there are some very toxic gotchas .

But what I strive for is I strive to help people feel a culture of openness and acceptance , and that goes back to that unconditional positive regard , with limits .

That , again , I don't own and , yeah , it's nice to be able to find , move somewhere new and , within a year , find community , make friends , develop partnerships and you know , and it's just being open , being authentic with yourself and with others and you know , doing the work . So I encourage anybody to do the work .

If there's any men out there who have been challenged , who kind of want to talk more on this stuff , like , like . I think I gave you my Instagram link . You know I'm open to messages , email , whatever , yeah .

It's been an interesting thing to do I love it , I'm heteroromantic , but I consider myself a little bit flexible in that area .

What is your favorite or best sex tip ? I love it . That's so good , thank you . Thank you so much for coming on the show .

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