215 Nurturing Established Relationship Energy

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. Just you had this great idea that we would take the great time we just had. We just went on a wonderful vacation that we set up for ourselves, a little retreat, and it went.

absolutely the way we wanted it to and we had a great time and you had the great idea of talking about how we got how we did it what did we do to make that happen it wasn't an accident it was not and um So I don't think we have talked a lot about established relationship energy. We've mentioned it, but in the context of any... relationship structure um anything any relationship that lasts for a while

and takes on that format of established relationship, right? Deserves established relationship energy, nurturing, nurturing that energy. Um, but I have to say it's actually been a little hard for me to talk about it in our personal life. I teach about it, but, um, we've been. You and I have been struggling through a bunch of big changes in our relationship, a bunch of personal growth over the last 18 months, and I haven't really wanted to talk about what's going on.

on that level personally for us and then over the last four months i feel like we've really dug in done some we turned over some rocks that we had not previously turned over and had what I think counts as a breakthrough in, oh, a new version. of our relationship is is fully here now and it came like i really felt it take hold during this this retreat be planned for ourselves yeah i did too yeah i think sharing what we did to get there and um

what methods we used to, to not just do the same thing we always do. Cause that's, that's it. Like one of the things we needed to do is break the, break the routines that had, were not necessarily supporting us and choose another way. And so, boy, it worked. And yeah, we were in the thick of it for a while. We have been for a while. And that's, you know, it doesn't feel great. It felt pretty bad sometimes, but it's also...

part of established relationships. Right. They have their downs and we had them.

Well, and I think it's, I mean, it might be interesting for everybody listening here. I mean, so we just, we crossed the 200 episode mark a while ago. And so we, I would say that you and I have been. Going through it, really trying to find our feet again for the last 18 months or so, which is- going back through two and a half seasons of this podcast. So just think about that. So we have this podcast and-

We are talking with each other in loving ways and creative ways about how to solve and resolve and how we work with our relationship. And also we're going through all of this and it's not, I don't feel like we haven't been sharing the truth, but it's also hard to. talk about the personal stuff between you and I that is not that's super, super fresh because, and I've heard this said before, like teach from the scar, not from the wound. And we were still very much.

in a particular wound. And I feel like now we've been able to reach a healthy scar tissue and like, okay, so stuff has happened. And yet here we are. And I'm happy to report, from my perspective, happier than ever. Like, more in love with you than ever. The changes that we have been struggling with for the past year and a half. have been necessary changes. And having made at least some of them, yeah, it feels so much better than it did

Even before all of that, we didn't get back to where we were. We weren't aiming to get back to where we were. We were aiming to figure out what was next. And yeah, it does. It feels like we just got our feet under us again. We're back on dry land or back in the water, depending on which one you like. And yeah, it feels amazing.

Yeah, so this I think sits next to, we did an episode on reimagining your relationship back at the beginning of season 11. That's been the process we've been in. But this episode isn't so much about the reimagination process, which is ongoing, that takes... a long time. We're going to dive in. We're actually creating some workshop materials around that because the re-imagining process is such a big, expansive, and exciting process.

We wanted to have this episode to talk about, okay, and what happens if you want to plan a specific container, a small container to experience each other in the healthiest... most joyful way we possibly could. And we didn't know. So we set out for joy, relaxation. We had some mood goals, but we didn't have specific goals.

about what exactly we were going to do or whether we were even going to come out of this feeling some sort of way. Like we didn't know that we were going to come out of it feeling like, we did it. We like, look at the thing. Like there's a new version of us. That was the happy outcome of having set up for a personal private retreat for the two of us where we could.

Use the tools that we rely on really thoughtfully, but also just be in our relationship and not try to work on it specifically. Yeah, that was a big... Like a big commitment to say, yep, we're just going to be in it. We're not going to spend the time trying to reimagine and redesign right now. We're going to be together as we are. And that was...

And having chosen that, we didn't know where it was going to go. Right. So I can honestly say, yeah, more in love with you than ever. I got to experience the joy of like. Sitting by a fire with you and looking in your eyes and feeling like a renewed sense of not just, I love this human, I love this soul, but also, I... thoroughly enjoy you i enjoy who you are and how you are and and also knowing and tomorrow you might piss me off and that's all okay and that's all okay yeah

It was so renewing. How did you wind up feeling during? During, I felt so much. piece in areas of myself that had been pretty rattled for a really long time. Yeah. And in that piece, I could connect to you. And I think that is one of the things maybe that you felt is that I was able to connect to you from places that had been, and I didn't know this, like rattled and not able to connect. Right. Okay.

That really reflects to me what I felt, which is that you were authentically you. You weren't trying to be. You weren't trying to be good. You weren't trying to be something. You weren't trying to fit who I needed you to be even. I just felt you relaxed into yourself. And a little added context. You lost your job seven weeks ago. You are currently in the trenches of finding new employment. You have been managing a lot of emotional content around all of that.

And we've had this 18 months of challenge of meeting each other, which has been meeting each other emotionally and our sex life has been really up and down. We also had, we have been in. power dynamic relationships well for over a decade um formally and this resulted in this last 18 months resulted in building a new power dynamic enjoying it for a while um dismantling it

and rebuilding it, then dismantling it completely and going back to a non-power dynamic experience between the two of us. All of that, all of that too is happening. we work in the field of relationships. We're both in this all the time. I'm in it professionally and you are there with me. providing peer support and, and, and like that co-creative space with me in the year of opening. I mean, we're in, we have five cohorts of the year of opening and a cohort of our second year program, the deep.

as well as my Individuation Alchemy program, which you participate in. So you're also present. You're so present to this deep relational work, which means sometimes you just get that feeling of like, oh my gosh, yeah, I need a break from all of this. But I want to give you a lot of credit for having you stuck with the fact that just because all of that was happening didn't mean that you couldn't show up to.

creating a process to nurture our relationship, to spending that energy. And I'm really grateful that you are willing to say, yep, and I will find energy and attention. and willingness and presence to bring you for this. Well, I appreciate your acknowledgement and I want to just reflect that back to you doubled because yep, I am. I'm there. I'm participating. I'm supporting and you build and create.

Like you're making all of this happen for so many people and you're building all of this intellectual and emotional property. And then you show up with me and you will engage with our relationship. And we, this I think is one of the things that we really turned a corner on. for the retreat was we are always tweaking. We are always looking for.

what's working, what's not about a relationship and, and trying to think about it and not just for us, but like, and how would this work for other people and how can we use that information to help? And it's, and if, if you notice, none of that is just us sitting. looking at each other and enjoying each other's company other than enjoying it in the context of doing this work but it's still doing the work it's doing the work on the relationship so often and I see you doing this work for

so many people and then when we can when we found a way to just stop for a little while and let us let us be who we are in this moment and so i do i want to uh acknowledge the heck out of you for still having the energy to work with me and then engage with me and now let's talk about

The tools we used, the things that we did to make sure we were able to make the container we wanted. Yeah. Well, it was important to use tools because I... One of the things that stands out to me when I think about nurturing established relationship energy is just the word established, right? Established means that there are expectations. There's a rhythm, there's a flow, there's the habits that we're in. And nurturing established relationship energy to me is about noticing the pieces of that.

habitual rhythm that work and still feel supportive and discerning between those ones and the ones that are just barely functioning or they're keeping you. together, but they're not actually feeling supportive or the parts that are actively harming. you're relating now, but they're just built into the system. They're built into your routines. Those are like internal emotional routines as well as the things you do and bringing attention to like what's working, what's not working.

is so important, but... Often when I'm working with people who are non-monogamous, we put a lot of energy on managing our dating process, dealing with and managing new relationship energy. dealing with our calendars, right? And it can be a stark reminder, right? To realize like a lot can... can slip away from our awareness because we're in just that, the ERE energy can just be like, yep, what if we'll just go on autopilot? We'll just let it keep going. Right.

For us, this was about turning a lot of attention over the course of a bunch of months, many months, to reimagining and now spending some really intentional time. nurturing the version of us who exists right now, bringing really close attention to it. So the first thing that I needed was I needed to have clarity of what exactly we were going for. And I tend to be goal oriented. So it was really important to me that you said like, I don't want you to have to have a goal here.

I remember you saying to me, so we're going away. We're going to a place that we trust and we feel comfortable, but I don't want you to feel like you're working. And I joined you in that and we committed to... setting ourselves up for success, which meant employing some tools and using tools while we're away because the tools, those are just techniques for being in your relationship, but to not trying to work.

on the relationship as in not having a specific goal for, we're going to get this agreement hashed out, or we're going to figure out what to do about that problem, or we're going to address these projections between the two of us. No. We set that stuff aside and said, let's create a container in the format of

A minimum viable relationship agreement, which the MVA process is something I developed and I use consistently with all of my clients. I love this process and we use this process and I think it held us really, really well. It held me really well. Because not only did we use the process, but you have volunteered to take the lead with this one. So you started the MVA and you took the lead. You created one that I was able to respond to.

which also let me relax into, okay, you're going to make offers first. You're going to make requests first. You have spent so very much time as the relationship administrator. for our relationship, driving most of the growth, most of the, like, what are we going to do next type energy?

What I found was, well, my goal of you not having to have a goal was for you to have a container you could be held in instead of holding the container, which you do so often. And it started right there. It started with right. I mean, you asked for it, so thank you for asking for it. But you're like, okay, you do this and I'll respond. I'm like, great. Yeah. And because of how we'd come into it, it just...

Well, this is just me feeling good about how that went. It took me like, I don't know, less than an hour, which normally I would agonize. I was in a session while you did it. Right. Usually I agonize over that stuff for days. And I didn't. I just did the thing and trusted. And I think that matters that I started from a point of trust in myself. And then... So we started with some ground then. There's some fertile ground here.

We have already created a request-friendly environment, right? One of the things we've been working on for many years is it's okay to ask for what you want and... That means you also need to be willing to receive a no or an offer, a counteroffer. Right. And so I asked for what I wanted. Yeah. I asked, hey, you know the MVA process. You know it inside out. You teach it all the time.

Would you please go make an MVA for our time away? And you said, yes, it was easy. Like, yes, it wasn't a counteroffer. You just did it. took that up. So we're already, we got the ball rolling on that discernment process of, right, MVAs have worked really well for us. Doesn't mean that we don't, I mean, sometimes violations happen. Sometimes we realize that.

The point of an MVA is to have an experimental iterative agreement. So it's okay if it doesn't go perfectly, but we know that process works for us. So we took that request. friendly environment that we've been building on and building together. We leaned into it and you used a tool that you're comfortable with already. And for those who aren't comfortable and used to making short term. agreements that allow you to experiment and create a container together. I just

I think so many people get turned off on the idea of agreements because they're, they're used to thinking of them as laundry lists of things not to do. That is not how we treat the minimum viable agreement process is a completely different thing. It can be. almost entirely about things you are going to do. And yeah, there may be some...

boundary conditions or limit conditions of, hey, and we're leaving this off. And we're actually offering a workshop on this. Summer of 2025 will be the first workshop on the minimum viable agreement process held outside of the year of opening. So I think this episode is actually going to probably air pretty soon to pretty close to that. So yeah. Right at the beginning of summer. We'll make sure there's a link for it. And if it has already.

happened, it'll happen again. We'll be running that workshop again. And we do this inside the year of opening. So these are the tools. It started with an MVA.

It started with that, but it did not end with that. No, that was it. I felt like the agreement gave us a great set of boundaries for our container. Right. So that I understood what. What to expect? Honestly, yeah. Knowing what to expect and what was expected of me, what you expected of me. was part of what gave me the peace and settled my rattled parts. Right. To say, okay, no, I know exactly what she's expecting. And if I bring something else as well, well, I get to.

But I know what's expected. I mean, that just felt so safe and held. And that's where we started. Yeah. And that also allows us to be in the negotiation process because we did, so we did our. We created this liminal container, this container for us to have an experience from the position of you make some offers and requests, I will make some offers and requests, and then we'll see.

What's the space? Where do our requests line up? Where do they not line up? Where do we not want to meet them? Where do our offers feel good? Where are they like, yeah, thanks for the offer, but no, thank you. I don't want that. In all of that, we also were helping each other understand what our expectations are. Thwarted expectations are a huge source of rupture. We talk about ruptures as if they happen out of left field. They don't.

Ruptures often happen because we had an implicit expectation of how things would go or should go, and then that is not how it went. Sometimes that's because there's an emotional earthquake. Sometimes that's because...

an actual physical thing happens in the world and it impacts us. But lots of times it happens because we never actually asked for what we wanted or said what we expected to happen. So we have these expectations, but nobody else knows about them, which makes it really easy for them to get. but not met. Right. So you and I know that we can't, even as well as we know each other. And I think anybody who's been listening to us for a while would say, we know each other pretty well.

But still, I am not you. You are not me. So in practicing differentiation, we also were practicing like…

oh, right, let's make it clear. Let's say what we're expecting. That also, so doing this in writing, this was an actual written agreement. The MVA process is a written agreement process because writing is thinking. The process of me sitting with a piece of paper and saying, here's what I have to offer you. Here are my requests for our time. That helps me make clear to myself.

It's not just, oh, my thwarted expectations because you didn't understand them. It's also, did I understand them? Or am I just like, I don't know, I just want to feel a way. But the question of, the question of. how do you want to feel is important. Because I started writing my part of the agreement from the perspective of how do I want to feel? And I knew I wanted to feel relaxed.

I knew I wanted to feel a complete lack of pressure. And I wanted to be in as known an environment as possible. I also knew I didn't want to have to wear clothes. So those are some simple things that I knew about me. Those two things line up pretty well. being in a place that you know and not wearing clothes. They do. It's a good combination. But, you know, I see lots of people, they'll plan a retreat type getaway for themselves.

Lots of people will plan that to a location that they've never been to. Now for me, that wouldn't work. I actually needed to go to a place where we have already been. We know the system. We know the location. We know what's available to us, what's not. We know what's expected. For me to really create a sense of the respite I was looking for, to really be able to focus my attention on.

our relationship, the space between you and I, I needed to not be thinking about planes that could be late. Yeah. a hotel that could be one that I didn't actually like, um, a busy location that didn't fit with the vibe I had expected. Um, all the food that was not. Up to par. Yeah, or not being able to get what I actually needed. So that was part of the intentionality too, was choosing a place that, yeah, it might be a boring choice.

But it was a choice that allowed us to do what we were setting out to do, which is to be with each other and to be in a known enough setting. But also we chose, and this comes with privilege. I mean, we had the privilege of being able to go away. Our kids are old enough that...

Well, honestly, we don't even have to tell them we leave the house anymore. The youngest is 18. The oldest is 25, doesn't live with us. Well, they don't tell us. We don't tell them. Right. So we can just wander off. They know to take care of the chickens and the dogs. but the our life is also

We are privileged enough to have the capacity to go away. So we did. So we went away for, was it five days? Four days? Yes. Five days? Five days. Five days. Okay. And going away does change things. We have... We have adult children who live with us, and we have a home that requires energy from both of us. So being able to step out of that was really helpful. If we hadn't been able to, I still think we could have crafted an environment, but it would have taken actually even more.

structured planning. It would have, yeah. Because we would have needed to plan to have all the things that interrupt our emotional state. How do we get those taken care of? So many more moving parts there. Yeah. Who's going to make sure that the dogs aren't... needing to go out and coming to our bedroom door? Who's going to make sure that we actually have the food we want and we don't have to go out to get it? How is that all going to happen? How do we pre-plan for that?

I don't take that for what it's worth for you in your established relationship, but a known quantity that also allowed me that freedom of… don't have to be on for the system that I live within was really delightful. You mentioned that it might be a boring choice, and it occurred to me that stable is not exciting.

Like, there's nothing exciting about something that doesn't move, usually. Yeah, we don't wait in line to get on the stand in a room. That's right. Right, yeah. But Stable gives you a platform you can build. whatever you want onto. Yeah. And that's what we were looking for. That's what our particular established relationship was needing was a sort of a blank palette.

that we could use to fill in with what we wanted. And so we started filling it in before we got there by working on the MVA and writing it down and thinking about what we wanted to paint on this palette. Right. And so I came into it thinking about what mood, how did I want to feel during, how did I want to feel when I got back here? And that also required me to let go of who you would be.

I can have a hope, an expectation around your behavior. I could say, could you do this or that? I could make offers and I could make requests. In truth, we don't know. I have migraines. I have a migraine right now. It is excruciating. I want to cry. And I am doing this anyways. And I might have had migraine while we were gone.

As it lucked out, we didn't, and that was such a gift. But we could do all the planning, and we were still going to have to deal with the and what. We don't know what will happen. it really matters to me that you were able to stay in that with me of just, we have these intentions and we are alive and we're present to what is. So when we went there,

We did have some visions about what was going to be there when we got there. And one of them was a gas fireplace. We were thinking, oh, we'll sit around by the fire. And we got there and it turns out that the gas fireplace was broken. It didn't work. But there was a wood fireplace. And so we showed up and there was a hiccup.

And the hiccup required a little bit of resilience. Like, okay, had a vision. Yep, had a vision. It's not going to work out that way. But it turns out there was another way to go. There was an indoor... a regular wood fireplace, which turned out to be better. It turned out to be such a bonding activity. Oh, and it was so good in so many ways. The actual fire. The up to tend the fire. It was like so metaphorical. It was so metaphorical. Yeah.

And I did, in fact, learn some very important things along the way, both about tending the physical fire and the metaphorical one. It was amazing. And my point in bringing this up was that we had set up the container. We'd set up the MVA. and everything else about how we set things up to require as little resilience as possible. Yes. So when something came up that needed resilience, I had plenty because I knew I wasn't going to need it.

And so I was like, okay, sure. We'll do something else then. That really lands for me. Yeah. Because I felt it. I felt your disappointment and I felt your hesitation in telling me because we had this vision of like sitting in front of the fire, curled up, reading to each other and things. And then.

Yeah. Okay. I can see how the hiccup, the resilience is there. Also, though, we used a bunch of other skills, one of them being gratitude. Yes. Yes. One of the things that having this little hiccup come along is I had this thing to be grateful for every time you really like tending fires in general. We usually do them outside. I had never sat. near an indoor regular wood fire with you.

in all of our time together. It's just never come up. And so I had this opportunity to be in gratitude for how you were tending the hearth fire, which is so symbolic. I mean, tending the fire wound up being symbolic of our sexual... connection while we were away, but it also is so symbolic of how you, over the last five years, have shifted from being a helper, a partner in running our home.

shifted into, no, you, you tend our home, you run our home. And so watching you do this in a symbolic, um, but, but. physical form was really beautiful. It made me so aware of all the gratitude I have for you. So as I was expressing that in all the little ways, as you'd go to chop kindling or you'd go to tend that... fire or make sure it had the oxygen it needed. It was so easy to be in that moment of like, yeah, I am very grateful for this human and how you have just

put your energy into creating an environment that we want to share together. Well, thank you for your gratitude. I'll accept that as best I can. You know how I am. Take some gratitude, like a punch to the gut. A little bit. But it was, I was grateful for, well, I was grateful for your acceptance of the tending. You didn't.

You didn't reach to take control of things to like to make sure everything was the way it was. You would make requests. And it made for a very smooth back and forth between us. Well, in that. I felt the consistency of a couple of other tools that we used while we were away, we were doing little check-ins. Yes. Little check-ins throughout the day. So we typically do...

Like we have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. We have all these different like points that we will do check-ins. And some of them are big check-ins. We're doing a great big. full-on holistic relationship agreement review this September. That's going to take a whole month, but this is just the little check-ins. like the check-ins that help me stay out of my hypervigilance, the ones that are just a little formal, the ones that say, how are you feeling this morning? What can I do to be with you?

How would you like me to share space with you? And those little check-ins, doing them a few times a day to just make sure that we are still on the same page. really helped me stay settled, but also out of that hypervigilant mode. Because I knew that we were going to have these little, just these little moments. And I appreciated them happening.

in a more or less organic way. We actually didn't use timers or anything for them. We just let them happen. But both of us had that idea right at the top of our mind. Like, yep. So just when we need... To check in, check in. And not expect that those need to be big, long check-ins, but it's okay to just say like, hey, can we take five minutes to just see how are you doing? What are your hopes? for today, which really helped around building the sexual energy so that we could

be clear. What are your hopes? I mean, if you were hoping to have sex morning and then midday and then in the evening, and I was thinking, oh, I thought we'd just have it in the evening. Yeah, just getting that clear. And this is an episode about... Nurturing your established relationships and those check-ins.

Thank you for mentioning that because it can be really easy to forget to check in with somebody that you think you know well enough that you know how they're doing already based on what you know. yeah and i also see people get resentful about having to check in like you should already know right both ends of this works on both ends yeah little check-ins to remember that we're we're staying present too

A living, breathing, changing, dynamic other. It just increases the way I feel my tenderness to you as a sacred other. It also increases my... the practice of my differentiation. Differentiation being I can tell where you start and I stop and the space in between us. I can feel that. I know where my needs are. I know them as distinct from yours. That takes practice.

Not just practice, but an ongoing practice. Yes. It requires a practice because we are changing individuals. And don't meld, like that melding into each other that happens so easily on vacation. I mean, it was. beautiful to sit there and stare into your eyes and feel like, wow, that oneness, that unity feeling, that total enmeshment, and then to recognize, right, right, right, and we are.

We are too. We are here. We are separate. And to feel the tension of that separateness requires letting things be. different letting you have different wants and needs from me so thank you for bringing that up i didn't actually realize this but one of the things that allowed me to stay so present the whole time was that

We don't eat the same. No, not at all. You and I have very different eating needs and desires as well. And so I made sure that you had the food you wanted and then I ate the food I wanted. Rather than doing the thing that I have done for years, which is enmeshing into, well, whatever you're eating, I'll just eat that too. Which is super weird because I have very specific needs. We are not the same.

Not helpful. And so this time I got the stuff I wanted, made sure I had what was available to me that I wanted, and I ate it and I didn't worry about it. And you were very sweet. You were caring for my food. I love that you take such great care. I love that. It's such a fun game. Figuring out what food to bring you is a blast. Yeah. So thanks for bringing that up because that was, for me, one of those things that allowed for the space between us to exist. Yeah. So that we...

Like you said, the tension between the space between and the connection between. Yeah. Okay. So there was one more important tool that we wound up actually not needing. I mean, I think I used it one time. So it was barely touch, but. We agreed before we left. We agreed in our written agreement that if either of us brought up a topic that was really going to be working.

on our relationship instead of being in it that we would put it in the parking lot so we like we we had a spot in the agreement in the written agreement that we could just open up pop it open on our phone and say like yeah so this clearly needs to get talked about And it doesn't have to be spoken about right now. And I had one moment where something came up and I was like, oh, I want to work through that. I wrote it down. And then there was one moment where.

I was reliving an old memory and I was sort of walking through the memory slowly and I was adding detail and I could feel both of us kind of testing the edges of like, is this going to be one of those ways? Does this fit into the agreement or not? Yeah. Or is this like processing emotions that really belong in more therapeutic container? And I felt us both with it. And I said to you in that moment, like, I don't think this is.

A parking lot thing. I think I just need to feel through this because I think it's actually taking me to a very erotic place. I'm working through an old memory and I want to walk through it because the version of you who exists now is so different. Yeah.

from how I'm remembering this. So can I go through that? And you met me in that. And so we used the parking lot. I don't know whether you used it for anything else of your own. We might have discussions to have. I'm not sure. I didn't look at your list. The way that we use that was just such a safety mechanism. I just felt so comfortable. I did too. Okay. Things can be put on hold.

And it wasn't a hard line of like, these are things we're not discussing. It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. It was a general concept. And which is why it was a little tricky. Is this. working on the relationship or being in it. And I decided, no, we're not working on our relationship. You were working through things for yourself. And I was there with you, like relating to you as you did. So I didn't feel like it was working on the relationship. That was definitely having it.

It was really, it was very sweet for me. It worked beautifully. Absolutely led to eroticism. Yeah. I mean, it was amazing. Which I wasn't looking for from out of that, but yeah. No, but there was just something. We have often found this repair skill of rewriting the narrative together by telling each other the story. of what we remember and then talking about how like, Oh, the version of me now would meet that so differently. The version of me who exists now wishes that she could go back.

She can't, but wow, I can go back and address that. The imaginal realm is powerful. Imagination is real. Yeah. It was so powerful. So, okay. So agreement, gratitude, request-friendly environment, check-ins, the parking lot, and not everything worked perfectly. No. Not everything did. So we did use some of the repair tools. Because one of the other tools that we brought with us was regulation tools.

Right. With an explicit commitment in the MVA to use them in the circumstances that we knew to look for. Like if I start acting childish, if I notice it or you notice it, then I'll... I'll take a specific regulating action that I know works for me. And we did that once. Yeah, and it was really easeful to say. And we practice a lot of noticing and asking for regulation and co-regulation.

It felt really good because it came up actually around sex where both of us, I think we'd gotten to a spot of being just like a little nervous. We have been really working through some big stuff around our. mutual sex life. It's funny because in our agreements, our sex lives with others are easy. We don't have any struggle making our agreements. You have sex with who you want to. I'll have sex with who I want to. That feels really easy.

But our sex life together had gotten kind of mired in a lot. And so when we moved into erotic space, I could feel how like, oh, things just got weird. Things just got weird. Like, I don't know, did the color of this room just change? Everything just feels very strange. And rather than get into a... a negative spiral about it, I asked you, would you just take yourself outside? Because we were in a place where we're surrounded by woods.

I just said, would you just take yourself outside and like go do some regulation, whatever works for you, and then come back to me and we can start over. So that was using both regulation and request and using the do-over. Like we had started. Oh, yeah. getting weird i didn't know like it didn't feel good you just like can we try that again because i didn't want to lose we had the thread of energy yep but

It could also get weird right then. Yeah, that was a big win, that moment, because it was a moment where everything could have fallen apart for the rest of the trip. Right. It would have affected everything from then on or could have anyway. But instead we, we diffused it right in the moment by, like you said, by you made a request that was in line with our agreement.

And you just accepted it. You didn't push back and say that you didn't need to regulate. You accepted the premise of if I was making that request, then there was something here. And by the way, I didn't... I didn't skip my own regulation practice in that time. Like I wanted you to go outside. What I wanted to do, I could do inside. And you tend to do well with regulation. I'm an outdoorsy sort of, yeah. Outside. Very helpful for me.

But I use some NSI, Neurosomatic Intelligence techniques, which if you're not familiar with them, we have a free video talking about and training them. We can link it in the show notes here. I used some NSI techniques. You went outside. I'm assuming you ran around in the woods. It was cold and just a little misty. We'd been in the fog all day.

at the top of a mountain. And it was so easeful when you walked back in the door. Like you came back in, I could feel how your energy and mine had both shifted. Yeah. And it was really easy. to move, to shift gears from there. And there is a thread that runs through everything that we just talked about that might be invisible to some people.

but it isn't to me because it's not what I do by default, which is so much explicit communication. Every single thing you've talked about has been built off of explicit Actually saying the words. Actually saying the words, writing them down. And that was so important to me. And for me, it absolutely provided the stability of... of my expectations because, well.

This is what you said. It's written down. I can expect that to happen because you wrote it down. And if it doesn't, then we'll have a conversation about why not. But all of the implicit expectations I might have had. Those things are so, and we already touched on this, but those implicit expectations are so easy to be foiled.

So easily foiled because nobody knows they exist. So if I don't make them happen, they won't happen. But all of the things. They foment resentment. Resentment. That's right. There's just resentment just sitting there waiting to happen. And also often it's an, there was expectation we had.

We had this place we wanted to go. We knew we wanted, we had both already agreed that we wanted to have sex and we had agreed on some things that we wanted to play with there to see what was going to happen, what we could rekindle and what would work, what wouldn't. And none of that meant that we weren't still going to have to be in the moment and what's present now, what actually exists.

even writing things down, even saying the words out loud, there is still all the stuff that can barely be put into words, all of the history and the imagination of what's possible. That's really hard to make totally visible. So doing at least a little bit of work, effort towards let's be explicit, including things like who's responsible for what.

While we're away, because there's still responsibilities like you did. You handled most of the food gathering, making sure food came to us, got to us, was prepared for us. And I met that with a... I will absolutely help with food if you request. But I will expect you to make a request. Otherwise, I'm going to expect that you're doing the thing that you said you would do. We even did that around initiation of sex. We each talked about like, well, I'll initiate.

this many times. And that doesn't mean it will happen. Sometimes initiation happens and then sex doesn't happen. But since we knew we were going to play with erotic energy on purpose, it made sense to build that into the expectations.

But there was one other tool that I thought was really important for us to use, and that is our soft safe word. Oh, yes. So anybody who's played with any level of kink knows that having a safe word is super important, whether you use red, yellow, green, blue, whether you use... you know, the word Titanic, whatever it is, you need a word to say, hey, everything has to stop. We need to assess the situation. A soft, safe word, and we have a whole repair episode.

repair videos out there. But soft safe word is such a great tool. And our soft safe word is marshmallow. And when one of us says marshmallow, I always feel touched by it. There's this moment of like, right. Whoever is noticing that there's disconnection here, something doesn't feel quite right, and is willing to just say, hey, hey, hang on. And marshmallow for us is... It has gained this tenderness over the years of using a word that just says,

Will you come back and join me in a space of no blame, no shame, but there's a rift here. Something's not feeling quite right. And it's important that it's not a denial. Of the situation, of the things that need to be addressed. Like if there was a harm, if there was a rupture, if there was any discomfort, all of that is still true. But can we join together in a place of connection?

Yeah. Get back into a team mentality while also recognizing, yeah, there may be real harms or real hurts going on at the same time. It's a both and move. And I really appreciate that. And we had in our back pocket also the apology and accountability ladder. Oh, always. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't wind up needing to use it really explicitly. I think there was like.

a couple of short, very short versions. And we'll do another episode on that fully. But I love having that tool and knowing that I can provide you with a really solid. apology and help you understand how I'm going to meet you freshly without continuing to do harm if harm happens. Because harm might have happened.

It could have. We don't know. It absolutely could have. And I don't think I've ever really heard this before about the apology and accountability ladder, which is that it's a ladder. And so when I have dug myself a hole that I need to apologize my way out of, I'm going to need to leave. need a ladder to get back up. And the thing is, the metaphor works beautifully because the purpose of it is to return to that connection.

Yeah, shared ground. To the shared ground. And so I've disrupted things and I want to get back up to level. Yeah. And it works really well. Yeah. So repair skills episode. And we'll have videos about each of the repair tools that we use. But I'm so grateful that we went away prepared.

And that we've been able to have this full reimagining. Yes. That was going to be my meta tool, is that we prepared for this. which you've been telling me about the value of preparation. And it is, in fact, my word for this year. You were a Boy Scout. I know, I was. Yeah, it was a pretty good one, too, up to a point. You know, I'm not that good a person, so I couldn't. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You're too hard on yourself. I'm not that wholesome though. You're.

well thank god but what i was gonna yeah so preparedness um not just like hey let's go out let's go away and you know, packing and leaving. No, there was time ahead of time. It's like, what's this going to be? How are we going to make it what we want? And I mean, we prepared all kinds of things. We brought the food we wanted. We, you know, the snacks, the treats, the paraphernalia, the pillows, the specific things that we knew. The sex toys. The sex toys that would take this.

this stable base and allow us to create the environment that we wanted to make to leave us feeling the way we wanted to feel. Yeah, it is incredibly important to me. So we opened this episode talking about established relationship energy nurturance. You're nurturing this established relationship energy. while nurturing happens in day-to-day moments, absolutely. Think about when you want to nurture, in particular, if you want to nurture, say, a...

plant a tree, say you have a young tree that's been injured, that nurturance takes energy. It takes very specific energy. Our relationship is a living system. And I see a lot of people hope that time or just vacating, literally being somewhere else, that either or both of those things will be enough. Just boom. We'll just change the context or we'll wait for time. Time is a necessary ingredient in healing and reimagining, but it's not sufficient.

just going to a new place. Well, I'm very reminded of that Adam Sandler skit from SNL years ago, right? If you are sad here, you will be sad. On vacation. Yep. If you are fighting here, you will be fighting on vacation. And we knew we had been struggling with some things. So preparing so that we could have not just a break, but. a new different experience, which this was set on a foundation of many, many weeks of intentional work that then this was like a, it was a possible.

feeling of culmination, but we didn't even know. We weren't putting that kind of pressure on it. Now it does feel like, oh, I think we, maybe we. We crested this particular peak, this particular mountain. We live in an area with a mountain range called the Seven Sisters.

It feels kind of like, oh, well, yep, we got to the top of one of them. Oh, I see a lot of other mountains out there. There's more mountains from here, yeah. We're not going to have some mentality of like, oh, good, we did that. Right. Never going to have to do this again. Yes. Of course we will. But I'm really grateful. And I'm really glad I get to be in love with you all fresh. Yes, I am so grateful. And yeah, I am so in love with you coming off of that time. Wow. Thank you. Thanks, baby.

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 Anythings. 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. you