340 - Polyamory and Therapy (with Martha Kauppi)
Toolkits for non-monogamy
Martha Kauppi, therapist, author, speaker, and educator who specializes in complex relational therapy, sex issues, and alternative family structures, is our guest for this episode. She trains therapists all over the world to work more effectively with a broad range of sex issues, and with clients who are in open relationships. She is the author of Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients).
Throughout this episode, Martha enlightens us about the following when discussing tools for therapists:
What can get in the way of therapists being able to effectively help their clients who are polyamorous.
Some of the most common biases.
How a therapist can assess their own internal bias.
How a therapist can tell working with polyamorous clients may not be right for them.
Possible anti-monogamy bias/choosing not to work with monogamous clients.
On the side of the client, Martha talks about the following:
Red flags when selecting a therapist.
Good questions to ask.
Differentiation.
Individuation (and how it’s different from differentiation).
Not framing something as a “need” with a partner.
What makes for poor agreements vs. good agreements.
Find more from Martha at her website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Youtube channel. And don’t forget to check out her book!
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode, the Multiamory Podcast, we're speaking with Martha Kauppi, we will be discussing what it takes for therapists to best serve their on monogamous clients, some of the most important tools that help make polyamorous relationships thrive as well as what to look for if you are seeking a therapist for yourself or for your relationship. Martha Kauppi is a therapist, author, speaker, and educator specializing in complex relational therapy, sex issues, and alternative family structures.
She trains therapists all over the world to work more effectively with a broad range of sex issues and with clients who are in open relationships. She is the author of Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients). Martha, thank you so much for joining us today.
Martha: I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Emily: You have been working with no monogamous clients, clients in alternative relationship structures for several, several years. What finally inspired writing the book for you?
Martha: Oh, that's such a good question and it's one I've been thinking about lately a lot as I keep retracking onto why I'm doing what I'm doing as we probably all should once a while. I wrote this book because it's hard to find a therapist who's good at this. I really wish that all therapists knew how awesome it is to work with people who are in open relationships. It's a super cool population of people generally with really high motivation, really interested in relationships, really interested in transparency, really interested in consent.
These are ideal clients for therapists and so, it never made sense to me that therapists don't feel comfortable and don't know how to think about it except for that the training that therapists get mostly is that only dyadic marital relationships work, which is so overly limiting and reductive and annoying because it's just abundantly incorrect. I wrote the book for the therapist who need the education, but I wrote the book for the clients of the therapist who get the education.
Then, after I wrote the book, I thought, "Well, geez, not everybody has access. Not everybody can afford a therapist. Not everybody can find a therapist who has experience in this area. How am I going to help them?" My experience of my polyamorous clients has been that they're really insightful, really motivated people who are interested in self-help and they're really well resourced in terms of taking on a self-help project.
I thought, "Why don't I write this book for them directly so that if they don't want to go to a therapist or they can't find a therapist, or they can't afford a therapist, they can get a therapist's viewpoint about how to think about what the problems that they're coming up in their relationships might be caused by and what kinds of tools would actually make a difference," so that, there's really nothing in this book that I don't use in my own therapy room, and there's not much that I use in my own therapy room that's not in the book. It's really a very robust guide and it can be used by people who want to step by step go through a process of thinking and looking at relationships a little bit differently.
Emily: That's funny you make that observation because it's true, the polyamorous community loves a self-help book, they love that stuff. I suppose that, we could sit and analyze why that is and the factors that create that. I do think that part of it is that essentially good help has been so hard to find for a lot of no monogamous and polyamorous folk. A good therapist or any kind of good professional for so long has been so difficult and so inaccessible that often all the community has had has been self-help books, not only just about non-monogamy but also about communication and psychology and things like that. That is really interesting that that stood out to you.
Martha: This is a population who, by definition, values relationships, consent, and transparency by definition. Already, that's a self-help kind of foundation. Yes, I really wanted to serve and I used to be a midwife. I really don't believe in barriers to care. I think the idea that I went and got a master's degree and so somehow I've got some magic trick that you have to come and pay me a lot of money to get the benefit of so that you can heal or that you can have a healthy relationship is very limited thinking.
I really am much more interested in empowering people to get what they need to get for themselves, figure out for themselves what they need and what they want create the life that they want. I have done a great deal of thinking about what makes that stuff actually work. What makes it happen in a healthy way and what's the difference between a relationship that's working well and that's not working well and I can break it down for you. That's what I did in my book is really break it down. If you wanted to see it through my perspective, through the treatment perspective, the helper perspective, you can.
Dedeker: I have a question regarding like what really gets in the way of therapists being able to effectively help polyamorous clients and with that, I've had like past partners who are new to non-monogamy and they'll have a therapist, like you said, essentially say non-monogamy is never works. It's not okay, and they that at face value. They're like, "Well, clearly my therapist knows what they're talking about and so, therefore, I don't agree with this lifestyle or whatever." Yes, I feel like that's a barrier to entry, but can you talk about that a little bit? Why is it so challenging I think for therapists to help polyamorous clients and why are they not interested in doing so?
Martha: I think they're just scared and I think that they have a lot of education and some of it has been incorrect. In the last couple of years, several very high level master therapists came out and publicly said, "Polyamory doesn't work. Anything outside of a dyadic relationship structure is not going to function in the long run, it's not possible to have emotional security and safety in a relationship with more than two people. There's just no way that this can work."
It's not true. It's bull shit. The reason I did my study that eventually led to the work that I do and the book that I wrote is because my eyes are telling me something different than what I was learning in school. Basically, any therapist who's taken a couple's therapy course or has followed famous couples therapists around a little bit has probably had the opportunity to hear some of the master therapists that are living today who are thought leaders and thought developers in dyad polyamory and any form of consensual non-monogamy so then that's a very confusing message.
Emily: Yes, that's definitely something I've done the Gottman training and that's always something that's really frustrated me about the Gottman Institute in particular. We've complained about this on the show before that they have such good like psychoeducational resources, but when it comes to non-monogamy, they're so just like, "No, no, no."
Jase: Hard-lined.
Emily: "Hardline no, no, no. Well, we haven't researched it. We tried to talk to one swinger couple in the '90s and it didn't work out so clearly, we don't feel confident about it." Like, "," even though they have also admitted that I think in the last decade, they've gotten more and more and more and more and more questions about it. Whether that actually inspires them to do some research or not, I guess, remains to be seen.
Martha: Yes. Some of them have recanted, but not all of them have. There's more to it in terms of understanding how this all fits together to make a big cultural misunderstanding for therapists. The other part is that the people who come in for therapy by definition have some sort of struggle. We're talking about a marginalized population, not everybody is out, most people don't know up close and personal a polyamorous or ethically non-monogamous relationship that's working well. Most people are not lucky enough to get to see that.
Therapists mostly see the ones that aren't working so that is another reason I wrote the book because I've been so fortunate to know lots and lots of people in workable open relationships and to help people get from non-workable open to workable open. I'm able to put stories of real people's challenges and struggles and redemption like how they overcame those struggle into my book and give therapists who may never have the chance to see that for themselves the viewpoint that I have, which is when my eyes are telling me this, I don't care what the government say, my eyes are telling me that this is clearly possible, therefore, I'm going to discount that part of the message there.
Jase: Yes. That's something that we've talked about for years on this show too of just how as a person doing non-monogamy, its good role models are so few and far between. We don't, even in our fiction, we don't have those role models. What's weird is we don't even really have many mediocre role models. All we have-
Jase: -kind of caricatures or just something that's bad and it's shown not to work and that's starting to change a little bit but we just still don't have a lot and that so that makes sense that also for the therapists, there's also that lack of just breadth of experience of the different ways this can look and how it can work. I know something that I often talk to people about who are new, like who are newly opening up a relationship or getting into a non-monogamous relationship the first time is this idea of remembering what it was to date when you were a teenager when you didn't have any real lived experience of how that was?
Everything was the biggest thing that had ever happened. It was the worst breakup of all time. It's the biggest love of all time. Everything is super high-
Emily: Amplified.
Jase: -you have no perspective and I feel like becoming non-monogamous, you go through that again a little bit and so, I could see that for therapists only experiencing it through their clients, you might also be new to it. There would be that same sense of like, "Gosh, this seems too extreme. No one can handle this level of extremity of their feelings when they're not a teenager anymore."
Martha: It also doesn't always unfold in an ideal progression. It would be great if everybody that wanted to open their relationship would, by a whole stack of books and go through all 25 of my worksheets and figure it out, think it through, discuss it, talk to a bunch of people who are in open relationships, ask them what the pitfalls are, what have they learned, learn a bunch of stuff about it. Most of the clients that I've worked with who are in open relationships and experiencing challenges did not go about it that way. Instead, they dove in or fell in sideways or started with infidelity and then suddenly realized, "Oh, I think I am not monogamous."
All of that stuff is messy to tidy up in retrospect. It's, to a therapist who doesn't have a way of thinking about that stuff clearly, it looks super scary. To me, I'm still remembering, "These are clients who are super motivated to have healthy relationships. These are clients who believe in consent. These are clients who believe in transparency." This is very very different from what I think of as the hardest population for me to work with as a therapist. People have long-term infidelity that was discovered by accident, and that involved very big lies over many, many years and gaslighting and now, the couple wants to make a repair.
To me, I don't know that these people will believe in transparency truly, hold it as a value. I don't think they're understanding consent yet. I don't know how motivated they are for personal growth yet. Hopefully, all of that stuff will be in place or will materialize as we start to work together but if I had to choose between one population and the other to work with, I think it's abundantly clear which one I would pick and why.
Emily: That's a really interesting perspective. I don't think I've heard-
Dedeker: That's right.
Emily: -anyone can lay out that comparison but that makes a lot of sense when you put it that way.
?Dedeker: Also, yes, part of the work is already done. You don't have to start from square one they're, yes, I mean a lot of the people that are in our community, they are really very attuned to themselves in a way that not everybody just is automatically so that's very interesting. If we're talking about therapists out there who are open to working with consensually non-monogamous clients, what kind of advice would you give to them? Also, because we as humans all have our own internal biases and even therapists do, how do you get over that hurdle as well when approaching new consensually non-monogamous clients?
Martha: That's a terrific question. We all have bias of course and therapists, hopefully, as part of their training and part of their regular practice think about bias and think about how to handle their own perceptions, and thoughts and feelings as separate from those of their clients and the goals that are relevant in therapy are the goals of the client not the goals of the therapist but some people are a little fuzzy on this. I help people think it through, I've got a worksheet for therapists and anybody to start thinking about how they are conceptualizing relationships in general, what their own history is? I encourage therapists to look at the influences on them, what they've experienced.
Lots of people have experienced infidelity for instance which is one of those things that makes people freak out about non-dyad relationships. Any relationship that doesn't involve two people seems terrifying beacuse what about all those feelings? What about the lies and secrecy? It doesn't seem to dawn on people that you could have that without the lies and secrecy and that would be a completely different thing. I think when you don't have enough knowledge about something, just getting some accurate information is a really big step in the right direction.
Then I think it's also really important to figure out what are the influences on you and what's going on in your own life that's made it so that this is either easy or hard for you. When I'm working with a client, the more they seem to be like me, the more in danger I am of projecting, the more in danger I am of making assumptions about what they think or feel or want. The more different they are from me, the more likely I am to marginalize them.
There's a pro and a con to a likeness and difference and it's important to recognize both and to figure out where you are when it comes to working with consensual non-monogamies and then bring that self-awareness to the therapy room with you so that you can handle the thoughts and feelings that are going to come up which might be in the neighborhood of projection or might be in the neighborhood of marginalization or anywhere between.
Jase: Yes. I just wish that not just therapists but that everyone thought this way too just keeping in mind your biases. You said that likeness and difference both have their pros and cons such an important concept that I'm just like, "Yes, that makes so much sense that I've never thought about it quite like that."
?Dedeker: Yes, that's good.
Jase: I think that's used for everyone not just therapists. I think that's really cool.
?Emily: Awesome. I wonder about, I guess I could call this the reverse but anti-monogamous bias with certain people or with certain therapists. I ask about that because first of all, it is something that I have witnessed, working with some clients who are working with clients themselves have sometimes talked about having a sense of losing some empathy for monogamous folks the more they work with non-monogamous folks.
Then another aspect of that has been that I've also sometimes had that projected on to me in my work where some people are convinced that I must have an anti-monogamous bias because of the fact that I'm openly polyamorous, I work with a lot of polyamorous clients and therefore if someone wants monogamy, there's just no way that they could work with me. Is that something that you have seen being a phenomenon with therapists?
Martha: I think we all have bias and it is with us all the time, but knowing how to deal with it, boots on the ground every moment, while you're working, is the important thing, and remembering that the goals that are important are the client's goals is super helpful for staying oriented to that. Also, remembering that monogamy and polyamory or swinging or any other form of non-monogamy are not like in an arm-wrestling match with each other, where there should be a winner. Instead, these are all aspects of diversity. We want them all, and we want more in that if you want to go get it, let's invent it, it doesn't have to fit a mold, it doesn't have to be part of somebody's concept. I actually love when a dichotomy like that shows up because then I can just break it.
I think that that kind of east, west, north, south black, white thinking is really pervasive and does a lot of damage. When I'm working with a couple, for instance, is thinking about opening, their relationship, and one partner wants to, and the other partner doesn't, this is a place where this shows up. The fact that I'm able to have this conversation sometimes makes one partner feel like I must be incredibly biased towards non-monogamy or I wouldn't even be sitting here having this conversation. The other partner wants to feel like I know enough, and I'm accepting enough about non-monogamy to do justice to the conversation.
The work for me has to do with removing the polarization of that and asking bigger questions like what aspects of relationship are important to you? I think if we start there, "What's important to you in a relationship?" "I don't know, safety, security, adventure," the list goes on and it's individual, you could have any of those in a monogamous relationship, and you could have any of those in a polyamorous relationship, but we have a narrative where we believe this thing only exists in this kind of relationship.
We can't get the pieces to start moving in a way that feels like flow until we break up those ideological adhesions and start moving stuff around. De-coupling all of the weird little connections that are inaccurate helps things to start moving and gets us off of that linear east-west track.
Dedeker: We've talked a lot about therapist side of things, but I am curious for myself more because it's been a long time since I've been to therapy. If I do go back, I would love to try to find someone who has at least an understanding of polyamory, for sure. From that side, from a client-side, what are things to watch out for when you're selecting a therapist, and are there good questions to ask for example?
Martha: Certainly. I don't think this is special for polyamory. I think finding a therapist that's a good fit is a challenge, but when you're in a marginalized population and you're looking for a therapist, who's a good fit, the stakes are a little bit higher and there are fewer to choose from probably who have cultural competence. I don't think that the therapist has to be non-monogamous themselves, but I do think that they have to have some kind of way of learning about it and understanding it, that doesn't come directly from the client's experience. The client can't be the therapist, the resident expert so, therefore, I wrote a book so I sell to them.
Dedeker: Just hand it to them?
?Jase: Yes.
Martha: Yes, just hand them the book, just say, "Are you willing to read this book because this will be a really good start?" I think willingness is more important than expertise, honestly. Somebody who is able to say, "I honestly don't know, but I know how to find out, or I know how to consult, or I know how to do some research, or I will think about it and get back to you," is a really important kind of answer. Also, there are a lot of therapists now who have a lot of experience working with non-monogamies and so you might very well find one that's spectacular.
I've trained a whole bunch of them and there are other people who are training therapists to be competent in this area too. Hopefully, soon, it'll be easy instead of fraught, but always, it's going to be a little hard to find the right fit. What I'm hoping is that soon, there'll be enough therapists who are good in this area, culturally competent, let's say, so that then you can start choosing unfit rather than cultural competence. We don't have the privilege of looking for a good fit because we just need somebody who can actually stand to sit in the room with us and hear about our relationship problems. That's a very different viewpoint.
Jase: That's a very different search. It's just like, I need the bare minimum versus the best fit.
?Dedeker: Exactly.
Emily: There really can be so much variation in that based on thinking about my own experiences with therapists and also hearing about friends' experiences with therapists, that there can be such a range of what counts like a therapist who is willing or supportive of non-monogamy all the way from, yes, they're super knowledgeable. Maybe they themselves are non-monogamous. They're very steeped in the culture. They're very steeped in the knowledge and in the terminology all the way to, they don't ask any questions and they don't wanna talk about it, but at least they won't tell me that it's bad.
There's like such a range in there that for some, some stuff towards one end of that extreme works better for some people versus for others. I think that's a really beautiful image to think about in the future. This idea that that kind of care is not just accessible, but like there's choice around it as well, even more choice.
Martha: I also want to say that there are some people who have a lot of experience working with non-monogamy who I don't think do such a terrific job of it. I think that has to do with that bias going in the other direction. When I was writing my book, I realized I was going to probably be stepping on a number of people's toes by just coming right out and saying, "I disagree with this whole category of thinking. I think this is possible, even though most of the books you'll find, say, it's not possible, I've seen it work, so therefore, it is obviously possible. I've thought about how to make it work."
If a therapist has had a bunch of their own experiences with non-monogamy and they've run into a bunch of pitfalls and they've tried their best to work through it, and they haven't been able to work through it in a way that came to a resolution that was satisfying, they may very well be bringing that forward into their belief system now. I think that it's important to have a conversation with the future therapist of yours, "What's your experience with this? What are your thoughts about it? These are the challenges that I'm facing and that I'm coming to therapy for. Does this feel like it's within your capacity? What are your initial thoughts about how we might look at it?"
Hopefully, even in a 15-minute phone call, you should have a sense like, "Oh, yes, they get me." If you don't have a sense, like, "Oh, yes, they get me," I don't see why you would have a first session. Then, I would also assume that you might switch after two or three sessions, if it's turn out to be a super slow starter or you get into the intensity of it and you end up feeling like, "Oh, yes, they don't get me." You need somebody who gets you, or it's going to be impossible to grow. It's a very vulnerable process to let go of narratives and belief systems and move towards what you want.
How can you move towards something that you long for and that you want when you have the sense that your therapist doesn't believe it's possible? That's not going to work. On the other hand, you might be able to find a therapist who's never worked with polyamory before, who's just freaking brilliant with the change process. In which case, all you need is a good therapist who can sort themselves, you don't need an expert in polyamory. I think it can go either way.
Jase: It's excellent advice.
Emily: Yes. That's really wonderful advice. We're going to take a quick break to talk about some ads, some sponsors for the show, some ways that our listeners can support this show, but when we come back, we're going to be talking about things more on the client-side so stick around. We are back. Martha, in this book, you're not just helping therapists get more knowledgeable about polyamory and polyamorous culture, but you also include a lot of information that's very useful, both on the practitioner side and on the client-side as well.
As someone like myself, who is both, the book has really been a treasure trove of practical information, worksheets, stuff that I can apply both in my work with clients as well as in my personal life. I wanted to dive into some of the advice that you give just in general for making non-monogamous relationships work and thrive in a healthy way. Now, in your book, you put a lot of emphasis on something known as differentiation. You even have a quote here that I pull that quote, "Polyamory is a pressure cooker for differentiation of self." For our listeners, can you explain of what differentiation is and why it's so important for non-monogamous relationships?
Martha: Absolutely. Differentiation is a set of skills. I would say there are four of them, three and a half maybe. They are first, to be able to look inside yourself and figure out what you think feel, prefer, believe, separate from what anybody else might want you to think, feel, prefer or believe. The second is to be able to get grounded enough, to be able to say that to somebody else, even if you think they're not going to agree with you or their feelings are gonna get hurt. The third is to be able to get grounded enough to hear what someone else is saying to you, even if it's very, very hard for you to hear what they're saying, you don't want to hear what they're saying, and it's hard to hear, to stay grounded and access curiosity.
Then the half or the foundation that goes under this is that holding steady part, to get grounded, hold steady so bad. It takes a certain amount of groundedness and steadiness to be able to figure out what you think and feel separate from someone else. To say it certainly takes a lot of groundedness within yourself and to hear somebody else say something tough to you also takes a lot of groundedness. That groundedness is foundational to differentiation. It's not exactly an aspect of it, but it's foundational to it.
Often, if a client can't do the differentiation things, it is because they're having trouble holding steady. They don't have the foundation in place and often, that speaks to an attachment concern, instead, which I think those solutions for attachment concerns behaviorally speaking, dwell in the realm of self-management and emotional management. It's super exciting and it's about neuroscience, really. The neuroscience of self-regulation with perceived threat.
We think that we're in danger, we have a sense that we're in danger, but we're not actually in danger. This is actually our best beloved, not somebody who's pointing a gun at our head and so beginning to discern that kinda stuff and react as the current circumstance, is accurate, is quite a skillset, especially for those of us with trauma in our background. There's a journey to go through there and it involves aspects of attachment theory, differentiation and neuroscience.
Emily: Yes. I was going to ask that if you're referring to attachment theory. Okay. Yes, that makes sense.
Martha: Well, I'm referring to the phenomenon of attachment, and the way that we understand it comes from attachment theory. It's interesting who did I just have a conversation with about attachment theory and its possible limitations when it comes to multiple partners? There's this idea that you can only attach to one person, but we know that that's not true for children, which is where attachment theory comes from is watching babies and very young children and how they bond and how they know that they exist in the world and how they know that they're important and how they learn to think for themselves, have to do with-- It's relational.
It's all relational looking into their parents' eyes, but little kids can have a different kind of attachment with different parents and they can have multiple parents. The question I have is what about the village that is, for most of us, far back in our history and wasn't around at the time of the research about attachment. We weren't studying villages then, but my guess is that those kids attached to many, many people and that they just felt safely held as opposed to feeling like they had no safe attachment. I don't think those kids felt they had no safety.
Kids that I've known that are in tight communities, for instance, religious communities or dwelling communities, feel like they're safe everywhere. That's not a lack of attachment, it's a multi attachment. Jessica Fern talks about attachment as it relates to polyamory a lot in her book Polysecure, which I think is a terrific book and a good way of thinking about it. Some of the master therapists that I referred to that have indicted polyamory are attachment-based relational therapist leaders.
It's easy to see how they came to the idea that you had to have a dyadic relationship to experience secure attachment and knowing you have a client who's experiencing torture and torment due to jealousy, it's really easy to default to that while your problem is this open relationship, but it leaves off a great big truth, which is that people grow in the direction that they want to grow and if you want something for yourself, you can go get it.
If everybody around you is telling you, "That thing is impossible, don't go get it, that would be a waste of your time," that really hampers a person's ability to grow without being an extremely independent thinker and independently motivated. That's why it's so important to let everybody know healthy, securely attached long-term multi-partner polyamory does exist in the wild. It lasts over the long haul. It has amazing levels of intimacy. It's truly beautifully workable for some and some circumstances, which is how I know it's possible for somebody who wants it for themselves.
Jase: I did, just for myself, I wanted to clarify with this term differentiation. Is this about differentiating yourself from others or like your thoughts from your feelings or where where's the term come from? What's it referring to, differentiating?
Martha: That's a really interesting question that I'm not sure I have the answer to. It came out of Murray Bowen family therapy. Murray Bowen is the guy who came up with the idea of differentiation originally. He's the founding father of systemic therapy and systems theory. What exactly the differentiation is, certainly self and other. Self and other could be any other. It could be, I differentiate from my mother. I differentiate from my father. I differentiate from the God of my childhood. I differentiate from the beliefs of my culture. I differentiate from whatever.
It's about being unique and tolerating differences. It's so important to be able to do that in a relational way. This is not quite the same as individual, which would be special and separate, and we're going to go my way or the highway. That's an individualistic ultimatum.
Jase: Interesting.
Martha: Instead, differentiation is a relational way of accepting that we're all different and we can also be connected in our differences. Our diversity is our strength. We do not have to all be matchy-matchy in order to make this work. In fact, if we are matchy-matchy, it's probably going to be pretty flat, dull, and not very sexy. All of that is wrapped up in some aspect of my understanding of differentiation.
Emily: Yes. I wanna give a little shout. We dove into differentiation a little bit on our episode 334, that was all about good hinge partners, where it seems like resoundingly, good differentiation is really, really important for people who are in that particular role within a multi-partner relationship. It's interesting that you talk about the individuation being this very like I'm separate and I'm special and it's my way or the highway. I think sometimes, there's a tendency to lean into that a little bit intensely especially among people who maybe identify as relationship anarchists or people who identify very strongly with like no non-hierarchy or things like that. I often refer to it as like this emotional libertarianism sometimes, that's how I think about it is like-
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: -whatever. "I'm doing my thing, this is my boundary, this is what I want," people have to have to deal with it. Do you think that along with the strengths that you've seen polyamorous and non-monogamous clients bring to the therapy room, do you see that same tendency towards maybe some very strong individuation as well or is your perception of it different?
Martha: Well, I perceive that individuation stance as being a developmental stage of relationship. I think we all go through that kind of stage relationally. I certainly went through it when I was 18.
Emily: Didn't we all?
Martha: Didn't we all? If that completed well, then we may be able to move out of that to something else and if it didn't complete well, we may not be ready to move on it. I don't want to pathologize that decision. I think we can all be different, but what I'm trying to help people achieve is a relational way of being and my way or the highway is not a relational way of being, it's a individuated way of being. That's okay if that's what somebody wants for themself, but if they come to me and say, "What I want is for this relationship to work," we'll certainly be talking about the difference between individuation and differentiation there.
?Dedeker: I want to pivot to a different topic. I think in a lot of the standard polyamory discourse, there's this big emphasis on expressing needs and telling other people what your needs are and figuring out what they are and stuff like that. Then also, having different partners who are fulfilling different needs because one person can't do all that essentially. In your book, you actually discourage people from framing something as "Like a need to their partner". Can you talk a little bit about that and why that is?
Martha: Yes. I think that it is not your best strategy for helping your partner be able to hear what it is that's important to you. If instead, you can talk about a desire, a preference, a thing that's important, why it's important? How that came to be in you to be an important thing, it feels much less like an ultimatum. If I say to you, "I need this," you start looking around to see if you can provide it for me. You're aware that it's highly important, and that I might reject you if you can't do it. There's this little high-stakes ultimatum quality to it, that isn't actually necessary, and most of the stuff that most people identify as "Needs".
Dedeker: It's like a language or a different just in the language that you're using around that because it sounds like--
Martha: Yes. For the purpose of not triggering the limbic system unnecessarily.
Dedeker: Got it, okay.
Martha: From the department of I want you to feel heard and I want your partner to really get what you're saying, and why it's important? I'd like you to go deeper with it. That they can understand so they have a chance of getting it, we need to keep them from getting completely triggered by completely unnecessary theatrics, right?
Dedeker: Yes.
Martha: What if we talk about what's important, but again, lots of people learn something like I can't express what's important to me unless it's an emergency. Then we have this whole culture around self-care. It's a need, it's a need, it's a need. I'm not saying it's not important. I'm saying we have language for this. We have language that can help us express something way deeper than, "I need this or I need you to do this". Instead, "I wish this." "I want this." "I prefer this." "This feels very important to me." "In my ideal world, that would go like this. By the way, what do you think? How would that be for you?"
Now we're getting relational, "What's your side of this? How do you perceive this? How does it land for you? What are your thoughts about it? What do you want for yourself in your life?" Now we're having a relational conversation.
Jase: Gosh, I feel like we could do a whole episode just on that.
Dedeker: Just on that. Excellent.
Jase: Because it comes up when we talk about things like boundaries as well, that I think a lot of people go through this thing where they realize, "Oh, I've been allowing a lot of situations in my life that are harmful to me and that I don't want." They learn about boundaries. Then they are like, "Oh, well. If something's a boundary, then I don't have to feel bad about needing it like a need." It can get used in this ultimatumy way, before learning, "Well, okay. Hang on." There's this difference between what's truly a boundary or a need, versus, "This is what I want," and that's important.
Dedeker: Preference, yes.
Jase: It's like we get this thing as if I want it, that's somehow not important. If I'm not getting it, that's not a good enough reason to leave this relationship. It's like all these beliefs compounded on top of each other that make it we almost feel like we have to say I need it, or we have to say it's a boundary because otherwise, we couldn't even ask for it, or we couldn't even take ourselves seriously.
Emily: You said the word theatrics-
Martha: Exactly.
Emily: -that really resonated for me because sometimes, it is just that, or a partner will view it as that just based on the situation or the circumstance that you're in, even if to you, it feels fairly innocuous. That's really fascinating.
Martha: I feel life and death are important to you and because I want you to feel heard, I'm going to encourage you to use language that's going to make it easier to hear you, and to respond well. The other thing about this ultimatumy feel that really ends up shooting you in the foot is it really brings out an opportunity for conflict avoidance on the part of the partner. Let's say you say to me, "Martha, I need blah, blah, blah," and I'm conflict-avoidant. I'll be like, "Oh, oh shit. She's going to leave me if I don't meet this need for her. This is really-- I got to do-- Yes."
I'll say, "Yes, of course, I can do that for you. I've never been able to do it before my whole entire life, but I'm sure this time, I will be able to do it for you." I'll either pull out magical thinking, or I'll say, "Yes, I'll be dismissive. That's important. Right. Got it." Then we'll move on, or/and I may already know, I'm never going to do it, or I don't even believe in it, or I've never made that work in the past, and it takes some real magic to imagine that it's going to happen again. Any of that is really selling you short because what you need, what all of us needs is a partner who's strong enough to agree and disagree.
Now we're back to differentiation again. This is why it's such an important relational set of skills. If you can't figure out what you think and prefer and desire and say it, you're not going to get it, and you're not going to make a good agreement. If you don't make good agreements, you're not going to have security and safety in your polyamorous relationship. If you don't have safety and security in your polyamorous relationship, something's going to go wrong for sure.
Emily: That's a perfect segue because we wanted to talk about agreements on this show for the past seven, eight years, however long the show has been going. All the time, the conversation comes up about agreements versus rules, versus boundaries, versus a relationship contract, versus whatever other kind of structure, or terms of engagement that is popular in the Zeitgeist at that particular moment. We want to hear your take on the whole agreements versus roles, versus boundaries, versus relationship contracts, what you've seen that actually works really well for people?
Martha: We're well on our way here, because we've talked about differentiation, and we've talked about needs versus desires. Those are foundational concepts to making a good agreement. We've also talked about conflict avoidance, which is foundational. Conflict avoidance and also reactivity, those are challenges with the third part of differentiation, but hold steady when somebody else says something that you don't agree with, and that you're not comfortable hearing to lean in with curiosity. If you can't do all of the parts of differentiation, it's going to be very, very difficult to make and keep an agreement.
When somebody says, "I want this in my relationship," and they're looking at their partner, and they're saying, "This is what I want." If I'm there, like in a therapy session, I'll say, "Timeout" and I'll look at the partner, I'll say, "Thank you for showing now. Look at the partner and say, "Now, your job right now is to look for yourself." You heard what your partner asked for, that's fine. Just set it to the side for the moment and just take a second and get in touch with yourself. Can you find you? Can you feel anything inside of you that is true for you?
Do you have a sense of, "This will be easy for me? This will be hard for me. I believe in this. I don't believe in this. I'm interested in this. I'm curious about this. Why is this important to my partner? What you got?" What I want you to know is you do not have to agree. You do not have to give it to them just because they asked for it. The only thing that I think is really important for you to do right now is only be honest. This is not a good time to bend the truth.
You can disagree, and we can have a big flipping fight about whatever great thing, but it's a real conversation about what's actually true for you, that's what I'm here for, and that's what a good agreement is based on. Something that you really can bring yourself to, not because your partner wants you to, but because you want to, and you might want to primarily because your partner wants it and they're important to you.
It's got to tap into something deep that feels almost like a value if it's not going to just come naturally. That's the easy agreement., Oh, yes. I would never do it differently than that anyway," that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the heart agreement, the one where I'm going to be tempted 50,000 times to break this agreement. I'm going to need some real muscle to be able to keep my agreement. That agreement is the one that I'm worried about. That's the agreement that I want to make sure is formed well.
Jase: I feel like so often what we see when people talk about agreements and specifically when opening up a relationship because that's usually the first time people even think about having agreements in a relationship. So often they're not that, so often it's the agreement is that one person said they needed a thing, or just that this was important, and the other person didn't like it, but it was like, "But I want to be in a relationship with them, so okay." There's not that sense of a value behind it. Sometimes it's even like the opposite of a value they might have. They might actually think, "Actually, my values would lead to a different behavior than that, but I need to somehow compromise," and compromise is a good quality, "so I should do that." That's how it actually gets approached so often.
Martha: It does. It's funny you bring up compromise because I don't believe in compromise. It's one of my, more out there stances among many things that I just disagree with a lot of people about. I don't think a compromise--
Dedeker: I imagine one of the therapeutic circles also like, those are fighting words.
Martha: Yes, it's true but you know to me, a compromise is where I give up a whole bunch of stuff and you give up a whole bunch of stuff in the hopes that we can meet in the middle of somewhere so that neither one of us is satisfied and we're both resentful, what could go wrong? Instead, I believe in a different, a whole different process, that's less linear so we're not going to organize ourselves on your way or my way continuum. Then try to find something in the middle. Instead, we're going to try to populate a vast field of possibility. The way we get there is through curiosity and creativity, and playfulness, and empathy, and validation and safety.
Then, all of these possibilities begin to materialize. It gets very fun, and exciting and creative as our minds crack open and we realize, "Oh gosh, there are possibilities that I never even thought of before." Then, something very magical happens, which is that some decisions just present themselves. You don't even have to make them, they just develop out of this shared understanding and enjoyment of what's important to you and what's important to your partner or your other partner and all the people.
I don't believe in compromise. I believe in magic, that kind of magic that happens when you create something that you didn't know could happen before. When you create something that you couldn't have imagined before you start this relational process. Really, that's the beauty of relationship. We are more than the sum of the parts if we do this well, then you make me more and I make you more and the other ones make all of us more in it and just it's more.
That's so foundational to why people are even interested in polyamory in the first place. The idea that love is not a limited commodity there, more makes more. Well, ideas aren't a limited commodity either and ways of structuring a relationship also not a limited commodity. I think that this is part of you're getting an idea of how I think about agreement making, it's quite different.
Jase: It's the best.
Martha: "What do you want and what do you need? What do you need? Now, let's hash it out. Then let's write some stuff down on a piece of paper." I just think, "Whoa, that is not going to work. I'm worried about every single one of those agreements, because they're about to be broken agreements." Once we have broken agreements in a relationship, we don't not have emotional safety, security and we need it. We need everybody to feel nurtured and safe and welcome, and wanted and important, and valued.
Dedeker: I had a comment, but I don't feel like I can follow that because I think that what you said was just like so solid and inspiring and wonderful and so I think just going to leave it there. Martha, it's been fantastic to have you, where can our listeners find more of you and your work and your book?
Martha: The biggest best place to find me as in my book, which is a great big book that talks exactly like I talk to write to you, it looks like a big fat textbook, but it's super readable and you can get it on Amazon. You can get it on independent booksellers. It's available in the UK from several booksellers and you can find links to all of that on the book page on my website, which is instituteforrelationalintimacy.com.
Dedeker: Again, for people, that title for Martha's book is Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients). Highly recommend, I got a review copy, but I even went and bought another copy because it's just that good.
Jase: Good.
Dedeker: Highly recommend to both the professionals and non-professionals out there. We are going to be sticking around with Martha for our bonus episode for this week, we're going to be talking about mono-poly relationships and also talking about managing NRE. If you're a Patreon, you can stick around for that and on our Instagram, we want to hear from you. We want to know how do you cope when a partner tells you something that is difficult to hear? You can go, check out our Instagram stories to answer that question.
The best place to share your thoughts to other listeners about this episode is on this episode's discussion thread in our private Facebook group or Discord chat, you can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to patreon.com/multiamory.
In addition, you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Emily Matlack and me, Dedeker Winston. Our episodes are edited by Mauricio Balvanera. Our social media wizard is Will McMillan. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. The research assistant for this episode is Dr. Keyanah Nurse. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh & Anand from the Fractal Kate EP. The full transcript is available on this episode page on multiamory.com.