310 - Polyamory Reminders with Evita Sawyers
Non-monogamy challenges
Evita Sawyers is a non-monogamy coach, speaker, educator, as well as the creator of “Today’s Polyamory Reminder.” She is also the subject of the groundbreaking polyamory documentary “Poly-Love” and has graciously joined us to discuss her approach to polyamory and discuss some of the less sexy, harder truths about non-monogamy.
Evita talks about how she got started with “Today’s Polyamory Reminder,” as well as how her concept of polyamory has changed over time. Listen to the full episode to hear us pick her brain about her experiences!
“Compersion isn’t “necessary” to navigate polyamory successfully, does not need to be cultivated if you don’t wish to or feel the need to do so, and can be felt simultaneously alongside jealousy.”
Evita Sawyers
Find Evita on Instagram at @Lavitaloca34 or on Facebook to see more of her!
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 have a very special guest, Evita Sawyers. Evita Lavitaloca Sawyers is a non-monogamy coach, speaker, and educator, the creator of today's Polyamory Reminder. She is also the subject of a groundbreaking polyamorous documentary Poly-Love. Her approach is both frank yet empathetic, and she is appreciated for her vulnerable openness about her own challenges in non-monogamy, and helping others to grow. Evita thank you so much for being here.
Evita: Thank you for having me. I'm grateful for this opportunity.
Emily: I just wanted to start with your journey because I know I've seen Poly-Love and I know that it's different, like where you were at that time is different than where you are now. Can you talk to us about your journey into starting polyamory, and then how that's woven and changed over time?
Evita: Oh, yes wonderful. I began my non-monogamous journey probably about eight years ago, with my husband. We were married at that time for almost 10 years. I like to joke that our non-monogamy started with a song by 2 Chainz because there's a lyric in the song it goes, y'all been together ten years, you deserve a ménage. You know, and so like I-
Emily: Oh my God, there you go.
Evita: -joke about that because we were coming close to 10 years, and I was bisexual. It's funny, we met in church and it was a very suppressive congregation. I shelved my sexuality for a while and then once we left, it began to blossom. I was going through that process. He knew that I had an attraction to women as well. My son got diagnosed with cancer when he was six. We were going through this really, really, really, really difficult time in just our family life. My husband had a lot of things that he had to work out with, like sexuality and being comfortable with it.
I was like, "Look, we're going to this really crappy time. Let's have some fun, and so let's start, exploring this." We started with swinging. Swinging was very, very easy for me. At that time, I had an easier time with being sexually open than I did with being emotionally open. It was a struggle for him because he is what I would categorize as a little bit more demisexual. He likes having connections to people when he sleeps with them, so swimming was a challenge for him. At a swinger party, we got introduced to the concept of polyamory.
This woman came in and she came with a boyfriend and her husband came in later on, and they were all just chopping it up and laughing together, and we were mind blown. We were like faint. It really appealed to my husband because he wanted the opportunity to have actual relationships with people and not just do casual sex. I was resistant. We tried it once. It went horrible.
He went on a date and I completely lost it. We tabled it and just stayed with swinging and then about six months later, we went back to it because I wanted the opportunity to experience having romantic relationships with women and not just sexual ones because that was largely what I was getting when I was swinging. We were like, "Okay."
Dedeker: I wanted I want to jump in just because I'm curious about that transition for you because it's funny because it starts out-- First of all, when you said that this woman came in to this party, I'm getting this image of like she came in with these like polyamory pamphlets to try to convert people at the swingers party. I think it's interesting that you also made that shift of like, "Oh, actually, I am interested in more romantic relationships." I'm also curious about those turning points for you.
Evita: I just wanted to have the experience of being romantic with a woman. I enjoyed sex with women, and it was something that I liked. I wanted to know what it was like to actually be in a relationship with a woman, to be loved by a woman, to love a woman, to have that romantic intimacy that you just didn't get when you were just having sex, and especially in a swinger environment. I just wanted that experience. I wanted to know what that was like. I began to feel like I had more than just the sexual attraction in women because I hadn't really explored my sexuality at all.
I'd been in this heterosexual marriage for such a long time and then part of that, church. I had no idea what I wanted from my relationships with women. Sex was the first thing. Then after a while, I was like, "I think I want a different experience." Like I said, my husband's more, I would say naturally polyamorous than I am, so that shift wasn't a challenge for him because it's actually something that he wanted. When I began to express my desire for that, he was like, "Yes, we can do this."
We actually got into non-monogamy to date separately. We didn't do the classic new couple comes in, they have the bisexual wife, heterosexual husband, they're looking for the unicorn. We didn't do that. We were like, we both have completely different tastes in women. There is no way that we're into the same women we both like, "You go find your own person, I go find my own person." Never the twain shall meet. Then we get to a swinger party. We meet our partner that you saw in the documentary and try it.
Emily: That really just, came out of something that you didn't expect it seems like because who knew that you both would be attracted to the same person? That's really interesting.
Evita: I knew he was attracted to her. Funny story, I knew he was attracted to her because he actually approached her first at the party and that made me a little envious. It made me a little jealous because it was still early in that stage, and she had a lot of-- I used to say that if you take every personal insecurity I have about myself and make a person, it would look like her. It was extremely interesting.
Dedeker: Oh God, it's really interesting.
Emily: Interesting.
Evita: Very interesting. He was the one who approached her first, and so I was a little crunchy about that. I sat down and got to talking to her and she and I clicked. We had a chemistry and she was like, "I like talking to you" and we-- Then that began to shift to me where I was like, "Oh." Then I started looking at her as someone that I could possibly be attracted to.
I was actually the one that was a lot more pursuance of her than he was because she turned him down. It was me and her that, had more of a connection, linked and we exchanged numbers and stuff like that, and so we began to talk. I was very aggressive.
Evita: I can definitely say that was very, like, "I like you this way, I want you this way." Then I invited her to go to a party with my husband and I and we all interacted. Then it just took off. We started spending time together. We'd go on dates. She'd be over at the house and at the time, our children were away for the summer with their grandparents so we were just being grown. We was like oh, you know--
Emily: Having fun.
Evita: Yes, exactly. Having fun enjoying that freedom. She would come over and we hang out, and then this relationship sort of blossomed. We all developed feelings for each other.
Dedeker: I get the impression from some stuff that you've posted on your Instagram, that you're very open about the fact that there has been like a lot of shift and a lot of change, and a lot of transition in your journey. We'll talk a little bit later about the documentary, which is the snapshot of all this stuff going down. What have been the turning points since then that have brought you to where you are today?
Evita: That relationship was very, very volatile for me. I struggled to behave in a healthy way in that relationship, and polyamory began to bring out all of these insecurities about myself that I didn't know that I had. I had these very surprising reactions to them because before that I would have considered myself-- I was emotional, but I would have considered myself a relatively self-contained person, but I had a lot of
very, very surprising, and some alarming reactions to the difficult emotions that I experienced.
It made me aware of the fact that I did not know how to love people romantically in a free way, in a way that felt-- How would I put this? In a way that felt in alignment with who I wanted to be in people's lives. That started me on the process of going-- and plus I knew I wanted to live this way. It wasn't that I was doing this just because he wanted to do it and I didn't want to do it.
I knew very, very deeply, "I want to live this way," but I'm having all these struggles and so where is that coming from and how do I work on those things so that I can also enjoy this freedom and give that same freedom to the other people around me that I love in a healthy way? I began to just join groups, and I was struggling. I am struggling and I'm struggling with this, and so I began to join groups. One of the things that I noticed in groups was that especially back then, there was such a push to just post the positive stuff all the time.
If anybody shared anything about feeling jealous or having an emotion or wanting to ask their partner, "Hey, can you not sleep with your partner in the house?" Just these questions that people would ask because those beginning struggles of, "What is okay for me to do as I'm doing this? What is something that I can do, I have the emotional ability to show up to it? How do I not--?"
You're working through all of those ways of not wanting to control your partners, also wanting to honor yourselves. I wasn't seeing people sharing about those difficulties. Then when I would share about those difficulties, I would get so much pushback and so much flak.
Emily: Really?
Evita: Yes, I get a lot of flak. I remember the very first post that I did in a group that I was in, I was asking about if it was okay for me to ask my partners because we were going to try it at the time, if when they're having sex and I'm not involved, I'm not in the room if they could keep it down because I was really struggling at the time. We would shift who would sleep in the bed with each other--
Sometimes they'd be in the room and they won't have sex and they'd have sex, and I would struggle with it. I asked this question and they jumped on me so badly, I bawled crying. I cried.
Emily: Oh, no.
Dedeker: Oh, yes it's still a problem. We talked about this on an episode we did a few weeks ago about some assumptions that a lot of us carry in the polyamory community that are maybe not so healthy, and I think that's one of them, that's still this sense if you're having struggles, it's 100% your responsibility to deal with.
Evita: Right and not only that, but you're not supposed to talk about it, and then if you even have the struggle, that's an indicator that you're immature, that something's wrong with you that you don't really want to be poly. It's all these weird things, and I'm like, "They're just normal human emotions." This is challenging, it's okay for someone to just name that.
Emily: Yes and what, all these people in the group who are saying these things to you 100% of the time, they never feel jealousy, that's ridiculous, of course, they do.
Evita: Yes, I was like, "Okay, so nobody feels--?" Nobody.
Emily: Yes, come on.
Evita: No one? Oh, okay, so I'm just all alone on this. Okay, sure all right, but people began to resonate with my willingness to talk about that, and they would reach out to me and they would say-- it used in my inbox, "I love this thing that you're saying. I've completely felt this way, thank you for saying this." It encouraged me to keep on sharing, keep on talking. Then when I would process through my emotions, or I would process through the difficult times that I had, I would have such fascinating revelations about myself.
Such revelation about relationships and love, and I wanted to share that. I was like, "Wow," because it was mind-blowing to me, and so I would share that with people and it showed me that I have a very unique ability to be able to create these mental reframes. I almost tell people that sometimes I feel I'm a a mono--or at least an emotionally monogamous person who's just figured out how to hack themselves.
Emily: Interesting.
Evita: Really, I just figured out to go in there and create those hacks in my mind to help me get through these struggles and still show up to polyamory the way I want to show up, and the way I also want my partners to show it to me.
Jase: Yes, this makes me think about something that a friend of mine who is polyamorous, and he had a partner who was new to polyamory. The feedback that he got from her, anytime he would suggest, "Oh, maybe it would be helpful to join this polyamory group or listen to this podcast or whatever." Her reaction was always, "Hell, no. I think all polyamory people are totally fake."
She had this-- clearly had a very strong impression of that. He would then confront me with some of that stuff. As I thought about it more and really tried to sit there and think about it, I was like, "Yes, I get that." I could see that, and I could see someone in your situation that you described absolutely coming away from that being like, "I think all these people are full of shit.
Emily: Full of shit.
Jase: None of this is real." On the other side, I think that when I remember when I was first starting out and you'd hear these stories about people being okay with certain situations and that they have this arrangement with their metamours and it's all great and positive, I would go, "Bull shit, that's not possible." Now I'm like, "Well, it is." It's this weird thing of how do you tell apart what feels impossible versus what's fake.
Evita: Right, right, right. I totally relate to that because there are things that I would see in the beginner days of being non-monogamous, people talking about hanging out with the metamours and them going on vacation, and all those things like that. I'd be like, "How? How is that even possible because he just took a phone call from his other partner and I'm falling apart in the bathroom right now, so how is that even possible."
Dedeker: In the Ethical Slut I remember they shared this story of their example of figuring out compromise or conflict resolution, was one person being like, "Hey, sometimes when you're in the bedroom with your other partner, I just found myself a little bit sad because sometimes I want to be able to go in and get my slippers and I can't get my slippers." I remember those days being like, "The slippers are your problem?
Dedeker: Is that what's going on with you?"
Evita: Right. That's your takeaway, like, you need your slippers? Because it's like because I'd be tripping over a whole nother thing, but now I'm in that place where those are actual things that I'm doing, I'm actually I spent the weekend at my metamour's house and that these are actually things I'm doing. Those things are possible. I think what people like to do which I try not to do is to act like it was candies and rainbows the whole time, and the entire process of getting there was candies and rainbows, and it's always candies and rainbows for you.
I'm more like, "Yes, I was here with my metamour for the weekend and we had a great time, but when my partner came over to give her a hug and a kiss, I got a little crunchy." You know what I mean? I needed to go off for a little bit. I think it's learning how to hold both that yes there are these wonderful moments about it, yes it is beautiful, yes we grow and we evolve, and the things that bothered us once they get to a place where they don't bother us now, but it doesn't mean that it just completely eradicates all of the challenges that you're not going to experience this highs and lows, that you're not going to struggle sometimes through it. It's okay for those things to exist at the same time.
Emily: I'm interested because you said before that you have a monogamous emotional mindset but that you've hacked into the polyamory mindset. You also said, "Even when it was difficult, I realized that this is the lifestyle that I want to be in even though it is hard, so I want to get better at it." How did those two things exist in the same universe within you? How and why did you decide, "Hey, this is the thing that I want to do even though maybe parts of me have a tendency towards something else, and that it's important enough to choose to get better at this?"
Evita: Number one, I enjoy freedom. While I do feel I have a part of myself that it can be or tends towards emotional monogamy, I would not like to get myself into a situation where I'm completely cut off to that because I just never know. I never know what I'm going to experience as a person who considers myself fairly hyper-romantic, and I like interacting with people in romantic and sexual ways. I didn't want to limit that part of myself just because I'm like, "Well, I have a tendency toward it, but I can also do this."
I wouldn't even-- I don't think I could ever be ambiamorous or polymonoflux. People that can go back and forth between, "Well, I'm polyamorous in this relationship, and I can choose monogamy here," and they can move back and forth through that. I wouldn't say that about myself because I do enjoy having that freedom to make those choices without that being a big deal because we started with that freedom. I just like having the maximum amount of freedom afforded to me, so I like to be able to give the maximum amount of freedom.
That's why it was important enough for me to move that tendency in the other direction because I wanted
to be able to have those experiences freely, and I also wanted to give my partners the ability to have those experiences freely. I needed to move that marker a little bit so that I could show it well to that.
Emily: That's great.
Dedeker: Yes. It reminds me. I very much resonate with that because I remember very early on in my own journey that the first time I was picking myself out of the shambles of the relationship that I imploded trying to open it up, that it was very much that same thing of like, "Wow, that really sucked." Sometimes this really sucks but there's still something deeper that's like, "But this is still the right choice at the end of the day," which is such an interesting feeling and it's like when you feel it, you feel it, I guess.
Evita: It's an interesting feeling because you absolutely could have that monogamy because there's so much more available. It's an interesting space to be in and go, "This is really, really hard, and this is deeply, deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Also if I wanted to stop doing this at any time, this other thing is here in abundance and I can just go back to it or whatever."
Obviously, you may have to end some relationships, but you can have it if you wanted it but still feeling like there's a deeper purpose as to why you're doing that work within yourself. That's really what it is for me. There's a deeper purpose into why I'm doing that work within myself. Even though I know that this isn't the same for everyone, but for me, polyamory is very much a spiritual work. It's very, very deep, deep, deep.
It's deep work. It's changing all of my perceptions around love, love for myself, love for my partners, what that looks like, what that means, how to interact with it. It's a very deep, deep spiritual work for me. Even though I could technically go, "Okay. Well, this is too hard. Let me just do emotional monogamy. It's safer. It feels easier." It's just about something more than that for me.
Dedeker: I really want to ask a billion questions about that specifically, but I'm going to put a pin in that because I feel like we were leading up to-- you were talking about sharing all these things and people really resonating with that. Is that the origin story of the polyamory reminders?
Evita: I've been walking in the polyamorous community for awhile. Before that, I had done a couple of conferences. I'd been on several podcasts. I'd written articles and things, and so I had developed a little bit of notoriety as the person to go to when you were having issues and you're polyamory, and someone who's willing to be vulnerable and talk about it.
A lot of where my polyamory thoughts came from something that I went through and then the clarity that came afterward and then I would share that because it would resonate with people and it would help them. It would be light bulb moments for them. I am at home, the pandemic happens, we're stuck in the house. I get this idea of what if I could post a polyamory reminder every single day? What the heck else are we doing?
I would try to just create these little simple statements about different things to be reminded of, and most of them came from my own experience. Then sometimes it would come from stories that people would tell me or posted that I would see, and ways that I would respond to them. Then it just snowballed. People started resonating with them, and then I started changing the format so that I could actually write out either stories that were connected to this reminder or different observations that I have and they just really began to resonate with people, and then it just took off.
Dedeker: I don't know how far into the pandemic you started. We're getting close to hitting 365 days of being in a pandemic if we haven't hit already. Have you considered making one of those daily rip-off calendars?
Evita: I have actually.
Dedeker: That would sell like hotcakes.
Evita: I actually wanted to do a polyamory like a devotional. Just have one of those-- so January 1st because I find that there's lots of wonderful books out there. The Ethical Slut, and Love's Not Colorblind by Kevin Patterson, Polysecure is making the rounds, and I think Kathy Labriola has Polyamory Breakup Book. There's lots of publications that are coming out. Well, a lot of people don't like to read.
Evita: They don't.
Emily: Some of them are very dense, yes.
Evita: Some of them are very dense. I remember one book, it took me the better part of a year to get through it and I am an avid reader. I have like a thousand books in my-- I love to read and it still takes me a while to get through a book. There's some people that don't like to read at all, and I find that just having a small digestible piece that you can read for a moment and just reflect on, or even bring to your partners and go, "Hey, did you read this today? Let's have a talk about our thoughts and views."
So many people reach out to me and they say, "Me and my partner had this great discussion about your reminder. My partner sent me your reminder this morning so we could talk about it." Having something small that people can go to and not feeling the pressure of having to read through the whole book. You can just pick it up on the 23rd of August just because you feel like it, and have this thing that you can think about and so I have thought about it.
Dedeker: I love the devotional. I am ex-Christian, so is Jase, and I don't know where you're at in that whole--
Emily: I'm not. I'm an atheist.
Dedeker: Emily was raised atheist. I don't know where you're at in that whole thing. We have joked about how sometimes old habits die hard.
Evita: I remember those from when I was Christian. I'm just kind of woo-woo now, but I remember those from when I was Christian and so I like that, just that little digestible kind of book because there's another book. I think it's called The Book of-- It's by Mark Nepo. The Book of Awakening. It's the same way. It just has these little--
Every day you open it up and you read a little snippet and so I wanted to have it be these little concise things that people can just read and digest as opposed to this really long thing. I'm a very simple person. I think that's one of the things that people appreciate about my reminders the most. Is I'll take this really, really, really big kind of issue and I'll condense them down this very succinct message and so it's direct and I think people like that.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely.
Emily: I actually wrote down quite a few that I really, really love from Polyamory Reminders. Jase, do you want to say the first one?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: I'd love to talk about some of these because there's just some amazing gems and hard truths from what you've written. Even though the three of us talk about this on a weekly basis, sometimes I'm just like, "Wow. Okay, yes. That was pretty profound there." Let's talk about a few of them.
Jase: The first one we have written down here is, "It is a bright red flag when someone has nothing kind to say about their current partners and constantly complains to you about them." What's funny is I remember getting advice similar to that about if you're dating someone and they can only say negative things about their ex, and that that should be a red flag right there if that's all they can say.
It is interesting in polyamory that we have the opportunity for that in the present. You don't even have the excuse of, "Well, it is in the past and maybe things have changed." It's like, "No. Right now. Right now this is who they are and what they're saying."
Evita: Where that came from for me is I went out on a date with someone that I met online, and they spent the entire time just-- They had nothing nice to say about their partner. I don't want to diminish the fact that sometimes people are in relationships that are just not going well, or they're not happy, and they just need the space to own that. I get that but that to me was a very bright red flag.
Number one, I was like, "Why would you do this to me, this other person who is dating you with the potentiality of seeing what we can have? If I hear you saying those things about your partner when they're not around, what would you say about me when I wasn't around? Why are you in a relationship that you seem to be so unhappy with? Why are you comfortable putting this person down to someone who's essentially a stranger to you?"I also feel like it does not foster very good relationship between metamours.
I understand that sometimes we have to go to our partners and go, "I'm going through a struggle with my other partner," and we do that, but if we're constantly putting down our partners to our other partners, it doesn't foster a good relationship between metamours. Even if you're kitchen table poly or parallel poly, you still want to have a good feeling about your metamour if you can. Sometimes you can't, but if you can, you want to. If someone is putting down their partner constantly, to me, it very much makes me go, "Hmm. I don't know that I want to get too close to that."
Dedeker: I thought you had an experience with that once, Jase, but that was probably years ago. I don't remember.
Jase: I don't even remember, but clearly, I didn't end up dating that person because it was like, "Hey, this is a red flag."
Emily: Okay. Here's another one. Sometimes in relationships, we can become so skilled at navigating and avoiding conflict with a person that we avoid taking a real look at why the conflict is happening to begin with, because if we took a sincere look at why, we might realize that the relationship needs to drastically change or even end. Whew.
Evita: That was me and my husband for sure because we're both decent individuals, and we both love each other, and we both like each other. Those were all things that were true, but we have these very fundamental incompatibilities that we had for a very long time, and we had just learned how as we got healthier, we learned how to navigate conflicts better in healthier ways, and we learned how to avoid conflict with each other so that it got spread out when we would have these conflicts, but we still weren't actually dealing with the why
the conflicts were happening in the first place.
We had just gotten skilled at navigating when they did and avoiding them for as long as possible. It was almost very jarring when our relationship ended because it was like, "We get along. We don't fight that much." We may have had a fight six months ago. We have squabbles here and there, but not these huge blows, they were getting fewer and further between.
It created this cognitive dissonance of going, "I get along with this person. I love them, I care about them, they're a good person, we have a good rapport, and yet we're still not continuing this relationship or they don't want to continue this relationship with me." I think that he finally was just like, "This is the conflict. We are fundamentally different in how we organize relationships and this needs to change."
Dedeker: I'm actually interested in asking a little bit more about that transition if that's okay with y'all Emily and Jase to take the time right now, because I think this is something that we bump up against all the time of doing these relationship transitions or de-escalations, or sometimes it's just a straight-up ending, or break up or whatever. Sometimes we can't even put the softer language of de-escalation on it. I guess I'm curious for you, going through that process, or being in the middle of that process what do you feel like you're learning and realizing right now?
Evita: I am learning that there is a difference between being happy in a relationship and being fulfilled, that there are two very separate things. We made each other happy, we had a happy marriage but the things that we both needed to feel truly fulfilled in a romantic relationship, the other person just did not possess. Not for lack of trying but it just was not who they were, and what was meaningful about a romantic relationship for each other was very different.
It was really, really hard to meet in the middle, and we did it for a very long time. We'll be married 17 years in March. It was that. It was we love each other but just as we began to grow and as we began to explore non-monogamy and non-monogamy forces you to have to think about yourself in love. What do you want from love? How does love matter to you? How do you want to behave in love? What do you want to be able to say? What do we want to be able to feel you can say about your relationships, and how they make you feel?
As we begin to get to know ourselves more in that way, we began to realize just how much our romantic relationship didn't meet that for each other. I was very willing to try and keep going but he was just like, "I just no longer resonate with the belief that romantic relationships should feel hard." You know how they say sometimes romantic relationships, they take work, but it shouldn't feel like work. He just was like, "I just don't want." We already had a very hard relationship. We always did.
That was something that we both would say about our relationship. We loved it, but it was hard. I learned that. I am learning how to be friends with an ex, I did at all. That was not my thing. I am not sitting here with a voodoo doll poking needles in the eyes of my exes but once we break up, I usually tell people. I tell them I'll be my birdman, is we finished or is we done.
I am learning how to maintain a friendship with an ex because we have children, and I want to maintain my children's sense of family even though we don't have this romantic relationship. Because if you think about your children don't super interact with your romantic relationship with your partner.
They see it, they witnessed it, but they don't interact with it and they don't necessarily need it in order to be okay, in order to have a sense of family. Having to navigate, wanting to maintain respect and care and love for this person, because we have these children together. I joke that the universe was like, "Oh, you don't be friends with exes. Okay, we're going to make you work on that in a major way." This happened and I was just like, "Really?"
Dedeker: Well, thank you for answering that question. I realized that such a doozy because I don't really want to be asked in this moment, what I'm learning right now going through all my own struggles with COVID and relationships and stuff like that. Thank you for being willing to be on the spot and talk about those things. Although it makes sense.
I saw one of your recent reminders that you posted was, and I'm probably paraphrasing here, but it's something along the lines that it's a little dangerous when you're opening up your relationships, just make this assumption that you're going to be the one who's going to stick around, the other person is going to be the one to leave.
Like you were saying, look at me, I'm in this major relationship transition after so many years. I think it's so interesting to talk to people about that because on the one hand, I think from a "polyamory PR" standpoint, we're often trying to reassure people like, "It's okay if you open up your relationship, it doesn't automatically mean it's going to be the end. It doesn't automatically mean it's going to fall apart."
Then on the other hand, like you were saying that it does force you, I like the way you said it, like to think about yourself in love, and what you actually want out of love. Sometimes that thinking process and examining process may mean, it's actually going to be better to love in different ways and with different people and in a different type of relationship with this person.
Evita: Yes. I stopped doing that when I first got into it. I stopped doing that pretty early on because I realized that it didn't work for me when I was first getting into it. Those reassurances that, "Oh, this isn't going to break up your marriage, and you're going to be able to stay together through this." Early on, that didn't work for me. I was like, "That doesn't feel accurate," because I was like, this person could totally leave if they wanted to.
I had to shift my thoughts around that to going, "That is a potential reality but if that occurs, it would not be because we made this choice, or this wouldn't be the cause of it." Becoming non-monogamous or entering into polyamory would not be the reason why it happened. The reason why it happened is because either him or me or both of us just did not see a value in being with each other anymore.
I don't even really know if polyamory isn't the reason that we lasted the eight years that we did in it. I have no idea. I have no idea if there's some alternate reality where we didn't do this, and we were broken up in six months. I don't know. I needed to understand that it would not be about this choice that we made if we got to that point.
Jase: We want to go on and talk about a few more of these polyamory reminders, as well as some other things because all of this is just so great, this level of just really getting to be honest and exploring these things. We're going to take a quick break to talk to our listeners about things that you can do to support this show, help keep this content coming to everyone for free, and we will see you after that break.
Dedeker: All right. We're back. This next one I really like a lot. You said the compersion isn't necessary to navigate polyamory successfully. It doesn't need to be cultivated if you don't wish to or feel the need to do so, and it can be felt simultaneously alongside jealousy, which I think it makes a lot of sense to have the sentiment especially after hearing you share your personal experience of someone who it sounds like especially right out the gate didn't exactly have that wonderful angelic from the skies, like you said candies and rainbows like compersion experience that showed up. What's been your personal relationship with compersion?
Evita: At all. That was not my experience at all. I would see people post and they'd be like, "Oh, you know my partner's away with their partner, and they sent me this selfie. They look so happy and I feel so good." I was like, "That is not my experience. That is not what's happening over here." I would even try to pretend. I remember when my husband and our first partner, they went on a date, their first date, just the two of them. I took this picture of them and posted it. It was all fake. It was just all me trying to foster this feeling that was not there.
After a couple of times of doing that, and it going horribly wrong I was like, "Okay, Evita this is not the experience that you're having." Then I began to say, "Okay, well, do you need it? Do you need it? Can you get yourself to a place of indifference? Can you get yourself to a place of going, 'I may not be happy that my partner is happy with someone else but I am happy that they're living the life that they want. I am happy that they're seeking to fulfill themselves. I don't always like the ways that they choose to do it, but I do appreciate their ability to be able to do it and I support that.'"
Because I feel like getting into polyamory, unless compersion isn't just something that you naturally experience. There are people that naturally experienced it. I feel like it's too lofty a goal in the beginning because you're arriving from a model that says, "If your partner is with someone else, if they're getting happiness from someone, if they're getting sex from someone else, something is wrong. Something is wrong with you. Something is wrong with them. Something's wrong with the relationship. You should feel bad about this."
Having this expectation that you're going to come from that, to, "I feel wonderful and amazing about this and this is so great," that's a big leap. There's a lot of space in between that that you have to step towards in order to get to that point. I don't even necessarily think that it's something that you should
strive for if you want to, that's fine.
I just feel like it's something that you should be like, "I just need to get to a place to where I am okay with my partner doing this, and I support it. Even if I'm not super happy about it all the time, but I do support it and I am here for them doing this thing." There was so much push for compersion. Oh, you're immature, if you don't feel it. All you got to do is just work on it, and you'll get there. I would notice that people just felt so bad about themselves that they didn't experience it.
That's why I'm so vocal, and I talk about it because I'm like, "Hey, here I am. This person, I've been doing this for eight years, my partners have their freedoms." Compersion is something that I experience to a very small degree or almost not at all, or alongside jealousy so I can feel compersion and jealousy at the same time, and it has not hindered my ability to have healthy polyamory.
Stop making people feel bad because they don't have this emotion. I used to say everyone has an emotional index. In the wide range of human emotions, we all have our own personal emotional index. Some people experience some emotions to very high degree, to very low degree. They experience them not at all. You hear people that say, "I just don't experience jealousy."
I'm like, "I experience it so much." Who am I to say that that person doesn't or does experience it just because I experienced it to a certain degree. We all have this emotional index. Compersion is just the same thing. It may be part of your emotional index. It might not. You might have it to a high degree on your emotional index. It might be very low. You might be able to work toward it, you might be able to not but that doesn't mean that you cannot live polyamorously.
Dedeker: I think that very much falls in line with I know, on our show, we often have this refrain of telling people to like, "It's okay to aim for neutral." If you aim for neutral, it's like, that's still a success.
Evita: Right. I think where people get tricked up about this often, and why this is something that's so uncomfortable for people is because people deal with a lot of guilt in their non-monogamy of their partners having struggles. They want people that are going to be happy about it, so they feel less bad. Just like people have to work with their feelings of jealousy and envy, and all of those things like that, we also have to work through our feelings of guilt for living this way.
That is some of our work is why do I feel guilty if I know that I'm doing this thing that I'm supposed to do? Why do I need my partner to be happy for me and need them to feel a certain way about it? What is that about? That's a separate work. I feel like that's like the other side of it is learning how to sit with your partner's genuine emotions about what you're doing in non-monogamy.
As long as they're not trying to use them to manipulate you or control what you do, but just learning how to sit and go, "This is how my partner feels about it, and this is how I feel about it." Both of those can be at the same time, and it doesn't mean I'm wrong and it doesn't mean they're wrong.
Emily: Well, yes, that's something that not very many people talk about, like the guilt on either end of being guilty for, I don't know, making your partner feel a certain way or having an emotion come up and having your partner feel a certain way, and then also your own guilt about your own feelings. That's really interesting.
Jase: It's absolutely there though.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Jase: Even after doing it for a lot of years, and being in a relationship with Dedeker, where we both are clearly very comfortable being polyamorous people, still comes up. I still feel guilty about things and it's this weird struggle because it's just they put it so deep inside us, it's hard to get it all out.
Evita: You feel guilt when you're in your emotion because you don't want your partner to think that you're trying to rain on their parade. You know like anything I want to--and sometimes you’re like "Man, I wish I could just keep it to myself, or why can't I just get it together? Why can't I feel the right way about this?" You're both struggling with this guilt around these emotions instead of just going, "This person feels this way. I feel this way. It's okay. Both can be held at the same time."
Emily: That's great. Another one, let's see, it's important to treat people we are seeking relationships with people, not like things. Avoid using folks as distractions, comfort aids, or forms of entertainment or at least tell them that's what they are to you. I know, in the blurb like below this quote on Instagram, you talked about how this was a thing that you were struggling with during your decoupling your relationship from your husband and that's really, really interesting. I wanted to go more into that. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Evita: My romantic relationship with my partner created a void. I love romantic interaction, and I had this huge romantic relationship that I had for almost two decades of my life. Now it's ending and it created this huge void in that space. Then I'm also hurting about it, so I'm feeling rejected, and sad, and grieving, and mourning the loss. I have a partner, but he lives about two hours away from me, so we only see each other maybe once a month, once every other month.
I'm noticing that I'm feeling emotionally raw, and I'm having this huge void. I have to be mindful in myself, that I allow myself the space to heal from what I'm going through, but then I'm also not trying to just stuff it with folks. Just to dissociate and distracts from what I'm going through. I often find that in non-monogamy, people will date people that they're not all that into, or they don't really like, just to soothe themselves from their partner having another person or because they are bored when their partner is out with other person.
I don't necessarily think that that's a terrible thing, because I think we do that in relationships. Relationships fill a lot of holes, for us, and they do a lot of needs. I don't think that that's necessarily a terrible thing. I think it's important to make sure that we are engaging in relationships with people where they are consenting, and they are consenting to who they are to us.
They have a relatively accurate picture of who they are to us, so they can say, "Hey, I want to be that to you," or they can say, "No, I'm not interested in that, or this is what I want. Can we merge those two pictures?" I find that people often aren't honest with the person who's going, "This is my motivation for connecting with you. Are you cool with that? Are you comfortable with that?"
In times of pain and times of struggle, or emotional turmoil, we don't always make the best choices in who to engage because we're just trying to soothe. I noticed my desire to connect to people-- I felt like I didn't have the energy to date, but I was still wanting to connect to people and it was this drive to soothe what I was going through. I think it's important to make sure that we are with people for who they are, and not like the object or the thing that they represent to us.
Dedeker: I think that's interesting. I think it really points to the fact that I think a lot of the scripts and models that were given for dating and connecting to new people, were really given this very harsh binary of, either the purpose of this is casual sex. I can tell you if I just want to keep things casual. It's okay for me to say that, even though maybe I don't clarify exactly what that means, or I'm looking for my next soulmate, looking for something serious.
There is this whole spectrum, in between and beyond those things where I think like you were saying, it's not necessarily the worst thing, if it's like, "Yes, I need some comfort. I need someone who can touch me and hold me during this time while I'm healing." That's not the worst thing. It's just so important that we're able to find effective ways to communicate that so that someone can be fully consenting to that.
I think that not a lot of us are necessarily really given those skills. It's like the two scripts that I feel like we're given. It's just like, I say that I'm just keeping things casual, or I say that I'm looking for something serious when maybe it can be a little bit of both, or neither.
Evita: Or even that whatever we start out with it as doesn't have to stay that way, that it can change. You can start out looking for something deeper, realize you do not have that in transition to something casual, start with some casual and then it can go deeper. I think that people have in their minds what they want with the person, and the other person having we do this dance of trying to see where the other person is at because no one wants to take the leap because the person said no, or they don't want that. Now you're like, "Oh, no."
I think we feel that for both casual and serious so like a person they tell you don't go on a first date and tell someone you're looking for your soulmate because immediately someone's going to be like, "Whoa." If that's what you're in this for, be upfront about that, and then the same thing if you're wanting something casual, be up front about that also.
I think we don't allow ourselves the space to broaden what we think relationships can be for us, be comfortable with our own desires and what we want, and then also going, "If this person doesn't meet me where I'm at, I don't need to cling or change my desires, or try to manipulate theirs. There is much more out there for me, and I don't have to necessarily have it from this particular person just because they don't want what I want."
Jase: That's one that took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.
Evita: I'm just now learning it.
Evita: Just now.
Emily: It's all right, they want to like fit everyone into the box that we want them to exist in, but it just won't always happen.
Jase: I also think part of it is just this awful, and I think even
the more time goes by, the more destructive I learn this belief is, but the way that our books and our movies and our TV shows teach us about like fate and destiny and shit like, that really it makes us think like, "Well, I feel very strongly about this person so there must be something like magical behind it," and so, therefore, it has to be even if it's hard right now because that's the story that we're shown all the time.
It actually can make us into pushy awful people, or just upset all the time. It's not a good thing to teach people, and we do it all over the place.
Evita: Yes, I call myself a recovering nice guy actually because I would get so incensed. First of all, I tell people I'm vain. I'm like, "I'm vain," and I'm this weird mix of like I'm the worst person in the world and I'm the most amazing person in the world." You know kind of like talking back and forth and so I'm like, "No one loves me."
Then I'm like, "Everybody should be in love with me and so we got to go back and forth." When I would interact with people, and I'm very upfront. I'm like I don't do that. If I'm interested in a person, I let them know pretty early on, "This is why I'm connecting to you or this is what I'm interested in." I would find that people just wouldn't feel that back for me, but they would still want to interact with me to be friends and I would be so indignant. I would just be like, "Oh, you didn't want the same thing with me that I wanted with you?"
Now I'm like, "We're done. That's it. Now, I take my ball and go home." I'm just now getting to the space of not seeing that as an indignation, not seeing that as indicative that something's wrong with that person or something's wrong with me not going, "Oh my God, there's no one out there that's going to love me."
Having the lights fall apart and despair about it but just going, "Sometimes the stars don't align with some people, doesn't mean you can't have anything with them," and also, things can change in having to be a little bit more at ease. I think that comes from that scarcity, I think we still operate sometimes in polyamory in the scarcity of monogamy because monogamy being that zero-sum game, "If I don't get this person, this other person gets them and so I have to hold on to this," and I think we still do that and especially in polyamory because our dating pool is a little significantly smaller actually.
We kind of cling to when we meet someone that we can have this thing with, "Oh, I have to have this with you, why don't you want to have this with me?" Instead of just going, "I can be at peace with that," that it's okay and there's more love out there.
Emily: Absolutely. I think there's been just so many great nuggets of advice on this episode alone. I'm really curious because as we talked about before, and we're going to discuss your documentary in the bonus episode but your relationship configuration has really changed over the eight years that you've been involved in polyamory. In that time, what have you found to be most rewarding and what have you found to be most challenging about polyamory and about non-monogamy?
Evita: I always tell people that the most rewarding thing about non-monogamy for me is the self-discovery so that's my favorite part is all of the things I learned about myself, all of the ways that I learned I need to heal, that comes up a lot, and getting the opportunity to see those things so I can begin that healing is probably my number one benefit.
Yes, I enjoy interacting with people in ways that feel right for me and right for them, and then having that freedom but for me, it's more about all the things that it's taught me about myself, all the ways that it's brought these things forward so that I could heal them. What is the hardest thing about non-monogamy is that process. It's like, I've been like that, I feel like that.
Emily: The dichotomy there. Yes.
Evita: Yes, is that process. Some of these things that come forward are deeply, deeply wounded, deep wounds, very painful and so going through that process, and sometimes being okay with the times along my path where I did not do well with that, where I did not respond well, and learning to be at peace with I didn't know that that wound was there, I didn't know that action was going to trigger it.
I did the best that I could with the information that I had available to me in the moment, and who I was in that moment, and while that doesn't absolve me from harm that I caused, and I do need to be accountable to that, but to make my peace with the fact that I showed up that way because I'm a human going through this.
Emily: That's really huge.
Dedeker: Thanks for saying that.
Emily: Yes. Dedeker was just like, "Aah." I saw you over there, Dedeker, having a moment.
Dedeker: I often have lots of moments, don't you worry about me.
Emily: No, it's good.
Dedeker: I was waiting for you, actually, Evita. I was waiting for you to drop the word grace because that's how I can always tell like a former Christian is, I feel like it's only Christians-- I have a lot of former Christian clients that if somebody drops the word grace, there's this idea of offering this compassion and gentleness to themselves and like, "Aha, I know where you came from."
Evita: Yes, yes. Not only do you have to offer that for yourself, you have to offer that for your partners, you have to offer that for their partners. It really steps up. I always tell you that non-monogamy is the basic relationship principle on steroids. It just steps it up. It steps it up and not in a more evolved way, so that I don't rock with, but you're saying you're interacting in relationships in much more interconnected ways, and navigating multiple relationships in interconnected ways.
We do this with families, we do this your friend groups, we do this with multiple coworkers, but we don't do this with romantic relationships in our society. You're stepping up that level of grace for yourself, grace for your partners, grace for their partners as you're going through this process. Grace is very important to remember because I feel like so much of what we really struggle with is not the actual feelings that we have, but it's our judgments of ourselves for the feelings, our judgments of our partners for the feelings, our judgments of our metamours for the feelings. Like I said, we're all humans going through this.
Dedeker: Yes. That's a wonderful place I think to just put a button on this episode because I love that sentiment. Evita, can you let us know and let our listeners know, do you have anything exciting coming up in the near future, any workshops, any specific places where people can go to find more of you and more of your stuff?
Evita: I do have a few workshops coming up, I will be doing a class for self-serve toys on disclosure agreements, I just did one for empowered pleasure. I'll be doing another event with them, but we're still working out the details on that. I am also-- you can find me on Instagram @lavitaloca34. You can find me on Facebook @Lavitaloca Sawyers. I'm also on Patreon, if you want to support my work at Lavitaloca Sawyers. I think that is all the places.
Emily: Wonderful.