SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, monogamous, jealousy, relationship, non monogamy, kids, partner, polyamory, conversation, big, life, emotion, knew, person, children, study, totally, polyamorous, triad, love
SPEAKERS
Joli, Ellecia
Ellecia 00:07
Hey, I'm Ellecia, your non monogamous relationship coach. Welcome to the podcast where my friends and I chat about our relationships, enthusiastic non monogamy, polyamory, swinging, kink, and our lives, you'll get a candid peek into what makes it worth it to live life outside the box. And in case you're still wondering, nope we're not monogamous.
Ellecia 00:36
This is one of my favorite episodes that I've recorded yet meeting someone whose journey feels so similar to my own is like a really validating feeling, and is really what I hope to provide for so many of you the listeners. I'm talking today with Dr. Joli Hamilton and she's a relationship coach for couples who color outside the lines. I love that so much. She's a research psychologist, a TEDx speaker, and AASECT certified sex educator. Julie is also the author of the best selling book project relationship, the entrepreneurs action plan for passionate, sustainable love, and the host of the project relationship podcast. She's spent the last couple of decades studying and reimagining what love can be if we open our imaginations to possibility. And she helps create partnerships that are custom built for people's authentic selves, you know, no more shrinking, pretending or hiding required. I really hope that you enjoy this episode, especially as much as I enjoyed making it. And if you do, please drop us a review, I might wind up reading it out loud on the show. And this helps us get more listeners, and make consensual non monogamy much more of a normalized relationship style. Enjoy. Okay, let's start this way. Why don't you tell me what non monogamy looks like for you? Like? Do you use any labels for your relationship style? Or what does that look like for you?
Joli 02:14
Oh, that's a that's a great question to start with. Because, you know, it's an evolution trying to figure out what you are doing in non monogamy. And since I talk about it for a living, I'm also a little bit under the microscope, and I and I feel that microscope. What it looks like for me right now is that I have an anchor partner, who I married, goodness, eight years ago, and from the outside because he happens to look like a cisgender man. And I happen to look like a cisgender woman and we have seven children. We look like the most soccer family, like run of the mill people in the whole world. Our real life is complicated. We've lived as a triad we do not currently. And right now we both have casual partners. But it's it's always an evolution. What does that mean? What does it mean to have a casual partner? When do they change? So by the time this episode comes out, who knows what it'll be. And I'm one of those odd people who likes labels. I know a lot of people are like, Oh, I wish there were just no labels. In fact, my eldest son is definitely that way. I wish there were no labels. I like the labels. They make me feel legible to my partners to the world. So I think of myself as someone who practices really intentional hierarchical, relating right now, because I have seven kids. And it would be impossible for me to really, honestly, practice egalitarianism in a practical way. So I tried to be really thoughtful about that.
Ellecia 03:44
Absolutely. Oh, I love that. Super, super relatable, actually. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have three kids and who are all like preteens and have been married eight years, eight years, seven years. So funny. Yeah. And live as a triad, actually. But then with like other people around.
Joli 04:08
There's so much there's so much in common. I'm thrilled to meet you because sometimes it feels lonely. And I feel even though my clients often have complex situations, usually when I'm working with them, like they're still figuring out what it'll look like for them. It's nice to be in conversation with somebody who's who's comfortably in the mix of the of the complexity already.
Ellecia 04:29
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a wild ride.
Joli 04:32
It really is. Oh, my goodness. Um,
Ellecia 04:35
have you always been non monogamous?
Joli 04:39
No, I haven't. So I've always fallen in love with people. And I thought that that was really normal. And I married my high school sweetheart. For all the wrong reasons. I married him because my household that I grew up in was incredibly dysfunctional, and my father was like, get out. No, he wasn't really like that, but he didn't know what to do with me. So I did the monogamy thing because that was the only story I knew. I'm 45 years old. I had not heard of anything else. Maybe I'd heard of key parties that might have been the most rowdy thing I've never heard of. Hmm. And so I just did that. And I did. I had that relationship for 17 years. And during that time, I kept falling in love with people. And I thought that's just what everybody did. I thought you just do right? Because it's love how do you not fall in love or lust? I fell in lust plenty of times, too. But I never acted on it. I I didn't, I shouldn't say never while I was engaged, I did cheat very much in the monogamous paradigm. I was totally ensconce not cheated, intentionally like that was planned. And then got back together did the monogamy thing with like capital M, like, this is what I'm doing. This is the only way to be. And the only other alternative I knew was cheating. So I was not going to do that. Because honesty is my top value. So no, like once I like, No, I tried that once. It was horrible. It made me break out into actual hives no. So for me, coming into a life where I am not just non monogamous, but I'm super outs, like I give a TEDx where I talk about myself. So I'm all the way out. It was one of those flights of fancy, I fell in love with someone on a dance floor who I'd known my whole life. And I knew I couldn't lie. So I just told everybody, I'm like, I don't know what we're gonna do about this. But there are feelings. And I thought it would all work out. And you know what it has, but not the way I would have thought.
Ellecia 06:30
Isn't that the way.
Joli 06:31
Exactly. Exactly.
Ellecia 06:34
Wow, that sounds actually like super challenging. I'm curious. Okay, what was the easiest part of that? And what was the hardest part of that?
Joli 06:42
The easiest part was the feelings. Like, I'm not a feelings type. I'm actually a thinking type. So like, I mean, union psychologist. So I think about things like that. That way, I could not use my logic to get me out of this obsessive depth of like, I had fallen off a cliff into this pile of feelings for this human. That was super, super, super challenging, because I thought I should be able to just figure it out. But it was also easy, because I just, I just felt once you're falling, you just fall, there's nothing to do. I just went for it. The hard part was that I jumped out of the frying pan into the fire because I left my monogamous marriage when my partner was like, he tried for a couple months. But he he couldn't do it. It just was not for him. That's totally fine wasn't for him, we split up. And I entered into a triad. And they'd already been doing it. So I thought it would be okay. It was not okay. It was not. The challenge was finding out that at least at the time, and I think it is easier now there are people like you making material I guess there's like, there's a conversation when this was 2009 the conversation was different, it was much quieter, I could find the Ethical Slut and nothing else. That was it. We didn't have anything. Um, so it was the loneliness and thinking that because these people had done non monogamy that they knew what they were doing. But instead, I got really hurt, it was incredibly, incredibly abusive and challenging. And I'm sure I hurt them just as much because we didn't know what we were doing. And I wish that there were people out there having these conversations.
Ellecia 08:27
You know, I hear that so much that people will enter into relationships with folks who are already non monogamous, who have a little bit more experience and it's like I just followed their lead because like they're doing it obviously they must know what they're they must know what they're doing. They look happy.
Joli 08:46
This is how I wound up founding my company now is because I was like, oh, there's not that is not actually a thing. It's not a thing like this thing called non monogamy or whatever pick any label you want. It's not a thing. There is no board like I do not get to revoke your non monogamy card when you do a certain set of things. That's not how it goes.
Ellecia 09:04
Your going back to the monogamous box.
Joli 09:06
You have to go back. Yeah, I'm sending you to the principal's office. Now I kind of want that but that's a different kink. Hang on. Wait, that's another conversation. I did I really thought like, okay, they they. So this this person I fell in love with this person. His wife was like, that's fine. It's cool. I love you too. You know, like it was in a much more platonic way. But it was love like we loved each other. She's like, that's fine. We we've been doing this for a long time. Not a problem come on in. But their version of non Monogamy was really based on Don't Ask Don't Tell. Even though I was living with them. It was based on so much secrecy. And that again, the hives I couldn't live like that. And I started to think that that's just what it meant. Like if if you were going to do something alternative had to be secret. And honestly, I mean, that led to a really dark place. I was I was struggling with suicidal ideation. And it was really really hard because that didn't work. So if monogamy didn't work, and non monogamy imagining it was one big monolith didn't work, then what was I going to do? And I, it was very much like, should I just walk out into the woods? I don't I don't understand what do I do? Learning for me, meant, like how to do this better man making all the mistakes. And then, you know, literally studying my way out of it. I just went back to school and I got my bachelor's, my masters and my doctorate studying relationships. And I did my doctoral studies specifically on jealousy because it never those problems never go away like that issue it never, it never resolved. Instead, I learned about it a lot.
Ellecia 10:46
Oh, I love that. What? What? What advice would you give someone who's in a similar situation to that.
Joli 10:53
And the first advice I would give them is talk about it with people, but not just a person, like, go find yourself in multiple communities, don't listen to just my podcasts or just this podcast, go listen to lots of them. And that's not because you're looking for your guru. You're looking for the variety, the breadth of of ways to do this, that there are and you're looking for a way to be able to communicate with other people because as soon as you open the door to non monogamy, you're opening the door to all the other ways. And now the better your vocabulary is, the more diverse it is, the more broad it is, the better you'll be able to communicate with all of the people who come into your life, including the monogamous ones who are gonna be like, What are you doing? Get yourself a big ass vocabulary. Yeah, yeah,
Ellecia 11:43
I mean, and that kind of goes with like, you don't know what you don't know. Like, like, how do you know what you're looking for? What your desires are, if you don't know what the options are? I know that when I I was married monogamously For 13 years got divorced. And then I was like, Well, I don't want to do that again. I guess. I guess I'll just be a big slut forever, because that was the only option that was that I knew of I didn't know swingers. I didn't know polyamorous folks. I didn't know anybody that wasn't monogamous, or cheating, or like, a serial, monogamous dater? So I was like, Well, I guess I'll just fuck people and tell them, tell them tell them the truth. Because like, that's, you know, the morally right thing to do. So. I started meeting People who were like, Yeah, that's a thing. It's
Joli 12:30
a thing you can you can make a whole life out of it. And, and it's funny, I was married, actually, for exactly 13 years. So relationship 17. Okay, there's like a lot of things. I think that you're right, when you like when you first explore, it's just so easy to imagine that there is like a right way for you to do it, whether that's just go having a lot of sex or what no matter what it is. But also, over time now it's been 12 years for me. And I'm like, oh, it's been many different versions. I've had lots of different versions of non monogamy that worked for me. And then they evolve, and they change and learning the skills of how to transition gracefully. That's the thing. I don't care whether you're monogamous, non monogamous, or anything in between, learn how to transition gracefully. Everything changes. Everything changes.
Ellecia 13:25
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I always tell people is being intentional about your relationships, rather than just letting... I don't know, just not knowing what you want, and seeing what's available and then settling for it.
Joli 13:43
Right, right. I mean, when I think about settling now, I think, why did I ever think that was the right way to go? Yeah. But my imagination just did not have. It hadn't been stretched in those directions. And when I first heard, it was actually sort of funny because I was in this circle of people. My friends, they were friends. And I first heard that a couple of them were screwing around, like they were there was like, there was stuff going on. There were no real words about what was happening, but everybody knew. And it was sort of aboveboard, because everybody knew, but nobody had words. Nobody knew how to deal with the fallout that happened. I was the first person in that particular group to come out and just be like, I'm doing this and like, put my I put my flag in the sand. I said, this is for me, in that particular situation. I had fallen in love. So it wasn't just about wanting sex. And that was what messed everybody up. I needed to like, have a whole other level of conversation with people about not just yeah, I'm horny. But also, what happens if I'm actively in love with more than one person? Can I do that without fracturing and splitting my psyche and starting to become different people for for my different partners? Nobody was having that conversation. And that's the one I needed to have.
Ellecia 15:00
Yeah, oh, that's really good. That's really good. Because that's, I think that that's kind of what's expected of people in relationships is to be the person that your person needs you to be. Yeah. But when you when you have multiple partnerships, like that's just not possible, like you have to be yourself,
Joli 15:19
Right. And we're all influenced by the people in our lives. We know this from high school friendships, right? Like, my two friends want me to be different people, essentially, they like different parts of me. And I have to figure out what to do with that. But most of us don't figure out what to do with it. We just stumble around, and it kind of hurts. And we just Yeah, it's not comfortable. And, and non monogamy sort of takes that and turns the amplification up because we add the potential of owning houses together, bringing children together, having buying, like, doing our lives big. And now also having people who are expecting us to be consistent, and having influence from multiple directions. And non monogamous people aren't actually doing something that monogamous people aren't doing in some ways. Like we're all just out there being who we are. But monogamy tries to give you a path that you won't have to navigate this, it tries to like, give you a map here. If you just follow this map. It'll make sense. And for me, as soon as the map didn't start making sense, I was like, Oh, what have I done? I the only the only way out was to actually write a new map. And then keep writing it forever.
Ellecia 16:32
Yeah, I don't know. I'm just picturing like, Dora the Explorer with her backpack and her map like okay, we're gonna go. Where's the adventure taking us today?
Joli 16:43
That's it. Yeah. Very Slutty Dora the Explorer. Wrong.
Ellecia 16:49
There, they're there. Actually. It's one of those. Oh, my
Joli 16:52
okay. Yeah, I can kind of see it.
Ellecia 16:54
There's a parody out there.
Joli 16:56
Sure. There's a parody for everything?
Ellecia 16:59
Totally. Oh, what kind of coming out to your friends. What was that? Like?
Joli 17:07
For me, it was tragic. That first coming out, it cost me everyone. Literally everyone, none of those people are still in my lives. Some of them sort of circled back in our, our, you know, tangentially kind. And you know, in that outer circle, but I lost everyone, my best friend, all the people who had attended the births of my children, and all the people like people who I thought would be with me forever. It was I tell that, and I say, the problem, the biggest problem appear to be that we didn't have any language. And the imagination that everybody had of what was happening was just terrifying. It was as if they'd woken up and I was introducing these, this, you know, range of monsters and fear and scary stuff, it was overwhelming to them. Now, I would have explained it very differently, I would have helped through education, I would have helped them understand what I was talking about. And now when I come out to people, I come out, knowing that some people are going to be ruffled, and that that's not about me. But at the time, I didn't know about it, it just hurt so much, so much. And there was also a lot of threat, because my ex tried to take the kids because of it. So I acknowledged that not everybody comes out for other reasons, too. I mean, if I'd known what was going to happen, I don't know, I might have waited a few years until I had more ducks in a row. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't pretty. But that's what leaves me in a place to feel like it is actually my calling to help people. Like do this in a way that is not destructive. It there may be elements of your life that are no longer in existence afterwards. But it didn't have to be so profoundly destructive.
Ellecia 18:52
Yeah, I think that that's, that's one of the big struggles that a lot of people have is what what if, you know, what if the people in my life know about this, and then everybody leaves me?
Joli 19:03
Yeah, yeah. And I think that we've had, if we'd had any examples, it would have been nice to be to be able to point to them. So this was 12 years ago. And I think now, when I'm working with somebody, and they're like, Okay, you know, we're ready to come out. One of the first things we look at is okay, which TV show or film or something like what's going to be relevant to them, to at least give them the the idea, because just introducing story really helps calm a lot of people's nervous systems like, Wait, there are stories about this, therefore, this isn't the weirdest thing I've ever seen or heard. And it doesn't have to be traumatic. And so we instantly turned to that. And from there, the conversations can be about creating shared vocabulary. What does this actually mean? Because there's the other thing if you don't do the vocabulary piece, the people you're coming out to are going to make up a story in their head. That's usually not helpful and that includes our Kids, you know, coming out to our kids figuring out what you know how to explain these things. And yeah, yeah, not simple but doable. Doable now?
Ellecia 20:10
Ah, yeah, yeah, we are, we are really lucky to have I mean, not only platforms like this that we can make make this more visible. But yeah, like stories, movies, books, shows. It's it's becoming much, much more public, I guess.
Joli 20:28
Yeah, it is. Well, it's when I was first coming out, because I came right out of the gate, and I was open. Like I was telling people, the number one thing I heard was that never works. That never works. That never works. And it took me a couple of months to realize, Wait, Everybody keeps saying that never works. That means they have an idea of what we're doing. That means they've seen it before. And so I started asking a different set of questions. Tell me what you mean, what have you seen? And it turned out? Yeah, of course, my parents generation, they'd all everybody had been touched by this in some way. And even my grandparents generation, there were some stories that came out like, oh, yeah, so their idea of the statement, it doesn't work. It never works, was based on the fears that they had, because they'd seen little at bits of non monogamous behaviors playing out inside a monogamous paradigm, not the same thing as doing a full upgrade to the system of like, okay, actually, there's new rules. And we're gonna talk about the whole world being organized differently. It's a completely different thing. And so that helped me have different conversations with people, and even some of the old guard got on board and said, Okay, I guess I guess it could work. Yeah,
Ellecia 21:42
I love that. That's, I hadn't thought of that. I might kind of go to as always, like, what does work? Yeah, because I'm not seeing a lot of that out there.
Joli 21:51
That was my argument, when I was when I was putting in for my doctoral study, like, I had to get past the core faculty, right, you know, you have to get your idea. And they didn't understand why I wanted to study jealousy specifically in the polyamorous container. And I was asked during my oral exams like, so. polyamory doesn't seem to work. I see it, my clinical practice just doesn't seem to work. And that was my question back. I said, Tell me what does and I will study that. But last I checked, the divorce rate was 50%. So and he, to his credit stopped, he actually took a beat. And he was like, Okay, I didn't think about the implications of what it meant to have something work. And cool. And so I ran that study. And I'm really glad that I pushed back because it also it enlarge and the imagination in that in our cohort in our group, you know, that was a roomful of people. And every time we do that, fewer people are then on the other side. I mean, that that's bottom line. I want fewer people to be othered. I don't need that much else.
Ellecia 22:57
Yeah, yeah. What is the most awkward or inappropriate or intrusive things someone has asked you or said to you about your relationship style?
Joli 23:10
My actual most awkward question comes up all the time, all the time. So I have seven children. And I have the bookends I have I gave birth I birthed the oldest and the youngest, as well as couple of the others. But the number one question people ask is, are they are they really your kids? And I'm like, oh, okay, we're in dicey territory here because I was present for these children's births. they call me mom. Do you really care whether they came out of my vagina? Is that your question? And it does really, it relates to my relationship style, because as soon as they figure out that I'm not monogamous, they just assume that that means our family is less of a family. And it hurts so much. Like I'm tearing up just now thinking about it. It hurts so much. Because there's nothing I care about more than my family, just like I did when I was monogamous. And some of my children came to me through a different path. But yeah, that's the tough one.
Ellecia 24:12
Yeah, it blows my mind how much people want to know about things like, whose vagina did those children come out of? Or whose blood is running through their veins? Or who is having sex with who like, why do you need to know this? Was that relevant?
Joli 24:29
That is actually the other big question that came up when I was in a triad. Like, as I said, one of the partners and I had a platonic connection. But we had promised each other a life together. We bought out like we bought property together, where we were all in. I was homeschooling all of the children together. I couldn't imagine why anybody needs to know whether we were having sex and the ironic part was, she wasn't having sex with her other partner, either. She wasn't so but nobody was asking that right is that the presumptions and the assumptions and the pain that they caused, because now we were layering values around sexuality on to our assessment of the, the goodness or the the worse the validity of each of these relationships. That was tragic. And that had an impact not just on us, but on the children themselves. It you know, it can be haunting for the kids to have other people like trying to figure out who the family is based on who's fucking. So was I supposed to say fucking?
Ellecia 25:30
I checked that little explicit box. Oh,
Joli 25:32
there we go. Okay.
Ellecia 25:36
There's no way I can
Joli 25:37
I can? No, we can't. Yeah, I'm the kids.
Ellecia 25:45
So how is it raising seven kids in a, like a polyamorous environment,
Joli 25:53
going all the way back to the very beginning of us all living together. So the youngest were two and three to two, they were two, three and three, were the three youngest of them. So they have no memory of anything before. Like there's there is no before times, right. And the oldest at that point was 10. So we've been all together now the whole time. They're now 14 to 22. How it's been like, is when people would ask how everything was in our family. I'm like, Ah, there were plenty of times when I'm like, Oh, this is harder. This is hard. But the kids, the kids all really bonded beautifully. The kids, like they were a unit. They have each other's backs. And that was unexpected for me. But is probably the most, you know, like, when I think about dealing with the difficult stuff. I think that was what I had wanted. I set out down this path because I fell in love with someone. But the very next question was, hey, what do I want to be in the world? And he and I both came to this conclusion that what we wanted was a more connected, bigger family, a more connected world, not just like family in this tiny sense. But like, we wanted our children to connect deeply. And that we succeeded on even though raising seven kids is it is a that is a fool's game. And then, you know, they're old enough now to tell me how they feel about it. And they're like, Yeah, it's fine. We don't care. We don't want to know about that. Like, leave us alone. I don't know. It's not as hard as anybody thinks it'll be. It's, it's the same work, it would have been to raise these kids in any way. And with extra vocabulary. That's all.
Ellecia 27:36
I love that. People ask me a lot about like, Well, what about the kids? Yes, like, I mean, kids have a bunch of people in their lives that love them. That's great. I mean,
Joli 27:45
right, I never got that piece that was people's first fear for me was like, well, the kids will have and I'm like, more people to love them. It'll be okay. I think one of the downsides, and I did not see this coming was I didn't, and now I know how to do it better. But at the time, I didn't know how to do the graceful transitions of people in and out of my children's lives. So now I'm much more thoughtful about that and have been for a long time, at the very beginning. There were a few like, harsh starts and stops of people who who came and went quickly. That's not ideal for anybody. That's not what I want for them. And now could have been avoided if I'd known how to do things a little bit differently. So those are things that, yeah, make a plan. Like if I had been thoughtful and thinking these all the way through, but when you're first falling for somebody, like Yeah, it'll be fine. It's not, it may be fine. But that doesn't mean they'll be together. Raising kids is, you know, it's hard. But the polyamory part of it just makes it easier.
Ellecia 28:41
I completely agree.
Joli 28:44
More hands on deck. Yeah.
Ellecia 28:46
Yeah. I mean, and not only that, I mean, even. But I'm curious what your advice would be to people when you said about, like people coming in and out of in and out of their lives? What would your advice be to people about that?
Joli 28:57
So I think this is actually a lot has a lot to do with the adults the like, my own attachment stuff, and not just my attachment stuff my own, like how am I going to react to this person coming and going. So, like, I have earned secure attachment. And now I feel pretty good. When someone exits themselves from my life. Now, I maintain myself really well, I have a good set of tools. I know where to turn. I know how to self soothe. Earlier, I didn't. So it's not so much that the other person was coming and going, that caused the trouble as it caused tumult in me. And now I had given them a place to point they're upset, right? This other person had done this big, great big air quotes done this to me. So this was just, I didn't know what to do. A single person who's dating could absolutely face the same problem. This was about me learning the skills of transitioning gracefully, and knowing how to take care of myself as that happens. So now that's what I asked. I asked, What's your plan your own self care plan? And how are you going to make this so that the kids can recognize that people can be in and then leave our lives. And that's not the end of the world we can grieve. And that's not the end of the world. So now I worry about it much less. I tell the kids when someone has broken up with me, and I'm like, This is how it is. And it's really honest conversation and includes things like grief and time to reintegrate, rather than just them seeing the harshness. And that was on me, I didn't know how to do it better.
Ellecia 30:27
That's so good. I genuinely had never thought about it from that angle of how the parent is reacting around the child. I've never thought of that. Because people you know, always say like, even you know, even monogamous people who are dating, you know, maybe they got divorced or whatever, and they're dating and they're like, You got to wait six months, because you don't want to bring people into their lives. And I've always thought, like, that's coming from like, a very monogamous place. Like, if you're introducing someone to your children, then you're introducing them as someone who's going to be the next parent or the caregiver, you know, like, you're introducing them as a, like a staple in your child's life. And I'm like, but they like, grandparents, they see once a year, they have cousins, they you know... Yeah, like, like, I don't see where like, that shouldn't be a thing. It's the impact that you make it mean, I guess, like, right, that you assign it.
Joli 31:16
Yeah. So I had a friendship. And last year that I think was a much more impactful loss. The kids watched me go through deep and this was a completely platonic friendship. But they watched me go into profound grief and, and just be there for like a month, I was just in the hole of it. That was just, I mean, that could have happened to me no matter what, it has nothing to do with my non monogamy so kids can deal with this. But me being better resourced meant that the kids were able to actually learn from what I was going through, they were able to watch me without being sucked into like caretaking for me, or being scared. That I think is an asset. That's not a liability. That's an asset, them watching what happens when people come and go, I mean, because people are going to die, too. I mean, stuff happens. So I feel like my kids actually are better suited for managing the realities of people coming and going now. But that was on me to figure out my stuff first. And, and if I were doing it over again, I would still do all those things. And it's not that I would set a time limit on when people could see, but it would make sure that I had my shit together. More therapy. That's all. Totally.
Ellecia 32:34
I wanted to ask you about jealousy. Since that is a thing that you are very versed in.
Joli 32:44
It's my jam. I tattooed the attacted the kanji symbol for jealousy on my back accidentally, so I have to study it. Yeah. It's just required by law now. Yeah. Oopsie these things happen. It was it was all in good. I meant to be tattooing the word zeal. And but zeal is the root for jealousy. It didn't know. Yeah, it's a whole thing. But it means it's followed me. So I study it deeply. I'm actually running another study on jealousy right now, as we speak.
Ellecia 33:10
That's amazing. I have always identified as a very jealous and possessive person. Like I knew that before, I decided to be non monogamous. And I was like, Okay, so these are traits that aren't serving me in any positive way. So I'm gonna have to figure out how to deal with this because I lost that. Because I don't want it. It didn't go away. But I know how to deal with it a lot better.
Joli 33:31
That's it. So I love that you that you claim that because so frequently, people either imagine that they have to be jealousy free somehow, though. Yeah. Or they imagine that you have to somehow come up with a solution to cure it, or kill it, or crush it or get rid of it. And that is, it doesn't work. I have the data doesn't work. Don't do that. So I love that you owned it. And you learn how to work with it, because that is the only solution I've seen actually work.
Ellecia 34:02
Oh, yeah. It's like, it's like, okay, I have this emotion. And for some reason, this has been labeled as like it if you're feeling jealous, it means somebody is due causing you harm.
Joli 34:18
There's the thing, right? There's the thing, and well, it's wonderful. It's a wonderful way to so we have this great big emotion, one that we have made into a monster we also pack shame along with it. It's an emotion that we've had since we were six months old or younger, because it's about being attached to our primary caregiver, you know, so we don't die. So it's like, fundamental and then just for good measure. We say let's put some shame on there because also you should feel bad when you feel jealous. So when you feel jealous, project it onto your partner, make sure that they know they should change what they're doing in order to make your feeling go away. We've that's it that will not work. It won't work. So Yeah, you're right. It's an emotion if you can own it and defang it from its shame. And just say it's an emotion. And it's made up of a bunch of other emotions, when you peel it apart, if you have emotion, if you have anger, for instance, attached to your jealousy, we probably have other tools for dealing with anger, you don't go round, you know, killing people. So you have other tools. So you will use those, if jealousy for you is tinged with depression, cool, let's get a great self care plan in place. So that when you first start to see the signs, we can deal with it before it goes too deep into sadness. Or if jealousy for you is about anxiety, awesome, you we live in a golden age of dealing with anxiety, like coming up with active ways to deal with anxiety. That's great. So there's so many opportunities to unpack jealousy, and make it actually really useful. Because it's a great warning sign like there it is, like a great big, you know, Woo Woo Woo. So now, you know, to do something.
Ellecia 35:59
Ah, oh, I love that I love the connection to the other emotions, and how would you care for yourself with those other emotions?
Joli 36:06
Right, right. Because then we get to reclaim it. As soon as I take jealousy, and I start pointing my fingers outwards. And I say, Okay, well, it's my emotion, they may be doing problematic things. But that's a separate issue. That's about your relationship agreements. That's about what you expect from the world. Separate. So if I but if I recall that projection, and I say, okay, but the feeling is still mine. Now, I have so many more options in front of me, and I am at, I'm at no one else's, you know, like leisure, no one is trying to hurt me. I've got this thing. I can do something with it. It's so empowering. Jealousy becomes, oh, this is my work to do. Great. I can do that. Oh, yes.
Ellecia 36:51
What would you say are like the, I don't know, top 123 Like easiest things to do when someone is feeling jealous?
Joli 36:59
Yeah, the first one is the most important. And it is that when you're jealous, take a beat. Jealousy is neutral, until you act on it. Take a beat. When you feel jealousy rise up. If you give yourself time to metabolize it a little bit, then I've got some great moves we can make to just work through it systematically identified a five step cognitive framework to work through it, we can put all the anxiety tools in action, all that. So take a beat breathe, don't take any action right away. The next thing to do is to unpack it really just just now you've noticed that you're jealous. So you've noticed, great, awesome job, just start to name the emotions that brought with it. So I say you pop the hood, who's in there, it's going to be different for everyone. And it's probably going to be different situation to situation. So for instance, I have an anchor partner who I trust deeply and who doesn't bring up a lot of jealousy feelings for me when he's out. Unless he's out with just a certain specific kind of person or a certain specific kind of situation. And then Whoa, it knocks me over. I can unpack that emotion, see what's in there. That particular situation, it's deeply related to not just fear, but also to this profound insecurity that I have. So there's fear insecurity. Great, awesome. I have a self care plan that I wrote up for myself on a sticky note, it's only three steps. That's what I have to do. If that jealousy shows up looking like that I know exactly what my three steps are. I learned it over time. So you don't try to figure it out all at once you're going to create a plan that's custom fit for you to really work with jealousy. Because in my experience, it doesn't go away. It's archetypal. It's, it's here for a reason. So rather than hoping to no go away, make a really strategic plan for what you do when it shows up.
Ellecia 39:05
Yes, yes, I love that. I always tell my clients write down like have a plan. Like if you know that something is coming up that is going to be activating for you. Don't try to figure out what to do in the moment when you're sitting in the muck of it. Like, have it written down have a plan of things you can do to take care of yourself to not spin out of control, like like, written down. So you don't have to try to think, be logical when you're sitting in your emotions.
Joli 39:31
Exactly. And if you have a plan so for instance, if you have a self care plan, that doesn't mean it can't rely on others. You know, a self care plan can be about hey, if you're like for instance, you could have on your self care plan to to talk to a friend but but maybe I want to pregame with that friend, hey, I'm going to be feeling jealous. That will not be helpful if you pile on and like oh yeah, you know, this is their fault or whatever. So, you know, like, bring your friend who you trust into that process with you, and have them be supportive have them remind you, you know what, this is a good time to watch a movie, this is a good time to let's go get a manicure. Like we don't need to actually engage with this story that's now brewing in your head. So it's not just about taking care of yourself in isolation. It's also about connecting to people and helping them help you in really positive ways.
Ellecia 40:24
I love that. That's so good. I love that. Okay, I want to ask you, what do you think makes a healthy relationship?
Joli 40:38
Oh, juicy question. Oh, self awareness, as a foundation. For me, relationships are the best way for me to individually. Relational individuation, like coming to know myself better through relationships is my goal. That's how I live my life. But that requires that in order to be healthy, I need to I need to be continually becoming self aware. The upside to that has been that foundationally when I noticed with myself, my partner's my children, my clients, as they increase self awareness, they naturally increase their their vocabulary, their skill sets, their ability to ask for what they need, and to receive what they've asked for. So there's a million things I could write this, I could write a whole treatise on what makes up a healthy relationship. But I would want people to focus on the foundation of self awareness without being myopic without just navel gazing. I'm not much for that. It's, it's about looking at myself in the mirror of relationships, and seeing what I'm really doing. And what that says about me, not what it says about the other person. That's a separate issue worth dealing with. But separate issue.
Ellecia 42:01
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Mm hmm. That's the best. That's the best.
Joli 42:08
People think it's all about the sex. But for me, it's about the it's about this. It's about relating to other. And as I come to know, oh, capital, oh, other, I come to know, capital S self. So much more.
Ellecia 42:20
Yes. Yes. Yes. It's like, people hold up this mirror reflecting back to you all of all of the parts of you. Yeah.
Joli 42:30
And what, what I find is this, the image I use for it is a is a crystal like, we're, we're these beautiful, messy geodes, right. And we're, and often we only show, and really, we only even can like, over a given amount of time, we only show a few facets to eat to a person. And then a new person comes along, and all of a sudden they are somehow they have just caught the reflection of these other facets. And now, oh, I start to know myself as more complex, more diverse, more, I am multitude, that whole thing. And then there's all the stuff that's, you know, that like craggy back of the geode like, then there's all that we could get into that. But the relationship, the ability to have people see these different facets, all of these facets, now I become a bigger, more complicated version of myself. And ideally, I remember that each of those people is just as complicated. So what I'm seeing of them is probably still only some of the facets and we can keep trying to explore and know more and more. But I think in reality, you know, we're just so unique, new people bring out new parts of us and demonstrate to us so it's like having like, shifting to having all these different mirrors with different tones and different qualities that I can get to know myself better. And, and not get caught in that navel gazing like, I love interiority, but like just go and deep down and stay in there all the time. I'd rather connect to other and get that reflection point.
Ellecia 44:06
I love this. Using crystals as an analogy. That's so beautiful. Okay, it brings to mind a couple of things for me one is Steven Universe. Have you seen this?
Joli 44:14
Yes. The whole paper on it gave it a convention. Yes. Yeah.
Ellecia 44:21
It totally that that made me think of Steven Universe. What a brilliant frickin show.
Joli 44:27
Amazing.
Ellecia 44:27
Uh huh. Uh huh. And then also, the way the way you just described that how different people bring out the different facets of us. Really, I mean, so many people are have this big fear of like, you know, why does my partner like doing this thing with them, but doesn't like doing this thing with me? Or, you know, you know, all of the variations of that and that that crystal analogy makes that so clear.
Joli 44:53
Right? It's I came to this analogy, I literally am looking at the crystal on my desk, and I say this like it's To remind me that no matter how much I know, my partner or myself, any, any of my partners like, no matter how much I point them at each other, there's just so much more complexity going on. And this we just we have this one life. And in reality, it makes a lot of sense to allow all those facets to shine off of different sources in different ways. And that doesn't mean sexual non monogamy even that's about us have it really allowing for emotional connection, depth of friendships, allowing for people, I'm I am super complicated when it comes to what I study and what I do for businesses, I've had 13 businesses, knowing me and all those ways would be almost impossible, right? Like I have my CrossFit people and I have my, my psychology people, that's just allowing for that that multiplicity that I couldn't possibly ask for more from any partner, than to see me as being that complicated and to gift them that as well. It takes out that whole idea that, that if our partner wants to do something with someone else that has anything at all to do with us
Ellecia 46:07
Exactly. What is what's one thing that anyone can do for free that will help them have more successful relationships.
Joli 46:19
I'm gonna go with taking time to actually know yourself, yourself, by spending time with yourself. Simple, right? I wanted to think this through because there are a whole bunch like you could resources, you could do stuff, but it is free to spend time with myself. I could do this in a lot of different ways. If, if I spend time with myself, and I like my own company, my relationships will necessarily be healthier and more stable. because there'll be less about acting out codependence and more about me actually needing my partner as a whole entity and knowing that I am whole. And I don't come to this easily. I'm an extrovert extrovert. So like, it is not easy for me to say I'm going to spend time alone. But doing it, that investment is right. Whenever I do, I'm like, Oh, I'm awesome. This is great. I should I'm awesome. So it just returns to me so much. And benefits my relationships so much.
Ellecia 47:29
That's beautiful. I love that. I know, it took me about five years to finally like get comfortable. And not only comfortable, but to love sleeping alone. Yes, it took me a long time. Like it was really I was like I would get anxious and sad. And just it was miserable thinking like, oh my god, I'm gonna have to sleep alone tonight. And now I'm just like, oh, it's Monday night, I get the bed to myself.
Joli 47:56
Totally, it's a different thing. I I struggled with it, I finally put myself to the test one time. i My partner and I were seeing someone together. And I was like, I keep imagining that I'm going to have trouble sleeping alone. But you know what? I you know, I have my kids when I was young. So it's like never been alone, even when, even when they were little I just had like little bodies in my bed. There was always so many people. So I put myself to the test. I just left them downstairs, they were sleeping happily in the king sized bed and I'm like, I'm gonna go put myself to bed. Oh my god, that was the best sleep ever. Like, oh, so that was some of it was just my imagination that I had robbed myself of the previous four years of like, thinking it would be a problem was not a problem, right?
Ellecia 48:41
What a the gift.
Joli 48:43
They got to enjoy something that they wouldn't have. And that was awesome, too. I got to like bask in the compulsiveness of that because it really was coming from that place of like, awesome, have sex or don't or whatever you want. Like that's, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go do me. I'm gonna just go be me. And we all got what we wanted. I couldn't ask for better and I had to experiment with it. Because I don't think I would have just believed it. If somebody told me I needed to try it out.
Ellecia 49:09
See how this goes. Yeah.
Joli 49:11
And trust that it doesn't stay the same it like it shifts over time. Even if it's hard for you with at some point, it's worth revisiting any number of things that happen like something can not work for you. And then you know, give it a little time and you might be surprised at what is totally completely comfortable. I'm always surprised now by like, wow, yeah, more than a decade in. I think I got this thing. And then all of a sudden I can get totally blindsided. I was swept up by the tidal wave of jealousy just like six months ago. Totally knocked me on my ass. Like, I had no idea it was gonna come. So I had to experiment again. What am I going to do? What put the tools into effect? Because we're alive and it just keeps changing?
Ellecia 49:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hmm. I love that. Um, Okay, before I let you go, because I don't want to take up your whole day, because I could
Joli 50:07
we could definitely talk forever, right?
Ellecia 50:10
So before we do that, is there anything? Is there anything else that you want to share anything you wanna share with the listeners?
Joli 50:17
Well, the thing I would just love to share is these conversations like this. These are the exact conversations that helped me understand what my relationship philosophy was. And from there, it became really, really promising. Like, I could see how I could work out those, those rough spots, and all those things that were really hard about being polyamorous, through having the conversations and actually walking myself through, like, what do I really think. So I just want to say, like, find some people to have conversations with, they might be online, they might be in person. And some of the conversations I had, they were with die hard monogamists, who were open to hearing my perspective, and we got into the conversation. I didn't actually need to be just in polyamory groups, I just needed to be willing to be the brave one, saying, I want to talk about this stuff that we just have all accepted as given. So here I am, so many years in, and this conversation was incredibly generative to me, so I hope other people go out and have more conversations like this.
Ellecia 51:20
Yes. So good. I love that. That is exactly it. Right? When people come to you and like have questions, then you get to work through, oh, why? Why is this a thing? And why don't we all accept this thing that like, why are we doing this thing that we never said like we never bought in on? We just went oh, that's the way of things,
Joli 51:39
Right?
Ellecia 51:39
Doesn't mean it's wrong. But like, why do I do this?
Joli 51:43
And when you have those conversations, and you start to recognize some things that you don't actually philosophically agree with, you can still decide to do, like, I may I may choose to be monogamous with someone. Even though it doesn't align for me philosophically, even though it doesn't align for me orientationally. But having the conversation lets me know who I am. And now I'm doing it with intentionality. And that changes everything because now I'm, I can operate on an actual, like, ethical platform, I can really I can dig into it, why am I making my decisions? And how not just doing what I think everybody's supposed to do. Except if that were true, there would be a rulebook and we would just have it, we would know what the rules were. We don't have one.
Ellecia 52:27
Just people being people, just people in yup, yup. Thank you so so, so much. I have enjoyed this immensely.
Joli 52:39
Thank you for having me. I want to just say to if people want that five step framework for jealousy, you can grab it free on my website, so they can go to listentojolie.com and just grab it. It is my mission to have people having real conversations about jealousy does not have to crush you. It'll be okay. Thank you for having this conversation with me. This was like I get to have the rest of my day on a high, this is awesome. And I hope we can meet in person.
Ellecia 53:04
Absolutely. I'm gonna put I'll put your the link to that in the show notes so that people can grab it there.
Joli 53:10
Yeah, it's just great to have I just want more people to have like, some resources. There are only a handful. Yeah, there's just only a handful.