Welcome Dr. Zhana!

Dr. Zhana Vrangalova is a relationship scientist, consultant, and NYU adjunct professor of human sexuality. She’s a world-renowned expert in non-monogamy and the creator of Open Smarter™, an online course that guides couples and individuals to identify and navigate the relationship type best suited for their unique personality and life circumstances.

We welcomed her onto the show to help us answer some questions posed by our Patreon supporters. Some of the questions we tackle today are:

• How do you navigate exploring a poly relationship with two people who are “open” to the idea of poly but are uncomfortable with or don’t want to have any of the conversations around needs/wants/boundaries that seem so important to building healthy poly relationships?

• How do people communicate what they want without asking in such a way that it feels like permission, which can create a problematic power dynamic.

• Have you come out to (friendly) exes from previous monogamous relationships? I would like to come out to an ex, because I think they’d understand/validate in a way my platonic connections couldn’t. But! I don’t want coming out to be a threat to them or their current (probably monogamous) partner. …And I also don’t want to feed any fantasies on my end that they will respond “What!? No way! Us too!” :p

• How do you keep your RADAR on track when dealing with topics that bring out fear and trauma in one or more people? We want to talk about these things but need another tool as we had to stop our last RADAR and are struggling to get back to it, even though we want to.

Listen to the full episode to get Dr. Zhana’s insight on these topics, and find her on Instagram and Twitter @drzhana!