390 - What It’s Really Like to Be a Polyamorous Parent (with Jessica Daylover from Remodeled Love)
Welcome, Jessica!
This week we are joined by Jessica Daylover from the Remodeled Love podcast! During this episode, we are talking with her about parenting and raising children while being polyamorous and how to balance it all. Jess co-hosts the Remodeled Love podcast with her husband, Joe, where they talk about their polyamory journey, their experiences parenting as polyamorous people, as well as many other topics. They just released an ebook entitled Polyamory and Parenting: Navigating Non-Monogamy as Parents of Young Children. We’re excited to have Jess on the show to share her experiences and what she’s learning from teaching others about her journey.
Jess goes over the following during this episode:
An overview of her polyamory journey and being a parent.
Green, yellow, and red lights as talked about in her book.
Mom-Drop, which she uses as a gender-neutral term for the experience of coming home from an exciting, fun time out, full of endorphins and having to go back to your childcare routine at home.
A relationship anarchy game she plays with her kids.
Her non-sexual relationship with Joe, her husband.
Why she does this work and what it means to her.
Find Jess’s podcast here, and don’t forget to check out her Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok!
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 talking about parenting and raising children while being polyamorous and how to balance it all. Joining us today to talk about this is Jessica Daylover. Jess co-hosts the Remodeled Love podcast with her husband, Joe, where they talk about their polyamory journey, their experience as parenting, as polyamorous people, as well as many other topics. They just released an e-book entitled Polyamory & Parenthood: Navigating Non-Monogamy as Parents of Young Children.
This has been a topic that gets requested a lot, so we're really excited to have Jess on the show now to share her experiences and what she's learning from teaching others about her journey. Jess, thank you so much for being here.
Jessica: I am so excited to be here. Huge fan of the show. I just had to get that out.
Emily: Thank you.
Dedeker: No, thank you. Happy to have you here. Let's start out. Where did this all begin for you? Can you give us the highlight reel of your journey to polyamory and being a parent?
Jessica: I was like, "Where did what begin?" I'm going to need you to be more specific. You want The Reader's Digest polyamorous journey?
Jase: Yes, let's go with that first.
Dedeker: We don't have to be as milk toast as The Reader's Digest is. We can be a little more spicy if you like.
Jessica: Absolutely. I'm always down for some spice. It's just that age-old story of, looking back, I feel like I always was polyamorous, queer, neurodivergent. Monogamy never made much sense to me, but I never knew there was another way and didn't know there was another script possible. Also never really had any relationships. Was very uncomfortable with "commitment". Anytime I was in a relationship, always had agreements.
Moved to Reno from the Midwest in 2008. Met my partner, Joe, in the theater scene, we started dating. We actually started dating because I'm very witchy and clairvoyant, and I had a vision that he was my baby daddy, and so I was like, "Do I like him?" because we were just friends at the time and it reversed planted the crush in my head. We started dating.
Emily: That's amazing.
Jessica: You're a theater person, so the theater scene is inherently queer and polyamorous.
Emily: Oh, yes. That's where every time.
Dedeker: Where all the kids go. That's where we all escape to as soon as we can.
Emily: I'm shocked at all the people I come across.
Jessica: It was always naturally there and I would say we were monogamish. He knew I was queer coming into the relationship. In our relationship, we'd be at a party and I'd be like, "Hey, I just made out with so-and-so in the bathroom. Just wanted to let you know." He'd be like, "Okay." Cut to three months before we're getting married and we go tubing the Truckee River with some friends and they're like, "Hey, have you ever heard of this thing called polyamory?" I just felt like every cell in my body became electric.
It's that moment where you recognize yourself. You know how labels can sometimes be constricting but other times they're the very thing that sets you free? I heard myself in the label and I just came alive. I was like, "That's who I am. We don't need to talk about it. I don't need to read a book. We can start right now." The more excited I got, the more scared my partner, Joe, became.
Like I said, we were three months away from getting married. It's that journey so many previously monogamous couples know where one person is very excited, the other person's very scared. The very excited person can't stop talking about it, doesn't want to stop talking about it, doesn't want to put it on hold any longer. We just moved forward and I ended up meeting somebody and falling pretty hard and was just like, "This is who I am. If you are truly my partner, if you are truly meant to be my partner, then you would support me in exploring this. Otherwise, we shouldn't be partners." That launched the exploration.
I call those first couple years- you read the book, I call them the dark ages. Joe disagrees with that. I think he's wrong. He's kidding himself about that. We made a lot of mistakes. We would both do things very differently if we could. We got married in 2013, became polyamorous in 2013. It was hard, very hard until about 2015 when Joe finally got his first other partner, and then all of a sudden a lot of that fear was like, "Oh, I get it now." That alchemy comes in. Things started to get easier and gooier.
In 2018, we had our first child, Aslan, named after the king of Narnia, and then in 2021, we had our second child, Lucius. We've been polyamorous the whole time. It's coasting now. We are both professional entertainers, producers, and when the pandemic hit, killed our whole industry. Remodeled Love was a project on the back burner. I'm like, "Our polyamorous life is so interesting, and I think the intersection with parenting--"
Polyamory is controversial in the normie default world, but add in parenting, it's even more controversial, but it's also controversial within polyamory. Even within the community there's some controversy there. I was like, "I feel like there's a niche here where just living our lives out loud could be very educational for people." That brings us to now.
Dedeker: I'm curious. I think it's pretty easy and understandable for many of us to see in mainstream normie land, how combining polyamory and parenting can be controversial. We have these social mores that associate polyamory with sex and all of these ain't-normative values, and then we associate children with innocence, need to protect them from everything at all costs. Of course, that creates all the arguments, why being polyamorous and parenting must be terrible. What's your take on the controversy within the polyamorous community about parenting?
Jessica: Girl, so many theories. I just think a lot of times there's this whole trope within the community of autonomy and a lot of people inside the community who grew up knowing they didn't want kids and they associate their polyamory with that autonomy. A lot of polyamorous people actually have a, "I will not date parents," part of their boundary. I see it a lot more in toxic Facebook groups and Reddit and things like that where people are just like, "I refuse to date parents."
I don't know if it's just this attitude of, it's not in alignment with why some people became polyamorous. It's not logical to me. I don't really understand it, especially because I try to be somebody who's very like, "There is no one right way," and, "To each, their own," especially with polyamory and also parenting, but really parenting does not make sense inside the nuclear family within monogamy at all. The fact that people are so against it is baffling to me.
Emily: To touch on that, on the flip side, I find that a lot of people out there, especially like Eli Sheff and people who are doing longitudinal studies on parents who are polyamorous, they talk so much about how having multiple people around children is so wonderful because it creates this unbelievable structure that multiple people can thrive from, and kids have so many different opportunities to learn from different adults and how great that is. Have you found that to be the case for yourself?
Jessica: Oh yes, absolutely. Let's talk about postpartum depression in America. It's astronomical compared to more socialist countries or countries with non-nuclear family normalities because the hormonal fuckery that you guys go through, that women and birthing people go through hormonally, the physical healing-- My first birth was extremely traumatic. I couldn't sit down for nine weeks. I had traumatic time breastfeeding, the whole thing was just trauma.
The idea that I would have to go into being a parent who may be in a world where I have a regular job where I only had six weeks before I had to get back to work, and I'm up all night breastfeeding or failing to breastfeed, and maybe I have a shitty partner who's not doing his part, there's no aunties or grandmas, or other partners in the home to take a shift, and I'm up every 20 minutes with my reflux-y baby, baby number two, who did not sleep for the first year of his life, content warning here, postpartum depression comes with a lot of dark thoughts, so that's my content warning, that shit will make you want to kill yourself or kill your family.
That is how postpartum depression in America is just astronomical because we are putting the script on birthing people to do the job of 20 people, and it's just not feasible. The idea that I could have had a baby in a home with even one extra partner, let alone four or five who were interested in the well-being of the mother, so that the mother, the birthing person, could receive just as much care as the newborn, life changing.
Jase: That's fantastic. I was curious too, to just touch back on your story, of what was the decision to have kids like? What was that? Was there any talk about, "Do we stay polyamorous?" I know some people close their relationship during pregnancy. What was that decision-making process and that communication like for you?
Jessica: Like I said, full disclosure, I'm very woo. I knew my whole life, that I was going to have two children, and that draw was very real. Even though I was kind of terrified of the whole process, it was a whole spiritual journey for me and my husband, as well. We talk about, very bluntly in the book in the pregnancy chapters, that I do not recommend exploring polyamory if you are just now starting the having-children process or even if you're in the turbulent years.
We would not have made it. I'm just going to be completely honest because all of my control dramas came out in the early stages of polyamory, my shadow side, my attachment style. When you mix that with pregnancy hormones, there's just no way. I really do think that pregnant people need to be catered to and that there needs-- there is a hierarchy there. That's not always going to work with exploring polyamory.
If you're working through becoming a parent, going through pregnancy, while also having to work through all of the inner growth and learning and unpacking and mono-normativity, that must be undone as you are making the transition from monogamy to polyamory with a long term partner, I'm not saying-
Emily: Sounds like a fucking shitty time.
Jessica: -it's impossible, but I am saying it could set you back much further than if you had made that transition outside of that specific timeframe. We would not have made it, I can tell you that right now, especially because, I'm going to be totally honest, you can weaponize your pregnancy and weaponize your children in a moment to manipulate a situation or if you want to have a veto power.
If you are lacking sleep, and you just want to ruin your partner's day, because they're in NRE, you are going to use that situation to do that, and there's nothing really anyone can say about it. The culture is going to support you in that. It's not going to encourage you to work through your stuff, it's going to be like, "New mother gets whatever she wants," et cetera, et cetera, and as it should be.
Emily: Wow. I want to talk about something that's in your book. You have a chapter that talks about the best and the worst and the middle parts of being polyamorous while raising children. You describe them as green, yellow, and red lights, which I love. That's cool. Can you give us some clear examples of what each of those are? Because again, the three of us don't have kids, but I know that so many people out there are really interested in this subject.
Jessica: I would definitely say that's one of the meatiest parts of our book is our traffic lights, which actually started as a class which is actually what birthed the whole book, is that chapter. I want to be specific that our book is very oriented to parents of young children because that journey is going to likely change. We're hoping to write Volume 2 someday. Most of our red lights, yellow lights, green lights are very specific to parents of young children, even specific to those who practice kitchen table polyamory, which is our style.
A green light is an example of something about the intersection of polyamory and parenthood, that is just good, good, good, good, good all around. For example, I had a girlfriend one time who enjoyed trading childcare with me. A couple times throughout the week, she would drop off her daughter and I would watch our kids together, and then she would take them for equal amount of hours on the other part of the week, and then we would spend time together as well as one big polycule with kids.
It was a dream come true on so many levels. It lifted the burden of being a stay-at-home mom, it made her life easier, my life easier. The dads appreciated the break that came with that as well. We were able to spend time together that we wouldn't have been otherwise able to spend where kids maybe would have, "gotten in the way" of being able to see her because we lived in two separate families. Being able to take care of them together allowed us to spend time together. That's green light. It makes parenting better, it makes polyamory better.
Yellow light are examples of things that can be tough. They're not exactly the best moment but there's usually a lesson involved in that, something that can make you dig in a little harder and recognize like, "This was hard, but it was okay." An example of that is, maybe I'm on solo parenting duty because my husband is on a date, and maybe that night, the kids were kind of rough. Maybe I got broken up with as well, and now I have to parent, and I don't really have time to process the breakup, and not have to simultaneously be like, "Have fun, babe."
It's not going to kill me, it might make me a little bitter, and I might have to process those feelings later. It also might lead me to looking within and communicating some boundaries. It might make me realize that after I go through a breakup, I need this much time to process. Maybe your date could be at home, you guys could take care of the kids together, and I could actually go to the river and cry or something like that. That's yellow light. It's kind of shitty, but it leads to growth.
A red light moment is something that there's no explanation, there's no, "This happened for a reason," there's no reframe that's going to make it okay. It is just crappy. We say a red light moment is going to be the thing where you're like, if you end up quitting polyamory, for lack of a better phrase, it's going to be on a red light moment. I just had one on the way here, actually to record.
My lover asked me to go on a road trip with him this weekend and I couldn't because of the kids. I said no, and on the way here to drop me off, he was like, "Oh, so this new girl--" that he's dating, she's going to go with him. It's just like, "Ah." Evolved poly me is like, "Yay. I'm so happy that you have somebody who can randomly go on a road trip with you and you won't be alone. Super happy," but human me is like- I'm grieving. I'm grieving the world in which I have more help at home, that maybe we have two more wives or two more husbands or aunties or grandmas who can help my husband at home so that I can go on a random road trip, or maybe I don't have kids and I can just take off and go.
It's always the juxtaposition for me of when my partner, without kids, dates a partner without kids, and they have all this autonomy that I don't have, and then I feel crappy talking about it because then I sound like a bad mom, so then I have mom guilt, and then it's just the spiral. There's no justification, it's just red light moment.
Dedeker: I really appreciate just the existence of the yellow light in there because thinking about those moments, and I think that even other people have kids or don't have kids and they're practicing non-monogamy, there's a lot of those yellow light moments. I think the funny thing is that people who are very critical of non-monogamy tend to look at those yellow light moments and see it as a red light, deal breaker, "What? You're at home with the kids and your partner's out on a date having a great time? No way. That's horrible."
Those of us who have more experience in non-monogamy, I think, tend to skew the opposite side of like, we're not going to talk about the yellow light moments because we're constantly on the defense of trying to make sure the world knows that this is valid, and it's joyful, and it's fulfilling. I can't really spend a lot of time talking about that crappy time where I had to watch the kids while my partner was out even though, I don't know, I think in that yellow light, what bandwidth or whatever it is you want to call it, like you said, there is so much growth and so much realness. It's like people on both ends of the spectrum tend to gloss over that in-between.
Jessica: That was so well said, totally. I agree completely. I think that yellow light moments lead to a lot of self-advocacy, which is such a great muscle for polyamorous people to-- Well, it's essential for us to develop. I think, obviously, even non-polyamorous people should develop that muscle, but it's essential and crucial for us to develop. Those yellow light moments really make you lean into it.
You can see on my TikTok comments, oh, that people are very triggered that my husband's out on a date and I'm home with the kids. I'm like, "I appreciate y''all being triggered on my behalf but also, I'm fine. We're good." Back to one of your questions earlier, I think if you are new to polyamory with young children, those yellow light moments are going to be red light moments. That's why I don't recommend it.
Emily: I did want to quickly ask, when you are dating someone who doesn't have kids, what is that like? Is there ever resentment? Is there ever moments where the two of you don't see eye to eye simply because they don't have that experience of having a child at home and knowing that that is a part of oneself and one's identity and they just have no idea? Is that challenging?
Jessica: Even just as a single monogamous mother dating a non-parent, those challenges all come up. Also, like I said, it's often the juxtaposition for me but it also comes with benefits. On the one hand, I might have a lot of envy for my partner's autonomy and freedom, on the other hand, I benefit from that because if I'm dating another parent-
Emily: You have to deal with their kids.
Jessica: -we're going to have a lot harder time scheduling than if I'm dating a non-parent who has a lot more freedom. I benefit from their flexibility and their autonomy, but at the same time there's going to be a day where I'm actually-- it just makes me sad.
Jase: Right. Just to wrap up this thing about the red, yellow, and green lights, what I really thought was interesting about that too, is you have certain things that end up on all three of the lights. The one that you mentioned is specifically this not being able to fully embrace NRE when you're experiencing that in a new relationship. I was curious if you could talk about how that fits into all three of those lights.
Jessica: I love your guys' questions. You could tell you're good at what you do. Yes. Part of my relationship with NRE, new relationship energy, has been so interesting to watch evolve as I have matured. I am a fire sign, Sagittarius Enneagram 8 so I have addict energy. I like to get high. I like a lot of different medicines or drugs or whatever you want to call it. In my younger years, I really enjoyed getting high on NRE and I would just deal with the crash. It's easier to deal with an NRE crash when you do not have a teething infant and a toddler who is in a bad mood.
On the one hand, having kids doesn't allow me to get as high and so sometimes I'm like, "That's kind of a red light/yellow light." Other times it acts as like-- the vision that always comes to me is when you take a kid bowling and they put up those gutter bumpers so they can't get a gutter ball. It acts like gutter bumpers for me where I'd really like to dive into this NRE in probably an unhealthy way but I've got these bumpers up here making sure that I don't do that. It forces me to stay in balance, whereas NRE can often take me very out of balance, and I can't really afford that price tag anymore.
Dedeker: I really like that metaphor. It's something that I've been trying to piece together my whole life. Some of my longest-lasting and healthiest relationships, there were those bumpers on the NRE. It is not so extreme, it wasn't like I had to just completely cut off my heart. I still went bowling, I still have a fun time bowling, but it was like there was some kind of either internal or external limit there. I do think, at least for me and for a lot of people, that does really help so that you're not just spinning into outer space and getting so high that the crash is so extremely intense.
Jase: Or that you end up making a lot of bad decisions that you regret later on like signing a lease or a cellphone plan or something right away in those first few months.
Jessica: The kids force more mature decisions and forced me to-- because NRE can be so self-absorbed, so having kids reminds me that I have other people in my polycule, including children I'm responsible for so I cannot go getting so selfish in the NRE, which is a mistake I have made in the past that almost cost me my marriage.
Jase: Wow. Before we go on to talk about some more of the book and ask you some more questions, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support this show at home if this is content that you find valuable and something that you want us to be able to continue putting out into the world for free. Take a moment, check out our ads and our Patreon. If any of it sounds interesting to you, check that out, and that directly helps contribute to our show.
Dedeker: We're back. We are here with Jess Daylover of the Remodeled Love podcast. In your book, you talk about what you call mom-drop, which when I first read, my first image was some kind of mom-oriented drop-box, but that's not what it is.
Jase: You drop your kids off and then pick them up somewhere else and stick them between your-- Okay.
Dedeker: You can pick them up in the cloud, somewhere else.
Emily: I thought it was like mic drop.
Dedeker: Ooh, that's good too. Mom-drop.
Jase: It's like, "Go to your room." Mom-drop.
Emily: "I'm dropping the mic as a mom. Exactly."
Jessica: "Because I said so." Mom-drop. Also, I want to, before you give us a definition, also distinguish that it's not quite the same as dom-drop or sub-drop, maybe even a little different from can drop. We've heard a lot of drops in this community. What is mom-drop?
Jessica: I do want to say it is inspired by the idea of sub-drop or dom-drop, which is just that polyamory and love, being one of my favorite drugs, can create a transcendental elevated experience. You can be, let's say peak experience. Just as a mother, just getting away from your kids is an elevated experience. That's just real mom talk right there.
Jessica: Now add in not just that I'm away from my kids but I'm away on a weekend with not just my new lover, and we're in NRE, but let's say he's a sugar daddy. He's spoiling me and we've got amazing sexual chemistry. Throw in whatever else you want to do on this weekend. It's a peak experience. We know peak experiences are dangerous even just in certain rave drugs and stuff like that. You have to really make sure you have aftercare.
Mom-drop for me is just leaving this almost fantasy world where you have the illusion of, "I want this to last forever." There's this Elmo Christmas movie where Elmo wishes that it could be Christmas every day and then he gets his wish, and then what do we find out? That Sesame Street falls to pieces because it can't be Christmas every day and madness just ends. In that moment when you're in the NRE and you're on the sexy getaway, you're like, "This could be my life. If I didn't have any responsibilities, I could be living this life every day. It be so glamorous." Now you have to return home.
In the kink world, aftercare is super important. They don't even recommend engaging in a scene if you cannot have aftercare. It's considered dangerous. There's no aftercare for polyamorous mothers, polyamorous parents in general, but I'm always going to give a shout-out to the mothers because we've got a whole different thing going on within the family
entering back into that home and maybe you come home to a partner who's been on solo duty.
I dream of the day in which my husband is kicking me out the door because his girlfriend's coming over, dream life, but he's been on solo duty. The baby didn't sleep all night because he's teething and now my husband's in a bad mood, both of the kids are in a bad mood and I'm in this blissful state. I come home excited to see my family, and it is just a shit show. That's mom-drop, is back into the reality because I have removed my label of not just spouse but also mother for that getaway. Now I'm coming back home and I'm putting both of those labels on, and those labels come with a gravity that's going to make you drop.
Dedeker: Is it just, we recognize that the thing and we deal with it? In the book, you do talk about aftercare for mom-drop. What does that look like for you?
Jessica: Yes, that's a good question. In a perfect world I would schedule an off-ramp, so to speak. Maybe if I'm on a really fun getaway with a lover, perhaps there is an evening back home, maybe at his place. We're not out gallivanting around, living our best lives, but we're back in reality. Maybe I even do a little bit of work, maybe I call my kids on a Zoom and see them, but I have a day that's a buffer between this peak experience and then back to my labels of wife and mother and domestic caretaker.
We know that mothers carry most of the domestic burden and that whole thing. Mothers tend to be the default parent, which I don't know if you guys have heard of this, but it's the parent that carries most of the emotional burden of the young kids. When the kid falls and cries, which parent is he running to for comfort? That whole thing.
Having some kind of buffer day or having some sort of support at home, because the most important thing is that now when I get home, I am going to set my husband off for what we, in the book, call autonomous time because if he's been on solo duty, the second I get home, he needs autonomous time as part of his aftercare of being the solo parent.
Jase: I feel like that's the challenge, that you both need it.
Jessica: I think aftercare for me would be having some kind of other support so that I'm not entering solo mom duty when I come back whether that's a friend, another partner, an auntie, somebody in the polycule to just be at home with me so that I can do laundry and also wipe a butt.
Dedeker: I feel like that's advice that could apply to moms of all kinds of relationship format, and parents of all kinds of relationship format as well. I do think it butts up against that uncomfortable truth about parenting that, we have a lot of narratives, that don't have room for, "Hey, sometimes this is just hard and it's a gritty reality, and I'm not always looking super forward to being back with my kids or being back at home." I think that's why we don't end up talking about the fact that having something like an off ramp, that kind of aftercare, can be really beneficial to a lot of people, not just the polyamorous parents.
Jessica: Any mother's going to experience mom-drop. Even a monogamous mother who just went to Napa for the weekend with her girlfriends and got drunk on wine and did slutty things at a bar, totally out of her comfort zone, and then she comes home and it's a shit show, she's going to have mom-drop as well. You mix in love and sex and anything that makes it a more peak experience. The more peak you get, the bigger the drop. That's really what it is. It doesn't matter if you're polyamorous or not. If you're out there doing something that gives you a lot of dopamine and serotonin, no matter what it is, when you get home, you're going to have mom-drop.
Emily: I wanted to pivot to a fun activity that you talk about in the book. It's like a relationship anarchy game that you play with your kids. We've talked about the relationship anarchy smorgasbord on the show, and you're essentially taking that concept and then helping kids define their own relationships. It sounds really cute and fun. Can you talk about it a little more?
Jessica: I would love to. Did you guys like your shout-out in the book?
Jase: Yes.
Jessica: I thought it was cool when you said you were going to read the book. People ask me all the time, how do you introduce your kids to polyamory? For us, we're doing the whole introduction by just living. There will not be compulsory monogamy in our home. It will just be normalized through example. I took that relationship smorgasbord idea and I developed it into a game where you take your child and you take a bunch of paper plates with a Sharpie marker.
In my case, I have a four-and-a-half-year-old, and he has a bunch of different friends. I could say, "Tell me what you like to do with Desmond." He would say, "I like to play superheroes." On one paper plate, I'd write "Superheroes." "What else do you like to do?" "Legos." "Okay. Legos and wrestling. "Now, tell me what do you like to do with your friend, Hunter?" "Oh, we like to play dress-up. We like to paint our nails." Okay, that's, each, going to get their own paper plate and so on and so forth. Even adults, "What do you like to do with Daddy? What do you like to do with mommy? What do you like to do with tee-tee?"
We have a lot of queer uncles and our families, so Pokemon, drag, makeup, you name it. Sitting them and then recognizing, "Okay, let's look at all these plates on the table. What type of plates would you have crossovers?" "Wrestling is a plate that you have on the table with Desmond and daddy but you don't have that on the table with Hunter or mommy." All this is giving into-- in a very subconscious but also conscious way, is that you get to design your relationships with all of the people in your life and each one of them are going to have different plates on it.
It's just a very visual representation where they can really understand that "I am negotiating what's in my relationship with each different person and it's not better or worse. It's just what do I like to do with these people?"
I think, so much of monogamous folks' hangups against polyamory, and like you said, a lot of times people associate it with sex and I know a lot of asexual polyamorous people, so we know that's not the case, a lot of times, it's like, "Well, if I know that my husband is off hiking with his friend from work, I feel one way about it, but if I know he's off having sex with her, I feel a different way about it." At the end of the day, what is the difference between hiking and sex, other than our cultural feelings about those things?
Even dopamine-wise, dopamines go in in both of those scenarios. Of course, I know they're not literally the same but I think it's important for kids to realize that the culture is putting different meanings on different things on those plates but you don't have to put those meanings on those plates, they can just be the plates that are on the table. That's what the exercise is all about.
Jase: I just thought that was cool reading about that and taking the concept of it, like you said, that you're teaching the concept behind it. Rather than feeling like, "I need to teach them about relationship anarchy specifically," it's like, "I want to teach them the concepts that matter." When we talk about teaching kids about their bodily autonomy or respecting other kids, it's not like I'm going to sit down have a lecture with my kids about consent, it's teaching kids like, "Hey, that person seems like they don't really want to play with you right now. That's okay. Let's give them some space," or, "Oh, you don't want to hug your teacher? That's fine. You don't have to, you can just say that."
It's like we teach the concepts through practice and how it applies to their life as a kid, rather than-- I think people when they assume talking to your kids about polyamory or relationship anarchy, they assume you're jumping into the conversation you would have with someone in their 20s, who's asking you about it, and that's just so weird.
Jessica: I think the thing about the activity, too, I agree with everything that you just said, is that it creates this representation that the plate in front of you is a negotiation between you and the person on the other side of the table. Just because you want wrestling with Mommy doesn't mean Mommy wants wrestling, so that plate can't be on here unless we both want it in front of us.
Jase: Yes, I love that.
Jessica: I think it really brings in that conversation about negotiation. Sometimes you have a relationship in which there are no more plates, so it's okay to walk away from the table when there are no more plates.
Jase: That's a perfect segue actually talking about plates. Something that you mention in the book but you don't really go into detail about is you talk about the fact that you and Joe do not currently have a sexual relationship and haven't for some time, even though you still have a good marriage and a happy marriage and raise your parents together. I know that on your podcast, the two of you have gone into much more detail about all of that.
I just wanted to highlight it because it was surprising to see, first of all, just that it brought up because it's not something people talk about a lot, even though we're all aware that we have all sorts of different relationships and different pieces in them, and just because you remove one particular plate, I should say, from a relationship doesn't mean the whole relationship goes away.
I just think it's worth pointing out because I think that's something important for people to hear and to realize that that's possible and that doesn't have to mean something's wrong with them. That plate analogy just got me thinking about that. I was just curious if you could share a little bit about that. I know, go listen to the first couple episodes of your podcast. Did you feel more of the story? You can give us a little bit of that both in terms of, I guess, focusing more on how that's changed your relationship or not changed it and if that's also affected negotiating things with other partners or friends or family members or anything like that.
Jessica: Thank you for asking me about this. I think, the mission of Remodeled Love is to expand the cultural narrative on healthy relationships. I think this is one of the most important part of my niches. You said, go listen to the first couple episodes of our podcast, but actually I want to point out that in the first couple episodes, I had not come out to my partner that I was no longer interested in a sexual relationship with him.
Jase: Oh, was it later than that? I was confused. Okay.
Jessica: That happens actually in season two of our podcast. We actually come out season 2, episode 8. Here's some tea for you, and you'll appreciate this because podcast producers, tell me why this episode, even though it's more recent, has three times the downloads of any other episode in our series.
Emily: Probably because it's prevalent and people are like, "Oh God, I need talk about this too. I want some help."
Dedeker: Because you're not the first people to go through this.
Emily: Yes. 100%.
Jase: All right, but no one's talking about it.
Jessica: That's why I'm so glad to be talking about it here. In that episode, it's season 2, episode 8 of the Remodeled Love podcast, we go into great-- Every raw detail people want to know it's in that episode. My husband was so brave doing that episode. I'm so thankful and proud of him because I know that it was so hard for him to do that. He had to go on a whole masculine journey. I know a lot of men who have their wives coming to them no longer desiring the sexual relationship when it's not even on both sides, I know that it's its own thing.
In that episode, I talk about that I have a theory. I have seven or eight reasons. This is the autism. I have over-intellectualized why I think I no longer desire that relationship. It was a few months after I had my second baby, so in 2021. Here are a couple of those reasons. One, I don't think that we were ever sexually compatible. I just don't think it was ever there, but I knew that he was my person. I knew that he was the person I wanted to have kids with, that I am best domestically partnered with.
Because there's no script, There is no script of how to be in love with someone and not have them be your best sexual partner, I continued to engage sexually for years and thought maybe we could build a chemistry or it will happen later or whatever. I think one reason is we never had it. Two, I think there's probably something biological about popping out some man's kids that it would shut off a desire. It doesn't happen to everyone and I'm not saying that's why, and I'm not saying that's not why, but doesn't that make sense? That evolution would have us shutting down that switch and maybe sending it elsewhere. Another reason is I'm demisexual.
Emily: You've already done that one. You've already accomplished everything you need to accomplish there. Move on. Interesting.
Jessica: I know. It can be harsh for a lot of people to hear that, but I also think it's very real and I'm not servicing anybody by not talking about that. Another reason is I'm a demisexual. I describe my demisexuality as sometimes my switch for someone's sexual attraction is on and sometimes it's off and I'm not in control of that switch. That's my definition of demisexuality actually given to me by my metamour.
My whole life I have been in situations in which I was deeply in love with someone but my switch was not on and I did not know why. Is it because I have trauma? Is it because I have vulnerability issues? Is it because they're healthy and I'm only sexually attracted to unhealthy people? That's a whole other episode. When I realized I was demisexual because of my metamore in season 1 of our podcasts, it happens live on air, I realized so much of the sex I've had I didn't want to have, and my commitment to myself was to, one, stop overanalyzing why my switch was on or off, and two, to no longer engage sexually when my switch was off, and that included my husband.
It was difficult because I knew for a while when I was pregnant, ooh, I'm getting emotional, and I was having sex out of not an obligation he was putting on me, I swear it was all me, just thinking, "Someday, this is going to come on." You mix in the polyamorous guilt of, "It's very on for other people. If I'm having sex with other people, it's got to be one for one, so if I go have sex with this new partner, I better come home and have sex with my husband." Not that he was ever making me do that, it was something I was doing to myself. I just had to recognize like, "I don't want to do this anymore."
Then I looked at all of the other aspects of our relationship. I know it's going to be different for megasexuals or allosexuals, non-demisexuals but for me, the relationship with my husband, our compatibility, we have political compatibility where you're both hardcore leftists, passionate. We are artistically compatible. We make a lot of beautiful art together and we have for over a decade. We are pop culturally compatible, we hate the same things, we love the same things. We both think Mad Max is the worst movie ever made and I will not be unpacking that further.
Jessica: We are spiritually compatible, we are domestically compatible, and we are co-parentingly compatible. Not just are we compatible in all those other categories, we are 100% compatible and that to me is unheard of. Why would I divorce a person with which I have 100% compatibility in all of these other categories to go marry someone I'm 90% sexually compatible with and have maybe 20% in the other categories? No, thank you. Pass. Absolutely not. That's a recipe for disaster.
I think the culture gave us the script that you should marry the person you have the best sex with, and I just do not think that that is wise. If you even want to get married, especially if you want to have kids and be cohabitated, I think that you should do that with the person you have the best domestic and value system compatibility with, and then go have toxic sex on the side.
I was afraid to come out about this because I knew people would once say, "Oh, is that why you're polyamorous because you don't desire each other?" No, we're polyamorous because we're polyamorous. The other thing people I feared they were going to say was, "Well, this only happened because you're polyamorous. You opened Pandora's box started having sex with other people and it turned off your desire for your husband," which is a very mono-normative idea. They don't even realize that when they're asking. It's totally biased. There's my spiel.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: No, thank you. That's great.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: I just feel like my heart takes so much comfort in knowing that that's been one of your most popular episodes that you've been able to share that journey, knowing there's so many more people out there experiencing the same thing that are going to benefit from getting that message that "It's okay. We got through it and you can get through it too. You're normal. You're not a weirdo."
To that end something that always surprises people, not within this community, that I talk to is the fact that there's a lot of polyamorous parents out there. There's actually a lot more than people realize. There's a lot of parents practicing different forms of non-monogamy. A lot of those people choose to be discreet, choose to be closeted, for really good reasons: safety, preserving energy, preserving their time. Why is it important to you to be sharing these things and doing this work?
Jessica: What a beautiful question. I want to first acknowledge the privileges I have in order to be out. We are white, so we are at significant less risk of somebody calling CPS on us and us losing our kids simply because they're triggered, so we have white privilege. We have heterosexual privilege. We are legally married. That's a privilege. We are low-income, but our family has money so we are not at actual any risk of being homeless. I work for myself and my husband works-- He has a public job. He has a little bit of risk of losing his job if this came out, but it's relatively low. There's a lot of privilege there and I always want to acknowledge. We talk about that in our book as well.
It's important for us to be out because like I said, the mission of Remodeled Love is to expand the cultural narrative on healthy relationships. My husband and I are both nerds for semiology, the study of semiotics. It's the sign and symbols with which our consciousness understands reality and it comes through our culture. We talk about, in the book, the first time you went to the grocery store and saw everyone wearing a mask. For many people, that was a very jarring semiotic moment because everyone wearing masks was not a sign or symbol we had in our consciousness. Now it is.
Simply by me existing, my husband existing, and us living our love out loud, and even if I'm-- Some of my TikToks and Instagrams and podcasts, they're literally educational by listening or consuming them and other times you are just witnessing a vignette of our life. That is creating the semiotics, the sign and symbols that gives a permission for someone else to think differently.
What I want our page to be and our life to be is a permission. That's all I ever want to be, is a permission for someone else to at least pick up another script, to know that they are holding one script that was given to them compulsory and that there are other scripts on the table. They can pick those scripts up and they could just read them if they want to, but if they wanted to possibly enact those scripts, it's okay, I'm doing it, and I'm an example of someone who's thriving in that script.
Emily: This whole conversation has been super beautiful. Really, all of us want to thank you for being here and for talking about all of this today with us. Where can our listeners and everyone out there find more of you, your work, your podcast, your book?
Jessica: Yes. Thank you, remodeledlove.com. That's going to be the easiest thing because that has links to everything. I have ADHD, so my brand's everywhere. On Instagram and Twitter, I'm @remodeledlove. On TikTok, Homeslice Productions, which is actually the umbrella production company that launched this. That is the producer of Remodeled Love so to speak. Homeslice Productions on TikTok, remodeledlove, Twitter and Instagram, and our podcast is called Remodeled Love. You can buy our e-book through our website. That's the easiest thing to do is, just go to remodeledlove.com, click Buy our Book, it will download right to your computer and you can even choose to print it out if you wanted to.