211 The Drama Triangle: How to Get Unstuck From Your Sticky Fights

Welcome to Playing With Fire, the podcast for people who are ready to custom build their love. We're talking about non-monogamy, however you design it, as an individuation opportunity. Want to leave the default and make your life spectacularly you? You're in the right place. Hey, let's talk about drama. Maybe because we've had a little. There has been some. There has. Well.

We can talk about drama, but only if we talk about ways to get out of it, too. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm usually looking for. It doesn't seem like it. Well, it's what my highest self is looking for. And then there's all my little parts that are like, let's have some fun. Let's act out. Mine too, by the way. Like we both have like serious drama energy. It's spectacular. Way to go. Us. We can really, we can really put on some theater. Well, so.

I'm assuming that you want to talk about the drama triangle then. I do. You use the drama triangle as a model a lot, and I think it's really helpful. And then we can talk about the empowerment dynamic. Yes. Yeah. The thing about the drama triangle with the victim, the persecutor, and the savior, you can use whichever words you like. Hero, rescuer. Yeah. But the thing about it. I know that, generally speaking, we all have one we prefer or that we enter into our drama from most frequently.

Right. Like we have, we have patterns of behavior. Humans operate from patterns and we do tend to have like a spot that we occupy, like a, like a drama style. A drama style. Yeah. Yep. I am an avoidant victim. Well, that's great because I am an anxious persecutor. So here we go. Yeah, we have a great time. Oh, yeah, it's really fun. It writes itself. Yeah. Those plays. The thing that I find most...

interesting slash challenging about those times is how long it takes me to figure out that I have entered the trauma triangle uh it's it's not immediately obvious it it's I trick myself or I fool myself or I'm doing it on purpose, stepping into the victim role. So, so often that is where I come in and it takes me so long to identify the fact that. I'm thinking and feeling things through the lens of victimhood. Well, I think that's perfectly natural. The fact that it...

It's hard to see ourselves, right? To be a witness to yourself. is challenging. You know, we all think we're self-aware, but the research very clearly indicates that we're delusional. And like as a group and as individuals at any one time, right? First off, There's our unconscious and our shadow. There's all the stuff we are unaware of. And then there's also just the reality that even if you're really working on yourself.

We're complicated. And there's also the context that we find ourselves in. And in any given context, it's really easy to see how other people. are causing things in our life, are creating things in our life, how the situation is happening, right? It's really easy for me to see that because all I have to do is open my eyes, open my senses, and look around, feel through this, think through it there.

I can see it's happening out there. But to look at myself, to position myself, to acknowledge who I am and the role I am taking in any particular situation. It's challenging. And it takes some clarity. It takes a pause. It takes some willingness to own the aspects of myself that I don't necessarily want to. And it also...

Also, once you recognize that you are participating in the victim triangle, the drama triangle, right? Whether you're victim, hero, or villain, you also have the option to step off, which means... I find it can be tempting not to see it because when I don't see that I am participating, that I am co-creating my experience of being in the drama triangle.

I don't have to do anything. I can just stay there. As soon as I acknowledge my role, well, now I also have to acknowledge that I am in it and I am part of that. Now I have to decide, am I staying in or am I going to take an action? So we'll talk about the empowerment dynamic and how you can step out of the drama. But can we give a little background context for this model? Yeah.

Yeah, what's your background? Yeah, do it. Yes, please. Let us know where this came from. The drama triangle, it's a relatively old at this point model. It's almost as old as you, sir. That's going back a ways. Well, it was born in 1968. Oh, not quite, but almost. It's just a year younger than you. Stephen Karpman offered up this model of...

human interactions, specifically dysfunctional human interactions, as a way to conceptualize what we see playing out over and over again. This model is at the basis for transactional analysis. structural analysis. And I use it in relational individuation work because I see how the victim, the hero, and the villain, those are archetypal roles, right? So as an archetypalist, it makes sense to me to see, oh.

Right. I can be stepping into these very, so an archetype is a pattern of readiness for action, right? They're human patterns of action there. So it makes sense to me to think about. When I am in a dynamic, I'm in a situation that's playing out and it feels like it's running its own story. It feels like it has a life of its own, right? That is the hallmark of archetypal energy.

playing out through me. And I have to decide then, am I going to just let it have at me or am I going to actively participate in this process? Which doesn't always mean immediately stepping out into something, yeah, some higher version of yourself or whatever. It also might mean acknowledging, wow, what parts of me are enjoying where I'm at?

What parts of me are feeling satisfied with where I'm at? And how is it serving me? How is staying in this drama triangle, how is it serving me? And that doesn't have to be serving me in some like great way. How is it serving me to reinforce the stories I already have about myself? How is it reinforcing my core wounds? Yep. What internal goals do I have that this is serving and moving me toward? Unconscious goals.

It's my unconscious goals that create. So this is when, when we talk about shadow work, what we're really talking about is how do I get to, to, how do I come into dialogue with the aspects of myself who. act in ways that I ostensibly don't want to act. I don't want to be this. And the drama triangle is a great way to see through this.

to see through the patterns that I just keep enacting. Also, it's a triangle. And you know how I love triangles. You do love triangles. The drama triangle also, you know, we could map this over onto. the jealousy triangle, which is something that I talk about in my research a lot, right? So we could also position how the victim, the hero, and the villain, right? I could also talk about the jealous one, the beloved, and the perceived interrupter.

right? These same roles, right? Three is an incredibly dynamic number from an archetypal perspective. Three creates change. It creates movement. There's a lot of action happening around it. Triangles are also very strong and resilient in an engineering sense. So when I think about a triangle, I think, yeah, there's something really human about playing with this triangular energy.

And I like the relative simplicity, too, of, yep, okay, so we have a triangle, we have these three archetypal patterns, and I think that any one of us could... probably come up with a whole bunch of other like archetypal roles that we could map and and like figure out like oh this is how i'm behaving right now but um But you don't need to. Like these are really good, really well thought out distillations of the kinds of energies that.

promote drama right i mean we could call the villain could also be yep the persecutor or the bully um it could be the the attacker like there are lots of things we could put but i like those three words because I just feel like they evoke something in me. Yeah, me too. Also, it is easier to see our patterns when we can see the fact that these are... These are story elements, right? Humans build stories around victim, hero, and villain. Like most of our stories.

have these elements in them. So they come very naturally to us, very easily. So of course, they're sort of self-maintaining once they get going. I like to think about the drama triangle too as

a way for me to check in with, there's a difference between being in a victim position because something's happening to you, right? Like harm happens. Damage happens. So sometimes you are the victim, like that's the role that you would be assigned in a particular assessment of a situation. When we're talking about the drama triangle, we're talking about the stuff we sign up for basically.

Like the times that we allow ourselves to be in these cyclical patterns, especially the patterns, the patterns we repeat in our relationships over and over and over again. So I want to be clear. We're not talking about... domestic violence and like, oh, there's the, there's the, the victim and they're just, that person's just, you know, they're just repeating it and they're in it. No, we're talking about the kind of drama that is.

I could opt out, but I also participate in it. So I just want to be clear about that. The kind of things where like it could be a fight over, you know, why didn't you take the trash out again? Absolutely. It could be simple things. Who breaks our agreements all the time. Breaks our agreements. Or who initiates sex. Mm-hmm.

Who initiates sex? That person could see themselves as the hero, but they could also be put into the villain role. Like, oh, they're always pawing at me. They're always asking, am I the victim because I'm always being asked for sex? Am I actually, wait, because I'm always being asked, but I always say no. Am I the villain? Am I the villain? Right. Yeah.

It is. I like to use the drama triangle as a way to see through. Or the rescuer, because this person is like, oh, I never get to have sex. Yeah. Sure, I will. There, boom. So you can, in any given situation, occupy one or.

more of these three. Which is beautiful. And bounce around. It doesn't take three people to fill up the drama triangle. You can have just two. But honestly, I think the most fun is when I realize, oh my gosh, I am playing all three roles. in an internal drama. So we talk a little bit about the inner council, right? I am inherently multiple. I am made of all of these autonomous complexes that exist within me.

they can each take up different positions. So I can have a part of me that is aligned with the victim, a part of me that's like working through valiantly to like save that victim me and also a villain that's just. nailing it there's like just just giving it all i can i can occupy all those spots on my own we're so creative we're so creative i mean sometimes i think the most common

time when I experienced the drama triangle all by myself alone with no other human agents involved is between me and my alarm clock and past Ken. Past Ken does not have the same ideas about what present Ken wants to do when the alarm goes off. So what do you do? Oh, so sometimes I just wake up and I'm like victim, victim, victim, victim. I don't want to get up, but I'm going to get up and go into grouchy baby mode martyr.

Okay, I'll get up. I am the victim here. I am doing this for you. Oh, so there you can put me. I could do it for you. I could put the kids there. I could put you. I could put the... Freaking dog. Actually, the dog becomes a villain very often. Every day. Every day. Our 20-year-old Pomeranian. Like a couple of hours before my alarm will go off in the morning, he goes off. Like, oh no, I am.

The world is crashing down around me. This is all happening to me. Yeah, so you do something really interesting. You move from victim. So you always get up with the dog. Always. I mean, I think I get up with the dog maybe once every couple months. Yeah. I got up with all the nursing children for a thousand years. And I fall asleep faster, so it just makes sense. Thank you. I really appreciate this. But you... I hear you. And I.

My hypervigilance is strongly attuned to the way you roll over. And so I hear you roll over and, and I hear the victim roll over. You hear the little internal groan that I don't even say, but you can hear it. And I often then I can feel you in the room shift from victim. into hero mode when you realize that you're keeping me I see you scuttle and like pick up this dog who's making noise and is going to wake me up and in fact you know has already woken me up but but if you can

If you can rescue me from that, right? You move into that hero mode. Now you're doing something, right? And the dog becomes the villain for both of us. But now you've stepped from victim to hero, which I imagine is a relief. to your nervous system. Sure. Yeah. It's just a more comfortable spot for yours. But-

I noticed that I often feel how like, oh, does that mean I have to occupy the victim role? Because I really don't want to. Yeah. I can feel it. There's this little reaction that happens to me. And this is such a small thing. This little reaction. action where I, I notice, oh, does he feel like he's rescuing me? Is he doing this for me? Because honestly, this is a deal we made. Like this is in our, in our day-to-day agreements that you will get up with the dog and I don't get up with the dog.

but are you doing it for me or are you doing it because you're in agreement with yourself okay that's exactly what i was going to say so yeah we we're getting um we're dovetailing the um the drama triangle into how we make agreements. So I made an agreement. Yep. I made an agreement. We, we together collaborated and decided, yep, I'm going to be the one who gets up and.

deals with the dog. Which means when we sleep apart, you always take the dog with you, which I really appreciate. Thank you. Which means that I have a choice in that moment of, it could be completely neutral. Oh, I made an agreement. There is no, there's no victim. There's no hero. There's no villain. There's nothing here. There's no drama at all. It's just, this is the agreement I made. It's just a 20 year old dog.

Yep. There's just a 20 year old dog doing what 20 year old dogs do. And so I could just get up, pick them up, do the thing, go back to bed. No drama. It doesn't usually happen that way. So there is though, that's, I think this is why I did not plan to use this example, but it is so simple. We all have things like this in our life. It could be drama-free, but instead we enter into a story.

Right. So rather than just have the sensation of like, oh, I hear the dog and now I feel myself having to get up and having to do this, we enter, we start making a story and it's in the. It's in the movement from like, yes, this is just happening and there are sensations involved to what's the story you're telling yourself about. What story is feeding your various parts? Do you want, is there a part who wants to be a victim right now?

which case, yep, I'm going to sign up for that role. Like right now, the dog just barked to go out, which opens up- He could be the hero. The dog could be the hero in this moment because otherwise- Because the dog barked instead of- Not going out. Exactly. Great. But you could conceive of that as a heroic move on his part. Yeah. And then there's, I could. I could then pick up my phone and text the kids and say, somebody, please let the dog out at that point.

I could be victim. I could be like, I could be any of the parts right there. I could be the victim saying, Oh no, the dog needs to go out and I need to ask. Or I could be the hero taking care of it. Or it could be the villain being the one asking the kids to stop doing what they're doing. And yeah, what story do I want? And this is where we also draw each other into. Yeah.

the drama triangle, right? Like as you assume that victim role, like if I assume the victim role, like, oh, he, he needs to be the hero here. So I need to, oh, oh, thank you so much. And I have to melt into that. Right. Whether I do it in that moment or later in the day, I make sure that like, you know, I saw this great big sacrifice. Whatever. We can draw each other into it. But also- This great big sacrifice of doing exactly what you agreed to do.

Oh, wait. And also saving yourself from the dog. And saving myself. But it is so easy.

To to draw ourselves into the story inside and then also To assume the pattern right like we tend to we jump onto the drama triangle In a familiar way So I am much more likely to jump in in the villain role in much of my life. That's the on-ramp I learned as a child. I learned to jump on as the villain so that I could... get between my, so my father or mother was often the villain. And I would, I would jump in and be a villain and like one up them at it. And like, that's how I.

wrestled with the challenges of being raised in the household I was raised in. It feels comforting to me. It's a horrible role. It's awful. It's not comfortable, but it's familiar. But it's familiar. The victim role. Not comfortable. No. Like, it's not comfortable. It's gooey in there. Yeah. But it is familiar. And the rescuer role, the hero role, well, that's a lot of work, right? That's not comfortable, but when it's familiar to you, when that's the role you play. And I think it's...

fantastic to recognize our on-ramp, but also not get overly clung to it because we all occupy these different roles over and over again throughout any given day, any given week. And if we have a particular Like everybody has these like familiar arguments or niggling little bits of their relationship. And we tend to just play out our roles in this dynamic over and over and over again.

The trick is, can we escape? Yeah, right. So these are our patterns. Patterns can be broken. They can. And luckily, so Cartman... that that work that modeling it's it's helpful it's meant for the therapeutic environment and that's great but um

What I really love is later along came the empowerment dynamic. the empowerment dynamic was specifically put forward. There's actually, you can look it up. We'll put links in. There's a foundation, a collaborative that came up with this. And I think it, I think it entered the scene in the early nineties, I believe. positing another triangle that you can flip into, right? So there are three other roles. Instead of victim, hero, villain, we get creator, coach, and challenger.

I find this model so valuable. I do too. And like it's almost cheesy. Like it's giving like mid-90s cheesiness. But also. I love that it salvages even the villain. It reminds us that all archetypal roles have shadow and brightness. They all have the good and the bad. They are not just one thing. Because frequently I hear people, they can kind of get behind the idea of like, okay, I want to step out of victim, but also, you know, victim.

We're all going to feel victimized sometimes. Well, hero. Well, maybe I want to be the hero, but the villain. For many of us, it feels irredeemable. Right. But the villain, when we reconceptualize it as a challenger. As someone who's going to push you to be the best self through challenging your ideas of what's possible or challenging your perception of what is, that is...

That is not comfortable, but. And it is a really, I think it's a really well chosen word because a challenge can be accepted or not. Right. So as a challenger, I can say. have you thought about this? What if you do these things here? Let me offer you these ideas and they can just be ignored. You know, you don't have to accept them. Right. So it isn't a, you know, it's not a point of, it's not a position of control at all.

I want to just differentiate, though, because the challenger and the coach are two different roles. And I think people often imagine that the challenger is like the coach. I hear that edge right there. Yeah, I see. So the coach, the coach role to step from hero or rescuer into the coaching role, you're using inquiry and curiosity and active listening to draw out people's best solutions. You help them.

by allowing them to see that they can make their own path out of that victim role into creator. You have to remain unattached to outcome. You need to offer support and encouragement. But the challenger, the challenger is different. The challenger is encouraging. They're encouraging growth, but not in any sort of comfortable way. This is.

You know, this is someone, they're people who are often known as like truth tellers or people who they disrupt. They disrupt the familiar. That's the word that was coming to mind was disruptors. They turn the world upside down. There's an inversion. They often have trickster energy. And if I were thinking archetypally about this, I would say that the challenger is frequently the trickster, right? And the trickster, again, like...

This is a difficult role to inhabit and to interact with because we don't always like what the trickster brings. Yeah. But they do change the reality. They change our perception of what reality even is. Okay. So in the case that, all right. Unfortunately, the dog was kind of the villain in our... So I can't think of how he would turn to the challenger. No, he doesn't have the same kind of autonomy that you and I do as humans.

Although Solomon is pretty special, and it's possible that if we presented this to him that he would be willing to choose. I mean, he's 20 years old, and so he's like 140 in human years. He's basically Yoda. He's Yoda. Gandalf. He's one of those. Yeah. But, uh, so in a challenger, in a, in a situation where, um, well, you said that you are, you're, you're on ramp is often the villain.

So when you switch to villain to challenger, can you tell us a little bit about what you do? I do it with you all the time. So one of the things about shifting into the challenger role is not everybody's asking you to be their challenger. Uh-huh. Right? Right.

Another option, if you are the villain, another option is to knock it off and leave the situation because not everybody is asking you to be a challenger in their life. But you and I have... a clear, explicit agreement to be each other's individuation partners, which also means that there are times where one of us is stuck. In the mud. And that mud is, I can't see beyond this reality. And in your life, since I was, I don't know, basically a child.

I have been able to challenge you in a way that most people find difficult. People, for some reason, find you intimidating. I do not. No idea why. I don't know why. I do not. But it's true. Happens a lot. I never have found you intimidating. You are. I mean, I love you and you're beautiful, but you're just not intimidating. You're a softie. But people have not been willing to challenge you. And I have always been willing to stand toe-to-toe with you and say,

Yeah. I don't buy it. I don't buy it, Hamilton. I don't buy it. That story. No. When I come to you with a victim mentality, or a hero mentality for that matter. or just apathy or apathy right um if i come to you with that energy you you have a choice of I could move directly into coach. You could move to coach or you can say exactly what you said.

So I'll be like, oh, so this just happened. And here's what I feel about it. Here's what I think about it. And you'll be like, nope. I am. Think about it again. Like, look at it again. What do you see? Yeah. No, I, it's really, no, really. Yeah. Crap.

You're right. And this is a dynamic you and I have. I don't do that with everyone. No, but we have a pre-existing agreement that this is what we do for each other. But it's not just the agreement. This is also the energy you and I have. It's also one of the things that... leads to sex with us like i challenge you i stand in the face of your like your whiny grumpy babyness and i'm like yeah not buying it not not doing it

And there's an energy there. Like we have a lot of polarity. We have a lot. Oh, right. So one of the things you do is you deny the premise of my victim role. Yeah, totally. You don't engage with it. You don't even resist it. You just. Deny the premise and continue. And it is important to note that that's only one of the options that I have. Yeah. Because I do also.

frequently act as your coach. In fact, I've done it on the podcast about a million times. But I'm thinking the episode that we did on existential kink, I quite literally coached you through a victim role. I coached you out of it and we worked through that. And one of the reasons that that can work is I learned the skills of that. So like the challenger role and the villain role come sort of...

They just rise up out of me. The coach role I learned, that was something I intentionally sought out and learned. The victim role also rises up naturally in me. No problem. Like easy peasy. And it's been interesting to watch you struggle because you didn't know what to do. You would join me in my victimhood. Okay, let's be victims together. That's not how this, no.

So when I was just a disaster of a victim mentality, yeah, you would just get in the pit with me. And we could stay there for weeks. And that was really messy. So this model helped. Both of us, because it just gives the simple language of, well, when I'm in victim, my choice is to step into creator. Do I step from victim to creator? And I have found myself. A time that really, really stands out to me is in a total meltdown, just total dissolution. I was a complete mess. I was struggling.

I was struggling with my mental health. I was struggling with multiple big situations that were happening in my relationships and the rest of my life. And it all boiled down to like... Two o'clock in the morning, I'm curled up on the floor of my bedroom and I'm like, I'm weeping and crying and gnashing my teeth and I'm a mess. And you've tried to help me, but I am just dug into this. It was such a disaster. But I remember.

I remember hearing a part of me. I heard myself inside. I'm all curled up and I'm on the little carpet that's right in front of the... the doors so I could, I could, um, had choices. There were doors right there. And I remember thinking, I hear a voice. What are they saying? Oh, they said creator.

And all I did was reach over and I opened the sliding glass door from the position I was in on the floor. I created a change. The change was, oh, now I feel cool air on me. Okay. That cold air is kind of shocking. It was. It was cold. It was like not just cool. It was cold. Okay. And I got up. I got up onto my knees. I stood up. I stepped out onto our little porch there outside of our bedroom. And I just kept hearing that word, creator, creator, creator. And the victim parts of me.

were mad. Now they were actually mad. They were fighting me internally. You were not even there. At that point, I had gotten so deep down into my victimhood and you had lost, like you didn't know what to do and you had tried. You tried coaching me. It was not working. So you stepped out of the room. And for me, sometimes that's exactly what's necessary. I need to be left to feel, I need to feel the bottom. I need to feel the rock bottom of this particular.

um dynamic and as i did i stepped into creator and it was tiny little actions that were just one little tiny purposeful step after another and before i knew it Yeah, I was actually in creator. And then I was self-coaching. I could hear all my parts starting to come back online and like, right, right, right, right, right. This isn't one thing.

Like, like all situations I have found myself in, this has an upside and a downside and there's, there's a mess here to clean up and you hate how you feel right now. And, and also you're here. And there are opportunities in front of you. And in that case, it was really clear for me to see. You started to feel your agency again. I felt agency and I could feel how my internal challenger had.

had gone haywire. They were just in, they were in full villain. And even the way they were challenging me was, it was like incredibly self-injurious language. That is not the challenger. The language of the challenger is not the same as the language of the villain, right? The language of the villain is bullying, demeaning, cruel. The challenger is a truth teller and is fearless in that.

They also have some shared goals. There's some desire for, yes, and I want the highest good. I want the best outcomes here. And it can be easy for me to lose track of that voice internally. I find it easy to access for other people and hard to access for myself. But the, the victim also sound like they also tend to be parts, right?

And they can be hard to hear. And I find the creator voice, like for many people, is incredibly hard to hear. Like, yeah, but the victim story is right there. I could just stay with it. I could just stay here. I could stay here forever. Maybe somebody will come save me. What surprises me about myself is that, yep, I enter the drama triangle most often as victim. And yet my creator is often not that far away because when, like when I, when I cross whatever the little threshold is that lets me.

like flip over the triangle and see the back. Well, it's my optimism. Which causes many problems because I won't plan properly. It has its problems, but one of its strengths is it energizes the creator. It's like, I'm sure there's stuff we can do about this. Let's, let's find it. Let's try stuff. It might not even work and that's fine. We'll just keep trying stuff till it works. So luckily for me, that energy is right there. And over the years.

I've, I've cultivated that, that switch. And it's, so I, but it's fine. It's funny how you've cultivated it in a whole bunch of areas, but then I can, I think about the troubles we found ourselves in over the last few weeks. There are a few certain problems that you have where like, wow, you just like, you really dig into victim. I do. Yeah. Okay. Can I just share the actual, like this is. Sure. Let's do it.

Yeah. This is really good. Okay. Yeah. So you were in total victimhood around our sex life. Yeah. Which is generally awesome, but we were having a really big problem. Yeah. deep and profound victimhood that you could not see any way out. Like we were, we were right at the edge. I mean, things were so, so bad. They were intense, but. And it was just like we were in this tight cycle for about five weeks of like. Yeah. Now, you lost your job last week. Yeah. You stepped from victim.

to creator in less than 30 seconds. From the time that you stood up from your chair and walked 20 feet into my room, you had already moved from victim to creator. And I could hear it in your footsteps. So. Thank you for letting me share this example because that's the same you. In these two different situations, you have more or less access to that sense of agency. The context matters so much. Yeah. So much. So you're more...

In the sexual realm, specifically with me, I don't think that you play this out with everyone. There is something there that can… there's some parts of you that want to portray that helplessness and hopelessness and the, the, I don't, I can't take responsibility for this. When it comes to. So when it comes to other areas, you don't do that at all. The number of times that instead of having sex, we had five hour fights that I like.

That I created. That you maintained. Maintained and sustained for all that time. So there was a part of me. Because I really would rather have sex, dude. There's a part of me that wanted to have the fights more than sex. Yeah. And, you know, I'm learning about those parts, but there they are. Right. Whereas, so you were laid off from your job and. I mean, it was literally 30 seconds. You walked in. I saw you look at me. You were...

already in full creator. You had taken ownership of this. You know exactly what you were going to do next. You were calm. You were in a totally activated, but in this really healthy, like, yep, I am activated. I am here. I am present. Here's the reality. Got this. So the context, it's not just the context of as in the outer situation, but the meaning. Again, the story we tell ourselves about these different contexts. So you've talked about your sexual shame.

and your own sexual repression. And that stuff easily keeps you replaying victim roles. And then I... I struggle to stay out of like, I don't want to be either your, I don't want to be in the victim dynamic at all with you. I don't want to, I don't want to be on the drama triangle because neither the role of the. the hero or the villain is, I don't, I don't like them other than in very specific kink contexts. Right. Okay. That's a different situation. But outside of that, I don't want to.

I want to be in a generative dynamic with you, but our better angels aren't always there. That's right. We're not always there. It's different for each of us. But when we have these sticky fights, these sticky relational patterns that just keep playing out, if we reconceptualize them through this lens. If we look at like, where do I keep getting into this? What's the starting point?

It's also helpful to remember that we can jump from point to point because the victim, when you're in the victim, there's this helplessness and hopelessness and they avoid change, right? They convince themselves and everybody else that there's no point, like every effort. is futile. There's just no point in doing anything else. The rescuer, though, is often driven by guilt and they try to help, but they also keep the victim dependent.

Yes. And they mask their own problems. I was thinking about that when you were describing when you were on the floor and I had left. Sounds good, but. After trying all these things, I had left. And one of the things that we have learned. is that despite my intentions, I can unconsciously nudge you toward victimhood or or you know maintain the system maintain the system with with you in the victim role and um

And so sometimes I need to just not be part of the system for a while so that you can restore yourself to creator. And it's tricky because there are times when I say go away. And what I mean is. don't leave. And there are other times when I say go away. And what I mean is you need to step out of the room 30 seconds even, and I will get a hold of myself. Yeah.

And this is the mess of being a human. We're not different. Oh, it's not going to be linear. It's not going to be straightforward most of the time. Right. And the persecutor, the villain can also. continue this system, right? They tend to blame and they bully, they manipulate and they control situations, but often they get sick of that role after a while because they also receive all of this blame.

Like they're receiving all this blame and all this accusation. And so when they get sick of it, they switch roles. They go to victim. Now they're the victimized, right? And when they switch into victim, all of a sudden they put on the other, like, it's you. See, I'm always the problem. And they switch the energy. And we can find ourselves. just in this for years, decades. Yes, yeah.

Learning how to recognize where you're at in a particular moment and then being able to step out of it is basically a superpower. It is. And hard to do. It is hard to do. But also simple. They're small moves. You described the small move. You opened the door. You opened the sliding glass door a little. That's it. You took one tiny move and it opened up, literally opened up a door for a bunch of other steps to happen.

and so in those times in those those ways that yeah so we've been fighting about this for for 15 years find the small thing that this little tiny thing and take an action that is outside the pattern that you play out over and over and over. Literally anything that's outside of the pattern at that moment. And I don't mean to say that that is a simple thing to even figure out because those patterns are strong and it can be hard to imagine, okay, what would a thing be that would be different?

Imagine a thing and it turns out it plays right into the pattern. Oh, I've done that a million times actually. Oh, okay. That wasn't it. So, but it's worth. the energy of just trying things. Yeah. The mental exercise that I put myself through is, um, I, I only ask myself one question. If I, if I have gotten myself to a spot where I'm like creator, creator, creator, creator, and I can't like nothing is.

coming to me, I'm like, what would I do if this was my best friend? Oh, fuck. I know exactly what to do. If I can make space in my imagination for this to see the victim from the outside, boom. Instantly, I can think of 10 things that I could do, but also it's so small. It's usually just one tiny step and one tiny step that now makes space for another tiny step. When we're feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, right, it is tempting somehow to stay there. There is a certain...

comfort in the inaction. And I was thinking about how you talk about responsibility, right? In that role, I don't have to take responsibility. And this is where I think this is also a profound act of maturity. of moving into your generative adult self and tending to your child parts that want to stay in the simple, familiar, icky pattern. Yeah. And, and doing the work of, I'm going to step, I'm going to make this step. Um, so yeah, I don't think it's easy at all.

I'll add a link to a couple of diagrams, but this work is easy to look up as well. You can find... other resources around the drama triangle and around the empowerment dynamic. We'll make sure that the links for the websites that explain these are up in the show notes. And if you're finding yourself...

In these situations, just remember that as you're doing non-monogamy especially, we often find ourselves moving from a two-person system to all of a sudden a system that has three or four or five parts. Yeah.

it is so much easier to now have real people to fill in these triangles. And when we have real people to fill in these triangles, I see things get out of hand really quickly. So this is a great... model to use as we start practicing moving from it always being in a dyad to, wow, there's always somebody to triangulate with.

It's messy, but that's what makes this such a valuable tool. And it is a straightforward one to apply. And I've been doing it for years. It's really effective. And you can apply it for yourself. You don't need anybody else's buy-in. That's right. No, you can just decide. Everybody else can still be locked into the drama triangle and you can decide not to, to move over to the empowerment dynamic.

There's a real value. So we were talking about ways to make small changes and break the patterns, and it can be very challenging. one of the things that can be very freeing and very imagination expanding is to tell your story to other people. Yes. To say, this is what happens over and over, and I can't figure out what to do. Chances are other people will have maybe similar stories or just completely different perspective on it and they can provide some input. So we don't like our.

Our culture doesn't make a lot of places for us to have conversations about our intimate relationships, particularly the really hard parts. The gnarly stuff. The gnarly stuff. But one of the places that you all have is our Ask Me Anythings. You can just come and say, this is what's happening. What do you think? It's so valuable.

That is exactly what we do there. It's always just a small group of us getting together, talking about whatever's up in our relational lives. Some folks are coming from inside of the year of opening. Some folks are coming directly. from listening to the podcast, but we'd love to have you. And this is also stuff that we teach and then we process and practice in the year of opening.

So if you want to find the AMA, you'll find the link here in the show notes. And if you're interested in the year of opening and having a community where it's completely. typical and normal to just talk about this stuff on any random night, join us. You can check out more at yearofopening.com.

you We talk to you all the time. It is absolutely imperative to me that we get to hear from you as well. Yes, please. So we'd love to invite you to join us. Join Ken and I. We're holding monthly Ask Me. things. You can show up. Bring your questions from podcast episodes, from your relationships. Bring questions about non-monogamy, about individuation, about relationship skills. We would love to share space with you. We're hosting these AMAs.

free of charge for our podcast listeners. You are the Playing With Fire community and it matters a ton to us that we connect with you directly. Oh, I would so love to hear your questions and oh, it'd be so awesome. Yeah. Go to JolieHamilton.com forward slash AMA and you'll find a way to sign up real quickie quick. And get an invitation to join us in a small group where we're going to get together and talk about all things non-monogamy, individuation, and relationships.