140 - The Jealousy Survival Guide (with author Kitty Chambliss)
This week we're speaking with Kitty Chambliss, coach, speaker, and author of the soon to be released Jealousy Survival Guide. Kitty shares with us the lessons she's learned as a polyamorous person who still struggles with jealousy and offers her insight and techniques for managing jealousy as it occurs in the moment with grace, ease, and compassion.
You can find more of Kitty's work at lovingwithoutboundaries.com.
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Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are talking with a special guest, Kitty Chambliss. Kitty Chambliss is a polyamorous and sex-positive speaker, author, educator, and relationship coach, and an activist, and founder of Loving Without Boundaries. Kitty's work has been featured in Stories From the Polycule, Postmodern Woman, The Youshare Project, and the upcoming book Coming Out Poly, as well as other publications around the globe.
She’s also been a special guest panelist and speaker on radio shows international, and national conferences, and more. As well as being a dual certified CPC and ELIMP relationship coach. She has a book coming out called The Jealousy Survival Guide which we will be talking about on this episode.
Dedeker: Well, let's get to the interview. Here we are with Kitty. Kitty, thank you so much for joining us today.
Kitty Chambliss: You are welcome. I'm excited to be here.
Dedeker: Great. We all read your book. And Emily is starting us out with our questions to grill you with, about your book.
[Laughter]
Emily: Absolutely. I was wondering, do you agree with the narrative that jealousy is just like a normal biological response? And that it's been this vital thing for human evolution? Because, a lot of times, I hear people saying that like, "Jealousy is just really normal. It's a thing that everyone goes through." Do you actually think that it's learned over time, or that it's just a natural response that occurs within us? I kept thinking that while I was reading the book, just simply because I wondered what your stance on all of that was.
Kitty: Sure. Now that's a great question. My stance is, really that it's simply a feeling. It's a human emotion that we can experience. I don't necessarily think every single one of us definitely experiences, say, a lot of jealousy. It's probably unlikely that we would go through our lives and never experience it. But I definitely think that some people are more predisposed, possibly, to feel jealousy than other people. For example, my husband is just not really a very jealous person and neither is his girlfriend, whereas I definitely have more challenges with experiencing jealousy.
So I do think that certain people may feel it more than others, whether it's physiological, or learned, or whatever. But one thing I'm trying to get across in the book is that it is normal and okay to feel jealousy. Sometimes, people try and squash it, or pretend it's not happening, or be like, “I'm horrible for feeling jealousy. I'm not doing good poly.” But it’s very normal to feel it, and instead of fear it or suppress it or pretend it's not happening.
Emily: I appreciate that you’re creating the book for people like yourself that maybe feel it more often. That's great.
Kitty: For some people, maybe feeling jealousy isn't maybe an issue or it doesn't feel quite so icky. But for some people, it's either they try and avoid it like the plague, but the book is, really to let them know that it's okay to feel it. And then here are some things that you can do to work through those feelings, and maybe lessen its impact if you do.
Jase: That’s great. It's something I've noticed with a lot of the blogs and other writings and stuff out there about polyamory that-- I found there's a fair number that are written by people who don't seem to experience much jealousy. I think that those types of people are the minority of most of us. But they're the ones who, because everyone else looks at them and goes, “Oh gosh, you do this so well,” there are a lot of the information out there.
I appreciate that you're also coming at it from the point of view of just a normal person who experiences jealousy. It's something that we try to talk about on our show as well, that we all experience it too. We're not immune somehow. It's not that we're magically poly and you're not.
[Laughter]
Kitty: Yes, sometimes there's that idea that you're practicing polyamory because you're enlightened or something. We're just everyday people. I don't feel any more enlightened. It's just a way I identify. It's also something I choose to practice. But partly, I'm choosing to practice working through some of these tough things or working on my communications so that I can learn to express these challenging emotions that are hard to talk about sometimes, or nervous to talk about. And trying to give people the tools, that they can have smoother conversations with their partners when things like this come up.
Dedeker: What I do appreciate about your book is that you address the problematic thoughts that can come up, fueled by jealousy. Addressing the fact that it is problematic to have feelings of jealousy and then to think like, "Oh, that means that my actions of screaming or blaming our partner or yelling are justified." However, I appreciate that you also address that it's equally problematic to think me feeling jealousy is wrong or my needs and wants don't matter, that it's not worth it for me to even fight for top of the bottle of talking with my partner about how I'm feeling.
This related to what we've been talking about just now, about these thoughts of feeling guilt about not being a good enough, a “good enough poly person” or feeling wrong for feeling jealousy. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about why this opposite end of the spectrum, the end of the spectrum where it's like, "Oh, I shouldn't be feeling jealousy. I should just be zen as fuck. I shouldn't be expressing my needs to my partner," why this can also be just as destructive as say, more-- well, destructive jealousy where you are yelling and screaming, and stamping your feet, and making demands on your partner.
Kitty: Well, a lot of times, people will suppress their own needs. Towards the end of the book, we talk about one of the communication styles is nonviolent communication. And realizing that sometimes, some of our challenging emotions, such as jealousy or anger or anything like that, we're partly feeling it because there's a need, or a need that's not getting met, or a value that's getting violated, or a boundary that's getting violated. Often, we'll either pretend our needs don't matter, or we're not maybe honoring our values, or we're letting somebody cross or violate a boundary.
There comes a point where you need to-- if you want to say, "Stand up for yourself," in those type of situations or learn to understand what your needs are, and then learn how to express them in a way that your partner can hear you, versus the screaming and ranting and raving. And also acknowledge-- You were saying that it's okay to have these needs. So you learn how to figure out how to get them met. Then make a request of your partner, instead of making a demand of like, "I don't want you seeing that person anymore," or practicing veto power.
You can make a request like, "I feel maybe we're not spending enough time together. Do you think maybe we could-- I'm feeling a little excluded. Can we maybe talk about that a little bit?" There’s constructive ways that we can be doing that.
Dedeker: Right. There's something that I keep coming back to, often in my own coaching practice, and what we've come back to many times on this podcast, is this idea that it's such an important skill to be able to tell the difference between what is me just having some uncomfortable personal growth, versus what is me in a situation where boundaries are being violated, or where I'm not getting what I need.
I feel like a lot of issues that come up with people who are exploring non-monogamous relationships, it tends to lie in that particular overlap, of people not being able to tell the difference between, "This is just uncomfortable," versus, "I'm being violated in some way." Sometimes it's one way. Sometimes it's the other. But yes, that's always a tricky thing.
Kitty: That's why the whole first section of the book, it's really a lot about mindset and really doing a lot of inner work and a lot of exploration, personally, before you even approach your partner. It does take time. It does take effort. But it's really important to look within first before you start talking to your partner and making sure it's a productive conversation. Also, so you're not like coming at your partner.
[Laughter]
Dedeker: No one wants to be ambushed. In your book, you offer a lot of very, very practical, very hands-on tools for doing that inner self-work, for doing that "switching up your mindset" work, for setting a good foundation for having healthy, effective communication with your partner. There’s one technique that you had in your book that actually-- After I read it, I immediately introduced it to a client of mine. It worked wonders. First of all, thank you for that.
Kitty: Oh my gosh. That’s so amazing.
Dedeker: It was your technique of categorizing your fears between less loss and never, like that. As you explain in the book that often, our fears that fuel our jealousy are connected to either the sense of less, of being afraid that, "I'm going to get less of my partner's time or less of my partner's affection." So the fear of loss, fear that, "I'm going to lose this partner entirely." Or the fear of never, the fear that like, "I'm never going to be with this person again," or maybe, "They will never take me on a date. Like the date they just went on with my..." or things like that. I would love to hear from you why is it so important to be able to label and categorize our fears when they're overwhelming us.
Kitty: What I found, especially in my polyamorous journey is, there are so many things that we experience. Like our feelings and things that are hard to articulate. It's so challenging when you're feeling something inside and you don't know how to get it out. Sometimes that creates anxiety. It can even make us sick. We can have an upset stomach, even. So it's really great when we can come up with a way to express it to the other person, whether we use metaphor or we learn new terminology like we love to do in a polyamory is come up with new words.
[laughter]
But with the loss, less, never, it's just-- Fear is such a difficult thing to talk about in general. It makes us feel vulnerable. Maybe that's it. There's a vulnerability in talking about our fears. So just coming up with some words to help explain it to our partner, in a way that becomes more tangible, instead of just this ethereal thing that we're afraid of. We're afraid to express it to our partner. So it's really about being able to, as you said, label it. But label it in a way that our partner can understand. And also we can understand.
Sometimes we're having a feeling that we don't even know what it is. Being able to analyze our own feelings in a way where we're practicing emotional intelligence with ourselves, and then being able to present that to our partners so they can understand. Also, create a bridge. Create some empathy from our partner for what we're experiencing, so that they can have a better understanding about how to meet our needs and how to meet our requests.
Dedeker: Right, that makes sense.
Jase: Yes, there's a lot of power in having labels for things. Obviously, labels can be misused as well. But when it comes to things like this, that just -- For a lot of people with anxiety, for example, they may have been feeling this way and it's this terrible feeling in their life. Once they have a label to put on it, of, "Oh, this is anxiety that I'm feeling when I have these symptoms, when it's-- my heart racing or my stomach getting upset," all these symptoms. Then it's like, "Oh, okay. I have a label for it. Now I know things I can do to deal with it."
"Here's this thing. I'm going to practice this mindfulness technique," or, "Here's this thing. I need to change my situation in a certain way to avoid it." Do you think that there is that power in labeling your fears, so then you can approach them differently?
Dedeker: Well, a theme that comes back again and again in your book is the idea of creating psychological distance between yourself and your thoughts, or between yourself and your fears, because of the fact that your fears aren't you and your thoughts aren't you which-- That truth is just a doozy in general.
[laughter]
Kitty: Yes. It takes practice. All this stuff really does take practice. It's one thing to just write about it in the book or to learn about it when you read it. But it's just like meditation and mindfulness. It is something that you have to keep practicing. Even though I did write this book, I had a situation come up a couple of days ago where I'm like, "Oh, if I could only just impart everything I wrote about and just have it in my power right in this moment." You really do have to keep practicing so that it becomes more ingrained in you. But the beauty with the practicing is, you do get better and better at it.
Dedeker: Right.
Jase: Well, that's a great segue, actually, into the next question that I had here which is-- It's all well and good to talk about jealousy and how to analyze it and how to be mindful and all of these things. But a lot of times, when people get triggered by something that makes them feel jealous or makes them feel afraid, which is showing up as jealousy for them, and they have that panic, freak out moment of just like, "Oh, God, get it off of me. Get it off of me," that kind of-- like the jealousy spider is on you. You just panic and freak out.
[laughter]
Kitty: I like that, the jealousy spider. That's awesome.
Jase: I just made that one up right now. Good job. There's that panic moment where it doesn't feel like you can think rationally. It doesn't feel like you can take time for that distance. I was wondering if you had any techniques from your book or from your experience of something that you can use right in that moment to create just that little bit of space, so that you can then try to label it or get some distance from it or whatever it is.
Kitty: It certainly whatever works for you. I can tell you some of the things that work for me and some things I talk about in the book. First, it's recognizing when you start seeing the green or whatever it is that you experience in that moment. For me, first, you have to recognize that. Then the next thing I usually do is, I just simply excuse myself and go to the restroom. [laughs]
Emily: Yes, you wrote about that early on in the book.
Kitty: It's so simple and silly. But you know what? It works. Because when I can feel those-- For me, it starts to well up in my chest and yes, that sense of panic. And my face starts to get hot. Once I feel those physical sensations, I know whatever is going to come out of my mouth next is not going to be very good. I might stick my foot in my mouth or say something I regret. Also, I just may look like a deer in headlights. Say it's a social situation, I just may look like I just swallowed my tongue or you know. [laughs] I'll literally just excuse myself.
Whether it is a social situation or I'm having a conversation with a lover, I'll literally just excuse myself, go to the restroom, look in the mirror, put my hands on the counter, feel something cold. There's always something cold in the restroom. And just collect myself for a couple of minutes. Then once I'm in there, if I need to-- maybe I'll just breathe deeply. Because also, when we practice really quick meditation, we can physically lower our heart rate and just physically calm ourselves down. When you are feeling those flushed feelings, it's a way-- If you only have a couple of minutes to just slow your body down, slow your breathing down.
That'll slow your heart rate down. I did read before, I don't think I have this in the book, that it can take up to 20 minutes if you are feeling jealousy, to actually get back to your normal. Whatever your normal is. But even if you've only got a couple of minutes, you can at least get back to some semblance of normal. Hopefully, get yourself to a place where you can at least put a pin in it and think, "Okay, I obviously just got triggered there. Maybe it's not the right time to talk about it." Or maybe it's also, "I'm in a social situation where I can't."
But just put a mental pin on it and be like, "Okay, as soon as I can get a moment with this person-- Maybe we're going to have to sit down and talk about this after maybe I do some internal work." That's kind of my go-to. Just excusing myself and doing some quick breathing. But I also would say, just not talking. If you're in a situation where you can't excuse yourself, just don't open your mouth until you're really ready to. Because I find sometimes, if I let myself go, you just don't know what's going to come out when you're in that frenzied panic state. It could just go really bad really fast. [laughs]
Dedeker: Sometimes, when a spider lands on me, I do have to do that same thing in the bathroom afterwards, of like, "Okay, it's okay. It's all right. It's a tiny spider. It's okay."
[laughter]
Kitty: This spider metaphor is awesome. I love it.
Dedeker: Yes, I'm actually numb. My brain's thinking. I was like, "Can we expand on that at all?"
Jase: Just yesterday, when we were out to dinner-
Dedeker: I know, that spider did land on me.
Jase: A spider did land on Dedeker. I watched her go through this. She was very still and stayed very calm until she took care of it. Then she freaked out.
Dedeker: Then I had to freak out.
[laughter]
Jase: Oh my God.
Dedeker: Anyway, sorry, not to hijack you.
Emily: No, no. I appreciate that you said that. Because I do have a partner who likes to leave the situation if he needs some time. There is something really great about knowing that, "Hey, I may not do or say the right thing in my present state. So I need to exit the situation, calm down, and figure it out." So I appreciate you saying that. Yes, just because it is so true. I know when you get a little bit of distance from the issue and from the problem, how much better it can go in hindsight. When you're looking at it, not right in front of you, but from 30,000 feet. So yes.
Kitty: Yes, exactly, exactly. Yes. In that case, you're putting a little physical distance. But I do find, when I do go back to the situation, I can be a little bit more of an observer.
Emily: Absolutely.
Kitty: And that helps too. I just think, "All right, I'm just going to try and enjoy the rest of the evening. I'll come back to this later." Just that process of then practicing observing the situation from a calm place helps you remain calm too.
Dedeker: We're going to take a quick break to talk about the best ways that you can help to support your favorite podcast, Multiamory. The best way that you can support us is by becoming one of our Patreon supporters. If you go to patreon.com/multiamory, you can take part in all kinds of fun stuff. We have a special private facebook group for our Patreon supporters at the $5 level. For our supporters at the $9 level, we have a monthly video discussion group, which has been fantastic. At $15 and up, you become our best friend, apparently, is what we've written. So if you want to hop on that train, we definitely encourage you. Again, if you're getting something out of this podcast, if you're finding value in it and you want to help support us so that we can keep making it, then go to patreon.com/multiamory.
Emily: In addition, if you want to write us a little review on iTunes or Stitcher, it would be very appreciated. A lot of you have done this already and we so appreciate you. But it would help us get higher on search results. So just go to iTunes or Stitcher, write a review, and we would love you so much. You would already be our best friend. Or you'd be a mega best friend if you go on patreon.com and become a patron.
Jase: Well said. Also, we actually have something a little different from the normal today, that's pretty exciting. That is that there is a study going on right now, that's part of the University of Utah Relationship Decisions Lab. This is actually a pretty cool thing because the Relationship Decisions Lab, which you can find at relationshipsdecisions.org, they publish all of their studies as PDFs on their website.
Unlike a lot of the polyamory or just relationships studies out there that you have to pay these expensive subscriptions to, like LexisNexis or these academic journal places to be able to get them, they actually just publish the there for real people, like you and I, to be able to learn about them, which I really appreciate. I wish that more research was done in this way. But right now, they're doing a study that's the first of its kind, and they are looking for people who are in monogamous relationships that are currently considering opening up their relationships but haven't done it yet.
This could be people who are doing this for the first time, or you were open or polyamorous in the past and have closed your relationship, but are now just with one person, but are planning to or hoping to open it back up again in the future. So if you yourself are someone who's considering doing this or you have friends or people in your local poly community who are considering opening up their relationship, this study will probably be going on for the next year or so. Send them this link. The link for that is, relationshipdecisions.org/open-relationships. That's also at the beginning of the episode if you want to go back and check that. Anyway, I'm very excited about this.
Emily: Yes, it's amazing that actual poly studies are happening now.
Dedeker: I'm so glad.
Emily: It hasn't been there before and now here we are. It's a new dawn. It's a new age.
Jase: Yes. And the Relationship Decisions Lab doesn't focus specifically on non-monogamy. It's all sorts of things about the reasons why people do the things they do in relationships. They've got some cool studies up there, which I'd recommend checking out if you like that sort of thing. But either way, to participate in this one, it's relationshipdecisions.org/open-relationships. With an S at the end.
Dedeker: Also, to tempt you even further, you'll be entered into a raffle for a $100 Amazon gift card bonus.
Jase: Which sounds awesome to me. Yes, actually, you'll be entered into a raffle to win a $100 Amazon gift card. And if you also participate in their follow up, which will be two months later, you get entered again for another drawing.
Dedeker: Ah, nice. And what, their sample size is they're studying a thousand? They're trying to get a thousand people?
Jase: They're aiming to get a thousand couples to participate in this. This is--
Dedeker: Better chances than the lottery.
Jase: And this is an addendum study-- Yes. This is an addendum study to their previous one that they did, which had 800 non-monogamous couples. This is now to look at people who are considering opening up, to then try to correlate some of these data together. Anyway, pretty exciting. Go check that out and spread the word with people you know who are thinking about opening up their relationships. And with that, let's get back to Kitty.
Emily: If you still employ all of these techniques, do mindfulness, like really do want to be non-monogamous and want to be there for your partner in that way, but you just simply feel you cannot do that, is that a thing? Are there actual polyamorous people and are there actual monogamous people? Do you think that that's something that exists, or do you think that everyone can employ these techniques and ways to understand and figure out how to be not as jealous in a polyamorous situation?
Kitty: I'll take that in a couple different ways. If you either identify as polyamorous or attempting to practice polyamory and, say, the jealousy is either really, really strong or where it feels like it's impacting your emotional well-being or just your well-being in general, or also maybe you're not willing to really work on whatever, however it's coming up for you or working on your communication techniques, I would say you may want to question whether polyamory is good for you. That's a valid thing because if-- We still, at the end of the day, have to be emotionally and mentally healthy.
So if you're finding that you're crying all the time, or you're depressed, or you think you're a horrible person because you can't figure out this jealousy thing, then maybe polyamory might not be for you. That's valid. One could say that's related to-- Maybe you thought your values were X but they're really Y, and you are trying to put a square peg in a round hole. And that can be very valid. Same thing for a monogamous person. If I have people that-- A lot of my friends do practice monogamy. A lot of them tell me when I've come out to them as polyamorous, "Oh, I could never do that. I could never do that."
It can be very valid for somebody to say, "I could never do that. That's just not for me." That's also a very valid choice. But I would still maybe put that back to-- Well then, as long as you're living in alignment with your values and you're feeling happy about the way you're living your life, again, that can be very valid. And I do think that some people may be more predisposed to jealousy or anxiety or things like that. At the end of the day, we still have to make the right decision for each of us. I do think that we can work on these things if we want to. But I think that you also have to be willing to, and also have the ability. Just like anything else, there's people all across the spectrum. So yes-- Go ahead.
Jase: It's just that that statement of "Oh, but I could never do that." I do feel like that's what I hear from people so often. But I will say I have known people who've said that and then maybe next time I talk to them a year or two later, now they're in some kind of non-monogamous relationship. It's so hard to say whether it is this innate orientation that they just know this truth that they can't do it, or if it's just that their brain hasn't gotten there yet because they've never been presented with it before and--
Kitty: Yes, I'm glad you said that. Because it's important that somebody just may not be ready. That goes back to, are you willing to put in the work? Or maybe you're just not ready to. Maybe you will be ready later. And that's totally okay. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We should all be able to go at a pace that feels good to us. It comes back to also safety. Like when you either get to a place where you feel safe to maybe explore something that's maybe out of your comfort zone, great.
But maybe you're not feeling that yet. And it's important to feel safe. That goes back to feeling that you're emotionally and mentally well. You want to explore from a place of safety. So I can understand if, say, somebody suffers from either depression or anxiety. Maybe you're not feeling a safe place to be grappling some really tough things at that point in your life. If it's temporary.
Dedeker: Definitely.
Jase: That's a good point, to take the bigger picture into account like that. Actually though, to continue on this vein of talking about monogamous relationships, you mentioned in the book that learning to manage jealousy and not allow it to be the one controlling you is something that gets talked about a lot in non-monogamous relationships. But is also incredibly important in monogamous relationships. But people tend not to think about it as much.
So I was curious to hear from you, from your experience of seeing monogamous people, either that you've worked with in coaching or just people that you've known, what kind of transformations you've seen when these monogamous people start thinking about jealousy differently, thinking about jealousy as something they can manage rather than something that is out of their control, which is the culture or narrative that we're given?
Kitty: I'll be honest with you, I would say most of the people that I know who are monogamous, or a lot of people who say, "Oh, I could never do that," when I talk about polyamory and-- I also see a fair number of monogamous people experiencing jealousy in other ways. Like jealousy of somebody gets a promotion that they wanted, or jealousy of their friends, or of the glamorous trip that somebody took. At the risk of it, sounding like a little bit of a generalization, I noticed those people not necessarily working on that. I don't know if they maybe have the desire to work on working through some of those jealousy issues or working on their communication techniques. Most of my clients tend to be those that are either opening up or already practicing polyamory.
I can't really say that a lot of my clients are monogamous-practicing. I do have situations where one person mainly feels monogamous and the other person is polyamorous. They're trying to see if the monopoly thing can work. In those cases-- there's a spider on my wall.
[laughter]
Kitty: That's really funny.
Dedeker: Don't let it jump on you.
Kitty: I know. Stay there, spider. But I will say that yes, it is pretty neat. I do have somebody who is actually about to become a client. I gave her just the first chapter of the book before I had written the rest of it. In one of our early conversations, she was talking about jealousy, like it was the plague. And she should never be feeling it. And she was a bad person for feeling jealousy. It was neat after she read the first chapter which just starts to talk about, "Hey, it's a feeling. It's human. It's okay to feel it. You can work through it if you want to."
She said that that was really a revelation for her, just to know that it wasn't something to suppress, or that made her a bad person, or she could never actually practice polyamory if she was going to feel jealousy. I did get to see that epiphany that she had in herself. But we haven't actually worked through it all. But she's excited about it. I haven't sent her the book yet, but she is really excited to read it.
I look forward to seeing more of those journeys. But they tend to be more-- In my world, it tends to be more of people that either want to enter the polyamorous world, or are already in it. I simply haven't worked with a lot of monogamous people who are trying to get through some of those emotions.
Dedeker: Yes, that feels so much, just even having the willingness. It's not even necessarily framing it as in the willingness to try out non-monogamy, but just the willingness to examine yourself and examine what makes you tick. Even if that leads you to eventually knowing like, "No, I want to be monogamous." But it's just that in its first place of being willing to go to that uncomfortable place of looking at yourself and seeing what's there. Sorry, go ahead.
Kitty: Just want to add one more thing real quick. Sorry. Just that I've noticed that most people don't want to do that. It's probably a smaller percentage of, if I had to guess, I don't know, maybe 10-15% of people are willing to do that. Because it is really uncomfortable. I love meeting new people like yourselves, who-- One of the jokes around meeting other polyamorous people is, we just love to talk about it. Like, "Oh, look, somebody I can talk about this with." It's actually fun to meet other people, where we like talking about it and working on our communication and doing the inner work. Because there are a lot of people that don't actually want to have the desire. Maybe don't even see the need.
Dedeker: That makes sense. We have one last question for you. It's a question that we ask all of our guests. If you were going to pick one piece of advice to give somebody who's thinking about exploring a non-monogamous relationship, what's that one piece of advice that you would give?
Kitty: One piece of advice I would say is-- This is partly based on my own experiences which is, I would just do a lot of inner work in the form of research, in the form of after you read a lot of these materials, really try and absorb it and maybe whatever works for you, journal about it, talk to people who are practising it. Really, do the homework before you go and just say, "Okay, now we are going to run and do this right now. This is who I am."
Do the work ahead of time, however that work looks for you. Just using myself as an example, I read and researched for about two years before we even attempted to really open up our relationship with my husband, my primary partner. The window of research time could be different per individual. But it's important to, at least, do some homework ahead of time.
Dedeker: Yes, that's a good one. Some people who do read the Multiamory blog will already know that Kitty often contributes to the Multiamory blog. She's given us some fantastic work for sure. But Kitty, can you tell us, if people are interested in your book or interested in reading more of your work, where can they go to find that?
Kitty: Sure. My website is lovingwithoutboundaries.com. All spelled out. I am also under that same name on Pinterest and on Twitter. I'm @polytalkbykitty. But you can also find everything pretty much at Loving Without Boundaries. That'll take you wherever you need to go. I do have some contributing works, of course, with you guys. The book will be out, hopefully extremely soon, first the Kindle version and then the print version.
Dedeker: Excellent.
Emily: So exciting. Thank you.
Jase: Well, thank you so much, Kitty.
Kitty: Thank you very much. I've loved talking to you guys. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Thank you for reading the book and your incredible questions.
Emily: Thank you for creating it.
Kitty: Absolutely.
Emily: That was awesome. Thank you so much, Kitty. If you'd like to have your question or comment played on the show, you can call us at 678-MULTI-05. Okay. International listeners can also leave a voice message for us on Facebook. You can also email us at info@multiamory.com or send us a message on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Just to put our show and join our private Facebook community, go to partreon.com/multiamory. Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Dedeker Winston, and me, Emily Matlack. Our episodes are edited by Mauricio. Our social media wizard is Will McMillan. Our theme song is Forms I know I did by Josh & Anand from Fractal Cave EP.