225 Fears, Hopes, and Aftercare: Preparing for Polycule Gatherings

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. Ken, we're back at it and recording. Thank you for joining me. And I have a topic for us that is...

It's brought by two separate questions that came in about a week apart. So I'm going to sort of amalgamate the questions. Well, I love having questions from people. Okay. I love answering. So the basic question was... How do we spend time together as a polycule when we have previously only spent time as dyads? We've only been together as couples and we're trying to figure out how do we spend time all together in shared space?

But then there were some nuances added to this. So a follow-up question came in from someone else and they were talking about how they had planned an event together. There was like a community event that they wanted to go to. They wanted... More than just one of their partners wanted to all be in the same space. They all wanted to share space. But that doesn't mean that things don't get sticky and that there's not complications and stuff.

might come up. And this person has tried this in the past and knows that it can get sticky. So what do we do? How do we ease into spending shared time at events? as a polycule or in any sort of situation where we're with metamors, maybe that we don't have a direct relationship with or we don't really know much about how we're all going to do this. We don't have any precedent.

And would you say that's the that's when I hear that, I hear the question. So I have these people that I'm not in direct relationship with. Now I have to kind of.

figure out what to do with this What to do in this situation like I know what to do with these people that I've already established a relationship with and I know the boundaries more or less Well, the thing is humans do that all the time the trouble comes in where I have this sensation of also being outside of the context of the default norm.

So this isn't just about how do I behave with each of my partners? It's how do I behave as a person who's now showing up with more than one partner in a shared space and in a larger context of other people who... know us in different ways. also issues of, are we even out? Do people know that we're partnered? And so there's lots we need to get into, right? There's a lot there. And it's so specific. So often these kinds of problems, when they show up in my office, they feel so specific.

that each person feels like, I don't even know how to approach this because it feels absolutely like it's about this particular situation. But there are some...

some basics, some things that I think about as we're preparing for spending time together, as we're preparing for events. One of the big things is to remember that you don't know how it's going to go yet. And don't get too caught up in the idea that it's going to go either perfectly or that it's going to be a train wreck, right? We can fall into this, a fear mindset that everything's going to be really disaster or just say, oh, it'll just be fine.

We'll just wing it and everything will be fine. And instead really get into a mindset of this is an experiment. We're going to learn from this experiment and also we can prepare for it. Okay. So I hear in this that there's... So when I walk into a social situation, there's a set of scripts. that the culture provides for, I mean, I walk into the coffee shop, everybody pretty much knows what the conversation is going to be like when I get to the register.

Yeah. Right. And, and there are a lot of scripts like that. Yeah. You walk into a family picnic and like, there's a way that you've been doing this for years. And now. Yes. Yeah. And. So first off, are you off script? Do the other people at the event, do they know that you are? in multiple relationships and that you're dealing with the whatever stress intention do they know is there are you out about this or are you all sharing space and you're still in you're still there's still a

even at least a pretense of like social monogamy, like we're presenting as monogamy. And then it gets more complicated. Do some people know and some people don't? And are you trying to manage that? Is there clarity? between all of you about what the norms are. Because you're going to have to invent your own norms in this moment.

I see a lot of people, they get overwhelmed by when they're thinking about this and they say, well, let's just play it by ear. Let's just figure out, we'll just feel our way through it. And the trouble is, I mean, it's just sitting right there then because yeah, we can each feel our way through it, but likely. There are some really clear things like how do we show visible affection? Like how do we handle public displays of affection? And those aren't just.

It's not just about, hey, let's not make out with anybody. Like, yeah, we could set a ground rule. How about nobody makes out with anybody else right now just so we can kind of get the basics of the sound. Simplifying. But it's way smaller than that. It's about... putting your hand on the small of someone else's back or leaning in in a particular way to move somebody's hair or whisper in their ear. It's also about how do I introduce

each of these people? Like, how do we handle introductions? Who's expected? Right, exactly. Now we're into, wait, labels and assumptions around all of that really easily. can be made like, oh, they can be miles apart. And so everybody can say, yeah, let's just feel our way through it. Except what if your expectations are vastly different?

Getting clear ahead of time, doing some preparation ahead of time is wise. And realistically, we don't know what we don't know. Like it's so hard to actually anticipate everything that's going to go down in a given scenario. So we can do the work to prepare and also at the same time. let go of the need for this to go perfectly. Let there be some room for mistakes. Yeah, but also for aftercare, for showing up with each other and taking care, tending to like, yeah, how did that go?

Does this feel okay for you? What did we learn from this? At the outset, you said, so you could go in and like catastrophize. This is just going to be a disaster. And then there's the other end. It's like, hey, it'll be fine. And in between there is the more realistic approach, which is going to require some resilience because things are going to not go completely smoothly. what can you do in the moment and then what can you do after to say okay what you know a little uh

review of an aftercare of that wasn't great for me or this went really well. That's a good things to know too. Yeah. I'm thinking about a party that you and I went to really early on in our relationship when you were still maintaining. a pretense of social monogamy, which was fascinating because you'd been open for many, many decades before I got there. Poorly thought out. But you were doing it. No, but there's a pretense of social monogamy.

I knew that that was true, but I still didn't know then, so what's my role? Up till now, I've been your friend, but I had been bringing another partner. And so we're just all coupled up. And now here I am standing with both of the people I'm partnered with and I have no defined role. So one of the things we really needed to talk about ahead of time is.

Yeah. What are the, what are we comfortable? How are we going to handle this? And realistically, when we did get to that point and I said, Hey, I need to have a conversation. I can't go to another party like this because the first couple were. so rough for me, so difficult. When I did ask, hey, can we do this differently? Can we either come out to people and tell them that we are all together or

can I get some care around this? Can I be acknowledged for the fact that it's really hard for me to uphold the vision? of your monogamous relationship. And afterwards, I'm going to have some feelings and I would love to be heard, but also I'd just like some care. I would like some time to be cared for. Shifting that, it was a relatively small shift. Like it's something that takes just a little bit of awareness, but it does take a pretty big step into paradigm shift.

into, right, monogamy is the default, but it's not actually more correct, right? It's a step into, oh, wait, we have to develop new norms. This we as a polycule, whether we're all relating to each other in a triad or a multi-person polycule, or whether we are in a, in a V or a chain of people, it doesn't matter. Now.

we are relating to each other in a way that requires us to make things clear that we, we may not even have the answers to ourselves. Like I didn't know what to ask you for before the first party. I went in also just like. I don't know. I could feel in my body that something felt like it might be off, something might go wrong, but I didn't know what it was that I needed. So now I think about that is when I get that clue.

in my body that something feels like, oh, I just, I don't know. I don't know enough about this. I need to conceptualize this as an experiment. And I shift into a mindset of, okay, so let's experiment. What are the... What are the things I can put in place to feel supported beforehand, during, and after? And how can I show up for the other people who'll be here? And that requires some conversation at least.

If my partners aren't available to participate in care and aftercare, well, I mean, one thing that might point out to me that. These aren't people that I actually want to share this level of relationship with. It provides some insight into the level of relating. That they're available. But also it brings me to the question of how can I care for myself?

Like, how can I show up for myself? Because one of the things I learned to do over time was to make sure that after I was leaving an event like that where I might feel Um, I might feel marginalized or like, like excluded in some ways to make sure that the next thing that I need to go do feels really nourishing. And that was really hard for me back then because I had little kids. So often after an event like that, I was going right back into caregiving mode.

I was right into that and I couldn't figure out exactly how to make an ideal plan. I needed help from the people I was partnering with. I needed help to make this. work well enough for me. It didn't have to go perfectly, but I did need help. And that's something that I think we had to just learn outright because nobody… nobody was talking about it with us and we'd never seen anybody else do it. I also discovered some, what I now recognize as boundaries.

If this happens, then I will do that. So, for instance, I remember being at an event where… I don't even understand exactly how this happened, but you and your other partner got really centered. People were talking about old stories, and it was very old days talk, and you got really centered. i i felt i actually got like squeezed out of a circle of people talking and all of a sudden like i like i wasn't

even included in the conversation. It was an odd experience. But these kind of things happen in social situations where I felt uncomfortable because I felt like I was being excluded. I didn't know the inside jokes. And what I discovered is I needed a boundary for myself. I needed a plan for, okay, if I start feeling excluded, what will I do with my body? Where am I going to put myself?

Now I have a rule of thumb for myself. Like if I start to feel excluded, I'm going to go find a quiet area that still has me present to try to regulate and take stock, give myself 15 minutes to come back into like, wait. what's going on here? Because sometimes you're being excluded and sometimes we're self-excluding. Sometimes we start telling a story and that may have been what happened. I may have actually started.

pulling back. I may have physically, like I can imagine now standing in that circle with a whole bunch of people who I did know well, I can imagine kind of shrinking. And feeling like, well, I don't really know what to say. I don't know whether I belong. I can imagine getting caught in my old stories of, well, they're the married couple, so their relationship's more important and shrinking away.

event can then cascade you know it could have been just some physical movement in the group that you ended up on the outside a little bit and then you start thinking these thoughts and that's one way the other way is everybody there was actually turned away. I mean, social dynamics. It's so long ago that this happened. This is 15 years ago that this event happened. And I really didn't know anything about how to handle myself in that situation. And we didn't...

have any labels for what we were doing yet. So from here, it feels really obvious that I needed a plan for how I was going to handle myself. And now when I go into situations like that, because I still, even though I'm relatively extroverted, I still feel a lot of tension in a new environment. So I have to have a like a rescue plan.

I have to have a self-rescue plan for what am I going to do in that moment? Because when I start to feel my shoulders close in, I start to feel my stomach drop out. I start to feel my voice get soft because my voice is rarely soft. Those are signals that I need to take some time to be with the feeling, to not run away from it, not just leave. Because if I leave too fast, then I get caught in, oh, now I've run away. Now I feel.

more excluded and I didn't actually learn. So instead I need a self-rescue plan that keeps me. present, but does let me take care of what I need. So for me, that means I need something grounding to do. I usually need to use my hands for something. So I'll go like.

like get food ready at a party. Or if I brought my knitting with me, I'll go just sit in a corner quietly and say like, I just need a few minutes for myself. I'll get myself a drink. That's not to say that I couldn't also ask for co-regulation. I absolutely could. But I feel very empowered by having a self-rescue plan in place as well. By really owning that. And so setting yourself up.

for resilience in the context of a situation that walking in don't know exactly what's going to happen. Yeah. And for me, it really comes down to knowing that. demonstrates to me that I know myself better than I did.

before. I know how to take care of myself, which also means that I can tell people ahead of time. So if I'm going to meet, I'm going to be with a polycule that's still trying to figure out like, how are we doing this together? I have the opportunity to inform them. Like I've gained a lot of information over the years about how that might feel for me. So we can talk about it ahead of time. So anytime we're making a plan for an event.

I want to have some kind of pre-meeting, something. And that might just, it might be a Zoom call. It might be a phone meeting. We can't always all get together, especially if there's travel involved. We won't necessarily be able to spend. real space time together, but can we all talk about our fears and hopes? Can we just have a fears and hopes meeting and check in with each other? I think that's a great idea. You mentioned earlier the...

the topic of, so how are we presenting ourselves in this scenario when we get there? And there are a lot of things that you can't practice, that you can't think about ahead of time. Although you came up with your regulation plan, your self-rescue plan, you can think about that like, okay, I don't know what's going to happen, but if it goes south on me a little bit, what will I do?

That's a great question. But as a group, I think that it's reasonable to kind of talk with each other about what's our elevator pitch in this. Yeah. situation what are we going to say who are we to each other because there are a lot of reasons to or to not be out and a lot of different levels of communicating that and so So if everybody has the ability to get together and say, so what do we want to do? I mean, we can decide for ourselves.

But because you're a group, you have relationships. We impact each other. You have bearing on each other. Absolutely. So we impact each other. And I remember the first time that... The first time that somebody used the word secondary about me rather than like, I didn't know that was going to happen. It hit. It was like a knife to the gut. It wasn't something that had been pre-discussed. I didn't understand what that meant, but I didn't like the way the word felt. I also, at that point, didn't...

I didn't have any need or designs to be anybody's primary anything. I just, but that word secondary felt icky. So literally just having a conversation about what labels feel icky, what we'd like to avoid. And understanding that that's going to evolve over time. If we're talking about relationships where we are building community together, yeah, we can expect that it will shift over time. So we're probably going to have to do this more than once.

I think naming, doing a hopes and fears session together is one way to get ahead of the potential problems, it's also great because you're all going to see different possible struggles or troubles, not just for yourselves. You're just all going to envision this. Your imagination will be expanded as you talk through it.

Warning, don't psych yourselves out. Sometimes when we get together, you put three or five people together, whatever, and you start talking about it and maybe it turns all into fears and there's no hopes. And I think it's helpful to just... actually use that framing of like, let's each share one fear we have. Let's share one hope. Let's keep some balance to this because so much good. can come out of actually sharing space and finding out who am I with more of my partners around.

There's so much to be learned there. So I don't want to get into this idea that it's always going to be bad. I think... I think we've learned more about ourselves being in shared space than really almost anything else in the journey. It's so effective. It's such a rapid way of like, oh, there. I feel it. I feel it right now. I feel the impact of having multiple partners. I feel the impact of choosing or not choosing labels. I feel the reality of how I might...

be presenting different personas to different partners. I confront that. We really experience it. Also, sometimes we don't know until we're in the situation. Sometimes we don't know how strongly we feel about like, oh, actually, you know what? Other people might have opinions. You were so... Okay, I don't know another word. You were so weak about claiming who we were in relation to. That is the right word. Absolutely. No strength of conviction of what. Right. And I mean like in our kitchen.

You like you wouldn't talk about it. But then when we were in public and other people started kind of giving us a hard time immediately, like your shoulders went back and you were like, oh, no. that will not be happening. So there was also this huge opportunity to learn in real space, like, oh, no, if other people have judgments about this relationship, it actually makes me more convicted.

That this is, this is my path. This is what I'm doing. So I think. So being, and it's something you don't necessarily find out until you get there. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't know. that was i think i can kind of see it in retrospect like right i other people's objections energize me yeah well and that's one of the things that i think

I might have been able to point out to you. You didn't even really know that was going to happen. But yeah, you don't like when other people tell you what to do. No, I do not. And so confronted with that, you were like, oh, that's going to be a big... no, thanks. We're not accepting that judgment. But we did still have issues. And I want to bring this into, it's important, I think, to clarify any special considerations that people have around children.

and family and friends who maybe don't know or maybe you don't want or running into people who you don't expect to run into. Like maybe you're going to an event and you think you know who's going to be there, but having clarity around. these special circumstances really, really helps. I think that's what, it's not about having necessarily a perfect plan, but understanding like, well.

What if our kids know we're out? They know everything that's going on. What if they're the ones who share information? Or what if we're in the position where it... It becomes obvious at the party that more people know than we thought knew. It just starts to become obvious to us. How might we want to handle that? There's a lot to think through.

There's a lot to think through. I think a great plan is to have this meeting, share your fears and hopes, maybe invite each other into like, do you have any hard no's? Do you have like... like some clear, like this is just a real hard pass for me, even if that's just a hard no for right now, right? Do you know where your edge is? And if you don't know where your edge is,

I encourage you to lean into your imagination a little further. It might be that you're actually feeling so much tension that you've blocked yourself from imagining how this could play out. And if you don't know your no. If you don't know where your no is, where your edge, your line is, then I'm a little bit questioning about, are you actually consenting?

to be in your yes, in your yes, let's all be in shared space. Yes, let's be in public together. Yes, we're going to do this. And if you're not fully in a yes and you don't know where your no's are, it gets super easy. to get into a blame-shame game afterwards. Yeah, and that can go inward or outward. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you might wind up just shaming yourself, blaming yourself. So setting up… For the best possible scenario.

Doesn't mean you're going to avoid all trouble. But the other thing we can plan is a debriefing time. Yes. So what are we going to do after? So we have a planning hopes and fears meeting and then some debriefing time. What did we learn? what felt good, what felt off. You might be surprised. I found it incredibly surprising. I felt so good to be publicly confronting default monogamy.

I didn't know I was going to feel that way, but as that started to be more and more a part of my life where I felt the obviousness of, oh, other people are being faced with the reality that there isn't just one relationship structure. I felt good about that. It felt good at multiple levels. But I've had partners who've had the exact opposite experience. They felt really bad. They felt like it just felt icky for them. We learned through doing.

Making space for there to be multiple truths coming out of this experiment. I mean, it's so valuable. It's so validating for each other. doing that validation before we get into problem solving. Because of course there could be adjustments, there could be changes, but... The listening needs to come before we jump to what behavior changes need to be made. If we jump into behavior change, we jump into problem solving, we miss the opportunity to actually hear each other all the way through.

process the feelings and be with each other with the discomforts and the wins. And we can move into a space where we're just like mechanically trying to reconfigure it all and get it all right. I see an opportunity to separate debrief and aftercare. Oh, absolutely. First, what happened? I don't know. It depends on what exactly happened, but trying to understand the full extent of how did that go and why did it go that way and what do we want to do next time and all of that.

is not the same as, so how are you? Yeah. So we're going to talk about, there's a transition management episode. I think it might not be out yet. It might be out in a couple of weeks. Transition management, I always remind people like separate reconnection. from debriefing, like allow yourself to actually establish reconnection. And that can be very, very simple. It doesn't have to be this enormous thing. Reconnection could be as simple as just.

coming back into shared space, regulating. It could also include self-regulation time first, some decompressing time first, but coming into reconnection, doing some care, self-care. and community care for each other, and then allowing for there to be time. Also, for a lot of us, we need time to process and feel through it before we know.

What did we feel? What did we get to? We may not know. I know the number of times I've asked you to debrief with me and you're like, yeah, everything was okay. And four days later, I find out. That it wasn't okay. But you weren't lying. You did not know. As of right now, I have no information about trouble. I will let you know as it surfaces. Yeah.

Understanding that we all have different processing modes and it's okay to need to take some time to actually take stock. You might even need time to yourself to journal.

to go through, to really like feel through it before you talk about it as a group. And so before we wrap up, I think it's worth really acknowledging some of the stickier stuff that can happen. And I think this is the hardest thing that I have come to realize. It's the thing that's impacted my own dating the most. When we're confronted with a situation where...

Maybe there is some default social monogamy being presented. That can lead to big feelings about maybe being someone's secret or being felt like I'm… off to the sidelines or I need to pretend to not care or pretend to be. All of the big feelings that come up around that, I mean, they deserve attention. But they also like bringing them forward often puts people who are receiving those big feelings into a very defensive position. I want to cycle back to the repair skill of.

dismantling defensiveness because if one or more people in this situation are like, you know, I didn't realize that I was going to feel like I'm someone's secret. I didn't realize that I was going to feel like an outsider. I didn't realize I was going to feel less important. I thought, well, we're all friends and so this will be fine. But then in the moment... But then it turned out that that level of visibility wasn't okay with you. Yeah. And for me, I've noticed over time that I don't do...

I don't do situations where I have to uphold someone else's monogamy while they're in relationship with me. If I'm dating someone, I'm dating them. And that works for me. Other people are perfectly happy to date people who are coupled and it's so personal. But for me, there's this, the trigger spot is when I start to feel like someone's secret.

I have friends who love being someone secret. They find it incredibly erotic. It's super hot for them. It feels good and they don't feel the pain of being someone secret. Sometimes because they just, they don't have any interaction like that. Like they don't share community. So yep, it's just this parallel situation. I don't feel like a secret because we just have two separate parallel lives. But once I learned that about myself.

it became much easier for me to establish my boundaries and not set myself up to feel that way, which does have to do with how I choose my dating pool. But it also has to do with just like what kind of events I attend. I don't go put myself in positions where I'm going to feel like I'm hiding. And that is a personal thing that we all have to. Yeah. And it's something that you, if you can't.

If you can't just self-interrogate to find out how a particular thing like this is going to land, then, well, a way to find out is to be in the situation at which point. If it does knock you back a little bit, you're going to want support and you're going to want to share that with the people who are willing to support you in future.

Yeah. So that debrief and aftercare, very important because these experiments, as you were talking about at the beginning, yeah, they can be, they can rattle you. Yeah. So let's wrap up by saying, ideally, we would get to do these experiments and learn what we need during times when we have emotional bandwidth. Oh, yes. Ideally.

However. Life is happening. Life is happening. I mean, you and I had, I think, our biggest coming out moment at my mother's funeral. That's exactly what I was thinking about. Yeah. It's definitely one of the. low spots of my whole life mixed with a very high, a bright spot because you, you stepped in and decided, yeah, so this, I'm going to show up for my partner.

in this moment. And so I say that just to remind people that I would love for this to all be like, okay, so if you plan for it well, then it will go well. no, life is happening. Things are complicated. You may wind up in a situation where oh, we all need to go to this event because our kids are all involved in this thing or because there is a loss or there's a wedding or there's a community event that matters to all of us. And so, yeah, we're doing this now.

And so this is a great time to say, let's put then as many structures of support in as we can around that, which it can ideally will also include broader community. One of the things I love to do in the year of opening is have people name this stuff that's coming up. Like, oh, I'm going. I'm doing this event. I don't feel ready. Like, at the very least, they have.

a community that they can come back to and share their experience, whether it was great or terrible, to be able to share that and be witnessed in it afterward is so powerful. So I would wish for everyone to have community where they can share the ups and downs of this because stepping out of the mainstream, it's really helpful to have some people who understand what it feels like to swim upstream. Can this this particular episode really reminds me as well that the we don't know, we don't know.

exactly what we need for support ahead of time. But all of us need regulation skills. So if you've heard us, I've said the word regulation a whole bunch here. Let's make sure that the link to the self-regulation skills for complex relationships, we'll put the link. We have a free training on that. It's available on YouTube. If you don't know where to get started with getting yourself a self-rescue plan, it's a great place to start. Thanks for talking this through with me. Thank 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 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.