239 Radical Relating with Mel Cassidy

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 and we have a guest who I have been following for quite some time, following their work, and I'm really excited. I know I introduced you to their work and then you just about lost your mind. Oh, so good.

book so good Which that makes me happy because that means that the whole conversation is going to be really generative. But I mean that it was really cool for me to see how you got really lit up. There was something about the way that Mel has written that seemed to really just lay out. for you. So awesome. So let me just introduce Mel so we can just get into conversation with them because what's better than that?

Mel Cassidy is a somatic relationship coach committed to the path of liberatory love and rewilding intimacy. Hell yes to all of that. They specialize in working with queer and questioning humans and those who love them. relationships with a focus on polyamory solo polyamory and relationship anarchy they are of irish greek and romani descent and have lived in three countries across three continents, which I love this whole third culture kid coming in strong here.

They currently live in British Columbia, Canada. I love that. Okay, I can't even say Canada. Here I was all worried about pronouncing other things, but they have something truly outstanding to share with the world this month. month because they've written their first book, Radical Relating, a queer and polyamory informed guide to love beyond the myth of monogamy. And I'm so thrilled. I'm thrilled. I'm glad North Atlantic picked this up because it is.

A book that is needed. Mel, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you for having me here. So I was excited because Ken was excited, and that's because we've read a lot of books. It's like there are a lot of books out there. This one does have – there is something new here. There's something really fresh, and I really appreciate that, Mel. So before we dive into like a topic, would you just like –

drop us into like, how did you find yourself here? And like, not just here in this book, but like at this stage of your life where you're ready to put all the work into writing a book. Oh, my goodness. I know it's a big question. We could talk for hours. People ask me, how long did it take you to write the book? And I'm like, hmm. eight months or 10 years. Like how are we counting this? Um, but you know, my journey as a coach started as a blogger.

So before I was coaching, I was writing a blog. I had a blog called Polysenglish and I started writing it in 2012 because nobody was writing about solo polyamory. I didn't, we didn't even have the terms for solo polyamory really at that point. And so I started writing and people would email me with questions and I'm like, why on earth are you asking me for advice?

do you not read the mess that my life is? But it happened consistently enough. And I've learned to just listen when something like that keeps showing up. Like, okay, maybe let's go back to school and let's get qualified to actually give people coaching advice. And so my coaching practice started in 2015. And I've had so many people through the years ask me, well, like, when are you writing a book? Are you writing a book? And I was like, yeah, yeah, there's stuff that I could write a book about.

and then during uh you know the the bubble of the pandemic and lockdowns um i was starting to deal with like long COVID and chronic fatigue. And I was scrolling away on Instagram and I left a sassy comment on somebody else's post. So many good things start with a sassy comment.

Social media is not a complete waste of time. And I left a sassy comment and someone who is an editor at North Atlantic Books saw that comment and went, who is this person? And went and looked at my... social media and was like, oh my God, they're talking about non-monogamy and they're talking about somatics and they're talking about trauma informed.

And they reached out and sent me an email. And I'm sure you guys get this too, like the emails where they're like, we can do this thing for you. And you're like, oh, but the catch is I have to pay money. And I was like, is this some kind of scam? And I Googled and I was like. oh, half the books on my bookshelf were published by this publisher. Yeah. Yeah. They put their money where their mouth is. Yeah.

So I was like, okay, this feels really good. And I still had to pitch the book and, you know, do everything. But it's been really amazing. And I honestly, it feels cheesy to say, but I feel like it's a lot of grace that has come together. to support this book being birthed. I call it my book baby because it is that like you have that like gestational process of like there's the ideas and there's putting it together and there's moments where it's like.

I don't even know how to find the narrative. Like there's so many puzzle pieces. How do you put this together in a linear form? And what is so interesting is that in the journey of writing, I feel like I've learned more about my own work. and gotten more clear on how I can talk about it and how I can guide people who want to do this work. Yeah, absolutely. Writing is thinking. And I have been so...

So in love with the clarity of your writing. I found it so accessible without being limiting. Like you didn't, these, these were not broad brushstrokes. These are the details that are so helpful. day to day in thinking about how to do relationships well. Thank you for saying that. Yeah. I really wanted to write something that spoke to the... like the internal anguish that I think sometimes we experience. And so much of the literature around non-monogamy tends to get very intellectual.

fine gets a little emotionally disconnected sometimes. And that can be great. Like we need our theoretical frameworks and we need words to describe things that we've never experienced in monogamy land. and that's helpful but then we also need to be able to embody and feel and understand why am i feeling this way what do i do with the feelings that i'm having um so i'm i'm really glad that that intention comes through in the words. Yeah. I, I want to.

Take this conversation. Ken and I were talking about, we could talk about like the general gist of the book and how we think it's, I actually think it's going to go on my recommended reading list. I would put it right there next to Polly Wise, not Polly Secure, specifically next to Polly Wise.

and the second edition of More Than Two where I would say like one is more theoretical one is a little bit more like step by step but covering a way broader range and then this just I feel like there's a There's a segment of our listeners who maybe haven't felt spoken to. And maybe haven't felt quite included. Not just, of course, because of the solo polyamory and centering that, de-centering couplehood, but also because...

you are, you're speaking like you're, what I read was you were taking a bottoms up approach, even to the writing of it. You were like, Oh, let's start with, let's start with the lived experience. Let's start with the embodiment aspect. And so where you get to theory, I feel like you're coming at it from a different direction, which is, I mean, I like both. I like both directions. I really appreciate that. So I would definitely recommend our listeners pick up the book.

We also wanted to have a conversation that went beyond just the broad strokes of the book. So I want to ask you a question that's like, I feel like...

It would sound like I'm crazy asking this question. I'm going to ask it anyways. Right. Because I want to know what your answer is. What cultural forces have shaped the idea that monogamy is actually the default? Like, how did we even... get here and i know that sounds way bad like oh we all just know that because we're in the polyamory club but we need to ask those basic questions what got us here yeah yeah i think

I mean, the biggest force that we have guiding us still today is within white supremacy culture. And so white supremacy culture isn't just about the color of your skin. It's a conceptualization of...

The closer you are towards this idealized vision of whiteness, the more power and privilege you will be given in white supremacy culture. And part of that idealized vision of whiteness includes cis hetero monogamy so we have to we have to check all the boxes to get closer and closer to this ideal state that isn't actually an achievable state anyways but

We're supposed to be like working toward this or trying to pass this. Yeah. And, and this concept also, like there's a relationship between that. And, um, I would say like the. what I'm going to call Christian supremacy of like the way that the Christian church.

um was part of the colonization process uh in many cases of the european colonization and so like within religion specifically in Christianity, but we also see it I think in some other threads of the Abrahamic religions that monogamy is put on this pedestal. And, you know, between colonialism and Christianity being spread throughout the world, this created this normalization of monogamy. I mean, Dr. Kim TallBear talks so beautifully about.

the experience of many First Nations peoples in North America of monogamy being imposed as a condition for anything, you know, that you're not going to be recognized.

as having any rights whatsoever until you're practicing monogamy yeah this is the same this has been repeated throughout colonial history and you know even you know after i wrote the book i started going into like you know pre-christian european history as well we see the same thing right in pre-christian european history indigenous cultures were not necessarily monogamous the the concept of fidelity

was not there, this lifelong fidelity and exclusivity. This comes in with the introduction of Christianity. and you know even people who are not christian may practice monogamy because of the influence of colonization more and more you know i mean in islam there was no uh a traditional monogamy

pre-Islamic Arabia and the Levant, and I talk about this briefly in the book, anyone of any gender could have any number of partners. So, you know, there's a lot of historical context for non-monogamy being the norm. But colonization has really wiped out a lot of that history. Yeah. So you use the term white supremacy and I'm like, yes, let's lean in. I want to say those words. Yeah.

the other word that comes to mind is centrism. There's like constant centrism of one perspective that now we take for granted. Now we, and I say we like. When I think about we, I'm thinking our social media, our songs, our films. It's not just in some system that we could point to and say it's just there. It's infiltrated. It's becoming. All of that. And then we have to, I really appreciate how you use the word, people have to perform monogamy.

Which isn't even about having one partner. It's about performing the look of having one partner. Yeah. You know, people have cheated. A few. Yeah, I've heard of that. And historically, if you were rich and powerful enough, if you were high up enough on that echelon of white supremacy, you could cheat and you wouldn't face repercussions. Right. It wouldn't even be called cheating.

There were other words to describe it. You have a mistress. You have a paramour. I mean, yeah, I can think of so many stories where as long as there's enough money, as long as there's enough romantic rose-colored glass to look through.

it gets another whole label yeah there's something you said you said centrism like the the centralization of of these these forms of power and these these different ideas and i'm struck by the fact that In other disciplines, when we centralize something, we make it universally available. But in these circumstances, centering it removes it. everything else and just puts it in one place. Because when I hear about non-monogamous history and the changes that have happened when

When we introduce non-monogamy, we start to introduce in-group and out-group in a place that didn't used to have one. And then the power starts to be not redistributed, less distributed. And all of a sudden we have these individual cells of relationships that are now at odds with each other for resources in a way that we used to be intermingled.

I get very, it's one of the reasons that I got so excited to see white supremacy tied so closely to the concepts of monogamy and non-monogamy is clearly people are gathering power to themselves. I don't actually even care about conspiracy theories. It's what happens in a system like this. Calling it out is step one, like, hey, this is happening. And step two is, as we're finding here in the United States, things are a dumpster fire right now.

And what we have is community. And breaking down the artificial barriers to community is just a really valuable thing right now, as it always has been. And I just so appreciate you bringing it up. And when you, when you were writing this, how did you feel the, the impact of, of this particular? power quote sharing system working in your life. Yeah. Oh, it's, I have to say writing this book and writing about these themes in the times that I'm writing was such a trip.

You know, I'd be writing and then I pause and I go check the news and it's like, oh, look, here's this thing happening and I can really see the interconnections and, you know, the... the power hoarding that you're talking about. You know, I think that's one of the things that shows up in monogamy and like, especially in the way that we look at the nuclear family, right? The nuclear family is all about.

how do you hoard power and resources as a unit, not as a community? And I'm really inspired by, you know, mutual aid groups and activist spaces where there's this dismantling of that hierarchy. I mean, that's what anarchism is essentially about, is the dismantling of the hierarchical order and the redistribution of resources.

So I'm writing this book and I'm also dealing with chronic fatigue. And there's days where I'm like, I don't know, like, how am I going to like take care of myself? And I reached out to community. And I feel incredibly, incredibly fortunate to have a community of friends around me who not only support me and who I am as a person, but believe in my work.

And so as it was getting into the final stretch, I remember going, I don't know. I can either make food for myself or I can write. I can't do both of these things today. And I had friends show up with food and friends like order food for me. And I was like, this is phenomenal. Like this feeling of being held in community and feeling that. we're all in this together. It's not about like our individual resource hoarding.

And as much as possible, I've tried to pay that forward in the work that I do. So in the book, there's some beautiful artwork from Joan Trinh Pham, who's a fantastic artist. I've known Joan from like... my first introduction into non-monogamy in Vancouver. And she just has a wonderful way of like visualizing the concepts and creating, it's just visual note-taking.

And I was like, you know what, I want people to see that art. And I said to her, can I commission you to do this? She'd never been commissioned for an art piece before. And so I'm like, well, I've never commissioned anyone for some ARC. Let's figure out. how we do this and so to be able to support her work being seen and amplified you know and like in how i'm doing in-person events i'm trying to go with like local bookstores and you know independent queer books

doors. And it's like, I know that there's a lens focusing on me. And it's like, how can I turn that around and also bring everybody with me that I love and care about? So this is where we step out of the...

The super narrow lens that often polyamory or non-monogamy gets... so much focus on it's about sex like i mean and it starts so fast like usually people's first exposure will come through like oh it's about it's about sex or it's about having a lot of sex and then i hear you talking for like five minutes mel and i'm like if that doesn't make it clear that this isn't that none of this is about sex that sex is just one of the things humans happen to do and so it's included in this picture but i

I appreciate that you termed the book radical relating, but you also centered post-monogamy. Yeah. Because post-monogamy isn't the same thing as saying, oh, Yeah. Sometimes we're only going to have one partner. Sometimes we're going to have no partner. Sometimes it's a wider term. We talked to Andrea Zanin about a similar topic that like, how do we get past this idea that it's.

monogamy bad, polyamory good, because that's no good either. But how I saw you doing it, approaching it in the book was taking a close look at how mononormativity is causing harm. Not monogamy, not the practice of having one partner at a time. That's up to the individual person. But the norms. So I was wondering if you could just help us.

pull back the curtain a little bit and see where mononormativity is causing harm and where we could start unpacking that even if we're not ready to take steps into multiple relationships because lots of our listeners aren't they're not there yet they're not it may not ever go there yeah i know they care about this

Well, and to tie it back to the white supremacy piece, I think one of the aspects of mononormativity that shows up so clearly, and it shows up in non-monogamy as well, right? This is where we have to get over that divide of... monogamy bad, polyamory good. It's like, no, it's how are you doing it is what's important. One of the pieces that shows up is this idea of perfectionism.

This idea that there's one true way to do relationships. And that within that perfectionism, we're all being held up to some imaginary, impossible standard. of being perfect people, always saying the right thing. And if you dare make a mistake, if you are in any way falling short of that image of perfection, You're doomed. You're banished. You know, there's shame sets in.

And the consequences of that paradigm are huge because it holds us back from having open communication. It holds us back from sharing when we're upset with a partner because we fear that could create conflict and that could lead to the end. relationship. It holds us back from talking about when we desire something that maybe our partner isn't going to be into. It holds us back from the conversation about even opening up a relationship. It holds us back from being able to own.

it when we have made a mistake ourselves and we realize that what we did hurt somebody right and all of this is part of mononormativity this idea that you know You find your one true love, you're going to be happily ever after, and that's all the work you're going to have to do. And, you know, the whole romantic mythology that comes with that.

Another piece of mono normativity is this. And again, this comes from white supremacy culture, this fear of temptation this um this imagination this imaginary idea that you know you are an indivisible unit And anything, like the two-headed monster, right? Like you're indivisible. And if anything comes along that pulls you away from that, that is danger.

And that could mean the loss of relationship and the loss of status, right? Again, there's a lot of status we gain from being in a monogamous or a monogamous presenting relationship. So that fear of losing. that joined identity holds a lot of people ransom, I think. And we see this as people open up a relationship. That is one of the big fears that people are processing is how much have I...

rested my sense of safety and security and stability in my life, my worth as an adult? How much have I rested that in the idea that I have a partner? Yeah.

And that we have this exclusive thing going on. Yeah. And it's so challenging, I find, to separate the idea of, okay, can I be with that question? How much of me is invested in, in being in a partnership versus all of my feelings about like, well, no, I love my partner. I care about my, no, it's just, so we can really diminish and we can look away from that question.

And I find myself like grappling with it all like over and over again. It's not like something you solve and you're like, oh, I'm done with that question. Instead, it's, you know, here I am in this particular unit with Ken and it doesn't. I can't, it is so challenging to actually separate out what he means to me on a personal level from my work to unpack. How much am I hoarding power here? How much am I using the face of this relationship to hold me up? How much am I relying on this?

as proof that all of my attachment wounds and all my core wounding statements aren't really true. It's just so profoundly challenging to sort those two things out because both of them are, they can be true at the same time. I can be. using mononormativity to uphold my self-worth and also truly, deeply, madly care about any one of my partners. And that... What's coming up for me is this idea of being in a couple.

Like what it is to be in a couple and the reinforcement we get, the constant reinforcement we get to be in a couple to then perform our monogamy in a very particular way that. That centralizes couplehood also as like the only possible thing that you could want and be happy. And I know the.

The triads and quads and larger polycules that I've worked with, primarily triads and quads, like who come in and they're struggling with the, we feel something, some kind of pressure, but we're not even sure what it is. And I think a lot of it comes down to this, like, well, you don't have access as an out triad. You lose access to power. And that's what happened. Ken and I were living in a full-time triad. It was visible.

It was the loss of power. Yeah. I didn't see it coming. I didn't know what to do with it. And nobody, it didn't seem like anybody was talking about it. I think you're putting it very cleanly here to say like, oh, we got to, we got to. we got to talk about this. Is there something that you would ask people to do to like, to, to be with this, like at a, an embodied level to like really be with this question and not shame themselves.

for loving one person a lot while also questioning this. How do we hold both of those in tension without exploding or maybe exploding to a minimum? I think it's important to remember that as human beings, we did not evolve in the nuclear family. The nuclear family is a very modern invention, you know, and it adds this other layer on top of the modern normativity. And as the nuclear family was designed to get women out of the workplace, back into the home where they had been before.

World War II, right? It was designed to counter feminism and counter socialism. And, you know, there's so much politic around that creation of the nuclear family. So I think... diving into that, having more understanding of that can help. People go, oh, the stories that I may have grown up with of who I'm supposed to be and how I'm expected to behave. are not authentic to the times we live in. So I think that's one piece.

i think for folks who are like well i i love my person and i'm not necessarily looking to explode out of this and into having a triad or quad or a giant polycule or anything i think you know, you can start looking at what are the ways that you resource share. It doesn't have to be erotic. It doesn't have to be sexual. We all resource share in different ways.

To what extent do you resource hoard, right? Where do you feel that you get more precious about, well, that's mine. You can't use it. You know, and, and. How can you expand your sense of community in that way? So showing up for your friends when they're going through a hard time, making meals for somebody who's going through bereavement grief.

um giving a ride to someone to the airport right like how do we how do we share our resources in innovative ways i think one of the ways that um i see people struggle sometimes and and this is to me is always an indicator that there's like a heavy what i call a monogamy hangover happening is when in a couple one partner gets very

uncomfortable about their partner having friends of the same gender that they are. So for example, you know, a woman gets upset that her husband is looking at pictures of someone of a woman on Instagram. Or a man is upset that his wife is really close with a male work colleague. And the implication is that... you cannot have friends of a gender that you would be attracted to. And I think to really like, start to queer the way that you do monogamy begins with

allowing more spaciousness for loving friendships and inviting people to be part of your relational landscape in different and unique ways. It doesn't have to look like dating. It can look like friendship. It can look like hanging out. It can look like work parties. You know, there's so many ways that that can look. I couldn't agree more because, Ken, I'm thinking back to before you and I were romantically involved. I mean, we've known each other our whole lives.

Before there was romance, there was, oh, we were already making dinner for each other four or five nights a week. We were already sharing school time. with each other's children we were already like he would come over and and teach kids like he'd do little science experiments with them because he's got physics training and he would just make it fun and he would take them out into the woods

The time of my life when I felt like resource sharing was most culturally acceptable was when I was raising small children. Like that was a time when everybody was like, oh my God, all hands on deck. We cannot do this alone. So we got together. There was this, what I now experience, I look back over my shoulder, I'm like, oh, if that wasn't a polycule, I don't know what a polycule was.

It was. We just weren't all having sex with each other. It wasn't even part of the equation, but we were sharing resources across so many other domains, including showing up for each other's births, showing up for each other. Yeah. I had seven women in my birthing room with me. What would be more intimate than that experience? But we didn't call it this because we were all still performing monogamy. Yeah.

And we had to be good monogamists. Also, the language wasn't there yet for a lot of this. We were not reading the right V bulletin boards. We were not. And I think about that time and I had included. You and your family's lists of needs and wants into the things that I was volunteering to engage with. Yeah, and vice versa. Yeah, totally. You were offering all sorts of things. You were offering. the resources you had access to, which was community and your your very.

significant contributions in parenting and education and all of that and i was offering you know stuff you know i would i i was going to a place that had things we wanted So when we needed them, I would bring them back. And so that no one would have to go. Yeah, it was such a lovely example of resource sharing. And I'm hearing the through line in all the things that you've been saying, Mel, as.

sharing like the the the expansiveness of connecting out to other people and both giving and receiving and it's In the context of the culture I grew up in, which was completely monogamous without question. There was literally no questions about it. Yeah, that's a revolutionary act.

To share so much across, outside the nuclear family. And I, you know, I want to name, like, these are practices, this kind of sharing. exists outside of Western colonialism. I grew up in the Middle East and there was so much a culture of sharing and warmth and welcoming. consistently in my experience in the Middle East. And I find that in my Greek and Romani ancestry as well.

you know we don't hoard things and maybe that's because we know what it's like to live in adversity so it's like when we have abundance let's share it because you never know how long it's going to last and you know I think in terms of what we're doing today, this is why I coined the term anarchy.

because I'm like, it's not just about who you're dating. Like to me, my closest relationships today are not about who I'm dating. Sometimes people I'm dating are included in there, but it's a network, it's a web, it's an ecosystem. of really close, important friendships where... we know, like we have that sense of, we want to be tied to each other in some way, not in a restrictive way, but like we are linked together. We are in an ecosystem together. We are supporting each other.

And just like, you know, when you garden, you learn as a gardener, there are certain plants that support others. And you learn how to companion plants so that you have a thriving garden. And I think in the same way, that's... That's how we can grow our relationships. That's how we move away from all that mononormativity and how we deconstruct white supremacy culture is to create an ecosystem. that leaves no room for that hierarchy to come in, no room for that supremacy to reign. Yeah. Lovely.

I really appreciate the term in our QL because it does remove us from this idea that I get really tired of the centering of sex. And honestly, anybody who listens to Playing With Fire will know. But it's just not the sense. It's not what we talk about the most, even though I love sex a whole lot. But it just, it's like it has nothing to do with the thing we're talking about, which is building my life. Sex is just a piece of it.

But there is, something happened to the quasi-polycule that I described before, which I would definitely have described as an anarchule if I'd ever had that word. And it broke it all up. And the two things that became present at that time, I'm curious what you would think, Mel, and what you might suggest we could look at to not have this happen. We were a close-knit group of humans to different degrees. Of course, we're all bringing in different things. We're all...

We all have different challenges, different ability and capacity levels. So everybody's bringing in what they have and taking what they need. And it's working beautifully for almost a decade. And then two things showed up. the presence of sex, but in the monogamous context, and then the conflict over that and having no tools at all to deal with conflict outside of the nuclear family. Yeah. And when those two things showed up, it-

did it just, it was like a tidal wave had swept the seashore. And I'm still to this day, so sad, 17 years later, still sad about it. And I look back and I'm like, I still don't know exactly what I would do other than rewrite the whole story. What can we do to have this beautiful reality of sharing? Yeah. How do we deal with the fact that most of us don't have the tools to deal with where sex intersects with all of this and where conflict will show up?

What do we need to do? So let's unpack these as two separate things. There's the sex component and then there's the conflict component. So with sex, again. Mononormativity tells us that sex is the measure of success in a relationship. You know, the assumption is you had great sex with someone.

Of course, you're going to be great life partners. Of course, it's not going to figure itself out, right? Because the sex is great. And you will hear so many people be like, yeah, you know, we have different values, but the sex is awesome. So like, I'm going to stay with them. And even in relationships where sex starts to change, sexual chemistry maybe wanes. People go, there's something wrong here because we're not having sex.

And I think it's a very valuable practice for us to look at how do we decenter sex. even in our romantic relationships like you said like sex is something that people do and can really enjoy and sex can give a lot of pleasure for people who enjoy it And it's not the be all and end all of relationships.

There's many other things we can do that can create pleasure. There's many other ways we can explore eroticism that don't have to do with sex, right? Creativity. And I think to a certain extent, spirituality can touch in those same areas. And so when we are engaging in sex, I think a really valuable question to ask is what does sex mean to you?

to ask that of yourself, but to ask that of your partners too. Many of us have never paused to question, what does sex mean for me? What are the stories that I make? about the relationship based on the kind of sex that I'm having? What are the stories I have about my sexual virility or performance or availability and how that reflects on my self-worth?

And based on that, how do we define ourselves beyond that? How do we define the relationships we have beyond the sexual chemistry, beyond our sexual appeal? to others beyond how much sex we're having. I think that's really, really important. I hear you moving past the ownership model.

It shows up in our sexuality without most of us being really conscious of it. Like, oh, this isn't just exclusivity. Yeah. This is also, I have that, it's mine. I am owed that there's entitlement and ownership that comes in. So asking these questions about the meaning could, if you're really willing to dig in, expose some of that, which is, I mean, that's going to cause an embodied reaction. I mean, I.

And I think that's a great thing, but I'm also recognizing like, wow, you have to be in a resourced spot to have this conversation. Yes, you do. It can take years, right? These are not conversations that happen over a day or two. They are ongoing. It can take months. It can take years. And I think it is still worth a conversation having, right? To be in that space of curiosity and inquiry around why do I have this relationship? to sex that I do.

When you are having sex with someone else, it doesn't matter if they have a different meaning around sex. I think what matters most is that you have clarity about this is what it means for me. For some people, sex is purely a stress release. But if you're somebody for whom sex is a spiritual experience and you're engaging in eroticism with someone for whom it's just stress relief, manage your expectations accordingly, right? Yeah.

Which means some people may not be a good partner for you because of the non-alignment. Yes. Or at least during a particular phase of life. Yeah. I've definitely felt that where I'm like, ooh, yeah. I need to manage my expectations. And that also means I need to be in constant awareness of my expectations. This seems to, in my mind, links to the...

the topic of conflict. Because if we're out of alignment and we bring up the misalignment and we're actively engaged, that can go just smoothly, but it can also... produce a lot of friction yeah and there's i know that in when i was when i grew up i was not taught a lot of conflict management tools and techniques. There are lots of them. I was taught very few. And most of the ones that I was taught had to do with harshness and punitive responses.

And I'm pretty sure that's not what we're going for in this more interconnected vision. And so what approaches do you think help other people, help people support each other in moments of conflict? yeah i mean that that harshness that you spoke of ken that's the supremacy culture coming in again it's like there's one right way we win win at conflict in quotation marks by being more right than other

than the other person. And that's the way a lot of like debate culture goes. And I think there's a lot of value to debate in that way. And especially when it comes to like creating social change, debate, open conversation.

really important. But in our interpersonal relationships, part of that fear of speaking up or around the conflict or naming it is the fear that conflict is going to lead to separation the conflict is going to lead us to fall apart and i i always go back to that model of relationships that says um you know the beginning you have this like

sweet NRE symbiosis. You're like, Oh, we're amazing. Everything's so aligned. And we feel like we're totally blended with this person as a kind of like a loss of self, but it feels good. And over time we start to differentiate and we go like, yeah, they're amazing, but sometimes their feet smell, but it's okay because everything else is great. Right. And then we get to this point of.

conflict of major differentiation. And what that's really about is reclaiming ourselves away from the merged identity, right? What's happening in conflict is self-assertion. And if we look at the nervous system, that fight response that we talk about in polyvagal theory and in somatics. That fight response isn't about, I need to beat you up. That fight response is, I need to assert myself in some way here. My selfhood is not feeling seen and I need it to be seen.

So I find that reframing it that way can be very helpful to begin with. The other thing I think is to recognize that we live in a culture that... like you said does not give us conflict resolution skills does not hold space for conflict to be allowed i mean for me growing up on the one side with a very

passionate, emotional mother and a very stoic, emotionally shut down father. And like growing up in my early life in the UK and then moving to the Middle East, like big contrast in how people deal with conflict. I would say culturally speaking, the English especially tend to be a lot more, we're going to put a lid on things and we're going to be contained.

And, you know, I think of Downton Abbey, right? The ways that they, the emotion, it's there somewhere. And it's a big deal when someone has an outburst. And in that kind of an environment. Our nervous systems are not used to strong emotion. So any strong emotion feels terrifying to witness. So we have to train our nervous systems to be able to engage in more emotion, in more passion, and in more conflict.

And we can't just dive right into that because we'll get a somatic whiplash if we just throw ourselves straight into conflict. So I always tell people, practice the conversations with the simple, silly things. Yeah. Yeah. Practice with the low stakes issues. Because if you practice with the low stakes issues early on, it will be easier as the stakes get higher. And I will get on my soapbox for this one.

I hate sharing Google calendars. I have always hated it. I've always felt like why it always feels like an invasion of privacy. I did it once and it was awful. I was like, why did it feel so bad? And I had one relationship where this happened. And I realized that what it did was it hid the conflict.

Because there was a conflict, the fundamental conflict between me and this other person about our values. And our values were reflected in the amount of time that we wanted to invest in different connections. And the way that we even engage in our own time, you know, regardless of relationships. And by leaning on Google Calendar to schedule the dates rather than having the conversation about scheduling.

We didn't see that there was such a fundamental difference until much later when the conflict had like been bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, and then poof. It's like, wait. what's happening here? Why, why are we, why does it feel like we're talking about two different relationships when we try to talk about our partnership? Um, so.

I think that's a really good one to practice with is like scheduling. It's a like medium to low stakes conversation, depending on the rest of your anarchy and your other commitments. But it's a good one to practice because there are. always going to be conflicts when it comes to scheduling there is always going to be that time where you're like i'm gonna have to let you down i can't make that thing that i said i would be able to make and we don't take it

too personally when we know like, oh, it's work is keeping you away. Oh, there was an emergency with your kid. Oh, there's traffic, right? We have a little more practice with leniency around that. So I think practicing conflict around scheduling differences or other low stakes things like, you know, okay, you want to leave some clothes over at my place? What side of the drawer do you want to have?

lower stakes things like that um and of course what's low stakes to one person might be high stakes to another I'm a big fan of this like practice on the small things. Ken and I did a demonstration of a conflict resolution technique. And the last one we used was he moved my water bottle.

I mean, he literally moved it like six inches. That was big enough. I felt the conflict. I was like, I'm going to do it. It was actually exquisite, Matt. It was. Because in that moment, we're like, okay, we have this great, what feels like a great big tool. And we got to apply it to this tiny thing, which meant not only did the tiny thing get resolved, which it could have in another way as well, but also our relationship grew. Like we grew capacity with this super low stakes.

Yeah. Like it could not have been lower stakes. Yeah. And yet, you know, it was touching each of our core wounds. Like the thing that wound up getting pinged was actually really big. I'm a, I'm a huge fan of that. And I think talking about scheduling, like, yeah, we all, we, it's something that universally applicable, we will all have to deal with in all of our relating. And so it's, uh, it.

I think you're right though. Low to medium. It might be medium stakes for many people, but a great place to begin. And one of the beautiful things about practicing with these low to medium stakes pieces.

is you get to workshop and lab, what is it like when my partner is experiencing conflict? Who do they become? Who do I become when I'm experiencing conflict? Because we are not our present day selves when we experience conflict. It is the old stuff that gets triggered. It is our inner child wounds. It is the like...

the stuff that we've been carrying from the relationship we had 20 years ago that suddenly is like rearing up and feels like it's right there present with us in the room, right? Our nervous system time travels when we experience conflict. and fear and activation and are worried about our safety. And when we can learn about who we become when we are in a state of conflict, we can learn about who someone else becomes when they are in a state of conflict.

it helps us to go, okay, this is what we do, right? I think of some couples who I've worked with where... And you've probably seen something similar. One partner will be very much, I need to externally process. I need to be present with this. And they're like kind of, they're pushing and they've got more of like the fight response going on, that self-assertion.

other partner is like I'm really scared and I would like to hide in my blanket fort please and I need time and I need to internally process this before I come to you with my finished idea yeah Yeah. These two, these two realities so often choose each other to be in relationship. It's wild. We're so. We're so effective at choosing people who will provide us amazing laboratories. I really like the reality that you've painted, like this alternate reality.

that some people are already living in. But I think a lot of listeners may be like, Ooh, I would like to touch that. And I appreciate the, the smaller steps that this isn't, it's not about all or nothing. It's not about. how many people you're sleeping with. It's not about whether you want to claim a particular label or not. It is about coming into a different relationship with relating. Yeah.

And that starts with relating to self. We didn't even dig into all the ways that that matters. Of course, as a Jungian, I was so psyched to see a chapter on relating to self. That made me super, super happy. Tell everybody like they have to find the book. Obviously the links will all be there, but find the book, find you. I know you're offering a workshop.

really soon this if they're listening to this episode when it launches yeah everybody so i'm going to be offering a small practice class um group practice on courageous communication which is going to be based on the practices formula that I offer in the book. And I'm doing it as a small group only. So by the time you're hearing this, I don't know how many spaces will be left open. prioritizing it to existing clients and students first, but there will probably be a few available.

um and the idea behind that is like let's actually get into practicing this and not only practicing the conversation but also practicing how we somatically take care of ourselves in the conversation so how do we take care of that that self-assertion fight response that self-preservation flight response

What do we do with freeze? What do we do with fawn? What do we do with all the other things that are kind of like fawn, but aren't like fixing things and fixating on things and, and blowing things up and we go, fuck it. I'm just going to do whatever. Right? Like.

There's all these other things we do that aren't fun, but are related. How do we navigate those when we are in conflict? So that's what we're going to be practicing. So that's going to start in the middle of October. Yummy, yummy. And yeah. And of course. Everybody should get radical relating. Yeah. And you can order it from your favorite local bookstore. You can order it online as well. The ebook, I narrated the audio book. I highly recommend the audio book as well if you like audio.

because when I read through the exercises, I'm basically reading the guiding you through meditations. So yeah, there's many ways to engage with the book. Fantastic. Mel, thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait for people to get their hands on this. I can't wait for my hard copy. I have read the e-copy and I can't wait for my hard copy. I already pre-ordered the hard copy and the audio copy because I'm a huge audio fan. Oh, yeah.

I'm thrilled to have you share with our listeners. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for putting your work out in the world. And thanks for talking with us today. Thank you so much for having me here today. It's been so sweet.

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.