389 - Struggling with Honesty & NRE (Patreon Q&A with Libby Sinback)
Q&A with Libby Sinback
This week, we’re having another Q&A style episode to answer some questions from our Patreon group. Libby Sinback, who is a queer, polyamorous mom, the host of the podcast Making Polyamory Work and a coach for people who want extraordinary relationships while choosing to live and love outside the status quo. She is certified in Relational Life Therapy, and has coached hundreds of people in breaking their unhelpful relationship patterns so that they can have happier, more nourishing love in their life. Libby believes love is why we're here, and how we heal.
We’re covering a variety of topics today, including:
Honesty in relationships.
Making decisions while under the influence of NRE.
Polyamory new experiences.
Sharing information about a partner with a metamour.
Libby’s ethical de-escalation guide.
Stay tuned for our next Q&A episode!
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're back for another Q&A episode answering questions from our Patreon supporters. We're covering a ton of different topics today. Things like how to deal with a partner who struggles with honesty. Whether it's ever okay to make life-changing decisions under the influence of NRE. How much information is it okay to share with one partner about another partner? A lot of really nuanced questions.
This time we are joined by Libby Sinback, host of the podcast Making Polyamory Work. Libby is a queer polyamorous mom and a coach for people who want extraordinary relationships while choosing to live and love outside the status quo. She is certified in relational life therapy and has coached hundreds of people in breaking their unhelpful relationship patterns so that they can have happier, more nourishing love in their life. Libby believes love is why we're here and how we heal. Welcome to the show, Libby. Thank you for joining us.
Libby: Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Dedeker: Yes, well, I want to dive in with that little gem that you just tossed in at the end of your bio. Tell us a bit more about that, about this belief that love is why we're here and how we heal.
Libby: Oh, wow. Nobody's actually asked me that question. I love that you're asking me that question. How long do we have? No, I'm just kidding. I'll try to keep it short. I'll start with the lover is why we're here, because they go together but they're also separate ideas. I just believe that connection to other people is our birthright. I do believe it's what our brains are structured to do biologically and I also think it's a big way in which we find meaning in our lives is through connection with other people, even people we don't like sometimes. I think sometimes finding the ability to love through difficulty is in and of itself a big and meaningful experience.
I'll say I really adopt the Fred Rogers approach to the defining of love. He said, "Love is a verb like struggle." It's something that you do. It's not just something that you feel, and I really believe that's true. I think that's what we're made for. I hate that what we all exist in, many of us at least, is in a very anti-relational culture that makes it very hard to live into what we're made to do.
That goes to the healing part, which is, when we're thrust into this very anti-relational culture, it damages us. I think we have this idea that when we find ourselves in a dysfunctional relationship, or we notice we have dysfunctional patterns, or we're struggling with our mental health, or whatever we might be having a hard time with, that what we need to do is take ourselves out of our relational landscape, and go fix ourselves and then come back all healed, and that's when we are worthy of connection with other people. I just think that's completely wrong. I think we heal through connection not we get connection once we're healed. I think that's what I mean when I say love is how we heal.
One of the most healing experiences I think that a human being can have is to be in a relationship with someone and really fuck it up and fall down on their face and still be able to experience the worthiness of their humanness and the opportunity to repair and make it better and move through that to a better place.
Dedeker: Yes, but it really turns on its head that wisdom that we receive. There's all those aphorisms about you can't love somebody until you love yourself or in between relationships you need to take that time away to work on yourself or to find yourself. It's the polar opposite of that.
Libby: Well, how do you even know who you are, except in relationship to other people?
Dedeker: It's true.
Emily: That's really lovely. I also know you're a parent. You talked about that, or we talked about that in the opening. We ourselves are not parents, but we get a lot of questions about parenting and polyamory. I was interested if there's maybe one piece of advice about parenting and being polyamorous. One wisdom thing that you've taken from being a parent while being polyamorous that you could share with us.
Libby: Sure. This doesn't really have to do anything with polyamory, because I don't actually think that parenting while polyamorous is all that different from parenting when not polyamorous. The one place where I guess it does intersect is my advice is, or my wisdom is children are whole people. They are whole people and they are whole people from the time they come into the world. That part, again, our culture doesn't really honor that and make room for that in the way we treat children, culturally, and the stories we tell about them.
Because children are whole, as people, they require all the care, and all the respect, and all of the internal work that you would need to deal to be with an adult with your child, except that they're not doing any of that work because they're just trying to figure out how to be a person. So you have to do double for them. You have to be the person who holds all the boundaries. You have to be the person who gives all the guidance. You have to be the person who is able to move through and teach them how to repair while repairing with them when you've messed up.
That is tremendously resource intensive and tiring and intense. A lot of people talk about how polyamory can really dredge up all your stuff, all of your insecurities, all the fears that you have about yourself, so can having children. You want to talk about contending with all of your childhood wounds? Have a child, if you want to do that.
Emily: I've never heard that said before, but that's a really good point. I feel like being an adult you tend to start understanding how much your parents must have gone through and how they're flawed individuals as well but then having a kid, Oh, my goodness. You probably see yourself in that kid in some ways as well.
Libby: Yes, because of that resource intensiveness I think it's worth you're going to be having to constantly balance your self-actualization and your need to be an effective and caring person for someone that meets them more than 50% of the way. It's a relationship, like any relationship. It's a relationship. The things that make a good relationship with other adults make a good relationship with other kids, but then more.
Dedeker: What an interesting way of putting it also, because I can see the problems that arise both with an adult who expects the child to come 50% of the way and also the adult that expects the child's not capable of coming any percent of the way in that relationship. Excellent. Well, we're super excited to have Libby joining us as we dive into some of these questions that we've gotten from our Patreon supporters. If you're interested in submitting a question for another Q&A episode, we've been trying to do these on a monthly month-and-a-half-ish basis or so. Definitely go to patreon.com/multiamory to get access to that.
We got a ton of questions this time around, enough that I'm actually saving some of these extras for us to come back to later potentially in our next Q&A episode. If we didn't cover your question, we may cover it later or I'm also really sorry we may never cover it because we got a lot of questions this time around.
Be on the lookout for those Q&A posts if you're in our Patreon group. This first question is short and sweet, and I'm really curious to hear everybody's answers. Which poly first/new experience was way easier than you expected it to be?
Emily: The very first time that Jase met a person that I had recently slept with and having the two of them meet, especially when this person. I don't think has ever been polyamorous in any way since, but knew that I was with Jase and we were at our home together, and then happened to meet Jase in person. He was really nervous about it and I was nervous about it as well. Then it just ended up being chill. It was like, whatever. He even said, whoa, that was not really an issue. That was just here's this dude and he's nice and we shook hands and went on our way and that was no problem. Yet another example of so many things in your mind becoming much bigger than they actually are in real life.
Dedeker: Well, I don't like to take it here, but mine is about group sex because I know everyone's thinking we always on the show, we're like polyamory doesn't always mean group sex or orgies, but mine is about orgies because that was one for me. That was a situation where I was so anxious that I'm just going to hate this the entire time. It was the specific piece of watching a partner have sex with someone else. I was just that's going to be horrible. I'm doing all this work leading up to it, and breathing techniques to find ways to how am I going to white knuckle my way through it? Then it was just super hot and amazing and super exciting so way easier than I thought that it was going to be.
Libby: It was never that hard until it was actually, I think all of it felt really easy to me actually. Maybe the easy thing that maybe I thought would be a little bit hard was to find someone who was willing to do that with me because for a lot of my adult dating life and in my 20s, I was dating people who were very clearly monogamous and I knew that I was polyamorous, but I was like, but nobody's going to want to do that with me. Then I met someone and we'd been together for a little less than a year and I said I think maybe we should date other people. He was like, okay.
Dedeker: Oh, wow.
Libby: Just tell me about it and we can talk about it. Here we are 13 years later so--
Jase: Wow. I think mine actually was coming out to my mom, but I was worried that that was going to be a tense conversation or awkward or something. She really surprised me by being, "Oh, huh, I don't know. Gosh, I wish I could do that." That was not the answer that I expected. She has talked about it since then. It's not something she's seriously interested in, but she could get it and was able to go there and be like, "I can see the appeal of that." I think that was one that was a lot easier than I expected it to be.
Dedeker: To be fair though, I also have a hard time envisioning your mom being the person who would just fly off the handle and be so angry and offended, even if that was how she felt in her heart.
Jase: I just anticipated awkwardness more and it, and it wasn't.
Dedeker: I can see that.
Jase: Let's go on to the next question. This one's a little bit longer here to give it some context. My partner has a lot of past trauma about being completely honest, upfront about what is going on in his dating life. In his past, he's tried being open about it and was met with anger and aggressive questioning. Because of this and maybe some bad habit development, he will lie about things that we have agreed to share, or he will massively downplay something that's actually important until something happens that prevents him from being able to hide or downplay. He calls it a " complicated relationship with the truth." I call it scary. Nevertheless, I want to help him start to heal and to be able to see our relationship as a safe place to tell the whole truth. What are some resources I can use? Thanks in advance.
Dedeker: I'd like to jump in with this one because I see this as there's two sides to this. I see. What are the things that are potentially in your partner's power to do and what are the things that are potentially in your power to do, to affect change here? I'll talk about the partner side of it first. This is hard because I don't like to go to a place of trying to give advice to a partner who's not the one who wrote the question to this podcast. Who knows if this person is even receptive to this or not, but maybe you're someone who can relate to this struggle with honesty. I definitely have had a really complicated relationship with honesty since my childhood.
That's something that I've really had to proactively change and do a lot of work on. I know a lot of people who can relate to this as well. There are some actionable things provided that your partner recognizes, "Ooh, this is an issue that needs to change and we need to find ways to change this," including things like finding areas where it is easier to tell the truth, finding the information that feels a little bit more neutral, finding the information that feels safer to disclose, or really highlighting the moments where you felt a little bit wobbly, but then your partner's response was really good. It felt, okay, so it's finding where things are going right and leaning into that.
Then something that I also recommend people to do is sometimes you need to find the right medium and setting to create honesty. What by that is, if it's easier for you to sit down and in a text message, write out all the things you need to disclose to your partner and that's the way that you disclose. It's asynchronous and maybe you're not even in the same room, but if that's what gets you to be honest, or to have a better relationship with the honesty, do that. If it's about sitting down and writing a letter and then you still talk to your partner face to face, but you read from a letter the stuff that you're afraid to talk about, then do that.
Then the other piece of advice that I could think of is actually, I think Kathy Labriola in one of her books mentioned that she first of all, acknowledges that pretty much everyone who's been in a non-monogamous relationship has had the experience of feeling tempted to lie about something or feeling tempted to downplay something super common experience is not just people who are pathological liars or who have something to hide or who have a complicated relationship to the truth. What she recommends, and I think this takes a lot of skill, is if you can catch yourself at that impulse and just stop on a dime as it were.
Catch yourself when you're feeling that knee-jerk reaction of, "Ooh, this is something that I want to downplay," or sometimes if you even catch yourself right after the fact after you've downplayed something, and this requires. A lot of vulnerability and the ability for the person on the listening end to be able to really catch that from you but it is a really powerful way to start really forcing that relationship to honesty, to change. That's what I see on the partner side. I have some thoughts about the question-asker side, but I wanted to hear from the rest of y'all if you had anything to contribute there first.
Libby: Yes. I actually really love your advice, Dedeker, for the partner. I think I would add one more thing, which is I would encourage that person to do some internal boundary work. By internal boundary work is understanding that when you tell the truth if the response that the other partner has to the truth, whether it be negative or positive, whether it's difficult for them to hear or whether they're so happy you told them, whatever that is has no relationship to whether it was right or wrong to have shared that thing.
One of my mantras, when I think about internal boundaries, my ability to take responsibility for what is mine and what belongs to me, and what is within my psychological realm of responsibility. What is my partner's experience and their right to feel how they feel and experience what they experience? I don't have any right to try to control that or to try to manipulate that or to try to get a good result. My job is to be with the truth with them and allow them to be in their own experience. My mantra is it is loving to make my partner able to have their own experience, to give them the room and the opportunity to have their own experience.
I think if you're able to continually shore yourself up, if I say something that is upsetting to my partner, it doesn't mean I'm bad. It doesn't mean I'm wrong. Even if they flip out even if they do have a big reactive moment or they shut down or whatever their experience is, it doesn't mean that if I was speaking the truth and I was speaking it from my heart and I was trying to be in my right relationship with them that it was wrong for me to do that. I just think that takes that also takes practice and skill to be with yourself and hold yourself in loving and warm regard, and like, I'm allowed to do this, and I'm allowed to maybe say something upsetting. That might be scary.
Because the truth is sometimes not telling the truth is scary, but sometimes when you tell the truth, it's scary. It's not always going to be easy. To tell somebody to try to make it easy, yes, I do want to grease the wheels, for sure, and so I love all the ways that you're talking about how can we grease the wheels and make it easier to tell the truth, but how can we also create safety within ourselves so that our partner can have whatever they feel? That doesn't make us unsafe.
Emiy: Yes, I love that, Libby. I just want to acknowledge the other person's side of potentially feeling unsafe in some way to tell the full truth, and whether or not that comes from feeling those things about this current partner or a past partnership. Something that I know for myself that I felt is, I bring one partner into the next relationship in terms of the feelings and the fears that I had with one, whether it be something from my youth or childhood, I might bring it into a new partnership, and those bad habits, perhaps of not telling a full truth or not really going there in terms of disclosing exactly what happened in every situation.
That's something that I've absolutely done, and it's because I was fearful of the outcome. I love that idea that regardless of that fear, regardless of the fear that you may be hurting your partner, or instilling within them an emotion, not that you make your partner have any emotion. That is for them, but that that possibility is there. I think the courage to allow that to happen is really important, and impressive. I appreciate that you said that. That's cool.
Jase: To take it back to the question-- This is tough, because I feel like we've really focused on the person who's having trouble being honest, and I think there's actually something to that, that is relevant to the question asker as well, which is that ultimately, this does come down to your partner's work that they need to do. That said, I guess, first of all, acknowledge that this is not a problem you can fix for them, but assuming that they are open to doing that work, there are some things I think could help to facilitate that. One, like Dedeker mentioned, maybe trying other mediums for how you would communicate that information.
Another one is, maybe people will take offense to this. I'm just thinking of experience taking care of pets who've had some kind of abuse in the past, where, sometimes just going to pet them, they'll recoil, and they'll react to that. Because for them, that motion or something about your posture or something reminds them of something bad that happened. If you think about that, with us humans, we have those similar kinds of associations, where maybe I've been honest in the past about something that they even told me wouldn't upset them, but then it did.
I was blindsided by this, I was surprised and I was hurt. That was a traumatic experience even if it's a lowercase t trauma, there's still some trauma there. That's upsetting. Over time, I'm going to build that association with, "Well, when I do this without downplaying it, that's what I receive." Then to go back to the dog metaphor, it's that thing of, well, what can you do to make that space feel safer for them and to get more exposure on the other side of this feeling okay, of this being fine?
Some thoughts that come to mind there would even be doing, essentially, practices of have them tell you something, maybe something that you already know now, maybe something that came out before that they couldn't hide anymore, and, again, assuming that they're down to try this, have them tell you that thing again as if it were the first time and for you to then model how you would accept that in a way that's okay. Then through a little bit of practice with that, maybe even try having them do that and you sharing, "Well, this is how I might respond if I wasn't comfortable with it, or if it made me feel some kind of way, but that's not your fault." Just helping to build some new experiences, because just saying, "Stop being afraid of that," that's a lot to do all at once if you have that association.
Libby: I'm glad you said that about let's talk about the person who asked the question their side of it. I think it's so important to-- If the fear is reactivity, if the fear is, "If I tell you this thing, I don't know how you're going to react, and I don't know what the consequences are going to be for me," then the more you can have some mindfulness about your reaction-- Again, not to be dishonest about your reaction. Again, that's a place where this could go. You could feel pressure to be okay with whatever they tell you.
If they tell you something upsetting, you don't want to lie about your feelings or feel like you can't show them, because you just want to make sure you're always rewarding them for telling the truth. That's another form of dishonesty. This goes to what Dedeker said about just slowing down your impulse to whatever your reaction might have been. If you can start with a thank you for telling me before you say anything else. Even just that phrase, "Thank you for telling me,” can actually slow down your reactivity, whatever other thing you might feel.
I think that it can be really useful to get clear on what it is about the reactivity that that person is fearing. The question asker said that this person seems to be fearing something that happened in a past relationship. I'm not totally buying that. I think there's other stuff that they might be fearing in the current relationship or in other past experiences that they've had, and I think it's useful to understand what that might be. Are they fearful that this is going to turn into a three-hour long conversation? Because some people, they don't want to tell the truth, not because they're afraid of their partner's reaction, but just because they just don't want to get into it. They're protective of their energy and their time.
This might not be this particular situation with this to their partnership, but it's worth understanding, "What is it about my reaction that makes you not want to tell me? Is there a way I can shift that while remaining in my integrity of my own experience and my own feelings, that can make that easier for us to deal with that together?" An example would be if it's, "I don't want this turning into a three-hour long conversation," it could be an agreement that you make with each other of, "When I tell you something, I also get to say and I don't want to talk about it more right now. Can we talk about it later? Can we have time to sit with it, and then can we revisit it in a day or two?"
Dedeker: Yes, I love that suggestion. Definitely. Well, I think we covered that one. We covered that one. Oh, we solved the problem. Check the
Let's move on to the next question.
Emily: Perfect. All right, this one says, "You've said in many episodes that I've recently binged, don't make any major life decisions in the first year because of NRE, but what if you're forced to decide between two people after two months with one of them? My wife and I have been together for 17 years. We thought our relationship was doing pretty well when we opened up 8 months ago, but then I made the rookie mistake of dating a friend who wasn't sure she could be polyamorous. Now she's chosen her health over the situation, understandably, but we both still want to be together.
Now that I'm forced to choose between them, it's impossible not to compare, and notice ways in which my more recent partner and I seem more compatible. I feel fulfilled with her in at least three ways that I haven't with my wife. I know it will change after NRE wears off, but I suspect it could still be better for me in the long run. In short, couldn't the rule of not making big life decisions during NRE lead to miss opportunities in cases where you don't have the luxury of staying with the person for a year?" Wow, that's a lot to unpack.
Dedeker: That's a lot. I just want to say this could turn into me giving a two-hour TED talk that's all about my deepest life regrets based on decisions I made in NRE. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take a step back, and I'm going to let someone else jump in and we'll see where we go.
Libby: I can take this one if you want me to take this.
Emily: Please, go ahead. Go for it.
Libby: I have a lot of mantras in my work. In fact, some of my clients say that there are Libbyisms that they really want to put on T-shirts and it's really funny.
Emily: Do I like Libby isms? Yes, that's great.
Libby: One of mine is "urgency is not your friend." The thing is, NRE, yes, of course, it alters reality. You're pumped up on it and all of that. One of the things it does, is it does create this sense of urgency that actually isn't there. I realized maybe it might feel like it's there in this particular situation because this person that this person is interested in is monogamous it sounds like, so there is this possibility that if they don't latch onto this particular partnership, that person might find another partner and then be unavailable.
That's part of where that scarcity mindset of it's now or never feeling can come in and then fueled by well NRE it can feel really urgent. I really in my bones, and I have a lot of life experience, I'm not super old but I've been around Maybe it's a spiritual thing, but I have this belief that if something's meant to happen, it's going to happen and you don't have to set off a bomb in your life in order for it to possibly happen.
You can breathe. You can slow down and take your time. If this person drifts away but they're really this amazing connection for you and you are for them, it's not going to be that easy to forget. You can take time to really consider your priorities, what's important to you and allow those emotions to settle. I don't believe in hard and fast rules around everything. I also believe that if this person really feels it and they really feel unsatisfied in their relationship, and this just feels like the right thing to do, sure, go for it. Who am I to tell you what to do?
Understand the cultural programming that also exists around if you love someone then it must happen and you must go for it and it must be fulfilled. Maybe not, actually. It's actually okay if that opportunity is missed. Maybe it actually wasn't really meant to be for you. Maybe it wasn't really as great as you thought it was. I don't know. I almost feel like that's a hot take, but that's where I land on it. I've never regretted slowing down. I've never regretted that.
Jase: Yes. That goes back to just even taking a step back from all of this and taking out whatever we say about NRE and all of that and just stepping back and looking at it from a decision-making point of view in general, if we're talking about just advice about decision making, if you have a situation where you have two choices and one of those is irreparable, there's no going back from it.
The other one is not necessary once I make this choice I can never go back from it, and you're not sure which one to make or you're in a circumstance where for some reason you can't make that decision, you don't have enough information or in this case, I don't know for sure that I can trust my own mind because I've got all of these chemicals and all this excitement, that in this case, just taking in the full context of it, the choice is staying with the person you've been with for 17 years and not dating this other person right now, but like you said, if that person isn't snatched away and stays monogamous forever with someone else, then, sure, maybe you've missed out on that, but also maybe it wasn't meant to be.
Or you go with this thing that's not really tried and tested. You don't really have a lot of evidence to support, but means getting a divorce or separation or something that's not undoable in the same way. I would say that decision is pretty simple there of which one's I would say the wiser one to make. I don't want to say the right decision or the smarter decision even, but to me, at least that's the wiser decision to make. Another thing to consider here too, just to put a little more context based on the question, they've been married 17 years, opened up eight months ago.
Libby: They're babies.
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: From a polyamory point of view but also just that I just want to point out that you have not experienced NRE in 17 years and so you have no concept of what it feels like. Good point that's the thing I wanted to get to. I know, Em, you had some stuff you wanted to add too.
Emily: I love that but in the first part of your polyamorous journey, it's tough. For a lot of people, it's extremely tough and sometimes that means you realize you're not right for each other, that the relationship isn't right for each other maybe in that form or something, but there's also the potential that if you do stick with it, you'll find this way of being in relationship is actually really great for you and actually works. It sounds like if this person decides to be with the newer human, that is the newer relationship, then that will totally explode this other relationship that's been existing for 17 years.
Jase: Heading back to monogamy, which it seems like you chose not to do just 8 months ago.
Emily: Yes, exactly. That too. From experience, I've had multiple times where in the midst of the NRE I've wanted to move in very quickly with someone and they both times were like, no, let's wait. I'm so glad that they pumped the brakes and that I was okay with it, ultimately, because of both of those times I got to live by myself. I got to really do some of my own self-work and it was excellent. Just don't sign anything in the first year. Don't blow up your life in the first year, really, truly. Maybe a year and a half, two years. I don't know. I know people get married after three months and stuff like that and sometimes it works, but my goodness, I couldn't do it. No way.
Libby: I guess I would just wrap that up by saying at the same time one of the things that the question asker said was there are all these vectors of compatibility that they've just discovered in this new relationship. I guess I want to honor what that can feel like, especially if you have been without that vector of compatibility for 17 years. It can feel like water when you've been thirsty for a really, really long time and it can feel so nourishing.
Again, if you're coming from this background of the scarcity mindset of relationships and that this might be the only person who ever feels this way about me, who I feel this way about who has this vector of compatibility with me, I've got to get it now. I can understand that feeling especially if that's a part of you that has been undernourished. What an opportunity to be really awake to that and hold it without making a decision around it is what I would say.
Jase: That's great.
Libby: I love that.
Jase: Enjoy it and realize now I see these things that maybe I'll be looking for in other relationships as well if I'm continuing to be non-monogamous.
Dedeker: Well, thank you, all, for answering that so beautifully so that I don't have to spend two hours taking a full inventory of every single NRE regret that I had in my life because there's a lot. What we are going to do is we're going to take a quick break before moving on to our next questions. If you appreciate the show, it really does help us if you just take a minute to listen to our sponsors. It keeps this show going. It helps keep this show free instead of being behind a paywall so go ahead, take a listen to our sponsors.
If there's something that you're interested in, go and check them out. We are back. We are rolling along with another Patreon supporter question. This next one. How much is okay to share with one partner about another one? As in how much or little is it okay to process feelings or discuss one of your partner's struggles with another partner? I'm currently struggling with feeling weird about my partner sharing a lot of personal information about what I'm currently going through with my metamours, even though my personal stuff is impacting my partner and our relationship. I personally feel uncomfortable with my partner sharing a lot about my personal stuff with my metamours, but I know that my partner getting outside support about our issues is helpful for them and ultimately us.
Emily: This is such an easy trap in my opinion to fall into. I love the goss. I love to talk through things with people and especially about people that I'm with and all of those things. I know that I myself have fallen into a trap of whenever I speak to another partner or my best friend or my mom about someone that I'm dating, it becomes that cycle of I'm only speaking about things that are upsetting or it leaves this bad taste in their mouth and it makes it seem like the relationship overall is in a worse place than it actually is.
I think if you can also be super clear about what it is that you are okay disclosing and not, and really try to abide and live by that. If you are going to be speaking to someone else about something that is happening in your relationship, make that be a trusted friend, not a metamour, or a therapist or a licensed professional. I'm so glad I have a therapist and this was something that I didn't have for so long. It's great because I can talk to that person about these things. They're an objective third party and not someone who's like, "Oh my God, so and so is terrible," It's continuing to place that idea in your other loved one's mind.
Libby: That's so interesting that's where you stand because actually, I'm not like that at all. It's not that like it's free reign, the people in my relational ecosystem, I'll talk about each other to each other. We're very discreet. We actually had a conversation-- one of my partners and I had a conversation about is it okay to talk about each other to each other, and how do we feel about that?
I think my partners are some of the wisest people that I know, and I actually trust them more than I would trust most professionals, honestly, to tell me the truth about myself, to tell me the truth about my relationships. I also trust them, like I said, to be really discreet and to not stir up drama. It does come down to the relationship and the person and how they operate for sure.
I guess the way that I advise people to operate is to have these conversations about information sharing and understand that, as much as it is your story and your personal information, the person that's in relationship with you also has a story in there that they might want to be able to share with their partner, be able to receive-- not necessarily advice or them getting involved.
That's, again, a boundary you might need to make with your other partners. Like, "Hey, I'm going to share this thing with you. I want support, please don't involve yourself. Please don't try to tell me what to do. Please don't try to triangulate in any kind of way. This is just me wanting you to hold space for me in this moment." The Triforce. You could use--
Emily: Yes, 100%.
Libby: Use your Triforce skills, but then the other thing would be ask your partner. If there is something that's heavy, that's weighing on you, that you want to be able to talk to your other partners about, instead of just not knowing whether that's going to happen or not or when, I always ask for consent. Like, "Hey, can I talk to my other partners about this thing that we are going through, or that you are going through, that I'm holding with you so that I can seek some outside support?" Then they get to say yes or no.
I think that gives them a greater sense of control and ownership over their story, instead of just feeling like you're blind to whoever in whatever way and you have no idea. I think that's probably where a lot of the discomfort is around just like, I don't feel like I have any control and I don't know what's happening. I think that having a consent-based way of operating really helps and that's how I do it.
Emily: Yes. I super agree that you should have consent to be a part of that and just communicate about if there is something that is being spoken about confidentially. It's like, "Hey, this is a thing that I want to be kept between us," make that known, I guess. I know that I myself have gotten in the past in bad habits of just blowing all over the place to a bunch of people and not being really direct.
When my partner comes to me about something, "Hey, is this a thing that you'd rather me not speak about, or is this okay to talk about to another person?" I guess, yes, that's the thing. I really do like that objectivity, but I appreciate that you also want to hear what your partners have to say. That's a difference and that's okay.
Jase: One thing that I think is worth acknowledging with this a question too, is that I find with a lot of different topics, like, boundaries or rules or this one about what can you share, then I feel like a lot of times people are looking for an answer. Like I want a clear answer of this is the rule, I'm good, if I do this, I'm bad if I don't or my partners good if they do this and they're doing something wrong if they don't. I always try to look at other situations that are analogous to this and see how we don't have clear rules.
That doesn't mean no one ever gets hurt, but that understanding that there is some ebb and flow and some fluctuations there, and that it is kind of an ongoing negotiation and there is no right answer that's going to solve this. The idea of-- I would just always ask for consent, it's that thing of is that, one is that reasonable in all situations where it's like, well, what's the line where what's the thing I do need to clear beforehand and what's not? Sometimes that might feel obvious, sometimes it might not, so there's a little bit of gray area in there.
Then there's also that thing of, maybe I'm really needing support for this. If my partner's just like, "No, you can't talk to anyone else about this thing that's going on," that's almost like an isolating behavior that can be an abusive behavior, even if they don't mean it to be that. There's a lot of moving pieces to this. To go to the idea of looking at analogous situations, think about your friends or your family members.
It's that say, my friend is going through something and they're being a jerk lately, or maybe they're just going through something hard in general and I'm trying to be there to support them. Hanging out with another friend, I might share that story with them maybe because I'm looking for some empathy. Maybe I just want to share, maybe I just want to be able to talk to someone or maybe it's, "Oh, you're going through this thing. You know I have another friend who's going through that too and he's been having a hard time with it, so I get it. I've seen this and you're not alone."
Emily: Keep it vague though.
Jase: Well, I'm saying it depends. Maybe they know who that other friend is, maybe they don't. Maybe you give a lot of details, maybe you don't, but we all negotiate these sort of things constantly. We tell things to our spouse or partner about other people in our lives and no one really questions that, but then if it's the other way around, suddenly it's this question. I guess I just want to point that out of there's a push and pull. Like what Emily saying that she used to just blah all over everyone to tell them anything she knew.
That's something that as someone who was close with Emily, you would just learn. Anything I tell Emily, she might, and not to be malicious or anything, but she's just like an open book herself and so she's going to want to share stuff. If I don't want that shared with her, I might want to clarify, "Hey actually though, but don't talk about this thing, or if you do keep it vague," or something. I just want to get clear that this isn't-- there's a right way to do it. That this is always going to be a little bit of a push and pull and a little bit of trying to feel out each situation.
Libby: Well, and then negotiation.
Jase: Yes, totally.
Dedeker: You took the words right out of my mouth that it's likely that this's going to be we need to work together to find the middle path here. We need to negotiate this. Right. Ideally, this is a collaboration, because this question asker is honest about feeling uncomfortable and also can acknowledge it's good for my partner and for our relationship to get outside support. So how do we together find some kind of compromise or something we could experiment with that helps to meet both of those needs?
For myself, this is just my own personal rubric. Maybe, Libby, you would call this an internal boundary. I'm not sure, but I know my rubric because sometimes you forget to ask someone, "Oh, is it okay for me to talk about the fact that you have this health issue?" That this other partner of mine has this health issue and the two of you don't know that, but I know that, but maybe if I told you both maybe then you would like become best friends and find support around this health issue so that you're not complaining to me about it.
In my mind, I can see that great, I don't know, matchmaker health related matchmaker scenario, but it may not work for everyone involved. The rubric that I give myself when I haven't talked to people or I've forgotten to ask or there's something that's unresolved is I just ask myself, would I still say this to one partner, if my other partner was also in the room with me, or would I say this to my partner if I knew that my partner was then going to immediately turn around and text my partner who's not there to be like, "Oh, so I heard this"?
Would my other partner get off if that happened? Of course, that's not going to cover your ass in all situations, but I'm like before we've negotiated and before we've clarified, maybe it's a new relationship. Maybe it's a new topic. Maybe you're not sure that's where I start to just try to keep it at least safe and at least limit the chances of stepping on anybody's toes. That's where I start. Ultimately, yes, I think in negotiation and figuring this out together.
Libby: I think your intention matters a lot. Is your intention to externally process because that one.
Libby: There's reasons to do it and there's reasons to contain it. I don't think anybody here qualifies as this, but I've definitely seen people who just want to stir shit, and that's what they do. That gossip as trading information, but that's not what this sounds like is in this situation. I think you do need to check in with yourself.
Like you said, Dedeker, just like, what's my intent here, is my intent to be loving and try to support the people that I love and get support for myself and be the best version of myself? Sure. You might fuck up sometimes, and like you said, Jase, you might fuck up, but that doesn't mean you were wrong, and if somebody didn't like it, you can just repair, and do better next time.
Jase: Yes. They also think that something else just real quick to bring it back to again, from the point of view of the question asker
who's the one having stuff about them shared rather than doing the sharing is to also, I guess, realize you can have these negotiations so that there's not one right answer and it seems like you're on a great track already acknowledging the fact that this can be helpful for your partner to be able to share this. Also, it makes you feel a little uncomfortable. That's a great place to start. Like I get it.
I can see some of this, hopefully, that leads to a productive conversation and I guess just that it seems like you're in a really good place to have this conversation so I just want to say great job question asker, and I hope that this negotiation goes well and just understand it'll be an ongoing thing in all your relationships forever.
Just continue to work on figuring out what that is for you and realize that it can change and adjust with each partner. For our last listener question, this is actually a listener question specifically for Libby. The question is I would love to hear Libby talk about her ethical deescalation guide, why she made it, how she's heard of people using it, what it recommends, et cetera.
Libby: Oh, I'm going to have to really discipline myself to not have this be two hours long. I will just say here for this listener, if you are interested, I do actually have a recorded two-hour workshop on this de-escalation protocol, whatever you want to call it. I call it a playbook and that's available on my website and it's like $27. That being said, I'll give you what I can for free right now. It's totally cool.
Jase: Yes. You have like five minutes.
Dedeker: just a little teaser?
Libby: Briefly the reason why I made it is because, I was part of a community of people who are all polyamorous and all really good friends of mine, and I loved them very dearly. They would date each other and have these horrible breakups. I was never involved in the breakup, but I felt like I was holding a lot of hands or being a shoulder to a lot of people and I just saw how destructive it was and it felt very unnecessary to me how destructive it was. I felt like we're all in community together, we're going to remain in community together.
Your ex might be dating your best friend. I was just like, how could we do this in a more compassionate way that preserves everybody's sanity and honors the humanity of everybody, and helps people remain in community together? Maybe also selfishly, I didn't want to have to do so much emotional work with the people that I loved, for them being so sloppy about breaking up with each other so that was my initial intention. I actually crowdsourced a lot of data amongst my friends and community members. I was like, "How do you do this?
Have you figured out a better way?" Because I can see how I would try to do a better way even, and I might have my good intention, but then the other person wouldn't be able to do it with me because they wouldn't-- they would have the template of we break up, it blows up. That's just how we go. I also really thought about like, having been through multiple experiences with people and really seeing where is it actually really hard?
I found that the hard part wasn't deciding to break up. People always think the hard part is deciding to break up, but the hard part is actually the aftermath of the breakup after it's happened after you've made that decision, and now you're living with the grief, you're living with the shame, you're living with having to see that person, maybe seeing that person, date someone else et cetera.
I created this playbook to help people, not just to navigate the conversation of breaking up so that you could potentially have a better aftermath and then also negotiate the aftermath because I think people really had a lot of blind spots to the ways in which the aftermath of a breakup could really prolong the pain and unnecessarily, create a lot more angst and stress on everybody. That's the why.
That's also the content, I guess. The content of the playbook is really, here's how you can do this. I'll just give us a small example of something that's in the playbook which is negotiating how you're going to engage with each other on social media after the breakup so that it's not like you break up and then suddenly you're blocked and you don't know why and now you're having to deal with the feelings around that.
Instead, you tell the person, "Hey, like to help me work through my feelings and so that I don't have to be constantly triggered by your existence right now, I'm going to block you for 30 days on social media and I'm not going to interact with you," and another thing I recommend is like 30 days, no contact minim after a breakup and that's not to punish anybody. It's really just to allow an opportunity for things to just deescalate and settle. Because everything can just be so stirred up and so intense during that transition that you're going to be more easily activated, more easily in your reactive state, and then more likely to say things or do things that are not from your like wisest parts of yourself.
It's like, you're protecting yourself and you're protecting the other person, but as I said, it's a whole two-hour workshop and it's a whole multi-page playbook. You can get the playbook, I think for free on my website. Although I think the link might not be very prominent and then you can get the workshop, on my website too.
It's funny that this person asks this question because I'm so passionate about breakups being this thing that's not a big deal, and that's a thing that we can do together in a loving way and I'll just say this last thing I remember, like when I was crowdsourcing from people and asking like how do you do breakups? How can we make this better? The one of the best pieces of advice I got from someone in my community that she does when she's in a transition, transitioning a relationship is she has a ritual around it with the person if that's available, if they're up for that.
They sing songs, they write poetry, they burn things, they honor the relationship, they talk about what they're going to miss and what they really appreciate and the ways in which they've been changed by each other. Then they say goodbye and I was just like, that's amazing. I want to break up right now just so I can do that but not really.
Emily: Yes. Have you found that people use it also because when I hear the word de-escalation, I think of what Jase and I did, which was just deescalate the romantic side of our relationship and move into a different form of what the relationship now is? We didn't have a chance to not talk for 30 days because we had to make this thing, this podcast.
Dedeker: We had to talk a lot for 30 days.
Emily: Yes. Exactly and Dedeker as well. All of that being the case, but do you find people using it to transition to a new phase of whatever their relationship might be instead of just like we're broken up by we're done forever?
Libby: I think that's every relationship if you're going to not be persona non grata to each other is some transition and some deescalation. Did Emily that you were definitely going to be friends with these people during the process of transition?
Emily: Yes, 100%.
Libby: But did you really?
Emily: I knew that for all intents and purposes, I was going to be making this podcast with them, but also I cared deeply about them and we made it a priority from day one.
Dedeker: I know it sounds unbelievable Libby. Emily is like so loyal
Emily: Oh God, I'm the most loyal person in the world, too loyal. Really for bad things too. I'll just be like, "No, I'm staying with this person in some capacity forever." These two are one of the best decisions of my life, but--
Libby: That's beautiful, but you also probably needed room to grieve and to like feel into what the new relationship would be and where the boundaries were and all of that. During that part, a lot of times people just don't talk about it and people are like, just figure it out. I just feel like that's so stressful and unkind, and make it more likely for things to be again just more exquisitely painful. I imagine that isn't what y'all did. You probably did a lot of like talking and negotiating and setting boundaries and resetting boundaries and--
Emily: It was still painful, but--
Jase: Yes, definitely.
Libby: Of course it was. To answer your question, I do think that people use this playbook and they take what works and throw out what doesn't. There are people who want to de-escalate their relationship but they want to continue to live together and co-parent for example, and then there's no option for 30 days, no contact like you got to figure out who's picking up the kids from school. I think the idea that I am still allowed to have space, I am still allowed to like, say, "Hey, I don't want to talk right now," or "Hey, I want to unfollow you on social media even though we're going to live in the same house." I think the idea of giving yourself room to feel your feelings without them
spilling out all over the relationship that you're trying to create a new is maybe the spirit of it.
Emily: Of course.
Jase: Yes. Even just having a guide of what are some of the questions to even ask. It reminds me a little bit of the relationship anarchy Smorgasbord that we've talked about before that part of what's so nice about it is just that it gives you prompts of what are some things to even think about.
Do I want this in this relationship, and to give you those prompts of what could I even think about? What even are options of things we could do while deescalating that? I think we all probably would've benefited from that back then and probably still will in the future now that it exists. That's a really cool resource.
Libby: I'll just say this last thing because I think this is an important thing to say is that even in that transition where you were committed to staying connected to each other, even though you knew that you would remain in some relationship together, the relationship you had was over. That's one of the intentions that I have and I state this in the workshop is I want to reframe breaking up as, not this one thing of, we never speak to each other again by, and instead have it be like breakups happen all the time.
Like you break up with an old version of yourself and you become a new version of yourself. There is a need to honor the grief that comes with that and the loss that happens there and to give yourself really room to honor that part, as well, as maybe you do have a commitment to moving forward and rebuilding something new. I use this house metaphor where it's like, you built a house together and you loved living in that house and it was beautiful.
Then it stopped working. If you try to stay living in that house, but change it from inside it's going to fall apart around your ears. You really have to move out of the house. You have to tear it down and then you're building something new. Maybe you use some of the building materials from the old house. Maybe you use some of the ideas or maybe there was this one room that you really want to recreate and keep in your house. Great. It's still a new house. The old one is gone.
Dedeker: I think we made a pretty badass house, honestly obviously, we're pretty resourceful. pretty great house, pretty comfortable. I like the house that we felt.
Emily: Continues evolving as well, which is always good. Libby, where can listeners find more of you and your work? Do you have anything besides your ethical deescalation guide to plug or to talk about?
Libby: I have a website, libbysinback.com. you can find out more about me, although I'm hoping to launch a new version of that soon. I do run a couple of programs over the course of a year. I do this thing called the relational non-monogamy circle, which is a 16 week group coaching program where I go really in depth on a lot of the relational skills that are the foundation of what I call relational non-monogamy.
We also do some group coaching together too. It's a really lovely group experience and also just really powerful. I think the next one that-- I'm not actually sure when the next one I'm going to launch is I was planning to launch it in September, but it is like September and I still haven't launched it. I have a cohort running now and there will be a cohort running again.
There are a few other things I'm going to be launching that I'm not fully ready to like talk about yet but that are going to be coming down the pike. I would say if you want to know about that stuff, whatever it is, whatever cool stuff I might be offering, that's like a workshop or an intensive or a group coaching thing or anything like that.
You can just go to my website and sign up for my email list. I promise I don't spam people. For a while was trying to get a newsletter out every week and that's not even within my capacity most of the time, but sometimes I get something out there. That's the best way to stay in the loop on what I'm doing. You can also follow me on social media and stuff too and beyond that, my podcast.
Jase: Awesome.