What you are about to hear is not a session. It's a one-time conversation organized around a dinner table on the topic of polyamory. It is not an endorsement, but an exploration on modern relationships. For Esther Perel's Where Should We Begin series, The Arc of Love. Vitamin water is so New York, it's three-favor cheeses, our chopped cheese, big and egg and cheese, and a slice of cheese pizza. Drink vitamin water is from New York.
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Where Should We Begin? Is always you being invited to be a fly on the wall to listen in on the therapeutic conversations of other couples or individuals? This episode is different. I didn't have a session with the people that you're going to listen to. I had dinner. You are going to basically be invited to listen in on a dinner conversation that was quite spontaneous in prom too.
I decided to record because I thought, wow, this is an important conversation when it comes to the state of relationships at this moment. It was a conversation that emerged out of a panel that I was on 10 years ago, on the subject of monogamy and consensual non-monogamy and polyamory. My two interlocutors happened to be in New York and basically we should meet again 10 years later. Where have we gone? What has happened? How I think is evolving?
We thought, who else would be interesting to have at the table? Each of us kind of brought friends, people that we knew that we thought could contribute to an interesting conversation on the topic. Nothing was structured or organized. It was really to have an interesting evening which by the way lasted five hours. That's how rich this conversation was. I've had many conversations about sexlessness in relationships. I haven't had as many conversations about polyamory in relationships.
When you listen, you will find that some people are searching, some people have found, some of them were immersed in these days. They were their life choices. They talk about the consequences of the choices. They talk about the price they pay for the choices they made. Some people are advocating and others are investigating what choices lay available to them and others are curious to listen in and watch other people make the choices that they are not yet or not at all inclined to make.
I'm just grateful to be listening. The conversation about polyamory is often quickly polarizing. For or against, it's good, it's bad. If we can just have a conversation that is actually more inquisitive, then I think we are tackling one of the important subjects of modern love at this moment. My invitation for you is to join us at the table of a dinner that you didn't attend, but that I'm inviting you to listen in to.
The thing that stood out to me listening to the talk from ten years ago was actually a comment that a stair made at the beginning that the choice that women have to be in a polyamory relationship or to define their relationships is a choice that not many women have.
Particularly when we look at women making that choice that it is a privilege to have that kind of access to design the relationship that you want to have the most freedom to have reproductive freedom to have family of choice. That still feels quite relevant to me in a larger global context.
The thing that I think was maybe missing from that really conversation that still feels quite challenging today is that having the choice doesn't mean that the choice is easy. And for us, we're in a triad. We have come out to our families. We have slowly over the course of the last five years come out to those we work with to friends and small increments and then increasingly larger increments.
But it is scary to make the choice to come out to your friends and family and to be subject to questions about your sexuality and about your sex life, which is still where people's minds go. And it is scary to come out and say we have chosen something different, but that does not mean that it has to be a threat to the choices that you have made. Certainly from a very personal standpoint, that was true for us coming out to our families.
I came from a family where my parents were extremely happily married. Love each other is still married today. And it was so hard for my mother in particular to hear that I was power. I think it felt like a rejection of what she felt like. She was like, well, why did it? Everyone around me was going to Boston. We stayed together and somehow I failed you.
No, it's exactly the opposite. For me, I feel it was her choice and her capacity to be in a committed and loving relationship that laid the foundation for me to be free enough to make the choices that I make. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that choice is easy for others to accept. It still feels at times lonely to make the choice to design a relationship that really fits your needs and doesn't just follow some social script.
Do you think that it's different if you say to your mom and Polyamorous versus I live in a trucker or in a triad? Or to say I'm Polyamorous. Namaste, Namaste is a different story. But is it your living arrangement because it's visual? I think it was challenging because it was visual. At the time that I came out to my family and you came out to your family, we did it together at the time.
Brenna and I were, our married have been married for, together for 13 years and married for 10. And so our family had the impression that we were a cis, heterosexual, halfway married couple. And I think that a commentary that we've gotten from our family, but also close friends, as we came out, as we, as we open the door to say, sorry, we've actually been polyamorous this whole time.
And really doing quite well and excelling at it and creating relationships that are very meaningful to us. The adjustment was hard. And I think part of what was difficult is hearing from some friends and family, oh, we upheld you as this couple that we could really look up to. And now that your marriage and your relationship doesn't look the same as ours, I no longer feel perhaps that my ideals are as good. I can't look up to you anymore in that same way.
I think that was challenging for both of our families to feel that they had, that we had succeeded in some way that they had planned for us. You don't know how, I didn't think like just stick back to your happy marriage. I don't think it's an idea of how we phrased it because I tried multiple angles with my mother and she was devastated for a period of time.
And I tried my best to try to educate and provide resources and have that conversation with her. But she was coming from this very religious framework, even though she's not going to church anymore. And that was just that that's where she was. And she was devastated for a period of time. But she's come a long way.
And now, yeah, I just recently came out publicly on social media about being polyamorous and queer. And my mom and I had a lovely text exchange where she was saying that she doesn't feel like we should have to come out anymore that that shouldn't be necessary. So she's deaf come along with. I think to answer your question just as the third person in this triad here too, that it was definitely very much that way for my mother and my parents. You only talk about your mother.
That usually means that it's even harder for the fathers. My dad never really talked about it. He's like, okay, I guess I don't even want to hear about it. From my mom, I had said for years, I was polyamorous. And I think that that's kind of just easy to not necessarily process what that really means very much, but the visual aspect of, yes, this is actually my family.
These are the other two people that I'm in a committed lifelong partnership with is like you're really faced with that in a different way. I think it's also more rare probably to see that than than a lot of polyamory, which often has a couple that there's a sort of centering around.
And I experienced that as well. And you know, one difference from when we did the talk 10 years ago is that I would no longer describe my my nesting partnership as a primary partnership just because I feel like I prefer to get away from the hierarchical language that I think is possessive and comes from capitalism ultimately. I don't need to possessing partners, even though it's just fun to say man here.
But other than that, I do think that I recognize that we have privilege as a nesting partnership such that we can go and see elderly relatives and look, they don't have to think about it. We know about it. We're very out, but you know, if we are traveling as a couple with a child through the world, through places where we could face discrimination, we also are both we're a bisexual different sex couple.
We could go to countries where we dangerous for us to be visibly trans or a same sex couple or in a triad. So I recognize those kinds of privileges and I feel like that's one way that I'm grateful. And also we have also faced that kind of family rejection. And that's one of the things that I think is incredibly difficult about coming out. People are always worried about losing their job that can happen.
There's only non discrimination protections in two counties in the Boston area other than that, you can't lose a job. But what's even more stressful for people coming out is often those elderly relatives. And my favorite uncle when I came out in 2008 has not talked to me since did not come to my mother's his sisters scattering of ashes because he didn't want to meet my partner, you know, so that was those kinds of things really do cut deep and are deeply painful for people.
And I think it's important for people to realize that we don't have non discrimination protection. So I get all these media calls all the time of like, how will you bring some of your polyamorous clients on. No, because they're my clients first that I'm advocating for them and they could lose their jobs or face a child's custody case.
So that's one of the reasons I think we need to reduce the stigma. Every time we pass domestic partnership law for plural domestic partnership as we have in Boston now, that kind of thing also reduces the stigma as we saw with same sex partnership movement.
One of the things that I think has changed, there was not a conversation necessarily about family about children. And I remember a couple of people coming to me afterwards and saying, well, this is all finding good, but what happens when you have children.
And I'm wondering if you could particularly because you're you're in this world and you that's what your chosen family is and to the extent that you all have experience of love to hear how that has changed because my sense is that it's opened up some. Absolutely, I have in my love practice since 2007, I've been supporting people and figuring out different kinds of co parenting and queer family formation, but in particular polyamorous co parenting.
And to the contrary of what the people might expect, my suggestion is always to slow down and communicate more. So I'm never in the situation of advocating that, you know, you have a new lover and they move in and act like a parent with it after a few months. And because once a child is involved, what we do know, we can counteract a lot of the studies that have said children need stability of parental figures and therefore they need to marry parents where male and female.
So what I've seen and I'm working with families is that I think it's really important that we get that stability for kids, but that that can really that comes best in any kind of family or partnership by discussing what it is you want to create. And that stability can be a single mom by choice and her mother that can be platonic, you know, gay best friend and the birthing mom.
There's lots of different ways that I've seen people create stability, including with polyamorous triads, for example, that I've helped to co parent a child. And I think we've seen more and more that there's this possibility of parenting. I have an eight year old who is absolutely thriving and has wonderful relationships with other chosen family people. And, you know, while it wasn't easy, one of my partners who have been with us during the pandemic and helped with homeschooling my child.
And there's different challenges as just as we discuss in the original talk, you can choose the potential for monotony of monogamy or you can choose the feelings of risk and vulnerability of polyamory. There was definite intensity to having my boyfriend and my husband and I inside the house in the pandemic for a lot longer than we all thought. And at the same time, my kid had maybe the best pandemic of any kid that I know and we had three adults for one child.
And that cannot be minimized and I would do the same thing again. So let's take a break for a quick word from our sponsors so that we can go right back and plunge into the inner layers of the conversation on polyamory. Support for where should we begin comes from square space.
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My kids have had a family of choice forever. They have a whole community. I have very intense friendships. I have my husband who I have never called my best friend. I have best friends is my husband. And I have very close friendships, men and women and everything in between. I just didn't use the vocabulary. I think you're the one who made that emphasis in the conversation. You talked about it as friendship.
It's an interesting thing even when you describe, you're saying it's a platonic relation. That to me is an interesting thing. Many relationships are alive and when they're alive they're often erotic and it's in their infancy or it gets played out or it gets held back and that makes it even more exciting.
There's an energy. It doesn't have to be that you sleep with people to experience that energy with the people. And that's to doubt for me. I thought, we're not that far apart in many, many ways. But I have never framed it in that language. I appreciate the ways we frame things differently. And I think that one of the reasons that I do that is because I think that it elevates to partnership too.
It helps people to think when they trip over referring to somebody who's a dear friend as a partner. It clarifies that I mean somebody other than a romantic partner. And that it doesn't have to be that you only have romantic partners and business partners. Because I help many, many people to decide they want to buy a house together. They want to share co-parenting. They want to grow old together. 38% of American adults are single and consider their best friend to be their closest person.
The laws that I've been passing have been acknowledging legally that they can be legal domestic partners and be this people who cross a border in a pandemic to be together and visit each other in the hospital, share health insurance. Why should I be able to do that with somebody I just met online and married and not with my best friend of 40 years. And so I think that that's why I use that term intentionally. It's a little bit of activism by sharing the idea that somebody could be a partner.
Because it's exactly what you're talking about, which is we have intimate friendships. And that everyone's like, wait, you gay? Well, there's such curiosity because the beauty of that kind of a friendship and I feel so blessed to have this kind of friend of my life as to her conclusion where there's a level of intimacy and we develop a level of intimacy.
But it doesn't fit into the categories. So that's part of what began to change. So clinically, you know, for a long time, couples therapy meant you knew which couple. And then I began to switch, you know, who is the couple? Then I remember the first time a trip came into the office. Then I remember beginning to say, we can't just use the word love and intimacy for romantic love. They'd exist in friendship. Then I began to bring friends. The pandemic really changed that because we could do Zoom.
And your best friends are not always next to you, but you could suddenly have sessions with those close friends. And I began to do friendship therapy, break up a friendship, not just break up a romantic love. And then I began to bring that into the training, you know, which makes it complicated too because you don't want to be a person who says the right fit is a straight jacket of monogamy.
You also don't want to be the person who says the right fit is the expansive jacket of non monogamy. You want to let people figure out what works for them wherever they are right in their life. This subject is a subject in which often people have a very hard time holding both and tolerating the ambivalence and the ambiguity that accompanies it. It becomes, you know, it's like in the beginning days, if you were a therapist that was divorced, you were more likely to help you couple divorce.
If you were a therapist that stayed married, you were more likely to work towards your couple staying together. The bias is very pregnant. And I want to share an appreciation that we use different framings, but you have done so much to elevate the importance and the value of friendship by giving those examples by doing podcast episodes of the two male friend who got a fractured friendship going through couples therapy together.
Why does this decades log friendship not important enough in our mind as a society that that would be worth going to therapy and working on right why shouldn't they maybe decide that they go on vacation together once a year that they have special time together that they have commitments that they have agreements with each other that they're going to talk about it if they have another argument right.
I think that that has done a great service toward elevating those other kinds of connections as well, even as we use different terms for it. I remember the first times when I would bring it up, you know, not just bring up, have you considered just are you a monogamous are you sexually exclusive.
Our field has always taken that as a given that's the norm with which you come in from there you can talk about the exception now if you ask the question you press you pose that it's not a given you find out where do you live where you from are you sexually exclusive is that how do you define your relationship a set of questions that were never asked because they didn't need to be asked because everybody just assume that's how you see change.
I would like to add an element to this that you're talking about personal exploration brought up which is this tension that outsiders I think often look at non monogamy and see which is a conflation between security and stability and they see non monogamy as disrupting stability and therefore we must feel more insecure but in fact the way you've framed it about personal exploration about finding these areas to connect with different parts of ourselves.
I think we have an opportunity in non monogamy to find greater security through different types of attachments secure attachment through exploration of the self with real bonafide connection whether or not those connections are quote unquote as stable. So I may have a partner or a friend that I've had for many years of my life but I may find just as much security with a new connection that I've made and a different type of security in a part of my identity that I didn't yet have seen.
I see have seen that shift in our community and in the people that we coach and teach and workshops that we do this this sort of slow and tentative step towards decoupling the two or really looking at the ways in which non monogamy opens the door to greater security.
Part of what we have emphasized we've used the word only one time here is communal and I wonder you know is the word poly a response actually to a hyper individualistic model of coupling and what we are really creating is you know it's not special arrangements it's actually traditional arrangements revisited.
You know aunties families of choice neighbors close friends who you feel like they're not just the ones that you go out with but the ones who actually you can leave your kid with and that whole to me it's a communal model that has gotten lost in a very individualistic environment that sees marriage. As this is your fantastic expression as a social welfare state of two.
You know and I think that that's what is the creative part of the road it and it's too bad that it has to be seen as so groundbreaking and rebellious actually and instead of talking about polyamory I think what we're talking about not instead but another way of looking at it is multiple ways that we're trying to deal with countering isolation.
A question I would love to take your thoughts for me to put you on the spot but you're saying I have a lot of questions and ask and I'm going to put it on.
I am so thrilled to talk to all of you and I find this conversation so stimulating and I feel like the the talk 10 years ago Diana I really resonated with you and you were saying that when you were talking about financial independence and that has driven so much of my life me feeling the need to be financially independent and the idea two years ago I was a monogamous person and my life has completely changed.
I am in the world of ethical non monogamy which feels strangely worlds away from the world of polygamy. I'm sorry. Polyamory. Oh my god. Please forgive me. Non monogamy feels worlds away from the world of polyamory. How is this? Yeah. I'll give you an example for my own life currently. I have developed a loving relationship with a couple who are married and they consider me a friend. That's the label that we live in and our relationship has grown.
It is a sexual relationship but I know their family as we spend holidays together. I love them very much and I feel content to be in this space where I am considered their friend and I hope sincerely that it's a lifelong friendship that we share. On the other hand I'm being sort of courted by another couple who are considering it feels like bringing me into a triad.
And so I feel like on one hand there's just a couple that I love that's very like non monogamous on this other hand it's a couple that's sort of like polyamorous. And me as a I feel and please I would love to hear your thoughts on this and forgive me if this is an ignorant question. Sometimes it feels like the distinction between that is like is security and division of resources.
There's absolutely no question that my friends on the non monogamous side would ever consider providing me like sharing resources or providing me with like security of their home or you know a space to live. Whereas the other couple it feels like that is on the table. I think that's a really great point because I do think it might work as a family mediator with you know people on the at the Columbia and the polyamorous side.
You see that I think there is this issue of you know are you prioritizing the financial and time resources of a family unit. And that maybe you know being sexual with your friend is for fun but something that we could be cut out versus is this person potentially the capacity at least to become a core family member to have just as much importance in your family. I think that's one piece.
And I think in part of that there can be a bit of a scarcity and trying to preserve those resources but also a line to ourselves because one of the top issues I see when people are running into problems is when they have a sort of a family unit. And that's what I think is when they have a sort of don't ask don't tell agreement or a non monogamy agreement which is you know very common also in the gay male community and it's sort of a rule that it's going to be just sex.
Humans don't work that way you can't say I'm going to just have sex with a charismatic person I met or with my dear friend and not have emotional feelings for them. And I think that's what I think is the most important thing is that we can do that very well we can't really make that promise and so to me it feels almost as false as making that agreement that like you know we're 25 and we promise to be together for the rest of our lives.
You can't really promise that necessarily you don't know that. You're a slip of the tongue between polygamy and connamary was actually very accurate because that is the polygamy system is a system of materiality. If you can support two families you can have two wives. And the materiality and the financial support and the responsibility comes first as a condition for whatever feelings you may have. So you had a good choice of what.
I'd like to add something from my own life I threw out my whole dating history typically I'd been in some of the nogamist relationships mostly polyamorous relationships where there was sort of a core two people involved. And when I began this relationship with my thrupal that to me was so much bigger of a difference than to be in a polyamorous relationship with you know me and one other person and a monogamous relationship.
And I feel like the rest of society views the whole polyamorous camp as this thing that is so you know separate from from an agame but for me the bigger difference was actually stepping up from polyamory with two people to polyamory with three person core relationship. Right, which then you can't sort of pass as a couple in other situations as easily as well. And also there isn't that assumption of couples privilege that there's a core couple that's the most important.
Yeah. Was that why it was the biggest difference was that you felt like you couldn't pass as a couple anymore. That was definitely a big change for sure. We're a family and you know we can we've already done this conversation we can spend a long time on semantics to the extent that it's helpful or we can all collectively agree that it's all garbage and it doesn't matter.
I think I've adopted this term recently if we're in a family system we're in a poly family system we have really committed to being in a family together we live we own a house together we own 158 or farm together we share finances and we are trying to have children together. We are creating a family together and to come back to your some of your comments about about the externalities are how people see these different pieces of financial stability.
I think like a popular joke that came about in particular during the pandemic for people in our age group from millennials and for those donkers monogamy in this economy. Like this also like much less about that. I've shared finances with with my best friends in deeply intimate ways that I guarantee my parents would be horrified by you know they felt secure and stable to us and for us to intermingle our finances to create a strong family system to make just make sense.
Why would I not want to invite in the greatest stability with our combined emotional intellectual and financial assets at this moment in time. But also we came together to time in our lives where we already had a lot of experience collectively with different forms of polyamory with different forms of a relationship security that I think enabled us to say yes we all feel qualified and excited about the potential of making that type of commitment.
More structure less freedom more clarity more certainty less structure more choice more freedom more self doubt more uncertainty. I just wanted to address I feel like your comment about how all this is about navigating isolation really spoke to me as a single person navigating these multiple relationships that I'm in and I must say that moving from monogamy where I felt like I was truly clinging to one other person maybe not the healthiest monogamous relationship to be fair.
Like begging them to help alleviate my feelings of isolation to now truly a single person like in relationships of various kinds with multiple different people what I have learned from non monogamy has been how to I've found a comfort with other people and also with myself that this that being alone is truly.
And truly a posture and from it can come a feeling of sad isolation and from it can also come this feeling of peaceful solitude and I feel much more of that peaceful solitude when I'm alone now I don't know if that I feel like it's directly connected to this.
And I invite you if you learn the switch from thinking about being monogamous to being ethically non monogamous or polyamorous at what point do you make the choice from thinking of yourself as single because single and I know I'm a stick for the words but because they mean so much the carry entire cultural systems and once you think of yourself as single it's in contrast to being in a relationship with the world.
And you're single until you know longer single married or at least committed and that in itself you know if you have two couples that you are in a relationship with I don't know at what point you stop being single. I sleep alone in my bed every night to me that feels very much like I'm single. And I'm having solo poly which some people will use that phrase.
And if I could add on to that I think I agree with that definition and I think another one might be that some people do have you know multi year dating relationships when they're solo poly they might have what we call it you know a partner and have partners but maybe they want to continue living alone.
But they're declaring by saying that is that they're not necessarily on a relationship escalator which is one of the things I loved about going from as I talked about at the talk 10 years ago of like going from this sort of like young professional woman like I'm supposed to be husband hunting I only have time to go on dates with somebody that's got like a graduate degree.
And sort of something that's like we could just like have dinner and make love once every few months for the rest of our lives this is great we don't whether there's no like getting more serious there's no maybe we're going to move in together there could be emotional connection right and so I think for a lot of people solo poly can really resonate and there's an overlap between that and the solos movement which is single people who are reclaiming the term single and changing it to solo to convey I'm not looking.
I'm not like oh I'm single right now it's like nope I'm solo and some of them are forming their family kind of relationships with people that are not their lovers the lovers are not the people that they want to make family with they might have co parents they might have their best friends but they're sexual and
relationships are not going to be the core of their lives as non monogamy becomes something that's more socially acceptable and more talked about and as different kinds of family forms and same sex couples are proliferating it's interesting to and refreshing to have children in my life who don't necessarily have the same preconceived notions so recently in my eight year old was asking what is monogamy again and I explained it I explained it and my
kid my kid said wow that sounds kind of controlling is that common is actually really common but not necessarily having a presumption that families look a certain way because just being exposed to other options is kind of interesting to think about like what will this next generation do with the ideas of family and relationship. Let's take a quick break there's so much more we need to talk about. Support for this episode of Where Should We Begin comes from Bombass.
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Mixed feelings I think it's sad but overall I think he might be making the right decision. I'm sad to see him drop out but I think it needed to be done. So I think hopefully it brings out more young voters. Joe Biden is considered as an anti-cris. I wanted to stay in this way I know Trump would have won. Now it's up in here. But I just feel like his America ready for a woman and also a black woman so that's what scares me.
I just don't really see Kamala or really anyone else being a Bible threat to Trump. Kamala, Kamala, we need the facts man I don't know you know me like I think it's some fishy going on but you know don't pull me. I'm going to quote you. We're going to ask Vox's Andrew Prokop and David Axelrod how they feel on today explained. Amen. What it be too much can we now like dig into this gritty moment of talking about jealousy.
It's something to do with I think the difference between your relationship with this relationship that maybe can survive like you two were partners and now you're chosen family. Whereas maybe most monogamous relationships could never survive a split like that.
It's like atomic bomb versus like it feels like there's a crux there right like I don't even want to say something that's like real love or like some kind in some way love where like the ego has been removed in some way where you're like truly loving the person for who they are rather than like loving them for what they can do for you. Am I am I like going way out and left field here like there's I feel like jealousy is involved in this somehow like jealousy ego can you speak on that.
I just want to drop in that like this one this is not a poly recruitment dinner. Yeah. I don't think it's better for everyone. But I do want to point out a thing a thing that the American idea of becoming evolved or in the tantra world like becoming more self actualized and you know becoming more you know reaching enlightenment.
I think the American ideals of self help and achievement or over achievement have seeped in to the relationship world and also the bedroom such that if you are not considering opening up your relationship if you haven't already tried a female lead yet like if you're not kinky if you're not already you know squirting so hard during your orgasm you knock over a lamp or something somehow you're not self actualized. It's a new kind of competitive absolutely.
And so like to I just like to reframe and remind people like it's okay to to investigate all these things and then realize you're you like monogamy. Right like it's okay to try tantra and you know have energetic orgasms and be like you know what I think I just like fucking you know or like I don't like three sums I like one on one you know sexual connections like like to just check that.
That evolved the nest that's seeping in and and what really is evolved is like you give yourself permission to explore if you want to explore but like like what you like. And don't like and don't do what you don't like and that should be what evolved and being self actualized becomes.
And from there then I'm fine we can talk about you know the opposite jealousy and things like that but but like I think this is this is a part that people are struggling with because they're like but I think I like being vanilla am I broken. It's a tyranny from one switching to tyranny of the other.
I have a vulnerable confession to make this group. I have actually been monogamous to Athena for the past four years which is the decision that I made with all the agency in the world after being polyamorous my whole life having the freedom to have multiple partners my whole life.
That was something I very joyfully did which is sort of an element of our DS relationship importantly Athena is not monogamous to me and most people would kind of look at this situation and think I think it's some ways it's kind of almost like taboo polyamorous almost like you're not really supposed to do that you know it's kind of a mistake.
How it's how transgressions. This is something that has worked really well for us and I think that we were able to kind of like make this choice it was right for us and we're still very much enjoying this.
And I think jealousy it's a human emotion right so of course like every person who's a human being has felt jealousy of some type but the jealousy that like I ever have is like kind of not the type that people would generally like expect like I don't have like jealousy over her having sexual relationships with anyone at all.
Like at times like the three of us cohabitate like I've maybe been like jealous of like Brandon's ability to like be on top of like the house management or something right like it's like a different kind of jealousy and we the average person would not like be like oh well that's the jealousy must be you know it's very safe. No not for me.
I want to share my own vulnerable so about jealousy because for for years Brandon and I were theoretically polyamorous but in practice I was we were just obsessed with each other and so practice we were monogamous so it's like we would like try to do other people.
I just want to really be home and I love them so much and then finally the day arrived where we were we both sort of within the same six month period found other partners and we were like I think we're now practicing polyamory and I remember the first time in like in my life that I actually felt this polyamorous jealousy.
Brandon was like going on a date with his partner they were together for many years love her very much and I was like oh here it is people always talk about this and it's in the ethical slot and it's in all these books but I'm finally experiencing for the first time. What do I do? Who can I go talk to?
We're not really supposed to feel this jealousy if you've been doing polyamory and if you've been doing it correctly in big air quotes of course you're really not supposed to feel this way as I go what I do with this feeling and of course that jealousy was this a desire in that moment to have a sense of of closeness or reassurance that I did not necessarily need from my partner I just I wanted in general or in fact in that particular case I remember clearly.
I was after I had had my concussion and I was dealing with all of these traumatic brain injury fallouts and I was very traumatic time in our lives and I was I really just needed to to turn to my partner and say can you just reassure me that if I was having like a medical problem that you would come home still and of course instantly my partner's like yes of course that's all I needed I just needed that reassurance in some moment but it can be so lonely to have these feelings of jealousy because we are supposed to move beyond somehow we're supposed to just be magically.
We're supposed to be magically free of those concerns but the desire for reassurance and connection is always going to be there it's a very human emotion to have. It should not be taboo as part of our conversation about not being able to know. Well I can do more evolved. You can feel it like jealousy would just dissolve into the ethers and you've sold of light.
But I think that's part of it and then we don't have the tools or we feel shame or we don't know what we're feeling because some people are so close off and haven't done any kind of somatic experiencing or noticing. And then like we're not talking about these things and then skill set sharing and being able to be like hey how did you work through jealousy or what do you do when you get jealous because there's so much resource out there.
And for a lot of us just talking about it is the beginning of the resource to know that you're not alone to know that the jealousy is being felt in different generations. jealousy is a human emotion but it doesn't belong to the original six it actually comes around 18 months and it's an interesting thing because it only begins once you have enough of a sense of yourself.
So you need a sense of of I end out in before you can even begin to experience it until the 90s there was plenty of articles in the press in the US with about jealousy and then at some point it all disappeared because the notion was that you shouldn't feel jealous and if you do this something wrong rather than it's a part of the experience of love.
So it's you know the question always is is jealousy and are you know an archaic emotion that you should try to get away from is possessiveness and archaic emotion that you should try to get away from versus are they just part and parcel of the experience itself and they come up on occasion and
you know if you there is jealousy in monogamous relationships and there is jealousy in polyamorous rapes just jealousy in love that's that's the oh I've accepted that for me it's inescapable I'm an extremely passionate person and like I feel like with my with my relationships it has become it's like processing jealousy with with me on my relationships right now.
Is that become a hobby but but there's so much growth in there because I think what ends up happening and I'm not trying to be woke I'm I would love to be enlightened that would be great but I feel like that's where a lot of this growth comes is like really being able to see that person and try to really walk in their shoes and think if I was this person what I want to have fulfilling sexual relationships yes.
You know with with other people and doesn't detract in any way from our connection no but it's like a bridge to like I have to walk all the way across that and it's painful as you said absolutely I jealousy is one of those sources of personal growth in open relationships and when I said that I've gotten just as much out of it as therapy oftentimes it was jealousy it was the surprising feelings that would come up it would be the oh I feel really triggered what is that.
And that would rather than just have the knee jerk reaction against it it was really informative to be able to allow it in and then feel out the different kinds of nuances and feel out that there are some things I would set a boundary around you know it wouldn't be appropriate to hit on one of my close friends without checking with me right or yes right or you know if you're partner developed a dating hobby six nights a week it would be just as much of a problem if they have a video gamer golf hot.
So if you're a video gamer golf hobby six nights a week right if they become obsessed with anything whether not giving you attention or the palm like attention that's a problem and you're allowed to set boundaries you're allowed to have your own kinds of deciding when you're rationally setting a boundary rather than just sort of in a passionate moment being like I don't like her in the red you know
don't talk to her and that any kind of bad behavior is excused and so it really helped me bring up my insecurities ask for the reassurance that I need and sometimes notice when it was something more like parody like you're having this special experience I want to have a special experience with you and I think that's actually something that can keep the long term relationships really vital when you're also dating other people because you might have a realization that your partner feels jealous when they realize like you know you're doing the toy and lingerie shopping for some new person
there should be a toy and lingerie night for the person who's been home you know for 12 years right and and I'm going to make a special moment with them we're like I'm going to go away for the weekend with them if I go away with the weekend with somebody else just because that feels like I want to get to have that kind of experience with you
and so I think just opening up a vocabulary is just been really nutritious for figuring out what's where are those little sticky points inside for me and for you and our relating.
And then like are you in have you been cultivating relationships where you can talk about these things and then co create like some sort of more processing but like co create the so what do we want to do with this like like what is the aha moment we're getting from this maybe it is like I would like lingerie too or then you realize like well I don't really like lingerie actually I like some socks really good little socks would be great and then but like
so many people never even get to that because they never let it in they don't have anything they can't talk about any of it and so jealousy never gets to be like a positive thing. Where should we begin with Esther Porelle is produced by magnificent noise we're part of the Vox media podcast network in partnership with New York magazine and the cut.
Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Dessertree Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller and Julian Ann original music and additional production by Paul Schneider and the executive producers of where should we begin our Esther Porelle and Jesse Baker we'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller and Jack Saul.
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If you've been enjoying this podcast here's a look into what else is happening at New York magazine I'm Corey Seeket and I'm here with Reeves wide a men who is written about the American obsession with NDA's where did they come from why are they everywhere and are they good for anything besides covering up for abusers. After you poked around the NDA's for a while do you see NDA's used mostly as tools of abuse and coercion you see positive results like where where did you land on NDA's.
I think in most situations it is used as a way to sort of claim power but not even necessarily to like to do a bad thing it's just kind of it is this now this sort of boring standard tool in the toolbox of corporations or powerful people.
But now it's being used on the people at the bottom it's the warehouse workers at Amazon being made to sign them or like I was just trawling job listings well doing the story and there are NDA's for forklift drivers and like people working in butcher shops and I think on the one hand it's just kind of like well I might as well there's no downside for me to do this but it is also just another way that you sort of keep your employees or people you get into a relationship with that you sort of keep your thumb on them.
So I do think it is at the end of the day the people who are giving them out by and large are trying to control someone. Do you think that they're going to become standard for like literally every interaction in job interview and possibly relationship as well or do you think they're just finally going to die or become outlawed like where do we go from here.
You know it was corporations first then it was celebrities then it was just rich people who aren't famous but they also want to protect their privacy.
The next frontier is people like you and me and and are we going to start giving them to their partners you know I think some people are going to start start experimenting with it it doesn't take much to go online download a free NDA and without even consulting a lawyer and hand it over to someone I did as a joke send one to my girlfriend she hasn't signed it yet but I yeah I at least sent it so.
That's Reeves wide meant who may I may not be single soon you can read his work on NDAs in our beautiful print magazine in your own home or on NY Mag.com slash lineup.