302 - Challenging Polyamory Concepts for Advanced Students
Critical review of polyamorous ideals
We all know that many people do polyamory differently, but there are a few common ideas and concepts that are often spouted as gospel, particularly to those who are new to non-monogamy. But for those who have already broken down some of the ingrained ideas about compulsory monogamy, there’s no excuse to stop learning and growing in your personal journey.
This week we’re talking about a few different common polyamorous aphorisms and how we can challenge them:
“Insecurities or concerns about a newly polyamorous partner are your own problem.” This topic often comes up when someone who might be newer to polyamory asks a discussion forum for help. Consider:
What if it actually is their partner being bad?
What if they’re not comfortable with their partner or don’t feel enthusiastic about polyamory?
“ Comparisons, competition, and jealousy are bad.” We have a lot of internalized jealousy as a humans, and this can manifest as controlling behavior, and in turn makes us shy away from comparisons and competition. However, these aren’t always bad:
Comparing yourself to a metamour in order to improve yourself isn’t a bad thing.
Feeling jealous can help you realize that something is missing in your life and figure out what it is.
Comparing partners to each other can help you see if you’re being treated the way you deserve.
“Humans evolved to be polyamorous; it’s a natural state.” This way of thinking sometimes may do more harm than good:
While interesting, evolutionary psychology is full of guesses and assumptions. It shouldn’t always be taken as the end all be all.
Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s good.
Similarly, just because something is a new phenomenon doesn’t mean it’s bad.
“Only egalitarian and non-hierarchical polyamory is healthy.” Historical polyamory was pretty hierarchical, but moving towards anti-hierarchy isn’t necessarily the answer:
Lots of people struggle to make all their relationships equal, novices and experienced polyamorous people alike. Such a thing is not only impractical, but also often undesirable.
We don’t spend equal energy on all friends and family members, so doing so for all romantic partners isn’t feasible either.
Trying to pretend all relationships are equal may lead to “sneakiarchy,” or may misrepresent ourselves to new partners, even if that’s not our intention.
“You must communicate every single thing and be an open book.” Sometimes it’s uncomfortable being open when we’re new to non-monogamy, but it can also be disastrous to share too much:
Separating areas of your lives keeps you interested in each other and gives you something to talk about with each other.
Respecting your partners’ privacy is vital and some people aren’t comfortable with having certain areas of their lives shared with others.
Make sure to give the full episode a listen to catch all of the conversation about these different concepts!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we are challenging ourselves and you, dear listener, to take a deeper look at some of the most common beliefs and aphorisms among the polyamorous community. When you're new to polyamory, most of us like to try out these well-established ideas because they are really important shifts from the compulsory monogamy that our culture teaches us.
However, these concepts are not as universally true as we sometimes like to think they are. Today, we're going to be exploring several of them and challenging some of the polyamory status quo, and finding opportunities for more advanced students to deepen their own understanding and get some more nuance up in here.
Emily: It's funny because our very, very first episode was like five myths debunking myths about polyamory.
Dedeker: Was it 10? Did we knock out 10?
Jase: Seven? Was it seven?
Emily: I think it was like five. It was really quick and dirty. I don't know. I thought we wrote them down on a piece of paper and divvied them up.
Dedeker: Oh, we did. We did. It was real rough and dirty.
Emily: Yes, exactly. It's interesting that now like 302 episodes later, we are doing five other not-- kind of myths, kind of mythy-
Dedeker: Now it's more of like debunking myths that we tell ourselves as polyamorous people instead of what all the normies say about polyamorous people.
Emily: I guess so. It's fascinating.
Jase: It's from the inside.
Emily: I do miss from the inside. I love that. Oh, my gosh.
Dedeker: That's a good-- what is that?
Emily: That's a good TV show title.
Dedeker: Yes, I'm thinking about unsolved mysteries. It's like that.
Jase: Something on the history channel or something like mysteries from the inside, exploring the inner world of the Mayans or something, I don't know. I did want to say too that some of these things we're talking about here, they're not just specific to polyamorous people. If you're not polyamorous or not part of that community, you might think, "Oh, well, I'm not really going to know these."
I think a lot of these have quite a bit of crossover into a lot of the advice and the community around this podcast and others like it, of a lot of these kind of-- what's the word I'm looking for? These kind of people who tend to think of themselves as pretty critical thinking and getting away from the status quo and some of the toxic zero-sum game ways of thinking about relationships in the mainstream.
The people who get outside of that can then sometimes fall into these rote aphorisms and beliefs. That's what this episode is about, is taking a second look at those, questioning them a little bit, looking for those exceptions because ultimately, the lesson is that things aren't black and white. It's not moving from one black and white to another one, but that there is some nuance, and there's some I guess just some subtlety to these things that often get missed and I think can actually be harmful to us especially when new polyamorous people come along and we just spout these things out, that sometimes we can actually be doing some harm without realizing it.
Dedeker: Like this idea of what it's like sometimes by stepping out of one box, you can unintentionally find yourself hemmed into a new box, like out of the frying pan box into the fire box.
Jase: Maybe it's a slightly comfier box. Maybe it's more like ethically sourced box.
Emily: I think fire box’s don’t sound very...
Dedeker: You're in a little cardboard box and then you step out into more of a cushy little like pet bed and it's nice and comforting but still squeezy and tight and maybe not so comfortable. You're not a cat, you don't like that stuff. You're human.
Jase: No way. Now I want to do a supplemental episode that's re-examining Multiamory metaphors for things and finding where they don’t quite hold up.
Emily: Oh, wow. There's probably a lot-
Dedeker: Oh, there's a lot of those.
Jase: All of them.
Emily: All of them, exactly.
Dedeker: Sometimes I have clients who are working through our backlog of episodes and a couple of people have brought up the emotional car metaphor. Do y'all remember that?
Jase: It was like the doors are falling off. You got to get those fixed.
Dedeker: Something like that. It's got to be at least 150 episodes ago. Every time, I'm just like, "Oh, gosh, I only remember like 5% of the emotional car metaphor, but I'm really glad it's resonating with you."
Emily: There was a car and it had something to do with our emotions.
Dedeker: It had something to do with our emotions.
Jase: Oh, my God.
Dedeker: Let's pick our first aphorism to dive into. This is one I see pop up a lot especially in advice forums on subreddits on Facebook groups. Sometimes including our own Facebook group. Although, I do think that our Patreon Facebook group, in general, tends to be better about some of these things.
Emily: Supercritical thinkers you all are out there. Well done.
Dedeker: It's this idea that if you're having insecurities or jealousy or concern about a newly polyamorous situation or maybe you're monogamous but your partner just came out to you as polyamorous or maybe you're just opening up your relationship for the first time and you're struggling with it. It's this idea of, that's your own problem to deal with, that's your own work.
Again, I usually see this play out when someone new comes to a discussion group, a forum, a meetup group, really wanting help. They're just struggling and they're just miserable. They're having discomfort, insecurity, fears about their partner's behavior, about their partner's choices. The usual response is, "Yes, we get you, but that's your internal work to do to become comfortable at the end of the day."
Jase: To work through your jealousy or whatever.
Dedeker: You got to work through your jealousy, you got to work through your insecurities. You can't put that on your partner. You got to do it. It's hard because it's like there's a certain amount that that is true. What happens is then those people come to me in my coaching practice and share all their stories, and share all those stories of just like, "I reached out for help to the community and the community threw it back in my face and said that I was the one who's the fuck up here and now I don't know what to do."
Jase: I think the first trouble here, and again getting into the nuance, is that I think for a lot of cases and a lot of situations, absolutely, that's true. It's, oh, I'm feeling this discomfort and I want to limit how much my partner can see other people or something because this is difficult. I think in a lot of situations, maybe even most of them, that something you got to work through or decide this is not something you want to do, but it's right. It is doing that personal work.
If we're always defaulting to that answer, we're burying or hiding or enabling situations where maybe part of the problem is that your partner is being shady about the way they're going about this or they're being a little bit shitty or they're being irresponsible or they're not being very caring. They might even be using this idea of, well, that's your problem to work through, to get off the hook for having to do anything that's like-
Dedeker: They may also be weaponizing it a little bit.
Emily: Especially if they're brand new to polyamory or open relationships in general. I think one has to look at the entire situation, also, because if the person who's asking for help was brought into polyamory by their partner, doesn't really know a lot about it, was persuaded into trying it, and wants to give it a good college try and stuff but is still having these feelings and these emotions.
I think there's a lot to unpack there and you do have to question like, hey, is this actually something that is going to work for me, or am I really more suited for a different type of lifestyle? It's not just like, figure it out, work on it, fix yourself.
Dedeker: I find whenever I'm working with clients, and this is just something I've learned after just years of listening to so many people's different situations because I very much fell victim to this I think. I've just like, you just got to work through it. That's on you. Don't you dare think about trying to ask your partner to hold off or to not go on a date this week or to put in some restrictions, where they'll be like, "Don't you dare even consider that."
I realized that in relationship it's like, whenever insecurities are coming up or jealousy or discomfort or stuff like that, pretty much always, it's a balance between stuff that's internally triggered. As in like your own personal insecurities about yourself or the areas just personally where your psychology is maybe not helping you, maybe your psychology is going somewhere that's a catastrophe, that's distorted in some way, or maybe making some assumptions, or maybe there is just some personal growth you need to make around this, but then, that's always counterbalanced with stuff that's going on in the relationship and with the attachment.
I do feel that when we just have this assumption of like, "Oh, yes, that's all on you." It's like no one's really asking the questions of, how is your partner treating you? Do you feel like you're getting what you need? How does it feel when you're in conflict? Does your partner turn towards you? Are the two of you able to repair? Do you get reassurance? What's your belief about the future of the relationship? There's just so, so, so many things going into it where it's not even necessarily that it's like, oh, maybe your partner is being shitty, but it's just like there's so many, so many things that could possibly be contributing to, I feel really uncomfortable and scared.
Emily: I think from a practical standpoint, if you are a person who sees a newbie coming to a polyamory meet-up or something and is asking a question like those, I think it would be who've you to and take the time to ask those questions that you just laid out, Dedeker, what is the backstory of the situation and how do you feel you're being treated in this scenario? What the relationship will ultimately look like? What you're going to get out of your relationships with other people and with this person, stuff like this, because it also, I think in teaching or in giving advice, it enables you and allows you to also learn some stuff on your own. That give and take is beneficial potentially to both parties.
I don't know. I agree with you that I've seen this in certain groups and it's like, well, I know what I'm doing and so I'm just going to tell a person they need to figure it out and they need to get with the program here, instead of really taking the time to dive into the nuance.
Jase: It's that thing that I think comes up with all sorts of debates between people to whether it's about politics or gender or relationship dynamics or any number of things is that we fall victim to this assumption that everyone else's experience of life is like our own.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: I think that that can come up extra with issues like this because I think a lot of polyamorous people have some baggage in our past about a partner trying to make us feel shitty for what we're doing, because they just think it's weird, or they think it's immoral, or that we've gotten that accusation or shaming.
Dedeker: Or a partner who is shitty and like controlling. I think a lot of people carry that, that a lot of non-monogamous people carry that, a little bit of that shared experience of having been there.
Jase: Right. Of having a very controlling partner who's major other relationship's miserable and has hurt your other partners. I think a lot of us have some variation on that. If we just project those experiences onto this new person who's coming looking for support or for help, we can go, "Yes, that's your own thing to deal with." Don't tell them that they need to change anything about what they're doing, because we're thinking that sucked so much when it was done to me, but it does, unfortunately, I think lead us to be just blind to the nuance or that we can jump to that response too quickly.
I'm not saying it's never the right thing, not saying that at all, but just when we jumped to it too quickly, when it becomes an aphorism, when it becomes this just, oh, someone asked and we all spout out this same line or this variation on that same line, that's when we need to start questioning and going, "Ooh, wait a minute. What are we doing here? Are we just assuming something and not really looking into the details?"
Dedeker: I think I've also realized from like I said, it's like, I end up having clients who've had this experience, when going to the broader public has been met with this weird dismissiveness that often, just empathizing goes a long way. I think if you're out there, if you're in a community like this and you are the one with a lot of experience, maybe several years of experience, that that's where the strength is rather than jumping 10 steps down the road to, this is going to be some personal work.
I feel like we got to rewind 10 steps and it's like the first step just has to be like, oh, my God, yes, that sucks. It's totally understandable that you would feel this way and that you would want to ask for these things.
Jase: I think it goes a long way.
Dedeker: It's not that nobody's out there offering that, but I do feel that whenever you're in a group mixed with newbies and more experienced people, I think the experience people just have a tendency to jump 20 steps down the road, and sometimes it can be helpful to be like, "I'm here in the future of this journey. I can talk and tell you some insight that I've gotten, but that's not always going to be universally applicable or helpful to someone who's just starting out."
Jase: Something I find myself trying to do in situations where I'm aware of this and where my intention is to be helpful or not just to show off how good I've got it now, is-
Emily: I have a podcast.
Jase: Right. My relationships rule.
Dedeker: I have a podcast, I know stuff.
Jase: -rule. No, is especially if I've had enough experience or have talked with enough other people who've had other experiences. I'm not just saying, "Oh, I had this one experience like that. This is what it was for me so this is what it must be for you." Is instead to provide a couple opposing examples. For example, in a case where someone's coming and saying, "I don't know, I just feel really uncomfortable about the way my partner is dating other people."
I might give an example of, well, in one of my relationships that happened, especially early on. Eventually, once we just got more used to it and did some personal work and it took some time, that same thing was no problem at all. It was actually very easy and is now super natural, super natural, not supernatural.
Emily: You mean like the TV show?
Jase: No, no.
Dedeker: No, like now you're dating like winged horses and such.
Jase: Right, cool, but just that that's natural to us. It's normal for us now, even though it was hard at first. Then I'll give a contrary example that's, this person I know, or maybe in my own relationship, had something like that too. In that case, it did turn out that it was because they were never telling any of their new partners about me and that I was picking up on some shadiness that was going on there.
I didn't know it at first. It was also good to acknowledge that and be aware of it and try to look into it and not just take for granted that it will get better. I try to give them some opposing ones to hopefully add some empathy of just, yes, that sucks and I've been there and I know lots of other people have too, you're not alone, but by offering a couple different scenarios to say, I don't know which one yours is. I don't know all the details of your life, but maybe one of these will really resonate with you and you'll go, ooh, that's the thing. What do you think? Is that a good technique? I've just started doing it and I don't know if it works or not.
Dedeker: Giving two different scenario or two different answers to a question?
Jase: Yes, giving two other examples of real-life scenarios like that, that are opposite of each other.
Dedeker: It sounds like a very-
Emily: Just thing to do.
Dedeker: Oh, I was going to say a very mythical sage thing to do where I'm not going to give you a clear answer. I'm going to give you multiple answers. Then you got to go on your epic journey to figure out.
Jase: You figured me out. Dang, it.
Dedeker: He's a mythic sage. He has been this whole time.
Emily: That makes a lot of sense.
Jase: Take my opium and go back over.
Dedeker: Oh, gosh. Oh, that's where you get your sage powers from.
Jase: All right. Are we ready to move on to the next one?
Dedeker: Yes. Let's do it.
Jase: This next one is that comparisons, competition, and jealousy are bad. This one, tell us all this time, when coming from mainstream culture, which teaches us this very competitive, there's a limited pool of good people to date. You've got to get them. You got to be better than everyone else to get them. You got to hold on to them and don't let them be with anyone else because they're going to slip away. Then you've lost your chance.
All that internalized shit that we've been given by our culture, moving away from that is really important. I think that's why we fight so hard to get away from comparison and competition and jealousy. Once we've done that, once we've worked our way out of some of those cultural habits, I actually think that comparison, competition, and jealousy don't always have to be a bad thing. I think that there's something natural to that. Maybe those things themselves, aren't the problem, but what we do with them, how we approach them, what brings them up could be the issue.
To start out, I'll just give an example to start. I want to see what the two of you think as well. This is a case of comparing yourself to a metamour. Which maybe you know them well, or maybe you mostly just hear things through your partner that the bad version of that is having low self-esteem and really beating yourself up over it and being like, "I'm terrible. They must really like this other person better than me." That's not a great place to be.
That's why we try to steer people away from comparing yourself to your partner's other partners, and just let them be separate from you. I would argue that there are situations in my life where learning something about the way a metamour handles certain things or certain things that they do, that I could look at that and go, "That does seem maybe better than the way that I approach that issue. Maybe I should try that. Maybe I should explore being more like them in that way."
In that way, I think that if I were just like, "No, I can never compare myself to them," I would miss out on that opportunity for self-improvement or growth. That's just one example that came to mind in starting this one.
Dedeker: That seems like the kind of situation where I do feel like you have to be coming to that comparison very intentionally and feeling relatively solid and secure in yourself and in your relationship. I could see it-- I don't know, this feels like a much bigger topic that goes beyond just non-monogamy and goes into just like, how do we deal with comparison and how can we make comparison a good thing for ourselves potentially in life?
I think about it more with professional jealousy these days actually, where I have more of a tendency to compare myself to friends of mine, who I feel like are succeeding in a way that I wish that I was, and sometimes comparing myself in a bad way in a downer real bummer kind of way, where that has a lot of shame and self-doubt, but other times, it's more of a like, oh, wow, I really admire them that they are going after this in this way and that they're really vulnerable when they talk about these things or that they do this.
Maybe that's something that I could try or sometimes I can land at a place of, that's their style and my style's different and that's okay. We're in a very wide marketplace of the internet and interaction and there's room for all these things. I guess that's where it comes up for me.
Jase: I think that's such a good, the professional jealousy thing or the professional comparison thing, is that I feel like most people understand that just happens sometimes. That I might be jealous of someone else's success and I might even feel bad about myself for a little bit in that process, but hopefully, the healthy result of that is coming away, going, okay, what of that can I try to get in my life? How can I be motivated by that? What could I look at to try to improve there?
I think that because we're trying to get away from this cultural narrative about competition with your partner's other partners, we can beat up on ourselves for feeling any of those feelings of jealousy or comparison. They don't necessarily have to be bad. It could also just be a natural thing and maybe it feels a little shitty. Maybe you are a little bit down on yourself, but as long as you're not letting that cause you to then try to sabotage their relationship or write or talk shit about them or try to put them down and instead try to eventually lift yourself up, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing even if you feel a little bit bad in the process.
I guess that's what I'm getting at. I think that professional jealousy is a really good example of a way I think a lot of people can relate to, that a healthy way to deal with jealousy and that makes sense.
Emily: I want to continue to talk about jealousy a bit because I think when used correctly and I don't know, is there a correct or a non-correct way to use jealousy? Just when you use it more as an internal locus for figuring out whether or not you need something from your partner or you need something from yourself or you're desiring more time, you're desiring date nights because your partner is super excited about a new person and has a bunch of new relationship energy.
You're jealous of that, but you realize, hey, I actually just want some like very concrete, specific time for the two of us to go out and for the two of us to do something fun together. I think it can be a nice indicator of your own wants and needs. To just say, "We're banishing jealousy, we're done with it forever," that's not a good thing at all. I think that's just taking it a bit too far. Jealousy can be used for good as well, especially internal good.
Dedeker: It holds both these qualities of both. It can be like this x-ray or this indicator, like Emily said, of pointing you towards, what might I need? What could be adjusted here? What could I do differently here? But then at the same time, it's also not always pathological. It's not always a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it's just very normal and very okay to feel.
Emily: You too have talked about how neutrality is something that is okay with you and that you strive to feel when you have new partners coming into your partner's lives and that you're not always like, "Yes, go. I'm so excited for you," but rather just like, "Yes, okay. I'm glad. Have a good time," and have a neutral attitude about it, that that's okay. That is sometimes we do jump to those extremes, like it's compersion or nothing, and that's not necessarily helpful or realistic. On the other end, jealousy doesn't always have to be like you're a bad polyamorous person, if you feel this, but rather, I don't know. Maybe it's an indicator of something to look more deeply into.
Jase: I was going to jump on something that you were saying too about looking at that and going, "Oh, I want more me time together with you as well." As a positive way of expressing that jealousy. Just the other one that occurred to me too and this comes up for me a lot with friends as well. If I'm looking at a partner or at friends of mine and feeling jealousy about their relationships or their dating life or something like that, is to question, what is it that I actually want?
Because a lot of times I don't really want to be whatever it is dating as much as they are. I don't really want to be, I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Maybe I don't want to be having as much sex as they are, even if what's making me feel jealous is the sex, but perhaps I'm actually jealous of having some excitement about something. I've definitely found for me a lot of times, it's this opportunity to explore what, why am I feeling this way? Where am I maybe stuck in a rut somewhere else? Or maybe it is that I really want what they have. Great. Now that I know that, I've got tools, how do I get more of that in my life? How do I get myself to this place?
Emily: Didn't we do a whole episode on that? You don't want what you think you want.
Dedeker: That was a while ago.
Emily: It was a long time ago.
Jase: I think the part we maybe didn't talk about in that, is that the jealousy could be this really useful tool to let you know that there's something that you maybe don't have in your life that you wish you did or that you don't have as much of, or you have too much of or something, that the jealousy could be a good indicator of, oh, I'm feeling this, that's a good indication that maybe something's off for me and that I want to start taking some steps to change that. That was just my thought there with jealousy.
Dedeker: I also want to do a brief interlude on comparisons between your partners.
Emily: Oh, my God. I was just going to ask about this. Sort of say something about that. Do that and then I'll continue on too.
Dedeker: I think that generally, most of the wisdom out the gate is don't compare your partners to each other, either to them because that's shitty, or to yourself really, because they're two different people and it's two different relationships and it's not super helpful to be like, "Well, this person is just way better at sex in this particular way. I'm going to be crappy about that to my existing partner or whatever."
That's just like don't weaponize comparison and stuff like that. However, sometimes comparison between your partners can be helpful. It can be a good way to determine if you're being treated the way that you want to be treated. It's not always a perfect litmus test, but sometimes you can get into a relationship and realize like, oh wait, this person is just way more respectful or way more kind. Especially if you've stuck with it and you're beyond the entry phase where everything just seems perfect, when it's like, oh no, really this person truly does treat me in this much more respectful way than my other partner over here.
Of course, I mean, I still wouldn't recommend going and weaponizing that and then going and telling your other partner that that's what's going on, but again, it can help to highlight for you of like, ooh, I feel like I've identified that actually being treated kindly in this particular way is really important to me, and so can I make a request about that? Can I talk to my partner about that? Is that something that I can fix in this other relationship?
Emily: When talking about comparisons, I just recalled a partner that both of us had that is not Jase, that I definitely heard comparisons of his other partners to my face, and it was really not cool.
Dedeker: Oh, it's so bad. So awful.
Emily: I know that he did it with them too, because she-- not you, but the other partner would say something about me when I was there because he had told her that, and it was really up fucked up.
Dedeker: Wild. Jeez.
Emily: Don't do that is what I'm saying because it's just-
Dedeker: We have some stuff to gossip about later.
Emily: It's just unkind. That kind of comparison, we're definitely saying no to, but the internal comparison is something else.
Dedeker: Yes and, then I'm just going to put the button on this and then we can move on. Yes, and even if you are verbally comparing your partner to another partner and the partner you're talking to is on the beneficial end of that. As in even saying to your partner, wow, you do this way better than so-and-so my other partner, or you do this way better than so-and-so, what they do is this terrible thing, even then, it's not great.
Jase: Yes, that's not a good move.
Dedeker: That brought back a lot of memories for me also, Emily, is that particular partner of even when he would talk about comparisons between his partners where it was complimentary to me, it'll still just like-
Emily: It's not cool, not at all.
Dedeker: It's just not great.
Emily: Then you realize it's happening with the other partners too, and it's like pitting everyone against each other, which is not okay, don't do that.
Jase: That can then make you be less likely to feel compassion for your metamour because you're like, well, all I've been told is all the ways they're worse than me, so why are they with them? Is that all around. It doesn't actually make anyone feel good.
Emily: That's something to watch out for and not participate in. All right, we are going to move on to more on these topics and our polyamory 201 course for you all, but before that, we are going to discuss some ways in which you can help keep the show running for free so that we can give all of this lovely content to you. This next one is one of my favorites. It's definitely one that I thought when I was a young polyamorous person and you hear it when you read certain books. It's that humans evolved to be polyamorous. It's totally natural. It's totally the thing to be, and of us really are deep down. Sex at Dawn, that good old book. I would love to have the people that wrote that book on the show sometime.
Dedeker: They've been on our list from literally day one, but it turns out they're hard to get hold of.
Emily: Anyone can help us out here. It's that stuff, all that's in there, that's in Sex at Dawn, it's good to know if someone's ever trying to make an argument that only monogamy is natural, but we might potentially be doing more harm than good by trying to make this opposite argument that the only thing that is natural out there is polyamory because we as humans are far more nuanced than that, and we have decision-making powers and sometimes we're happier in a monogamous setting than a polyamorous one and that's okay.
Dedeker: Yes. It's so funny to think about how perspectives on these things shift from the beginning of the journey to when you've been on the journey for several years because I remember back in the day that there was a lot of people making this argument of just like, whoa, why would you be non-monogamous, clearly humans are monogamous. They want monogamy, look how it's all just couples, monogamous couples, that's the way to do it. That's natural. I had a guy once who made the argument to me where he was like, yes, but monogamy just makes more sense and it has to be enforced because otherwise guys would kill each other over women and we can't have that. That's why monogamy makes sense. If everyone gets paired up, then it's okay and-
Jase: Because men are just like killing machines all over the place.
Dedeker: I don't know. I ended up dating him for a year though, so that was the lesson I learned later on.
Emily: Oh, okay, Dedeker.
Dedeker: I'm just saying that when Sex at Dawn came out, it really was this very validating, very confirming, very refreshing text because it was making this argument of like, no, we actually have a lot of evidence to suggest that humans are not naturally monogamous and do with that what you will. I did at least appreciate that they never tried to make any kind of argument of like, therefore that means we all should be non-monogamous, that it was very much the sense of just like, here's what we see, and here's what you can think about that.
Then fast forward to now where I'm like, yes, that's cool, maybe that's true. That's super cool, but I have seen this argument now tossed around, now making people feel bad when they struggle with non-monogamy or if they don't want non-monogamy that then it's this weird thing of like, well, it's natural. It's what we're built for. We evolved this way, and so why are you fighting that? That's not any good.
Jase: I think that gets at the heart of all of this. That's that I think knowing these things are good if you're trying to combat culture telling you that what you want is unnatural and therefore bad, but I think the key thing here to remember is that just because something's natural doesn't mean that it's good. Just because something is not natural doesn't mean that it's bad. An example that we've given in the past on the show is violence. That there's a lot of studies with primates and things like that, showing that physical violence is natural and that in humans, we are naturally violent. We'll naturally hit each other or things like that. Maybe not-
Dedeker: Or at least feel the urge to hit each other or act out in some kind of physical way.
Jase: Right, and there have even been studies showing that acting out in violence when you're upset can be beneficial in terms of lowering your blood pressure and things like that. There's evidence to show that those things are natural, but I think all of us here at least would agree that that's not good. That doesn't mean that it's good. Another big one is racism. That there's a pretty compelling evo psych argument that during this point long, long ago in history, when humans almost became extinct, when homo sapiens almost didn't make it, that evolving traits of being extremely loyal to our tribes and extremely distrustful of outsiders, may have been the trait that allowed us to survive.
Emily: Sounds like Nationalism.
Jase: Yes, kind of like nationalism, tribalism, racism. All those things. It's like, yes, you could make an argument that that's natural, but that doesn't make it good. Maybe at some point, tens of thousands of years ago, it was necessary for a species to survive, but it's not now and it's a bad thing that unfortunately we're still stuck with, that we have to fight against. I just want to make that argument that just because something's natural doesn't mean it's good at all.
Emily: I want to also tack on to this one that a lot of people out there think that polyamorous people are more enlightened than their monogamous counterparts.
Jase: Because we're more natural.
Emily: Sure, because we're more natural or because I don't know, because a polyamorous person is more enlightened in terms of relationships and doesn't need to tamp their partner down or control them or something. While all of those things are well and good, it doesn't mean that the person is inherently more enlightened or has relationships more figured out because there's a ton of people out there who are doing polyamory poorly, regardless of whether or not they're practicing monogamy or polyamory.
I think that goes along with this and everything is specific to the person and natural, I don't know. It's just that's not a great argument because it's like those people out there who say, okay, well, it's more natural to eat meat or it's more natural to be vegan. It's like, well actually, maybe you just need to do the thing that is best for your body and your mind and your health and your values.
Jase: That's a great example.
Dedeker: I think another part of that is just because there's a newer phenomenon or a newer way of being in our evolutionary history, doesn't automatically mean it's bad. It's like everyone points out that monogamy is a relatively new thing. It's only a couple of hundred years old really, or maybe, sorry, I'm getting that wrong, maybe more than a couple hundred years old, but it's not millennial old, let's just put it that way.
Jase: Right. In the tens of thousands of years, but it's somewhat newer.
Dedeker: It's relatively new, and people make that argument of like, it's a new thing, it's just a construct. Throw it in the garbage and stuff like that. When it's like, oh, that doesn't mean that it's bad. Air conditioning is also relatively new in our human history, and that's great. Same with fricking antibiotics and life-saving surgery and all kinds of things. It's not inherently bad just because it's new.
Jase: Right. Antibiotics are newer than monogamy. Really we should toss those out too then.
Dedeker: What a weird timeline that we're constructing here.
Emily: First came monogamy, then came out antibiotics.
Jase: You did the math.
Emily: Yes .
Dedeker: Talk about correlation and causation .
Emily: Yes. It's like those graphs that you see that are Nicholas Cage movies, and like amount of car crashes or whatever. That's really what it is.
Emily: Should we move on to the next one?
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes. This one's a doozy, this one I've really had to do some growth, some shifts, and perspective on, but it's this idea that the only healthy way to do polyamory is fiercely egalitarian. Non-hierarchical polyamory. There's a lot, there's a lot to process.
Emily: It's not like what our whole show has been base on-- No, I'm kidding .
Dedeker: I think it's where our show really started.
Emily: That's where it started, yes.
Dedeker: We don't say that anymore necessarily, but it's just more nuance and more complexity here. Again, in the early days of whatever wave of non-monogamy we're in right now, it was really common for it to be extremely hierarchical. I'm talking the last few-- what? Maybe decades since the swingers movement took off in the early days of polyamory. At least, the modern-day polyamory movement. Probably since like, the early '90s or so it was common for the baseline assumption to be like, the way that polyamory works is it's extremely hierarchical.
You have to have a primary, you have to have a secondary, veto power is totally understandable. Secondaries don't necessarily have to be treated with respect because they were just lucky to be there. Of course, I think that in response to that, in response to especially a lot of people getting hurt by that, and as polyamory as a movement started to become more and more distinct from, I think, the swinger model, the traditional swinger model, or the traditional swingers movement, there are a lot more people speaking out about that, of course.
Now it's accepted parlance that veto rules, not so great. Super harsh controlling restrictive rules, not so great. Prescriptive hierarchy, really not so great, but it has led to this point, this moment where we're at now where it seems like everyone or a lot of people are very clearly like, "Anti-hierarchy, non-hierarchical, don't practice hierarchy", which is definitely a contrast. Maybe someone arguing an improvement over the past, but it also comes with its own host of problems.
Jase: First off, just to go with the hierarchy thing. You hit on that more, and then maybe we'll talk about the egalitarian part of it second, but with the hierarchy part. One of the first problems that comes up is sneakyarchy, is that if you tell someone, "Hierarchy is always bad, you can't do it", and they go, "Okay, well, we're just opening up our ten-year marriage. We can't be hierarchical, so we're going to tell everyone that we're not, we're not going to have veto, and we're going to perform all the right things. But because we haven't done the rest of the work involved in not being hierarchical, we're going to advertise ourselves that way, and defend that we are that way but actually, do have a lot of hierarchy in the way that we behave".
"A lot of line-item vetoes that happened of vetoing a relationship by just making it so miserable to be in it, or having other little excuses and things so that we can actually end up treating someone shittier than if they knew right up front that's what they were going to get." I don't think either is necessarily the right answer, but it's not necessarily fixing the problem.
Dedeker: Actually one of our listeners was tweeting about this recently that because of the moment that we've ended up now with this underlying ethic of everything has to be really strictly non-hierarchical, that we do end up in those situations where people are really trying to prove that they're non-hierarchical, even though maybe it would be better if they could just be like, "Yes, we have a hierarchy, it's unavoidable because of X, Y, and Z reason. I'm letting you know this is what the situation is. This is how it may possibly affect you".
"Are you cool with that? Can you consent to participate in a relationship with me if you know that that's what the situation is?" Then, thing is that it's like, you could still find partners who are definitely totally okay with that, depending on what's going on in your relationship. It doesn't mean that that's going to preclude you from ever being with anybody. But I do think it's this assumption that it's like, if there's any hierarchy at all, that's been decided, it's going to be bad and it's going to be toxic.
Emily: I think if people have kids and the three of us unite, there potentially might be some nuance there in terms of hierarchy, in terms of who comes first, which, generally, is going to be the kid or kids, not necessarily the non-hierarchical polyamory that you're practicing. Also, some people out there and we've come across them, have literally said to us, "I will only date a person who has a primary partner. That's what I prefer because I don't want to be somebody's primary. I want to be somebody's secondary, tertiary, or common partner".
That's something to think about as well. What are you just going to tell that person, like, "No, you're doing it wrong. Not cool"? I don't know. There's a lot of different people out there who want different types of things, some people enjoy being unicorns, stuff like that.
Jase: I do want to make a real quick caveat to our caveat here, and that's just that the other bad side of this that I see, though, is the, "Well, but I'm just very upfront with everyone that they're secondary and so it's okay." While that might be true, it doesn't justify treating them badly because of it, or not giving them agency in that relationship. Not expecting them to have autonomy.
I think the point with all of this is it's not that one or the other is just correct, but that there is nuance here and that you can take either side of it and be shitty with this. Hopefully, instead, you can find the nuance, which leads us to the egalitarian side of that, too. Aside from non-hierarchical, I think what tends to go hand in hand with that is this idea that all your partners are equal.
This one I actually think is-- I was just having a conversation with someone about this recently, that they were really struggling with it, saying, "Okay, everyone tells me that this is the way I should be doing polyamory is non-hierarchical and an equal, but that just seems so hard to do to, to spend equal time with all of my partners and to have equally deep relationships with everyone, and it did give me pause." I was like, "Oh my gosh. Yes, because no one does that. That's not realistic." I don't think that's desirable. I don't think it's realistic. It's not the way we treat our friends.
Emily: Your relationships evolve over time differently with different people. I don't know that idea of true equality. I get it, but it's just potentially not realistic, like you said.
Dedeker: It starts getting into this conversation about equality versus equity. Where it's like, I know I can't treat absolutely everybody in my life totally equal. I can set it up so that all my partners feel like they have equity in the relationship, like equal opportunity and no-- again, the classic thing of no relationship is like dictating what goes on in another relationship. We're not setting up weird power imbalances, but also, understanding that trying to force it into an egalitarian, just like a weird vacuum, may not work out either.
Jase: I think it can lead to people being stressed, feeling like they're failing if they're not feeling equally close with all their partners and spending equal amounts of time with all of them, or feeling slighted when their partners are not spending equal amounts of time, energy, and whatever on them as they are on someone else. I do want to really reemphasize if you think about any other types of relationships in your life, we don't treat them all equally. That's just not realistic.
Even-- Not just friends where it's like, "I'm going to hang out with some of my friends a lot more than others. It doesn't mean I don't like the other friends. It doesn't mean these friends get to dictate the terms of my other friendships, but I'm going to spend more time with some than the others because I'm closer with them, or we are working on a project together, or we work together." There's any number of reasons why it's not going to be equal.
I think even if we look at family members, even children, something like that, where I'm not going to say I'm going to spend all my time on this one child and not the other, but you might for some reasons, maybe one child has more demanding, special needs or something, so I'm going to put more energy into that child than the other. It doesn't mean that they get to dictate the terms of whether I care for that other child. It's like, we've tried to get away from this controlling prescriptive hierarchy that allows people to affect relationships that they're not part of, that we've gone so far the other way that we're feeling guilty over having just normal human preferences and developing relations each at their own pace, and in their own way.
Dedeker is just sitting there silently nodding. It's not good radio. What are do you thinking, Ded?
Dedeker: I think I often come back around to, just what from what I've seen, people can have a hierarchy, be really honest about it, really compassionate to their partners, really care, and have really good relationships, and then people can have non-hierarchy and be really shitty in their relationships and to their partners. Especially the more I work with clients, the more I come around to, I just get closer and closer to feeling like I don't give any fucks anymore of what your relationship format is. Just do it in a way where you're kind to all the people that you're interacting with, you can leave people better than you found them, and not cause any unnecessary harm, essentially. Just whatever you're going to do, just do it good.
Emily: I feel like that's different than perhaps where we started at episode one, now we're on 302, which is cool. We have evolved. We're not the most evolved people, but we have evolved.
Jase: We're definitely more natural.
Emily: I don't know about that either. Why don't we do this final one on our list? Which is, "You have to be an open book and communicate absolutely everything if you are polyamorous." People like to date around sometimes when they call themselves monogamous people, and that's a thing that tends to not have a lot of communication happened with it often.
Polyamory might seem a really super open and sharing and very brutally honest thing, because hopefully, everybody is aware of everybody else, but it can be uncomfortable and important to break out of your past impulses of keeping relationships secret or trying to be sneaky about them. But then when you have comfort in that department, there can be a lot of benefit to sharing, but also maybe not sharing everything with your partners, like keeping some things sacred, something's held close.
I have had partners in the past who wanted to tell me all of their sexual excursions and all of their, "I did X, Y, and Z with my partners, and this is what they think of you and this is what they think of-", whatever. At times it's like, "I don't really want to hear all of that." There's a difference between total communication and perhaps like, "Hey, let's, let's juggle that a little bit. Let's have a little bit of nuance to it".
Jase: Yes, this one I think is so interesting because, yes, I feel when you're going away from this place where, even if we're not talking about dating around, but just you're in a monogamous relationship where it's like, "I'm going to keep any desire or attraction I might have for anyone else. I got to lock that up. I got to keep that secret because, even if I'm not going to act on it, that's just going to be hurtful, that's shitty." I think that that impulse can make it very hard to be honest when you're opening up a relationship and you're becoming polyamorous.
I think that sometimes the way I feel like I've seen this come up and be harmful most often is not even just from the point of view of, "Oh, I feel like I need to share everything with all of my partners about what I'm doing with every other partner and all the details of that, that they might not want to hear", but even on the other side of feeling like, "Well, even if this is upsetting to me, I feel like I need to ask about all these details of what they're doing with everyone else about, details about their sex life, details about all these things that upset me to find out about, but I feel like I have to ask about them because that's the right thing to do. That's how I'm supposed to be doing this".
Dedeker: It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine recently about over disclosure, which again, if you're at the beginning of this journey, I don't want to tell anybody to under disclose or anything like that. I feel it's good to practice those skills of being open and honest and vulnerable and speaking your mind and stuff like that, but sometimes we can get into a place of over disclosure that's not helping you, not helping the person listening and maybe the only function of it is just to make you feel a tiny bit better, but maybe it could be making the other person feel worse.
I'm thinking things like over disclosing. We've talked about over disclosing sexual details, which could also potentially be going up against somebody else's privacy as well, or over disclosing all the weird scattered thoughts that I have about you dating someone, that's maybe just me just like dumping on you absolutely everything and not really being clear of what I actually need from you or how I need you to listen, or what would be helpful or stuff like that. Or over disclosing. I don't know, this feels tricky because, again, it's just so context-dependent and topic-dependent, but I think it is the thing of we need to find that balance essentially between what's the necessary things to say and what's not.
Emily: I think sometimes over disclosure can be at the expense of your partner's privacy, and that is not cool. Even if your partner hasn't explicitly said like, "Hey, I don't want you to talk to others about this", it's something that I think you personally should navigate with, "Would I want somebody knowing this? Or a potential stranger or a metamour or something knowing this. Maybe not, and maybe it's not okay for me to tell my other partners about this.
Jase: I'd even say take that one step further to go back to something we've talked about before, is maybe you would be okay with that. That also doesn't mean someone else's, because even keep that in mind too, just because you're fine with it , just because it's natural, that doesn't necessarily mean that they would be comfortable with that.
I think also something worth bringing up here is that there have been a lot of writings over the decades and things talking about the benefit in a relationship. Generally, these are talking about monogamous relationships, but the benefits in a relationship of having parts of your life that are separate from each other, whether that's separate hobbies or separate passions or separate friend groups, or separate things that you do that not only are there a lot of benefits to those just for yourself, having your own identity, but also it can actually lead to increased attraction and excitement for each other. When you're able to see that my partner exists separate from me.
The research and psychologists who talk about this are generally not talking about it in the context of non-monogamy, but I wonder if there might be something to that also of, I think once you're to a place where you and your partners, all of them, have good enough communication that you can rely on each other to be honest and to not hide things that might be important for you to know, once you're there and you feel good, could maybe move toward, "Okay, now, maybe we don't need to talk about every little thing", or if we do a radar every month, we could check in on the major updates there, but after every time Dedeker has a video called date with Alex, I don't need to know what they talked about. I don't need to know what they did.
I don't need to decompress with her about it. I don't need to know what games they played. I don't need to know that because it's not relevant to me. I think that there's something actually nice about it, because then it also gives you the opportunity to talk to each other about other things, imagine that, we're not going to have to spend all of our time talking about our other relationships, we can talk about other things. We can talk about movies we like or whatever.
Emily: Yes, that's a funny polyamory thing that people always joke about, "Oh, all we ever talk about", or like, "Is our relationship or other relationships", or just like relationships in general and that's what our whole life is, but imagine if you got over the need to do that to a degree. There is a wonderful thing about being communicative and open and vulnerable, but yes just doing communication for communication's sake isn't necessarily the best thing. Take up your time with other things that you too can specifically enjoy without having to build anxiety over your other partners.
Dedeker: In case anyone was wondering, I am currently playing Disco Elysium with my partner, Alex, and I highly recommend it.
Emily: Cool.
Jase: All the mystery and intrigue is ruined. Now, there's no separation, it's all gone. That was the one secret that I still needed you to have. No, I actually really want to play that game because she's been telling me a lot about it. Anyway, this has been great. I hope that for our advanced students, as well as some of our newbies out there that this was a helpful way to explore some of these topics a little bit deeper and get you to just question things, start looking at things and not just taking for granted that these aphorisms are always true in every situation.
For our bonus episode for Patreons, we're going to continue on with one more of these talking about essentially dating people who are already polyamorous versus dating newbies. We're going to talk about some of the beliefs and aphorisms around that. This week we would love to hear from you on our Instagram, do you consider yourself to be an experienced polyamorous person or a newbie? This one is an interesting one because, where do you draw the line? Where do you think you've crossed from one to the other? I'm really excited to hear your responses.