233 The Case for ‘Boring’ Polyamory

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. Hi, Jolie. We have a great...

client questions today. I love client questions. Let's go for it. It's okay. We talk about non-monogamy a fair bit. We do. Kind of our thing. Kind of our thing. And one of the questions that comes up is this whole question thing. This whole non-monogamy thing is so hard. Is it going to get easier? Is it always going to be this hard? People get into this.

Yeah. Is this just it? We get into it, we're working, and it just keeps going? Yeah. I definitely get this on a day-by-day basis. The constant emotional workout. The energy we have to put out. The NRE highs and lows. Yeah. And the jealousy. And what would easy even be? Like everything I've done the whole time has been.

I'm just doing all this emotional work. I'm growing. At what point can I just kind of be there? And you know, what's easy is personal, but, but still we hear this a lot from a lot of different people. Yeah, so I think it's a great question. And I actually, I kind of like its simplicity and underlying that simplicity is.

What does it even, what would it even mean? Like, what would it look like for something to be, I mean, I think what we're really looking for is easefulness. Easeful, right. Which isn't the same as easy. Like, oh, this takes nothing. How does it feel to do it? Yeah, okay. If I were going to title this, though, and I were going to be quippy, I would say, can we make a...

case for some boring polyamory. Right. Could it just be boring? And you and I talk about that all the time that we have gotten to a certain point in our experience that, yeah, it's boring and I like it that way. I enjoy the boring polyamory that we have. have come to, we've cultivated. So we appreciate the boring times in our polyamory. Yeah. Yeah. Which doesn't mean our relationships don't still have highs and lows. Right.

Well, I guess I can say with, I could answer this question in a super quick way and say, I know that it can be easeful because I have. lived experience and examples of people who have found ways to live this in a way that is easeful. And it is really easy to keep ourselves locked in the drama cycle. Oh, yeah. When we're practicing non-monogamy. It is very easy. So when I think of boring, I don't think bad. I think...

Yeah, it's not all dysregulated all the time. It's not all conflict all the time. Because I hear, and I see this on dating apps, no drama. Yeah. Sure. I get the premise. I get the premise. And I take that to mean I think of drama as conflict plus dysregulation. Because conflict happens. If you have an intimate relationship with somebody, if you have any sort of deep relationship with someone, you will have conflict.

Because if you never had conflict, that means you haven't gotten to the parts of this other person that are enough different from you that you have something to learn from each other. But conflict with skills and capacity. But conflict with skills and, yeah, and resilience. Yeah. It is very different from conflict that's paired with, I'm just going to explode now. Yeah, honestly, I kind of, I mean.

I like it. I was raised in a, in a conflict forward environment. So I, I like a little conflict and conflict from a place of, yep. And we have the resilience and tools feels like love to me. Right. So yeah, for me, that doesn't necessarily even, yeah, I'm not necessarily going for conflict free. Whereas I was raised in a situation where conflict. It existed. It wasn't glossed over exactly, but there was a lot of back pressure. There was a lot of like conflict resolution, like resolution.

is we need to get to resolution as fast as possible. Yes. That conflict, while it's necessary, you want to get out of it as fast as possible. And there's no, like, I no longer believe that. But I still have some emotional leftovers from that upbringing. So from one stance on, this idea of no drama, usually what I hear in that is...

I don't want anybody else's drama because we all have our own. No, I just want mine. We all have our own drama. I understand the idea though. And maybe it's not boring polyamory that we're looking for. Maybe what we're looking for is sustainable. And that's going to be subjective. Like what's sustainable for me is different than what might be sustainable for another. And also grounded. Like it feels like this is grounded on meaning.

This like, I get why I'm doing this and I get how it fits into my vision of my life. So you have a nice, nice proportion of easeful to effortful. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that.

I think for a lot of us, what we're really looking for is trust that we understand how the path is unfolding, even though we understand also that we're... We're going to get sideswiped sometimes. Stuff's going to come out of nowhere at times. And enough emotional bandwidth to actually have pleasure and enjoy being with each other, enjoy all the rest of our lives too. Yep.

capacity. I need to have resilience and capacity. So I need a flexible nervous system. That's one of the things I will need. For sure, yeah. Which takes time to build up most of us. Most of us don't know what to do when we're feeling dysregulated. We just wait for it to get better. So knowing how to, that would be one of the ingredients I would put in. Which is one of the reasons.

That conflict had always bothered me is I didn't know how to get out of it. I didn't know how to actually work with it and have it become something else. So like you said, I guess I just have to wait. Yeah. It doesn't feel good. So the question as I hear it really right down at core is, will this always be hard? Is it just inherently harder? And that is related to the premise, like the monoparadigm premise that monogamy is easier than non-monogamy. And so I think-

you know, the first thing I want to look at is, have I bought into the idea, the illusion that monogamy is inherently easier? First off, monogamy isn't inherently easier. If I am polyamorous at a base level, if that is my reality, then being monogamous might be incredibly effortful for me. But also- Every polycule is different. Every individual experiences this differently. So just that premise, that idea that.

Just because monogamy is the default expectation of our culture does not mean that it is inherently easier or more easeful, but When we're confused, when we're dysregulated, when we're experiencing a lot of emotion. or when we're confused, we tend to just default to like, well, what do I understand? And we have a template for monogamy.

And so it can be tempting to say, well, I'll go to that. Or to have idealized how useful our monogamous experience was and have kind of forgotten and smudged over. the parts that weren't great and really focus on where it was useful. So one of the things would be, can I see the truth of all relationships? have their challenges. All relationship styles and structures have different challenges and different energy expenditures. And you said that...

The way you perceive boring polyamory is that it doesn't have to be hard all the time. I think similar. It might just be a different framing of it, but it's... how much time do I get to spend in the relationship as opposed to working on it? Yeah. And as you were talking about the monogamous scripts that, that exist, that, that, that.

paradigm that we've just been given uh is that we don't have to think a lot about how we work on our relationship we can but we don't have to whereas when you step away from that script all of a sudden You have to figure out for yourself how you're going to do this relationship. So there's a lot of work to do on it. And one of the ways I hear this question is, so when do I get to just have it? Yeah. Have the relationship.

Yeah. When do I get to just be in my relationships and not be working on them? Yeah. And you and I have set aside time. We've said, oh, okay, you know what? Not working on our relationship right now. We'll write ourselves up an agreement during this period of time. We're going to be in it and not on it. And anything that comes up, we'll just...

put in a parking lot and we'll get to later. We're just like, yep, that's, yeah, later. We created that because you and I were possibly the poster children for working. on our relationship rather than be in it. I think that was actually my way of staying in connection with you, was staying in the drama cycle of our relationships.

Yeah, and you bought into it and we would just stay in that. So there we were. So we equated it to having our relationship. And we did that for like five and a half years. Yeah, so long. It was a long time. I don't do that. Just don't. So if you're listening, just don't. I understand. Sometimes it happens. We didn't even realize that that's what we were doing. I would go back and do it differently now.

Another thing that comes up is the early turbulence time, like all that, like everything's hard. You don't know what you're doing. Right. That won't last forever, but it will become sort of. It will become the muscle memory, right? All the stuff, the novelty that you're dealing with. You don't know anything. You're learning new tools.

They're brand new. Shifting dynamics. Shifting dynamics. Power differentials, renegotiating things. Yeah. And you're also like experiencing dating maybe for the first time in decades. That's a lot. of novelty and novelty is turbulent. Um, but we could like build that into the muscle memory. I have definitely fallen into the trap of thinking when things were easeful and grounded.

that am I really doing, am I doing my non-monogamy? Like am I participating? Totally, right. Because it was so baked in to my muscle memory, my understanding of what. what it was to do this and that we had to just take that out it was like playing a game of operation i feel like with tweezers we really carefully like wait a second that actually doesn't belong there we actually don't we don't have

all these things that we need to be in conflict over anymore and know how to deal with the complexities and the novelty. So what if it's just okay that it's okay? What if it's okay that it's okay? And one of the things that can- And there are multiple. One of the things that can push back against that, hey, maybe this can just be fine, is that we have all these social scripts around monogamy and that it's the right way. That it is the way. And they stepping away from that script is hard. Yeah.

Because just because when you're stepping away from anything that you've just been doing your whole life, all of a sudden it's hard. But in this case, the. The drama and the turbulence, I love that word, starts to become proof that you are stepping away. Yeah. Because if you were in the monogamous paradigm. You would know exactly what to do.

If you know exactly what to, and that can like reverse. If I know exactly what I'm doing, I must be monogamous. So it feels validating to be in the mess. It feels validating. And that might even be Jolie's voice. Like I talk about the mess a lot. There's a lot of chill time. There's a lot. There can be a lot of chill time.

So know that. We need to not over couple is what I'm hearing you say. We need to not over couple. The being in the turbulence is what it is to be in non-monogamy. Yes, exactly. And actually let it be easeful when it's easeful. Um, it's very common in the transition. Yeah. But then when you're after you're like, okay, this is what we're doing. And do we have things to work on? Of course we do. Everybody does, but.

Yeah. You can let go of that. I'm not doing enough work because things aren't messy enough. Yeah. Well, so this, that's a great intro to one of the ways we stay. we rob ourselves of grounded, sustainable, boring polyamory is by getting caught in the drama triangle. Oh yeah. And when I say caught in it, I don't mean like it's a spider web and you flew by. I mean like.

it's like a vortex and you swam too close to the edge and you got pulled in at your on-ramp. Where is the spot you go into the drama triangle? Where's the spot you learned over and over again? Especially in the context of one particular... relational dynamic or one polycule. The drama triangle is, you know, the villain, the victim, the hero. Yeah, we talk in detail about it in our drama triangle.

Episode. And the week that episode came out, I had two dozen emails in my inbox saying, oh my God, I didn't realize. how much, like this is pretty much the whole story. This is what I'm doing. This is what's happening over and over and over again. And the idea that we come in to our drama from a familiar pathway and we get sucked into it, right? I come in as villain. I tend to be, I will pick fights. I will get aggressive. I will turn up the heat. I'll ask challenging questions, right?

You tend to come in as a rescuer, which is really funny because then both of us need a victim. Which one of us is going to be the victim right now? Rock, paper, scissors. Who's going to be a victim? the details of how just two people can play out the whole drama triangle no problem just one person can in that episode we'll link it down below but I think we that model really illuminates how we get stuck in the cycle, right? A triangle from an archetypal perspective, it's a very dynamic shape.

It has a lot of movement. It's not stable the way a square is. It's moving, right? And there's this intensity that can happen. And I tend to mistake intensity for intimacy. I am a person who generally self-identifies as and has been labeled by others as too much. And I've come to a lot of... self-understanding around that. I feel pretty relaxed about it, but I mistake intensity for love and intimacy and connection.

it's really easy to substitute intensity when what I want is closeness. What I want is to be known. Right. And you, I've seen you substitute this. caring for someone, over-functioning, getting into rescuer mode for intimacy. And like, wait, what if we were just in this and you didn't have to? care for you didn't have to martyr yourself you could just what if you just were in it and i want to say that um what we're describing what what you're describing is uh

It's not a simple thing to step away from necessarily. Well, actually, I said that differently. It might be simple, but it is definitely not easy. Right. It's tied to all these feelings because even as you were saying it, I was thinking, right, I over... I over function. And then what if we were, what if we just didn't, what if I didn't over function and I just let you be you and me be me and we, and immediately part of me panicked like.

Oh, no, we can't have that. Because then no one will know that I love you. Yeah, so there's also a performative piece in there. Not even just for me, performing for the rest of the world. So there are so many ways that we can get sucked into this cycle and, and then stay in it. And with more people, like add more people to your relational constellation. And now you've, every time you've got.

another dyad, you've got more opportunities to stir that up, to stir that pot. One of the antidotes toward that is to be nervous system aware. Can I actually tell what's going on for me? Can I tell what my capacity is right now? Can I tell what I'm even sensing? Like, am I aware of what my sensations are right now? Am I aware of... For instance, right now.

We're talking and I feel very animated. I can feel my arms moving. And if I stop and I pause for just a second and ask myself, what are the sensations? I feel bubbling under my sternum. I feel a sort of prickly feeling all down my arms. almost like goosebumps, but a little lighter than that. I feel my legs are kind of moving. I feel myself kind of bouncing and jittery. Those are sensations. What meaning I make out of those sensations will

definitely add into what I, you know, we're having this animated conversation. We could come out of it. And if I just move with those sensations without any thought or awareness, I could absolutely move into this really activated place with you. And then we have this intense interaction, which is not actually about us. Which doesn't mean I have to calm down. I like being excited. I like being animated. I like being too much.

But if I am not aware that those sensations are simply sensations and I get to interact with them the way I want to, so one of the things I can do is slow my breath down. take longer exhalations, allow myself to just become a little bit more settled. The skill of being able to notice what's going on in your body and then...

And then choose. Do I want to keep going in the direction that my nervous system is currently leading me? Or do I want to make a slight shift? I have a whole bunch of tools I can use to make a shift. And then I have to decide to use them. So we need to be nervous system aware. Then I have to be willing to actually use the tools that can influence my embodied experience of relating.

with others and those are some of the tools that i i immediately go to when i think well if i want a more grounded settled sustainable relating structure It's not that I need to have less partners. I need to have more ability to come back to my body, check in, and actually see what's my capacity, what's my bandwidth, what support do I need?

what's going on in here? If I stay locked in the story that this is all very hard and I have no say over how hard it is, it will keep being really hard. Right. So you're describing things that you can do. for yourself and with yourself to modulate how you, how you relate. Yeah. You know, and, and I like that word modulate because you get to decide. Maybe you're going to take that excited energy and bring it.

Bring it full right into the relationship because that's what you want to do right now. Or maybe you're thinking about maybe the way the day is going to play out. It's like, oh, actually like half an hour after we're done here. We have to do something that's particularly hard or sticky or tricky, and maybe it's time to ramp down. But you give it that thought. Right. But that's about how you relate with yourself, essentially. Yeah, it's not.

Yeah, it's not so much about the interplay between us as my choice to relate to myself. And interacting with the other. You, what did you just say? You said something about, oh, did I get, you know, what kind of support do I need in this circumstance? And if there's a particular support you want and you don't get it.

you will have, and I want to have a whole episode on this, foiled expectations. That'll ruin your day. Which will ruin your day and it can take that nervous system experience into a whole other level. And those are expectations often about someone else. And the question that I always want to ask in that moment is, did that other person know that was your expectation? Yeah.

Yeah, so many of our expectations are unspoken, invisible, implicit. And the antidote to that is having explicit agreements. And... Having explicit agreements and having a willingness to give voice when the implicit stuff, like when it bubbles to the surface.

Can you voice it or track it in some way? Yeah. Because I find when I'm in my agreement-making zone, that's a different mindset than in the- Oh, I see what you're saying. And all of a sudden expectation just like, oh, it just boiled to the surface. Yeah. I'm aware now.

Have we cultivated a space together where it's okay for me to say, oh, I thought you were going to open that email and read it right now. I thought you were going to watch all the TikToks I sent you. Now. I didn't know. Like the silly little thing. Those little things that- Right. Is it okay? It's not all. I mean, yes.

Yes, you know how I love an explicit agreement. But no, what you're saying is it's a very much a agreements. Like you said, you create yourself an agreement making space and you enter it and you do the thing. Most of the time, we're not in that space. but these things come up. And those moment to moment, day to day experiences can really inform you about, oh, that mattered to me. And being able to express that in that moment, really important. I also think that the adding in regular check-ins.

regular like regular check-ins regular like you just said spaces for communication i don't even mean full check-ins i mean you and i have Because we cohabit and we both work from home, there's a lot of overlap, which means a lot of space for conflict. And what we've done is try to build in a lot of micro spaces for reconnection and space to name the.

the the unspoken and that's been really helpful for us but prioritizing spaces that like okay it's safe to bring stuff up here very very important but then there's the also other boring stuff How's your rest? How's your rest? How's your exercise? How's your nutrition? How's your capacity? What's your stress level?

And can you support that in certain ways? Like, and I don't just mean, can your partner support you in filling those needs? Can you support yourself in filling those needs? Because if those things are all brought up, and I also create space to make. visible, the invisible. And I start to experience integrity in my agreements. All of these things, they add up to-

a more useful overall experience. And that takes time. There's a reason the year of opening is a year long. I teach all of these tools and I ask you to basically rewire your expectations of like, how do we show up in relating? How do we show up for our relationship with self and my relationship with others? And then we have to practice it. And it's normal to have a desire for calm, predictable connection, but then we have to do it.

We have to actually learn how to do that. And that's, it takes time. We have to like apply what we're learning and not just be caught in, well, this is how I've always done it, but I want it to be easy. Right. Yeah. You can't just want it to be.

stable and right. So if I'm going to employ a new tool or technique and I'm going to then experience change, change is a disruption. And I'm going to experience the dysregulation that comes with change, even if it's good change and then settle into a new. reality, all of that takes time. And that's moving out of the intellectual idea. I want to have it be easy and into the, can I make space?

to be in the messy middle and then to come into ease, to let it be more easeful. We've focused on this by making, like you said, days or weekends where we kind of. We box out, we bracket out some time to focus on making lots of space for the boring, sustainable stuff and to set aside. The big stuff. And also practice not catastrophizing. Practice staying. Because I am a catastrophizer by nature. But practice staying out of that. And that requires me to use.

all of my tools. That is not easeful for me because I was raised in a chaotic environment and some parts of me believe that when things are boring, that you don't love me. Or that I am unworthy or something's wrong. Just like a base level, something's wrong. When that's true, then you may have this. inner competition, this inner conflict within you that's saying, I want it to be easeful and I also want it to be horrible.

And so now there's a lot of deep personal work to do. It's not all about what are we creating together, but what am I creating within me? What part of me is sustaining the conflict and the struggle? What part of me is attached to an old story? Another old story that can keep us locked in the conflict is the idea that monogamy was easier. Right. So that every time it's hard, it's like, oh, I should have, I should never have endopolyamory. And that's, yeah, you start.

which interacts with your poly why and why you're in here at all and what are you doing. And so if your goal, if you're striving toward this sort of easeful polyamory. look for the ways that you're making it hard. Because God knows- Take ownership of the ways that you are. Right. Because I have made it so hard so often.

And then in retrospect, I got nothing out of that. And me too. Absolutely. Because we went over, we hashed over problems that we've already talked about when we know what the resolution is, but we dug into it again anyway. Yep. And we spent all this time and it's just like the last time we did it. Familiar will win out over good. Right. Familiar feels like love way more than quality connection. Yeah.

And yeah, I wish that weren't true. I wish it weren't just like baked into what it is to be working through our stuff. But there it is.

speaks to your comment about emotional work. Like, well, let me dig into myself and find out, are my emotional responses supporting the person and relationship that I want to be and be? Yeah. There's one last thing I want to say, which is if you are still stuck in the cycles, join us at the Five Pillars of Successful Open Relating. We have a free salon. We offer it nine times a year.

We'd love to see you in there. It's a time to come and learn what are the five foundational pillars that when you have these pieces, when they're all functioning, this will get easier. Yes. But when even just one of them is a struggle spot. okay, we know there's going to be struggle, but we also know when we can identify where it is, we know where to spend our energy. So often we forget to lean into our strengths because we don't actually know what they are.

don't actually spend our resources in the direction that is most effective. So join us. We'll put the link for the salon. We're having one. I'm sure there's one within... just a few days probably of this release. We have them so many times per year and we'd love to see you there and talk about what are the elements that we can build into your relational life so that it can feel more easeful, more sustainable.

And I want to leave our listeners with a thought. If your goal is leaning toward this sort of boring polyamory, reflect. What would a week of calm, fulfilling polyamory look like for you? Oh, that would look very different for you and I. It would, right? Yeah. It would. I can kind of imagine your answer. Yeah, that's quite different. Another way we can create drama then is if I'm trying to – are we going to have A weeks and B weeks in this house or how are we going to do that?

But I love the question. It's a great question. And it can help you, to Jolie's point, it can help you... figure out where are good places to spend your energy? Like what's missing from that week and what could you do to get there? And also I would love to hear your answers at our ask me anything and share them with us. Love to hear it.

Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to go answer that question for you because I would love to see how we are at odds and how that could be creating conflict all of its own. Right. In our non-monogamy. This was fun. Thanks, Julie. 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. It matters a ton to us that we connect with you directly. Oh, I would so love to hear your questions. It would 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.