384 - Imperfect Polyamory, Personal Growth, and Emotional Labor (with Normalizing Non-Monogamy)
Normalizing Non-Monogamy with Emma and Fin
This week we’re welcoming Emma and Fin from the Normalizing Non-Monogamy podcast:
“For Emma and Fin, life is all about seeking out adventure, embracing the chaos, and meeting amazing people along the way. They are in their mid thirties, met in seventh grade, and have been together since their freshman year of college. A year or so into their relationship it was obvious that exploring everything life had to offer was part of who they were as individuals, and as a team. They were very young at the time and neither had really experienced the world of dating, so they created a way to explore aspects of the dating world without ending their relationship, through non-monogamy. Fast forward about 11 years and they decided to start a weekly podcast called Normalizing Non-Monogamy in 2018. They absolutely love meeting new people and hearing their stories and through this podcast they get to interview people from all over the world who are exploring non-monogamy on their own terms. The hope is that if they can get enough of those stories out into the world that it will provide a resource for anyone who is considering non-monogamy. They also want to show that non-monogamy is more common than most people think and that it can be done in an ethical and consensual way. Overall, the mission is to inspire people to embrace their true selves so that, together, we can open minds and live authentically without shame.”
They have joined us to answer some of our listener questions about polyamory, personal growth, and emotional labor, touching on the following points:
Normalizing non-monogamy to yourself.
Overcoming the fear associated with living in a conservative or rural area and the desire to have open relationships/be polyamorous.
Measuring, giving credit, and confirming personal growth.
Struggling practicing what you preach.
Find Emma and Fin on Instagram and Twitter and be sure to check out Normalizing Non-Monogamy!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we are back answering some more of our questions that were submitted by our Patreons. This time we are joined by the hosts of the podcast, Normalizing Non-monogamy Emma and Fin. They've been together since their freshman year of college and have been practicing non-monogamy for over 10 years.
They started a weekly podcast called Normalizing Non-monogamy in 2018, where they interview people from all over the world who are exploring non-monogamy on their own terms authentically and without shame to just get those stories out there and help normalize non-monogamy like it says on the tin. Well, Emma and Fin, thank you so much for joining us.
Emma: Thank you so much for having us.
Fin: Yes, we appreciate it. Thank you. It's good to see you three.
Emily: Something that I saw on your website right off the bat, which I was shocked by is that you started the podcast right before quitting your jobs and going to South America. That's so cool. I feel like I have heard these stories of entrepreneurs starting businesses on a whim and just being like, "I'm going to quit my job and move somewhere and do something really radical and awesome." Can you talk about that a little bit and also why you wanted to create this podcast and where you are and what you're doing now?
Fin: Yes, for sure. I will say it was thought out, but also not super well thought out.
Emma: Hang on. The podcast was not thought out as much. The traveling to South America was a long time coming.
Fin: The trip to South America was about eight years in the making of saving and figuring out how to do that. The podcast idea popped up about five months before we got on an airplane. We whipped everything together, did a bunch of interviews to give us a little bit of a backlog and a little bit of breathing room because we decided to do it weekly. I have a lot of perfectionism that doesn't allow me to ever miss a week. It was like, if we're going to do this--
Dedeker: Is non-monogamy podcast just where all the perfectionists go because that's a problem that we're dealing with too?
Fin: Wow. We're going to start a support group and it'll be-- We'll make a weekly podcast out of it. We had been dreaming of traveling and this idea came up and I couldn't let it go. I got Emma on board and she's enthusiastic now, but it was a little tricky in the first month or two.
Emma: There was a lot going on. We were quitting our jobs and trying to do other things. It was a lot, there was a lot going on.
Fin: We just went for it and it was wild and crazy. Many interviews we did on a wifi hotspot with chickens and dogs and cows. It was rough but we did it and we're back in and all this good.
Dedeker: If you were going to ballpark it, how many people do you think you've interviewed up to this point?
Fin: We have let's call it 250 episodes roughly.
Emma: Probably around 500 people.
Fin: Somewhere in there.
Dedeker: Wow. Wow. That's such an interesting data set where I know you're not necessarily running a study in any formal terms, but of course, as you're getting exposed to people's stories, you get to know what are the really common things, what are the surprising things? I'm wondering have you stumbled across anything unexpected from talking to so many people about their non monogamy journeys?
Emma: Yes. I'm going to let Fin chime in too, but I think for me we've talked to probably around somewhere 500 people and every story is different. There's overlaps and there's common themes, but everybody handles situations a little bit different. Everybody lives a different life and that still always hits me.
Fin: I would say for me, it wasn't a surprise. It was almost confirmation that I think leading up to this, starting the show we had always heard and even run into a lot of the swinger poly split like, "We're swingers, we don't do poly, we don't have feelings." Or, "We're poly we don't do the swinging casual thing." When we started talking to people, it was like, "Yes, we're all just doing this and it's very much of an amorphous thing." The line, if there was one is so blurry that I don't know that you can see it for most people.
Dedeker: I really like that, that reminds me of several years ago when we had Cooper S. Beckett on the podcast, him talking about how in reality, there's a lot of polyamorous folk practicing things that look a lot like swinging. There's also a lot of swingers practicing things that look a lot like polyamory. It's just we're not necessarily using those labels. It is a little bit more amorphous like you were saying.
Fin: Cooper does great work. I think maybe on that same thread as the-- I hesitate to say that swinging is the precursor to polyamory, but we have talked to a lot of people that they start and it's a very rigid box of we have all these rules and it's going to look like this. As they start to do it, they're like, "We're a little more just open," so it's not that one led into the other, but I think people start from more of a place of fear and rules, I think create that sense that can get rid of that fear. As you start to learn it, the rules go away and the box gets way bigger maybe.
Jase: I'd be curious to see what you've experienced in the difference between people you've talked to who opened up a previously monogamous relationship versus people who maybe had done that before but then when you talk to them, the relationship they're in now has started being polyamorous the whole time or swinging the whole time or whatever it is. Have you noticed a difference in those two in terms of-- Because that starts very different.
If you start being open from the beginning, there's less of that, "Oh we need to put up guardrails to protect this thing we've already been doing a while." Understandably. Even if they eventually move away from it. I'm curious what have you noticed in the difference with the interviews you've done?
Fin: That's a good question. I think my anecdotal evidence is it's way harder to take a long-term monogamous relationship and crack it open.
Emma: I would agree.
Fin: I'm not saying it can't be done. I will even say this. We did what I would probably label as swinging for the first 13 years of us doing non-monogamy. Even cracking into, "Hey, we maybe fell in love with somebody. We did fall in love with somebody," that was even hard for us having been open to the level of having friends with benefits and ongoing friend relationships. I think what we've seen or what I've seen is it's a lot harder because there's so much to undo versus this is just how we are and how we've always been.
Emma: When two people come into a relationship that is open from the beginning, they assumed, I guess that they have some vocabulary, they have maybe some experience and their relationship is living in this certain way, right from the beginning. When people have been monogamous for a long time and then they have to try to change everything, it's an undo learned behaviors. It's just a lot harder. Definitely possible, seen it successful a lot, but it's hard.
Jase: It's like if you're building your initial connection and trust and intimacy with each other around this one particular framework to then remove that framework from underneath it and rebuild something else is tough versus if you started that way, you're building that trust and intimacy already within that structure. That makes a lot of sense.
Fin: I think what we do see in here quite a bit is, "Hey, we want to be non-monogamous, but let's do monogamy for six months or a year. Let's build a little base and then crack it open." They go into that time, knowing that that's what they're doing. I think that's a little bit of a different approach and one that we've actually seen people do pretty successfully.
Jase: Interesting. Wow. That's great data point.
Fin: Yes.
Emily: Do you feel like you had preconceived notions about non-monogamy or just notions in your own doing it for a long period of time that have been changed through the interviews that you've done on your show? Have you learned anything really new or just been surprised by something that has potentially altered your perception of what non-monogamy means to you?
Fin: Yes. That's a great question.
Emma: Yes, so for me and I believe for Fin, too, but I learned something from talking to every single person we've talked to. I take something away from every interview and so, yes, it's definitely changed the way I think about non-monogamy or look at non-monogamy because it's opened my eyes to struggles that other people have had, benefits that other people--
The way other people handle it has definitely influenced-- given me a lot of data points and information to learn from and so it's hard for me to pick one thing to say, like, "This is the one thing I've learned," or "This is the one thing that's changed," but my definitely overall perception has changed mostly because I've learned a lot more, been exposed to, obviously, a lot more.
Fin: Yes, I would say mine's very similar. Maybe one just as I was thinking that I'd never come up against is the mono-poly dynamic. We get emailed about that weekly and so now it's, like, "Oh, wow, that's a thing where people have to navigate." Then all the things that come off of that that can be really challenging, but also super beautiful. We've talked to quite a few people who do it and it's amazing how they can make that work and so maybe it was just that that was a dynamic that exists that I didn't know existed before.
Dedeker: It's so good talking to other non-monogamy podcasters because something that I think a lot with this show is it's really hard for me to think about how my relationships would be if I hadn't spent the past eight years talking about relationship stuff and communication stuff and also having a partner where we're talking about these things literally every week on a show.
So it is a little bit of a mind trip to think about how that affects you and so I am curious to maybe drill down a little bit more specifically, do you feel you've made any particular decisions in your relationship or in the way that the two of you communicate to each other based on all this exposure and all these many, many hours of conversations with other people?
Fin: Yes, a great question.
Fin: I think like you said, it's so hard to pinpoint where they were. I would say absolutely. I don't know what they all are, but I will say there are days, many of them, where we're, like, "We do this for a living, we talk about it every day, we've interviewed 250 people. Why are we still making these mistakes?" It's, like, you know it. You watch it coming. You're standing in the road watching the truck come and you do it and you're, like, "Why did I do that?"
Maybe it's just the awareness. Sometimes I think it's the awareness that, like, "There's a better way and I know I've got to get there and how do I get there?" I will say getting into therapy, that was big. We had avoided it for many, many years, partly financial so we could save up to travel, but at a certain point you're, like, "What am I doing?" I think we started to hear that theme and we're, like, "We've probably got to get on that train and see what that's all about and-
Emma: -deal with our own shit."
Fin: Yes.
Emma: The other thing I would add is that, as Fin mentioned earlier, we were friends with benefits, more casual, non-monogamy for many, many years and then in 2020 is when we started more down the polyamorous road.
Dedeker: Good time for it, 2020.
Emma: Oh, yes. Yes, yes, it was great timing. For me, I think doing the podcast, talking to all these many different people, it gave me more exposure to polyamory, not that I hadn't had it before, but I hadn't been in that place and so I think it gave me a lot of knowledge and more confidence going into that than I had previously from talking to as many people as we did.
Jase: Would you say that, perhaps, doing your podcast and talking to more polyamorous people normalized it for you?
Fin: I would definitely not say that on somebody else's show.
Emma: But, yes.
Emily: Do you just slip in your podcast name into every conversation?
Fin: It's always awkward when people say it on our show. They're, like, "Wow, you're really helping normalize non-- and we're, "Okay, yes, we"--
Emily: You're, like, "That is the goal, indeed." Amazing.
Jase: Oh, gosh. All right.
Emma: I love it.
Jase: Okay. Let's get into talking about some of the questions that our Patreons wrote in for this week. Basically, we'll just discuss them. Some have more context than others and I'm going to start us off with one that does not have very much context. Here's the question. "Could you all talk about non-monogamy normalization to yourself a little bit? I feel ashamed exploring this when my partner doesn't want it." I feel like there's a few different levels and pieces inside of this.
Fin: Yes.
Emily: Like internalized normalization and also normalizing it outwardly and then feeling ashamed about wanting to do it when a partner doesn't. There's a lot to unpack there.
Jase: Yes, exactly.
Fin: Yes, for sure. One thing I wanted to say is a quick disclaimer ahead. We say this in the top of our show, we're not doctors or therapists. We have done all of our learning through learning it anecdotally and running the race with everybody, so there's that. We, also, on the normalizing piece. We are not fully out yet ourselves, so if you go to our website, we don't have photos yet.
That's something we're working towards, so we struggle with this shame as well, so I just want to relate to this person in that way that that is a very real thing that we even struggle with under the name that we've created. If I were to give advice, it's find community and surround yourself with the people that don't make you feel ashamed of it and to help you feel it normalized around you. When we get around "our people," a lot of that drops away and you start to see, "Oh, okay. It's not like it is right here in my small town. The world is a little bigger than that," but it is hard, yes.
Dedeker: It is a little bit difficult, because this particular question doesn't have a ton of backstory context attached to it, but when this person talks about feeling ashamed exploring this when their partner doesn't want it, again, there could be a lot of different possibilities going on there. I think this is a situation where our former guest from last year, Martha Kauppi, talked a lot about differentiation and healthy differentiation where I think that means needing to figure out where's the shame that is just, "This is my own shit. This is my own stuff coming up around this.
Is there any shame that's actually directly coming from my partner, any kind of bad, shaming behavior, or is my partner just having some feelings and some struggles and I'm having shame in reaction to that?" I think none of those are necessarily inherently bad things, but it does seem like it's important to really get clear and take an inventory around the shame and the guilt of "What is mine? What actually is coming externally versus internally? What belongs to me and what belongs to my partner?"
Fin: Yes. I just want to own this. This is something I do really, really well, or poorly. I do it a lot. I will take, Emma can make a very nonchalant comment and if it's something that I'm ashamed of, it was clearly her judging, even if she didn't mean to and so I think this is exactly what you're talking about is to pick apart the internal versus the external shame.
It is so hard and especially if maybe it is in that mono-poly dynamic that we were just talking about a minute ago, where the other person could be fully supportive, but even just by them not doing it with you, there might be some feeling of being judged or that "I'm doing this wrong because look at all the other monogamous people doing it like my partner and I'm the 'weirdo.' I'm the one going against the grain," so, yes.
Emma: The thing is, if you look more and more, too, it is becoming more and more and more popular. I don't know if that's the right descriptor word, popular.
Fin: You're trying to avoid saying normalized.
Emma: I am trying to avoid saying normalized.
Emma: There is more mainstream. There's more movies, there's more articles out there. It's getting more and more normalized out there. I'll use the word, but it's just slow. It's really slow.
Fin: I have a lot of empathy for them.
Emma: Yes, I do, too.
Emily: We had a recent guest who talked about how sometimes you win the postcode lottery and that actually is going to go into our next question in a second here, but sometimes it's harder for people who don't live in a huge city, I mean
Jase, Dedeker, and I both, well, all three of us live in Los Angeles or Seattle. It's just going to be probably a little bit easier to find like-minded people in that way.
I agree with you completely that online communities are great if you can find, or maybe even create a local meetup group, look out for stuff like that. I know that Jason, Dedeker, you've talked about going to different cities when you travel and finding meetup groups there. I think that's a really awesome way of doing something, and finding community wherever it is that you are. I understand that sometimes that can be easier said than done.
Jase: I just wanted to add one thing here besides what Dedeker mentioned about that differentiation. Fin talked about that of feeling shame come up. If there's already a seed of shame or guilt about something, this is something I'm currently working on with my therapist. It's like, I felt shame a few weeks ago where I suggested we go hike up this certain hill and Dedeker seemed lukewarm on wanting to do that. I felt like shame come up about suggesting that we hike this hill. It's like it--
Emily: Was Arthur's seat?
Jase: Yes, it was.
Dedeker: I think it was.
Jase: There's some stuff that comes up, and I'm working on that with my therapist, but to come back to what this person is talking about here too, in terms of Normalizing Non-monogamy to yourself, that's one of those things that, I think that community like Fin mentioned is really good, but also just understanding that it's going to take some time of doing it, that you're eventually going to get to this point when you've done it long enough and you've had different relationships too.
You, and hopefully, your partner, also have had various other relationships where the non-monogamy part stops being the defining trait of each relationship, and that the issues and the guilt or whatever is less tied into that just because you have more experience with it. Unfortunately, being raised in a very default monogamy culture, we just don't get that. There is just something to be said for, be patient with yourself, and understand it might take some time.
Emma: I just wanted to echo off that because such a good point. As you're talking, I was thinking that's something that has definitely been true for me and it's taken 15 years, and a lot of experiences and putting myself for many, many years I was very ashamed of it and kept it very private. At the same time, I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong. It took a lot of effort and a lot of internal work and a lot of just conversations with people in my life to get there. Just be patient, it takes a long time. It can take a long time.
Jase: Now, before we go on to a few more questions, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that the listeners at home can support this show as well as some ways to join our Patreon Community if you want to ask your questions to be answered on a future, one of these Q&A episodes.
Dedeker: We are back, we're jumping into our next question from one of our Patreons. We touched on this already a little bit, but we're going to dive into it a little bit deeper. They ask, "Would you be able to discuss how to overcome the fear associated with living in a conservative rural area and the desire to have open relationships/ be polyamorous?" Now, Fin, would you describe the area that you're living in currently as either conservative or rural?
Fin: Well, we have a sign when you turn onto our road that says Joe and the hoe got to go. Every sign down the street is a Trump 2024 sign. We're going to say at least fairly conservative. We, at one point we're living in my dad's house right now. He had the only Biden sign on the street. It is very conservative here and I don't know how to answer this because I have the fear myself.
Maybe, it's not so much a fear, but it is like, I'm not going to feel as comfortable. You've talked, Emily about the postcode lottery. I'm not going to feel comfortable going in just hypothetically walking around, holding two different partners' hands at the same time. Not that I've ever done that, but I would probably struggle to do that here much more than I would in San Francisco. It's such a hard question because I understand the fear so much. Let me think on that for a second.
Emma: I do too, but I think an element to me is your own personal risk tolerance. If you're in a position where you have a secure job, you're not worried about that, your family is like, "If you feel in a very secure place in your life, then maybe it's an opportunity to be more out there, to help all of us normalize it, to help spread the word."
Now, if you're not and you can't do those things and that's, there's no shame in that, you have to protect yourself. Unfortunately, that's just the way it is right now. You may not be able to be out and open as much as you want, but if you're able to, yes, please do to help those more conservative areas, for sure.
Jase: Right. I was just going to jump in, and you touched on it a little bit, but I think part of this with fear is that fear isn't necessarily a bad thing. That fear might be protecting you and keeping you safe. It might actually be a really necessary thing for your health and wellbeing. Then again, fear can get out of hand and we can be afraid of all sorts of hypotheticals that aren't really going to happen.
I would just want to at least make a mention of that, that part of it is evaluating which parts of this fear are irrational or which parts am I maybe exaggerating too much and which parts are valid and worth keeping around to keep me safe and keep my partners safe because there's also that too. It's not just yourself even.
Emma: Right, and your family as well.
Jase: Right, yes.
Fin: I think, I just wanted to maybe clarify when I said I have that fear, and maybe I missed the meat of this is that they're literally afraid of maybe physical retaliation or losing their job or something like that. I think for me it was like, I'm going to be more uncomfortable. I'm going to feel more of that shame here. I know exactly what everyone's saying about if you have the secure job.
I think my piece to add to that would be, if you do maybe have a city that is a little more liberal or a little more little less conservative, let's say that to, if you can commute there, even if it's a half hour, an hour, and I know that may not be financially possible for everyone, but we do have a lot of people that we talk to that say like, "I can't do it here." If we're going to go on a date, we go an hour away, and they do that. Maybe they do it less, but they go to where they feel safer. Again, I know that's not a solution for everybody or possible for everybody.
Emma: Some people just tell us, they only go out on vacation when they're in places that they feel comfortable doing to--
Fin: You mean they go on vacation to two places where they--
Emma: Yes. They go on vacation to places where they would feel safe and comfortable doing that.
Jase: I mean, that reminds me of something that we talked about, way back, years ago, Dedeker and I went to a polyamory retreat type thing, and what really struck us was, it was a first time maybe ever that we'd experienced that being around people, talking about our relationships, also just talking about whatever without having to have that kind of filter on all the time of who knows what-- How honest am I being with each different person?
There's just this extra mental effort that you do. While I think we need to do that, and it's important to do, even if it's not fear of physical violence, but just fear of, I don't want to deal with trying to explain it to this person, even that. That's still a pain, but I do think that point of find something, even if it is a couple of hour drive, it's worth it to at least sometimes get that break of like, "Okay, I don't have to put the filter on all the time. I can just be honest about what I'm doing." It is really therapeutic and helps a lot.
Fin: On that filter note, and this is a slight tangent. It's maybe tied back to the shame piece of like when let's say you're struggling in a relationship and it's like, I'm having this problem with my partner and my other partner aren't getting along and it's like, "Well, that's your problem. You have a girlfriend and a wife. That's why you're struggling today. Clearly, that's your problem."
If you can get into those spaces where you don't have to filter and you don't have to be afraid that when you share what's really going on for you, that somebody can hear that and talk to you about your problem, not the thing that they think is societally wrong with you.
Jase: It's a great point.
Emily: Our next question is how to pull away without pulling away. To give a little bit of context here, this person is saying that they've been doing most, if not all of the emotional labor in the relationship, but they're getting fatigued. Essentially they want to take a break from trying so hard. I think they mean emotionally, but I'm concerned that my sudden slack in relationship
effort to speak, will set up alarm bells that might cause anxiety or a panicky or a desire, or something essentially along those lines, but they just want to take the load a bit off.
I think the mental and emotional load was taken off a little bit. How does one do that in a constructive way that's not going to potentially induce a lot of anxiety in the other person?
Dedeker: I can't see on our document who submitted this question. I'm a little worried it's myself from a year ago who sent in this question.
Fin: You time traveled into the future and submitted this.
Dedeker: That I time traveled or somehow was able to-- I'm really trying to reach out from the past for answers which it does track because I feel like this was very much the position I was in, in my last relationship. If there's anything that I've learned after talking to my therapist about it for many hours it's that-- I'm really interested in this person saying that they want to take some step to take care of themselves.
They want to take maybe a step back or just dial down the emotional labor for their own well-being but they're worried that if I do that, either my partner's going to freak out, become anxious, become panicky, and it's going to feel one sided and not collaborative. I think that I was very much in the same boat, was very much afraid of speaking up for what I needed because I was afraid that it would come across as criticism or come as scary to my partner or as a threat or something like that.
What would happen in my situation was that I would default to really trying to express these things in a very gentle way that really didn't convey my level of frustration and exhaustion, I think, and like how serious this was for me that it was reaching the point of seriousness where I was like, I don't know if I can keep doing this and also I'm questioning the relationship.
My therapist helped me realize that it is possible for us to stand up for ourselves in a way that is both clear and compassionate at the same time. I guess what I mean by that is the sense that I think it is okay to have a frank conversation with your partner about what it is that you're noticing and that this is frustrating or that it is exhausting or that this is serious for you.
You can talk about it in such a way where it doesn't have to be about criticizing your partner. It doesn't have to be about attacking your partner, it doesn't have to be an ultimatum of you need to change this, or I'm going to leave. I think you can be firm and be honest about what's going on for you in a way that's compassionate. Is it easy to do that? Certainly not.
I would definitely recommend whatever it is that you can do to get yourself psychologically, physiologically calm, and feel like you have resources so that you can convey this. I guess just the thing is that I think trying to guess or trying to really passively communicate or just trying to be like, "Okay, I'm just going to try to pull away but not talk to my partner about it," that feels like it may add different stress in anxiety and exhaustion on the other side of it. That's my take on it.
Fin: Yes. Thank you for that. This is a really hard one and one that is very present. I don't have a ton to add, but it was a thought that came through in-- Again, it's not necessarily knowing how well this person knows their partner or maybe what's going on, but just thinking about approaching it from a place of empathy, especially if you are trying to express what's going on for you.
Being able to say like, "Hey, over the last few months I've been feeling like this and I've maybe noticed this change and that doesn't seem like you. That wasn't us a year ago, I want to check in with you, what's going on for you here?" It's not necessarily giving them the benefit of the doubt, but like, "Hey, this doesn't seem like you, is there something going on?"
Maybe there's not, but maybe that's enough to bring their attention to like, "I didn't even realize I hadn't been showing up or I know I haven't been showing up, here's what's really going on," and just a different maybe a way to approach that with empathy and being gentle, but not passive in trying to downplay everything is my only addition and thought on that.
Emily: To add to both, we talk on the show a lot about emotional burnout and fatigue and that that is a real thing. I think especially right now, it's a tumultuous time in our world and it has been quite frankly for a while. I think also with that coupled with potentially anything that might be going on, that's intense in one's life for a period of time, it maybe just you aren't, or they aren't, your partner isn't able to show up in the way that they would be at other points. I think that that's something for both people to be aware of.
If you're in a loving egalitarian relationship, you should be able to come to one another and say, "Hey, I am having this emotional fatigue right now and it's not necessarily anything that you are doing," and maybe it is, this sounds like this person's dropping the ball potentially here a bit, but to be able to say the question or to say to your partner, "I am simply at this point unable to continue in the fashion that I'm doing just because I'm feeling this intense fatigue." I think that is totally fine and is a way in which you can take care of yourself and that's really necessary especially right now.
Jase: I think one other piece to add to this, just looking at the context a little bit more, this person's talking about how their partner tends to be closed off when it comes to emotional stuff. Part of the emotional labor they're talking about is trying to get their partner to open up when their default reaction is to just bottle it all up, keep it inside, and all that. That's part of this burnout and frustration. Just something that I feel needs to be said here too, is that that may have your job.
Emily: They might have a new job.
Jase: As much as we might want to, you can't do someone else's emotional work for them. There's something that Dedeker has told me before that within therapy, there's this concept of don't work harder than your clients are working or basically, if they're not showing up and doing the emotional work, you could try really hard and you'll just burn yourself out, trying to do it for them and nothing's going to change.
They're not going to get any better and you've just made yourself suffer for no reason. I do think that's worth considering here both in two ways. One is like, maybe they really do need to do this work, but you can't do it for them. If they're not willing to step up and do it like this work you're doing, even though it comes from a place of love and wanting to better your relationship just might not be your work to do like Emily said.
Two, it's also possible that it might feel like to you based on your experience that approaching emotions a different way is a better way and that they would feel better if they did it but you don't necessarily know that either, that that might not work for them. They might just have a different relationship to their emotions than you and I'm terrible about this.
I want to do everyone else's emotional work for them, who I care about, which is why I really just want to echo that. It's something I've had to learn a lot, and it's something we're thinking about here too, is that maybe you're trying to do some work that isn't yours to do and that no one even wants you to do.
Fin: Yes. I've never done that myself, but I can imagine what that's like. My only very quick add would be, if you do get to a point where you want to pull back or change and you need to do that for yourself to communicate that clearly and communicate it maybe with a timeline. I need two weeks to calm myself and reset. We're going to circle back on this date. Your partner doesn't just hear like, "Yes, I need some time to calm down, I'll get back to you."
Emily: 100%.
Fin: They're just hanging out. They're like, okay, well, I guess I'll see you when I see you and so I think that just that end that timeline, and we're going to reevaluate at this point, or we're going to check back at this point, and then sticking to that then they can count on that is important I believe.
Jase: Love that. All right. Our next question here is, how do you? They say the Royal you, and I think they mean the Royal y'all. How do all of y'all measure or give credit for, or confirm your own growth? A lot of non-monogamy is self-growth or self-awareness. Hopefully, that includes some intentional internal work, but they're saying it's hard to feel like you've made progress when you still have the same feelings coming up again. If there's anything to look to actually feel like you're making some progress, is it journaling or getting feedback from partners, or anything measurable that you could focus on?
Fin: I would say Emma shouldn't get feedback from her partner, he tends to be a bit pessimistic.
Dedeker: Oh, no.
Fin: This partner. I'm not speaking for any other partner. This one here.
Emily: Throwing a different partner under the bus now.
Emma: That's such a good question
because it is something that, if anyone's on-- a lot of people out there on this personal growth journey, especially if you're considering non-monogamy or non-monogamous, and it's hard to quantify and recognize. For me, I just wanted to give a quick example, one, I've struggled with jealousy and insecurities a lot more than Fin has. For me, it's been a struggle for many years.
I see myself, I've measured growth as we've developed and changed our relationship, and I've seen growth in the conversations we're able to have and my comfortability with different things and recognizing that I can handle the emotions better. It's not that the emotions don't come up. Jealousy can still come up or whatever emotion, but I'm learning how to navigate that smoother for myself.
I can tell that because it's getting not always easy and definitely not perfect at it, it has gotten easier. Also, journaling helps go back and read journals from the past and look at where you were and think about where you're at now. There's still things that-- we're humans, we're always going to be working on things. Those are just some examples from my life.
Fin: I was just going to jump back in and say like, I'm not eternally beating Emma down. This is the thing I've learned about myself, and that has become very vivid to me in the last nine months, is my propensity to tell myself that I'm doing something wrong and that everything is wrong. I have to work extremely hard to not project that.
If there is a misstep, it's really easy for me to say, "Throw it all out with the bathwater, the baby out with the bathwater." That's the thing I'm working really hard on. Emma actually has gotten a lot better at pushing back on me and saying like, "I don't agree with you. I think this is getting better." Then it checks me, and I go, "Okay you're right. I was catastrophizing." That was where that comment was coming.
Emma: That's a good point, get feedback from other people in your life because they'll notice changes.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. I think I can second the whole journaling thing. It took me forever to actually get into a journaling practice until I made it super simple for myself. I took off all the pressure to make something that sounded really brilliant or even write more than a few sentences at a time. I will say that I love looking back through my journals for this very reason. On the one hand, it can be really nice to look back and realize, "Oh, my goodness, things are so different now. This doesn't feel like an issue anymore." Or "I feel like I've improved so much here."
Also, on the flip side, it's not always positive necessarily. Looking back through a journal means you can also see the things that are repeating patterns. For me. When I've looked at that, if I'm in a place again where I'm feeling relatively calm and relatively collected and can look back on that. For me it feels less upsetting and it feels more almost like it's clarifying.
Like, "Oh this is so interesting. I'm able to hone in more on this pattern. I'm able to hone in more on this specific element in common that tends to trigger my jealousy or my insecurities really badly and that can be uncomfortable." I can totally relate to the sense of frustration of, "Oh my God, I'm not making progress. I'm not improving."
Just the process of I think essentially just like getting more information and more data helps move you in the direction of knowing what to even look at or what to even get curious about further. I think that looking back through a journal, even when you're seeing, "Oh, gosh, I was jealous about this thing a year ago and I'm still jealous about it today." That's giving you extra data points. I know we keep talking about data points and it doesn't sound very sexy, but I promise it can be sexy.
Emily: I feel like having a tool like Radar which we talk about a lot on this show, a monthly relationship check-in is really important because if you take notes doing it or take notes throughout the time that you have in between your radars, or just at the actual radar. It's really interesting to go back and look at like, "What were my action points for the specific rate or before what were they a year ago or a year before that?"
I have a humongous Google Doc with my partner that charts where we're at, and I see the times where relationship is super tumultuous and where we were going through a lot and how different it is now that we're in a super solid, secure place. That's something to really celebrate. I do think that if there are ways in which you can track over time that is giving yourself a gift, in essence, because you're able to see like, "Hey, yes, I have made changes, or I have moved beyond perhaps where my emotional state was for a long period of time, or if I have broken any patterns that weren't serving me."
Dedeker: We're going to move on to our next question. Do you all struggle with practicing what you preach? Do you have any guilt around discomfort you feel due to polyamory or your partner seeing other people? No. Let's move on to the next question.
Emily: Never.
Dedeker: Yes. My God, all the time. I will say that I feel-- it is a weird thing having a podcast and talking about this stuff all the time. I at least appreciate that it does mean that in the moments that I'm triggered or the moments that I am crabbing at my partner or when I'm in the middle of the fight, at least there's something in my brain that knows I should be better or should be doing something different. Don't always do that, but I'm like, "At least I can hear that voice." Sometimes that voice breaks through, and it's actually quite effective, and other times it doesn't. Sometimes I do struggle with practicing what I preach.
Fin: Very well said. Thank you for saying it for me as well Dedeker.
Emily: I think it's been a theme throughout this whole episode that all of us have some guilt and shame around that.
Dedeker: I feel like if anything on the show, when we talk about our fuck ups, people relate to that much more. I know when we've brought on guests on our show who talk about their fuck ups, I love it. It feels so humanizing and ironically can help reduce some of the shame around those things. That's not to say that you can just fuck up, and as long as you talk about it on a podcast, that it's okay. I will say that not a lot of us are served by, I think, any portrayals of relationship communication or relationship practice that involves perfection.
Fin: Yes, I was just going to jump in and build on it a little bit. I know I was joking earlier, but it is super hard. For me even to build on that frustration is like, you can sit down and talk through to yourself, "Here's what I'm going to do, here's how I'm going to do it." You walk into the ring and what is it, Mike Tyson, you get punch-- Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face, and it goes out the window.
Then you walk away and you're like, "What happened? What happened there? I knew what I was going to do. I had it all figured out, and the whole thing burned to the ground." You're like, "I don't know. I don't know what happened." Like you said, there is that voice, you couldn't be doing better, you know you can. I think we probably do better in those moments. We get a little more introspective, but I think it's still just a really hard thing.
Emma: I think in general, relationships are hard. Relationships are hard. We can talk about this all day and talk to a bunch of different people and learn a lot. When it goes to actually implement things, it takes practice and time and patience, and energy to keep going. There's just a lot there for me of just remembering that this is hard. Non-monogamy is hard, but relationship in general is hard, can be hard, monogamy even can be hard. All of it can be hard. Having grace and-- it helps me to have grace and patience with myself when I remember those things.
Jase: The grace and patience note I think is really important too. Because something I've found for myself was just realizing that it's okay that I don't have to be super jazzed about every date or new great sex that a partner has. I'm not. To be honest, I've never been super stoked about that. I have friends who are. It's like, "Oh, my partner just hooked up with someone. I heard all about it. I love it, so hot."
I'm not that person. I'm like, "Okay, all right." Letting myself off the hook with that and just being like, "That's okay." I don't have to be enthusiastic about that and be like, "Oh my gosh, that's so hot. That's awesome." I also don't have to sit there and dwell on it and suffer over it and be like, "Oh gosh, is it because I'm not good enough?" All that kind of stuff. It's like learning to let go of some of that, but then also not feel like I'm failing somehow if I'm not feeling the same
enthusiasm that someone else does when their partner goes on a date, or that I'm not feeling the enthusiasm that I think I'm supposed to be feeling, or something like that, to just say, "You know what, it's okay. It's all right. I don't have to be super jazzed about that all the time."
Emma: Yes. We had a guest--
Jase: Like neutral. Neutralness.
Emma: Exactly. That's what I was going to jump in and say is that we had a guest just recently say like, "If I feel neutral about it, that's positive. That's a good thing. That's success."
Fin: Yes, totally.
Emily: Well, this was really fun to have Emma and Fin from Normalizing Non-monogamy on the show to help us answer questions. Can you let us know and all of our listeners where they can find more of your work and what you're doing right now, you're about to move to San Francisco. That's really exciting.
Emma: First of all, you can find us on our website, normalizingnonmonogamy.com, or on Instagram. You can also find us at any podcast player out there, just search for non-monogamy and we should come up. Thank you again for having us. Yes. We are excited to be moving to San Francisco in about a month at the end of August. It's a whole new chapter for us. We're looking forward, I'm going back to grad school, which is why we're moving to San Francisco and it's a lot of changes, but we're super excited and we're really grateful to chat with all of you today and excited for the collaboration.
Fin: I would just echo Emma's gratitude. Thank you all for the work you do. I mean, I was going to jump in and say this when you were talking about the radar. In our community, our Patreon community, we do monthly Q&As. I can't tell you the number of times that people, like we already do the radar. We are. Here's how we do the radar. Can you send me the link for the radar?
Emma: Think it's referenced all the time.
Fin: It's almost every episode.
Emily: Oh wow. Oh, my gosh. Yay.
Fin: That's multiamory.com/radar. I know where the website is, I bookmarked it. Thank you for the three of you for doing all that work. We're excited to move to San Francisco. I'm thinking about becoming a sugar baby because there you go. I can't think of a better way to make the money. If there's any sugar parents out there that are looking let me know
Dedeker: In the Bay area, especially.
Emily: Probably a lot.
Fin: Yes. Thank you all. Appreciate
Emily: Awesome. Thank you so much. Our question that's going to be on Instagram this week is, does where you live personally affect how out you are? I think probably the answer is yes. I'm also interested to hear where some of all y'all live out there. We have a diverse wide audience who might live in some rural areas and some more liberal areas, things like that.
Fin: And if you're on our street, let us know, put, put, put something out to let us know that that you're on our street.