Welcome to Playing With Fire, the podcast for people who are ready to custom build their We're talking about non-monogamy. design it as an individuation. Want to leave the defaults and make your life in the right place. Ken, let's talk etymology today. Etymology? Not entomology. Not bugs? No, not bugs. Now, I want to talk about, well, we're not just going to talk about etymology.
Let's talk a little bit about liminality. And in order to do that, let's start with a dive into what the hell and why are we using this big fancy word when maybe we could just use another word. Liminality. Liminality. What is that? Liminal. From the Latin limon meaning threshold. And I pushed back against this word. If you were to walk into a gaggle of depth psychologist, Possibly they would be called an overthinking of deaf psychologists as a group. If you were to an over-souling, really.
If you were to meet a group of us, the chances are that you would hear one of us say the word liminal within the first 15 minutes. I remember hearing that word early on in your studies and being like, oh, that's a new one. And it is a word that I hear across many disciplines, right? We do hear it other places, but I find it to be incredibly helpful as a concept as we think about what's happening when people are exploring non-monogamy, especially...
And if you're listening to Playing With Fire, then you're interested in what is this as a reflection, as an... an exploration of my whole life, of who I am as a person. We tend to have listeners who care about the fact of non-monogamy as a piece of their life and they want to do it well and they want to really soak up all they can out of it and Well that sounds like a...
A good approach if you like to grow and learn in life. So what does liminality have to do with all that? Well, so how I hear it is liminality, meaning threshold. I pushed back against this word because as I heard the word threshold, I thought, well...
a threshold is just like a piece of wood but you know like on the door edge right where i just step and i'm in one place and then i'm in the other place while we're talking about etymology it's the thing that holds the threshes in that that keep your floor clean There we go. Okay, so I thought of it that way, and that is why I was like, I don't know. I don't know why we're all putting so much emphasis on this concept, liminality, liminal.
However, many years of school and then lots and lots of years of helping people. And I think. emphasizing this word was strategic and intentional and thoughtful on the part of my professors and my analysts and I'm very glad that they did because it was my mistake to imagine that the threshold was I was literalizing it. I was thinking about what my father would point to and say, you didn't sweep around the threshold and it's all dusty and dirty there. Yeah, it's not just that line.
The liminality, the threshold we're talking about here is the space between this and that. It is when you are neither here nor there. The phrase that often comes up in alignment with it is betwixt and between. So to... Give us some examples. We all experience liminal periods in our life. We experience them when we are in transition. We experience them when we are transitioning in age, in stage, in phase. When we graduate from high school that summer.
between the end of high school graduation and before whatever else we're doing, especially if we're heading off to college or we're taking a little bit of a break. Elemental period. gap year, a liminal period. But we can also think about being in a liminal time. You had a layoff back in 2018, a liminal period. You were no longer employed by that company and therefore bound by the imagination that you had of who you were.
when you worked for them which you did for i don't know 15 years or more ah 19 19 years okay so your imagination of who you are is deeply impacted by that container and then They ended it and you experience this period of well now what right liminality is often a period of now watch and Now bring us back to relationships and
Often we are in a liminal period and don't realize it in our relationships. Like when people come to me and they're super uncomfortable because perhaps they opened their relationship. But maybe they didn't really understand exactly what that meant. We often open without really fully even understanding what we don't know we don't know yet. So we open up and...
Now we're exposed to, oh, there's actually a lot more options and a lot more feelings in here. There's a lot of old wounds. There's all this stuff. And my old self, the version of me who existed in that old relationship. Well, that version of me no longer exists. I have crossed a threshold into this. space between and I like to picture it like a long hallway right there's this long hallway and off this hallway are a lot of doorways into what might be next
But which one will I choose? Where am I headed? What am I being drawn toward? And when I think about the opening experience, One of our clients said, they put it so, so beautifully, they said, I opened my marriage five years ago. but i opened myself this year like they they went through a deep dive in the year of opening and in private work with me like really digging into What does this all mean for me? Who am I now?
Opening is also about finding out what you want in other relationships perhaps deconstructing all of the things you think relationship is for perhaps constructing a new reality of your relationship agreements getting clear on your needs and wants and all that But it is also a time of allowing for your imagination to expand. And that's what's so uncomfortable for most of us about this liminal period. So we have this concept of the liminal in between.
two things so okay i mean i i get it you know i'm um if i step over the threshold while i'm stepping over it i'm not inside or outside i'm in this this middle place so what what is it that makes that time so important and in the context of relationships in particular. Well, when I think about like my own stepping into that, that in between, that betwixt in between. I think about the fact that
I was letting go of an old paradigm. I was letting go of, and I don't mean old, like, ooh, old, ick, but at the time, that's exactly what I did. In order to leave behind an old paradigm, often we will demonize it. Often we will fall into habits of like, ew, not that. I'm not that.
that can put us into a space of okay well then who am I and often we will over a line with something that we haven't yet actually understood right and we'll choose something new and I did it myself I stepped out of the monogamous paradigm and very quickly was like okay I learned the word polyamory I'm in, going for it. 45 days later, I'm fully ensconced in a triad. not having any idea what it meant.
to be polyamorous and i don't mean what it means to some objective other i mean what does that mean to me I hadn't had enough time to allow myself to sort through to really sift through and mine from my experiences of monogamy but what of that Did I like? What worked? What didn't work? Are there pieces of that I want to keep? Are there pieces I don't? How did I get hurt? What do I need to do to repair? Forget what other people might need to do to repair for me.
Can I even determine what I need to do to repair, recover, rejuvenate? And do I want to ally with, do I want to like set myself up to be? in a new space like in a new box am i am i just going boom this now i have this new label and i'm gonna do that When I haven't even had a chance to breathe and be in that liminal space. And I, this was intentional. I didn't give myself any liminal time because I hated it and I didn't want to. So what did you hate so much about?
I don't like not knowing. And that is what that is, right? Right. Or I didn't. So I feel myself. I'm constellated a little bit right now. I feel myself pulled back into that version of me 16 years ago. Who's just like, no, well, I don't know where I'm going, but I know it's not that. And that version of me then sought my child selves seek safety through knowing or the illusion of knowing at the very least, right? The idea that I could know.
And so finding a new label and finding a God, what I would have given for a set of rules that I was supposed to follow or something. I actually feel kind of lucky that I didn't find any right away because it meant I really had to hack through my own thinking. I had to journal and... flounder but also I didn't have any examples I had no role models and that really hurt because I picked up a word and I tried to get into it immediately. I tried to do it perfectly. I tried to be good at it.
A paradigm shift isn't about being good at something. A paradigm shift is it seeps in. You seep into it, it seeps into you. You experience the world different. You change both your inner and outer contact. And that just by its very nature takes time. It takes time, and I didn't give myself any time. I was so uncomfortable. I rushed. And I see a lot of people rushing through their liminal period also in hopes that they'll feel safe again. But the safety of not knowing, right?
If what you're rushing toward is the safety that you felt, before you had considered your relationship really consciously when you were living out the paradigm it's not about whether you have more than one partner but if you're living inside a paradigm that says you don't have to think about any of this There's just a standard. There is a social norm. Just do that. Just do that. Don't worry about it. Don't think about it. Just do what everybody does.
except you don't know what everybody does. But we all, we get into these patterns and then we live them and frequently my clients are between, you know, 10 and 30 years into that. deep well-worn groove of relating with one specific person. without having questioned everything that they are doing, without having deconstructed and questioned and just gotten clear about what do I want out of it. well i can see why um
And I mean, I'm speaking this in the theoretical, even though it's totally not. But for podcast purposes, I can see why it would be very uncomfortable to be in the liminal space. And I know it's uncomfortable to be in the liminal space because I've been there. And you mentioned the change of paradigms and you mentioned earlier about. time to reimagine. Right. So we step out of one paradigm. And in order to figure out where we're going,
In order to plan or think or take action or decide, I need to know, where was I even? So I have to start thinking about where I came from, what paradigm I'm leaving. how the new one is related to it and what like there's so much to imagine and think And there's the paradigm level and then there's the specific level. Yeah. Right. So episode 194, right at the beginning of this season, was about reimagining your relationship. And we talked a little bit about creating a liminal container.
some intentionality around how much time am I going to spend in this in-between and what am I going to do while I'm in there? Also, there's a case to be made that we're all experiencing liminality all the time. But think about the domains of your life. Oh, sure. Like in different ways. In different ways, right? So like right now, I happen to be in perimenopause. Total liminal space. I'm no longer real. I'm done with my childbearing years.
But right now my choice, like I could still technically have a child. but i'm definitely done and i'm experiencing symptoms of that that tell me like yup your yeah your body's really done with that and your soul's done with it but also i'm not on the other side right so in that area but in my relational life right now I feel very settled, very stable, I feel very confident in my paradigm and confident in my subjective choices.
And that could all change next week. And those are just two areas of my life. You know, if I think about my work life, my artistic life. If I think about my therapeutic life, I could look at my life in all these different domains. Oh, we're in a liminal time. We're actually right at the... a beautiful one where our last child is about to turn 18. Right. Like we're just about to experience the weird amorphous in-between of
Well, technically they're all adults. Now what? What happens and how long? And we don't even get to know how long that lasts. Right. And that's an important piece of the puzzle. There's the difference between an intentional, I'm going to devote this much time to. to creating a liminal space and then there's the yeah and you actually don't get to be in charge of it all yeah it's also happening and we don't know what will unfold
And also, you're rarely the only one in a shift. Every time we're talking about your relationships, okay, who else is involved in this? Not just who else is involved in this specific relationship, but who else is involved in your life? What else is interacting with you? You mentioned our kids and I just realized we have a perfect example of liminality that everybody has heard of. Adolescent.
Yes. It's literally a word that means becoming an adult. You're not an adult yet. You're also not a child anymore. Yeah. And so there it is. Adolescence is. And so. And our relationship has certainly gone through some adolescences along the way. You know, times when, well, okay, what we were doing, that worked for a while. It's not working anymore. We need to do something new. And now, look, what... What do we want to change? I'm a big fan of empowering myself.
to actively be in this, okay, I need to loosen my grip. knowing because I like to know so much I'm gonna loosen my grip and let myself be in the in-between but in order to do that and feel safe enough in my body I have to create some artificial boundaries So I will pick periods of time, and sometimes they're tied to the earth or seasons. Sometimes they're tied to something that I just already know is going to happen, like a graduation.
And I will just devote my energy, my intentionality and my energy during that time to the process of... letting go of my old imagination of what's possible and what is, and making space for the unknown. And that's the key for me. It's the unknown aspect of liminality. that is so uncomfortable but also so necessary. and If we were talking about liminality in terms of rites of passage, we could talk about how there is this very necessary stage in a rite of passage where you leave the known world.
You enter liminality. in an intact culture, that liminal space and time. would be
It would be very well defined by someone else. And held in ways, yeah. Yeah, like your cultural context would hold you. It would have cultural technology for... managing that time yeah whether that means creating more turmoil or relieving turmoil we it totally depends on like well what's the right what's the right supposed to do what's that that that period what's supposed to happen then but When people are going through
relationship change whether that is opening their relationship or closing their relationship or reimagining into from one form to another maybe you're moving from one type of non-monogamy to another maybe you're de-escalating maybe you're Trying to figure out, well, maybe there's not even a name for how we want to end up. Maybe there's no label. Maybe we're going to have to make it up. But you're reimagining all of that. There's a lot. There's a lot that's going to need to be let go of.
And a lot of space and time and trust needs to be invested in the not knowing. And that's where I see people really flounder and struggle. Well, you said that and I thought about all the... All the struggles I've seen in that area. And so what do you recommend for people in those spots? Well, it makes me miserable too. So if that's any... It makes me miserable to think about how I can't actually skip that part.
Even though I know all this and even though I understand that there are some scaffolds, like some supports I could put in place to help me move from one stage to the next. I mean, you've created them for other people. The year of opening is that. Yeah, exactly. The year of opening is a year long, in part, to create.
this liminal container of let's explore this deeply. So there's time for the reimagination and the understanding of what came before and what's coming next for you personally. And I also... created Individuation Alchemy, which is another year-long container not based on relationships, though some people are doing relational work in there for themselves individually. But the point being, this is time where you are choosing, I'm going to choose this year.
to get in and devote time and energy to my interiority, to paying attention to what's going on, to showing up in community and being vulnerable, and to learning some more tools that I could apply, tools that have been used to reclaim soul in the Western tradition for a long time. Many of us have lost touch with the idea that there there are tools for that that that fit even for my Like I I feel like I couldn't be further from an intact culture like I I don't have any of that
But depth psychology offers a bunch of options. Jungian and archetypal psychology offers a lot of options for what do I do in the in-between? What do I do? I like to put some structure in and that structure can look like intentional time spent wondering. intentional topics being brought to my awareness on an iterative basis as I let myself wonder and experiment and wander through this time. But I also like to practice breaking habits.
You know, the plot twist, you know, jumping up and yelling plot twist, just radical discontinuity. I'm just going to do something different. I'm going to, so move all the furniture around in your home. Um, move all the books. Oh, a big one for me. I take all the books off my library shelves. It is a lot of books. Thousands of books. I take them all off the shelves and I don't do it neatly. I do it messy.
Then I put them all back with new intentionality not in their old places and not in their old groupings, but a new format And that shifts how I think. It shifts how my soul feels. I'll do the same thing with my tarot decks and my ritual objects. Yeah, move them around. And those things might sound like they're not attached to how I do my relationships, but they absolutely are.
They're attached to how I show up in the world and how I interact in my world. You're in your relationships. So anything you do that changes the way you think and changes your habits is going to... you know, transfer over to all of your relationships. Right. So also when we talk about in opening, we talk quite a lot about differentiation practice. And differentiation is that ability to...
Feel the edge of you. Like what's mine and my feelings, my thoughts, my needs separate from my partner's holding steady in the face of like, oh, it is uncomfortable to recognize how different our needs, wants, desires are. and In order to actively be practicing differentiation, not just saying, check, I did it. But to be practicing it, we have to break out of the well-worn grooves, the habits. So sometimes it's as simple as like, well.
Let's go to two different coffee shops and have different experiences right now Let's be on different dating apps So we're not talking about the same things or seeing the same people on the same app It can be in the funniest thing. It can be about going to visit friends if you've always visited them as a couple. Going one at a time and hanging out and being yourself.
And so these are things that often can be a helpful part of a liminal experience if you're working toward an individuating, an individuation-oriented relationship. But they're just examples. There's not a formula. There's a whole huge menu of things you might choose. In your liminal experience. I really appreciate your comment about changing habits. Building new ones, resetting things that promote what you're trying to make be an old style of thinking.
Because it's amazing how small changes can change that. Little shifts in perspective. It can be really, really small. It can be as simple as sit at a different... Chair at the dining room table. You probably have a chair where you sit most of the time. I know there's somebody out there saying, not me, I'm always doing great. Good for you. But most of us are creatures of habit.
It can help us get new perspective to quite literally get new perspective, change the perspective. The liminal experience is... It's about creating space for you to imagine. So another thing we can do in that time is pay attention to our dreams and pay attention to the symbols that start appearing in our life.
What starts arriving? So, by the way, it was arriving the whole time, right? Like it doesn't start, but you're going to turn attention to it. So this is something we practice in individuation alchemy all year long is noticing. What do you just keep coming across? What symbols just like... Yep, they just keep popping up. What do you just keep being drawn toward you can't seem to pull yourself away from? The synchronicities that pop up. Exactly. Just starting to notice that.
Tracking your dreams is another way. We're going to do a class later this year on dream work for our relationships, and I think this is a good opportunity to... It's a practice that you can undertake that is... It might sound like it's off the beaten path, right? When people think about, what do I need to do in opening up? Almost everybody talks about, I need to learn to communicate better, and then I need to get out there and date.
I actually think there's a ton of things to do that have to do with you getting to know you. Who are you? And if you can understand that, your opening experience is going to be quite different. I love this conversation. So I've been open for decades. I've been non-monogamous for decades now. And as you all know, the fact that I've been open for decades doesn't mean...
I spent many of those decades actually working on getting better at it. And so after all this time and working with you and being partnered to you and all these things. Ciao! All of the things that you just talked about. about the paradigm shifting and the liminal space and how to shift perspective. I need every one of those. I need to implement them right now. I used to turn my desk around a bunch.
I haven't done it in probably a year. Like little things like that. I need to just start doing those things because I'm finding old habits. just not going away even when i'm like no i want to change this it doesn't change And I look around, it's like, I have changed nothing in my physical environment. with all of the talk that i've been like i want to change this i want to grow this way i didn't do anything to really like
help me. I didn't set up my context to help me and that's what the liminal space is an opportunity to do that. Right. So one of the biggest things that's happening for people when they show up in my world, like just check yourself right now. Did you show up to this podcast, to my work? Because something was almost intolerable in your life. Something was so uncomfortable. That would be a really common experience. I get a lot of emails. I talk to a lot of listeners.
We hear you at the AMAs. Like, I've been sticking this out, sticking this out, and I don't think I can take it anymore. Yeah. Something needs to change. Something has become intolerable. You are staring in the face your opportunity to intentionally decide to enter a liminal zone, right? Because some of what's creating that intolerable sensation is
gripping with your unconsciousness, gripping to what was old, the outgrown version of you. And as you grip to that, you're gripping you. It hurts. Yeah, it hurts. Yes, it does. and with thoughtful, patient. courage stepping into I don't know what happens next but I am going to actively implement change I am going to let myself not know what happens next. And if I can't tolerate that forever, I'm going to at least dedicate.
This time. I'm going to dedicate this year, this decade, this month, this week. What is it for you? This quarter, what is it for you? To being in the not knowing. If you can spend some time in the not knowing, a paradigm shift is possible. If you cannot tolerate being in the not knowing, paradigm shift. will not happen. It will not happen inside. You might reframe your entire world around you.
out exterior somebody from the outside might look and say like oh they changed their whole life yeah but if you can't not know the things you can't let yourself pass through that liminal space you're going to stay where you are Exactly. And the version of you who was will now be in this new life that you've crafted incredibly uncomfortable. And I have seen many clients and Friends. And lovers do exactly that. Do exactly that. Like this version of me has to, it has to persist.
And so it will persist in this new container even though it doesn't fit here. And it is tremendously uncomfortable to carry that into that space. So the beautiful thing is choose your discomfort. Yeah. Choose your discomfort. Yeah. You're going to experience this discomfort. I often hear this around like, but I can't be a person who gets a divorce.
Oh, actually, you can. You can, but right now that sounds intolerable. Or, I can't be a person who's polyamorous. Right now, you can't. The version of you who exists that way. I don't know what you want yet. But if you can create some time to be in the not knowing, in the betwixt and between, you have the opportunity to find out who you are fresh. This has been an amazing conversation. Thanks, Ken. Thank you so much. I love this stuff. I actually wrote a chapter on...
For a book, it's not out yet. When the book comes out, I'll let everybody know. But I was asked, I was invited to write this chapter by... some amazing authors who work in the field of theater and rites of passage, and I was asked to write on it. from the perspective of polyamory, moving into non-monogamy, exploring non-monogamy as a rite of passage. And the thing that came up for me was It's a liminal experience.
so when that resource is available i will make sure everybody has it but in the meantime i hope that You'll show up and talk to us about this at one of our AMAs. Yes, please. It's a great container to show up and ask questions. It's a small group. It's Ken and I and whoever shows up. And it is often just a tiny handful of people. So if you've been looking for a space to come and just be seen. uncomfortable.
And lots of people, actually about 25%, according to a recent national survey, are interested in some type of open relationship. But how do you know if you are ready to open up happily? Not everyone is, and that's no problem. I've got a 60 second quiz that will give you the answer. And even better, you'll walk away with your next step whether you're good to go or not so much when it comes to opening up.
And this is no BuzzFeed nonsense. I personally designed this quiz from my years of academic research. Go to JolieQuiz.com. That's J-O-L-I-Q-U-I-Z. and find out if you're ready to