424 - Polysaturation: Exploring the Limits of Love
What is polysaturation?
Polysaturation is the state in which a polyamorous person has as many significant relationships as they can handle at a given time.
Some of the factors influencing polysaturation can include time, distance, family, health, introversion/extroversion, partners' expectations, and the types of relationships. On the other hand, burnout is a broader term coined in 1975, encompassing emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decreased sense of accomplishment, applicable to various aspects of life.
Beyond polyamory
Similar to many polyamory-specific terms, polysaturation reveals an essential concept that applies to all relationships but is often overlooked. The Poly Land blog introduces a few alternative terms that can be used by everyone:
"Connection-saturated," emphasizing emotional and psychological connections.
"Socially-saturated," focusing on social interactions.
"Emotionally-saturated," indicating a saturation of emotional bandwidth.
Polysaturation is more complex than simply counting the number of partners. Page Turner's article on Poly Land distinguishes between capacity and desire. Some seek additional relationships to fulfill a need, while others pursue non-monogamy for freedom, curiosity, or exploration. The saturation point can also be influenced by various factors such as time, distance, family responsibilities, health, introversion/extroversion, partners' expectations, and the types of relationships.
If experiencing polysaturation or social/emotional saturation leads to overwhelm, understanding burnout can provide a helpful framework. Burnout, coined by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975, consists of three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decreased sense of accomplishment. Identifying social/emotional saturation involves introspection and assessing whether you are completely at capacity or have extra bandwidth without the desire to fill it.
How to avoid it
Establishing boundaries is crucial in managing relationships and avoiding saturation or burnout. Scheduling intentional quality time for self-care and completing the stress cycle are recommended. The Nagoski sisters' book, "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle," highlights the importance of physical activity, deep breathing, positive social interactions, and creative self-expression to combat saturation or burnout. Communicating with partners, asking for support, and adjusting other areas of life can also alleviate the pressure.
Understanding polysaturation and its relationship to burnout is valuable for individuals in all types of relationships. Recognizing our limits and desires allows us to foster balance and well-being. If you're experiencing saturation, communicate honestly with your loved ones and prioritize self-care. By exploring the boundaries of love and practicing self-awareness, we can cultivate healthier and more fulfilling relationships.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're diving deep into the concept of polysaturation and exploring the limits of love or at least our bandwidth for relationships. We're going to be discussing the factors that influence polysaturation such as time, distance, health, and how it differs from burnout and how it's similar to burnout.
We're also going to look at some alternate ways of thinking about polysaturation that can apply in other types of relationships, regardless of your relationship status, there should be something here for you in terms of balancing our emotional lives and our time to better understand our capacities and desires. Let's jump on into this and talk about polysaturation.
Emily: Immediately I wanted to discuss that and also how when you first are starting out as polyamorous I think there is this internal idea that you just have to go out and find all the partners you can, or at least like collect a few and see how that goes. Yes, as you move along more in your journey or maybe just as you get older, I don't know, it seems like perhaps one, two, three that's about all one can muster. I don't know about y'all.
Dedeker: There is that phenomenon, right, that when you're a newbie you want-- not for everybody, but some people want to do this polyam Pokemon Go like you said. Especially I think if you're someone who you feel like you felt non-monogamous or polyamorous your entire life or this is something you've been thinking about for a long time, then finally you have the opportunity to say yes to people and opportunities that previously maybe for many years or decades you had to say no to. That's understandable that you go out and then you say yes to everything at once.
Emily: Yes, totally.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. The question about if it has to do with age is interesting. We'll get into this more as we explore it, but I think a lot of it just has to do with what's going on in your life and what commitments you have. I think for a lot of people, as we get older, we get more of those things but that's not always the case. I've definitely encountered people at all different ages who seem to have way more capacity for partners than I would expect or something like that.
Emily: What season of life are you in currently at that moment? That can mean, are you maybe retired or are you just having kids leave the house and you have more time, or did you just finish a PhD program and finally you have all this free time that you didn't once have? Let's look at some definitions when we talk about things like polysaturation and burnout. What do those things even mean?
Polysaturation is a state in which a polyamorous person has as many significant relationships as they can handle at a given time. There's a lot of factors that influence polysaturation. Things like time or distance between partners. Maybe you have a big family that needs a lot of attention at a particular time in your life. Maybe you're growing your family in some way. Also, health concerns if you're super introverted or maybe you're really extroverted and you have ended up finding a lot of partners, and then you're like, "Shit, I can't handle anymore."
Also, other partners' expectations in terms of your time or in terms of how much they feel like they want to see you or not, and whatever types of relationships it is that you're having. I think when I was polyamorous I would have somebody that I saw maybe every month, other people that I saw maybe every week, then also a live-in partner, things like that. That can really determine how many people you may have at any given time.
Jase: Like a lot of the terms that have come up out of polyamory, like compersion or things like that, we don't have a clear origin of like, "Oh, this person invented this term at this time." That's something that we tried to look into for this, and basically, nobody that I came across knows. If someone does say they know, I'm going to be a little bit suspicious of it just because with the internet, sometimes it's hard to track down the origin of things like this.
Dedeker: Speaking of origins, we also need to define the term burnout which is related. That term we actually can trace its origin back to 1975. It's become a hot term these days. I think, especially millennial burnout.
Emily: 1975 I was shocked just because it feels so prevalent right now. I figured that that was a thing that maybe came into vogue more recently just as a term, but 1975, I'm wondering what was happening then. Was it the big wall streeters maybe doing a bunch of banking or something and getting real burned out? I don't know what was happening in 1975.
Dedeker: Yes, Maybe. More and more women starting to enter the workforce. Although I guess that really hit its peak or started to gain steam in the early '80s, but maybe more working mothers or mainstream at least suburban working mothers who probably would be the people in the front lines of burnout. I would imagine. I don't know. That's interesting, but burnout refers to things like being emotionally exhausted, having a decreased sense of accomplishment, maybe feeling less connected to your work, less inspired.
It can occur in many different aspects of life, not just work but also family life, personal relationships. There is a difference here in that when we talk about polysaturation, that is specific to polyamory, non-monogamy, especially regarding relationship or number of relationship capacity, while burnout is a broader term that's applicable to various life situations. Maybe we can put polysaturation under the broader umbrella term of burnout.
Jase: As with a lot of polyamory-specific terms, like I mentioned compersion a second ago, what to me is so interesting about them is that within polyamory, it gets us thinking of like, "Oh, look at these unique situations that we have. We should come up with words for those." We have things like compersion, feeling good when your partner feels good even if it doesn't involve you. Then we realize as we talk about it that this is something that everybody experiences.
It's not just exclusive to polyamorous relationships, but it finally was prevalent enough that it was worth making a word for it, so then it's interesting. Compersion is nice because it can still get used in any context, not just in these multiple romantic relationships, but then with this one, polysaturated, as I was thinking about it and you'll see this more and more as we get into this in this episode, but this concept applies in all relationships.
It's really not specific to polyamory or just multiple romantic relationships at all but because poly is in it, the polysaturated, I was thinking about what are some other terms we could use to broaden that concept. Some ones I came up with were things like connection saturated. It's like I've got enough connections in my life that I feel like I'm not able to give as much to all of them as I want, or maybe socially saturated, a similar idea and helps clarify that concept that these aren't necessarily sexual or romantic relationships but more it's about the social part.
The other one I like is emotionally saturated, which the thing I like about that one is that it helps cover it. It's not just about social obligations, but there could be something else that's taking up a lot of my emotional energy and bandwidth. That maybe it's not that, I've got so many plans I can't deal with it, but emotionally, I've just got so much going on that I don't want to take on anymore. Just to throw that out there to get us thinking about it because I think this is just such a useful thing to be aware of that most of us aren't. I think it's so cool that we actually have a word to describe it, and I want to make that more useful for more people.
Dedeker: I appreciate that. I appreciate that putting that lens on it almost gives it a little bit more of a holistic focus where again I think with non-monogamous folks, we can still get caught up in the how many partners is too many or how many partners do I have capacity for? Then it can be easy to put blinders on, not acknowledging, "Oh, but I also have my family relationships. I also have my two besties that I go to coffee with every week. I also have my work," really trying to look at the whole landscape. I think especially if you're in a position where you're trying to evaluate, is now a good time to start dating someone or say, yes, to dating someone, or is now a good time to get on the apps or not?
Emily: This makes me think about monogamous relationships and the idea of the nuclear family and how so often the nuclear family tends to be insular and not have much connection to a lot of people in the outside world. I do wonder if that's just simply because of that saturation in a variety of ways that you're talking about, Jase, like emotionally saturated or something along those lines.
Especially in certain points if it's like, "I can't think about anything else," or, "I can't do anything else." It's unfortunate that that is something that I think people just understand as that's just a reality, that's just a truth even though often we don't put as much time and effort into other connections as maybe we should be or maybe we want to be.
Jase: Yes. It's funny. It's making me think with the nuclear family thing you bring up about, I think so often what we see is the opposite problem there, where it's like, "I'm told that this is my only social world anymore and I feel so unsatisfied by this that I'm going to go have an affair or have a crisis or whatever." I'm like, "What's the opposite of saturated?" Maybe there's a problem on the other side that we haven't even thought about.
Emily: Yes, I don't know. I don't know what the opposite of saturate is.
Dedeker: Depleted in lack. I'm sure there's a fancier-sounding term, but that's just off the top of my head.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: As we could almost do a whole other episode just exploring that spectrum between, I'm not getting enough of emotional social engagement and sense of connection versus what we're talking about today, which is, "I have so much of this that I'm dropping the ball," or, "I'm feeling overwhelmed," or, "Feeling burned out," or whatever it is.
Emily: Dedeker, you talked about this a little bit before, but I think it's understandable to question how many partners is normal to have when you're polyamorous because I think normal may feel different from one person to another and it may fluctuate throughout the time that you are in polyamorous relationships. Especially maybe when you're starting out, like we said, you may want to be dating just everyone, one date per day of the week perhaps, or maybe when time goes on or you're at a specific challenging point in your life, that number may dwindle down to very few partners.
We tried to look at some research on polysaturation, but empirical research is really minimal out there, which makes a lot of sense to me. It largely because it requires researchers to have a definition of what counts as a partner. Those definitions are super diverse as diverse as polyamorous people themselves. We did find a survey from 2012 called The Loving More Survey.
This survey had a total of 4,062 participants, ranging in age from 16 to 92. It was an internet-based survey co-sponsored by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. The participants all self-identified as polyamorous, and the investigators were Fleckenstein, Berg Strand, and Cox. I love those names. They're great. What they found was that the average number of sexual partners in the previous year was just over five.
Now, that's an interesting distinction because that's about sexual partners, which right away when it said the word partner, I was like, "Oh, this is somebody that they're dating or seeing for maybe a long period of time, but here, they're talking about just sexual partners, so that's fascinating." Five seems yes, that's understandable to me that like, "Okay, maybe it would be five people," but to have five partners at a time to me seems like a ton.
Jase: Yes, but that's the piece we don't get to know. It's because, one, we don't know what counts as sex in this study. We also don't know, well, okay, how many other partners did they have that maybe they're not sexual with or how long did these last or-- There's a lot of question marks there, but it is at least interesting to have some kind of sense of what people answered.
Emily: Fleckenstein and Cox, so two out of the three from that last survey, they did another study in 2014 that specifically only looked at US adults older than 55. Again, it's not clear how partnership is defined here, but that survey found that most polyamorous people maintained two or at the most, three partnerships simultaneously. That's really fascinating and awesome that they did a study with people over 55 because that's almost never what people look at in studies, so well done.
Jase: Especially with polyamory. Yes.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: Yes, for sure.
Jase: This one does seem to be emphasizing more of the maintaining partnerships.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Again, we're not totally clear on what counts as a partner or not, but versus how many people did you have sex with? It's how many partnerships do you have or how many partners do you have?
Emily: That may actually be a little bit better in terms of research and looking at what constitutes as normal if that's what we're looking at here. That's the question that we're trying to answer. Then maybe two or three is more on the normal side of the scale.
Dedeker: Which I guess I think again, when I was in my early 20s first exploring non-monogamy, three felt like a nice magic number of ongoing partnerships that I felt like I could maintain.
Emily: Right, three. Three is great.
Jase: It often felt good.
Dedeker: Nowadays, I want to say within the past five years or so, the few periods of time where I have gone from two to three partners, my anxiety has just gone through the roof. That's not necessarily from what those three partners are doing, but from myself really of like, "Oh God, okay, three partners that I want to have good relationships with and take care of and spend time with, and oh God, oh God, oh God, how am I going to do that?" I think for me, three emotionally entangled relationships is probably a lot. I think for me, in order to have three partners, again, there needs to be very different expectations of how I'm going to show up or what shape those relationships are going to take.
Jase: Which is a great segue to our next section here, looking at getting beyond just numbers.
Dedeker: Yes, because it's not a number because all partnerships are created a little bit differently. It is more complex. On the Poly Land blog, Paige Turner wrote this piece called Full Up Or Not Hungry?: Polysaturated Versus Polysatisfied. Love new terms, always. Yes, so in that article, they bring up this interesting distinction between having capacity to take on more partners versus desire to seek out more partners, which I think is really interesting.
I think that I've gone through different periods of life where I maybe have a desire to go on a first date or to be dating someone new but don't necessarily have the capacity. Also, vice versa, where I feel like I have the capacity but have zero desire whatsoever to get on the app and then be expending my time and energy on trying to find somebody.
They also point out the fact that, for some people, non-monogamy can function as fulfilling a need for variety, a need to express your identity, a need to be relationally creative. It's often presented in this way. For other people, it's maybe not even necessarily a need, it can just be about freedom or curiosity, or exploration.
I guess I think about that as if you're a non-monogamous person and let's say you suddenly find yourself in a situation of having zero partners or one partner, does it feel like, "Oh God, I do need to rush out to still maintain my identity," or, "I do feel like there's a part of me that's just not alive or not being fulfilled if I'm not dating multiple people." Versus I think maybe if you're in a situation where it's less about that and just more about like, "Oh, I don't know, it's fun," or, "I don't know, it's fun to just explore new people or get to know new people or explore new relationships."
Jase: Yes, I think it's such an interesting thing to bring up where I know that I experienced this myself starting out in non-monogamy was this sense of, if I have time for more partners, I should have more partners, as in this polysaturation point is a goal. I don't want to say it like a goal, like, "Oh, keeping score," but more, it's like, "Oh, well, that's what you should be doing." You want to be dating so that you're dating all the time and you're so fulfilled and it's so great.
Now, for myself over the last few years, it'll be like, even just with one partner, I feel like I've got a lot going on in my life between that and my friendships and my job and this podcast and all these other things that sort of that, "Okay, I want to get myself to where I'm far enough from that saturation point that then I can feel more open to finding new relationships."
It just keeps making me think about this idea of, "Rather than trying to find the limit right away of this, I want to find a place where I'm comfortable." If I'm like, "Gosh, I really want another partner," okay, great, seek that out. It's like, "Okay, I think I might be okay," because if you've got that little extra bandwidth when you just happen to meet that random really cool, charming person, that's an option. Instead of that like, "Shit, I don't have time for this person."
I've talked to so many people who have that experience of like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know. I was on a trip and I met this person and they're actually from my town and I want to date them and they're so cool. We really connected and it's great, but I have no time. How could I do this? Do I have to change my schedule with my other partners? Whatever. It's got me thinking about that, having that extra room really frees up a lot of options, which is a nice feeling.
Emily: Definitely. There was a medium blog titled, what is polysaturation and How Do You Know When You're There? This was by Rachel Hope, and it points out some other factors that may significantly affect when polysaturation occurs. We're talking about some of them, but things like time, which includes how much time folks want together versus their alone time. There are a lot of us out there that feel like, "Okay, I don't need that much alone time. I feel great when I'm around a ton of people. My alone time can be pretty brief."
There are people that really, really need their alone time and they need multiple hours in the day in order to spend recharging. On the infiltrating episode that we did a few weeks ago, we found that people after the pandemic, they're more likely and willing to go further distances to date than they used to, but I think that really makes some people pause when they're interested in dating someone or not. They're like, "Well, this person lives 50 minutes away from me. It's going to take a really long time to get there. I just don't have the bandwidth to be able to do that now."
Also, if you have family members that need significant amounts of care or just time, small children, even aging parents, then you're probably not going to have a lot of bandwidth to go on dates. Also, your own health or physical limitations, things along those lines as well, that may make a difference in terms of how open you are to seeing new people.
Jace: A challenging one could be a time of year, the season differences, where maybe it's warmer, people are wearing less clothing on a day-to-day basis, so you want to date more of them. I don't know, or maybe as it's starting to get colder, it's like, "No, I just want to settle down with these ones I'm comfortable with." That could change a little bit. Emily mentioned the alone time thing. That may be a little bit related to an introversion, extroversion thing.
How much stimulation do I want versus how much do I just want to be chill and quiet or have my alone time? Then I think it's also worth pointing out that this can really change based on the type of relationships you're having. Dedeker you hinted at this where you're like, if you were going to date three people, again, you need to reevaluate what each of those relationships looks like.
An example of this would be if your partner expects a really intimate relationship where you are living together or spending a lot of time at each other's places, maybe interacting a lot with each other's partners, with your metamours, doing a kitchen table lap sitting polyamory, then that's going to take potentially a lot more time, and a lot more emotional energy because it's not just them, but also, all their other partners that you're needing to have some social interaction with and use that energy.
It could be someone who's a comet who you only see once a year or something like that. Then obviously I could have several partners that I only saw once a year, and maybe that's a strange setup, but I don't know, sounds cool There's a lot of different options for how that could look, and so I wanted to explore a little bit of that. Just some examples maybe from our own lives or things we've seen, just how it's really not about the numbers, how it's more about what types of relationships are you having and what are the demands that those relationships put on you.
Dedeker: For several years, I had two significant partners at once that I ended up alternately cohabiting with throughout the year and they were on opposite ends of the planet, which made things a little bit more difficult. I feel like my third partner was just like airplanes at that point. A couple of times during those years I would kind of try to go on some dates again, with the understanding of like, "I'm going to go into this and whoever I date, it's going to be pretty casual because I feel pretty saturated."
I just never really got anything to work for a long period of time as far as even having a third more casual partner. For many years, again, having those two significant partners felt pretty saturated to me. Maybe satisfied really, to be totally honest. Maybe things would've been different if, I don't know if I wasn't employed or something if I didn't also have life projects or this podcast or stuff like that. Maybe then I would have more bandwidth or wouldn't have felt as saturated. I'm not sure.
This can take many forms like Alyssa Gonzalez introduced us to that great turn of phrase of being polysaturated at one, where maybe you just have one partner and creative projects that you pour your time into, or you have one partner plus you're taking care of a newborn right now and you don't want to spend any of your little bit of energy or time on dating. Maybe that expands for some people that could be their four partners. They have one person that they live with, they have one friend with benefits, they have two people that they're just kind of dating or seeing occasionally. I've seen all kinds of different arrangements that people go through here.
Jase: One that I feel like is a trap, that I've certainly fallen into before is that like, okay, I'm dating two people somewhat seriously, and I'm also dating a couple more people that are newer, more casual relationships. Well, the problem is if those relationships go well and you're like, oh, I want to be spending more time and developing these relationships more, you can start out in a place of like, "Yes, this is a decent setup, this works for my energy level." Then it's like, "Oh no, I want to incorporate this person more into my life." Where is that bandwidth going to come from? That can be a challenge too if you've got, I don't know, too many irons in the fire. I was going to say ovens in the fire, but that's not the same.
Dedeker: No. Not too many ovens in the fire.
Emily: I was thinking about right when we all were starting out, I was in the quad relationship, and then for a brief period, Josh was in the picture. I also had this other guy that I was seeing. That's so many freaking relationships. I'm just shocked that I had that many people that I was seeing and that I was able to invest that much time into. It's really incredible. I'm like, yes, I do wonder. What was I doing at that time? I was just dating.
Dedeker: If we ever retire, we'll go back to that?
Jase: Maybe. I'd like to think that that could be a fun thing to look forward to.
Emily: This is a season in all of our lives where I feel like we're really hustling a lot and it's hard. It may be when we were not hustling as much, we had more bandwidth and more time to date, and that's just not the case. Our other partner are our jobs right now.
Dedeker: Yes, it's true.
Jase: I've thought about that a lot when I think back to like, "How did I do it?" I'm recently, and maybe this is partly why this is on my mind here as well is I'm considering getting back into the world of dating someone or someone's new, and it's a little bit scary and overwhelming. Also, just like, "Oh my gosh." I go back and forth between do I even have the energy or the bandwidth for that at all.
Even just having one partner right now, plus some close friendships that I care a lot about, plus a normal job, plus this podcast, which has grown more and more to more of a commitment, and all these things that I think back to that time of like, oh yes, when I was dating more, I was a lot, I would say less employed. This podcast took up less time, it was a much smaller thing back then. Dating was hard because I had a lot less money, but I did have a lot more time which--
Emily: You can never have it all, but not all at once. I don't know.
Jase: Maybe you can have everything everywhere all at once. I don't know.
Emily: Maybe.
Jase: Anyway, with all of that, let's get back into exploring just a little bit more about burnout to understand the origins of this term and what that's about. Then we're going to dive a little bit deeper into how do we identify this for ourselves, how can we prevent it, and what can we do about it in our lives? Before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show.
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Emily: We're back. Now. Let's talk a little bit more about burnout, which is something I think all three of us had experienced over different times in our lives.
Jase: I thought you were going to say over and over and over again.
Emily: Not over and over and over again all the time, but yes, I don't know. I feel like we're hopefully fairly good about understanding when burnout happens and that we maybe need to do something about it. It's tough. I think if you feel like you are polysaturated, and you have maybe some emotional or social saturation if you're not in a polyamorous relationship and all of that happens with a lot of overwhelming feelings, then you may be burned out, or you may want to look at the framework of burnout to try to determine what it is that you can do about going through this thing in your life right now. As we talked about before, burnout was coined as a technical term by Herbert Freudenberger. Did I say that right?
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: Yes, sure. Why not?
Emily: In 1975, which again is a long time ago. Now, my goodness, I'm shocked that it was then. It is defined by three components. The first is emotional exhaustion and that's the fatigue that comes from maybe just caring about something too much for too long that there's a point at which it's like, "Okay, I just can't anymore." That may be your job, a really intense project that's occurring in your job or I think for me feeling like I have to be at my day job when I'm not there, for instance, that can result in burnout. I think maybe for Dedeker it's great that you take time off from your job so that you can minimize feeling burned out.
Jase: We actually talked about this, gosh, almost two years ago now on Episode 327, about compassion fatigue of that just emotionally giving too much that you just-- I like the term burnout because it's like, "Yes, you've burned it all up. There's nothing more to burn here. There's no more fuel here that can be burned."
Emily: The next component is depersonalization, which is that depletion of empathy, compassion, and caring. That goes along with compassion fatigue right there.
Jase: Like an apathy kind of.
Emily: Yes. Then third, a decreased sense of accomplishment. That's really interesting. This unconquerable sense of futility or this feeling that nothing you do makes any difference. That's kind of like an existential dread maybe of, "Oh, whatever it is that I'm doing, it just doesn't matter. In the grand scheme of things, we're all just on this big machine. This big cog in the sky doing nothing really."
Dedeker: I also wanted to point out, I didn't do this earlier that I think this can happen and it doesn't have to be connected to a particular job. It doesn't have to be connected to a particular life situation or relationship situation. Sometimes this can literally just be the product of living under capitalism, living under oppression, living under just all the systems that we currently have to navigate on a day-to-day basis. Even if you love your job, even if you love your family. Even if you love your relationships and your partners and you get a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment from them, burnout can still happen.
Jase: I think that the decreased sense of accomplishment is one that in times when I've felt burned out. That's the big key of that sense of I'm doing lots of things and if I were to tell someone all the things I'm doing or all the things I did, they're like, "Holy, shit that's a lot of stuff." I'm like, "But it's not enough. I haven't done enough." I do think that is very much related to that concept of your value comes from what you accomplish and the sort of hustle culture and you've got to be doing all the things all the time. There's a lot of that glorifying of that mindset, which I know for myself really leads to that feeling of it doesn't matter how hard I'm working, nothing seems to matter.
It's all futile and I just have trouble caring about stuff or then I will care. The caring just makes me more upset because I don't think I'm doing enough or getting caught in that cycle. It's interesting because I think for me, I don't tend to think about burnout exactly as related to my relationships even though it affects everything. I do think it's worth pointing out how there can be those similarities, too. If it's just like, I'm giving so much of myself in so many relationships that I'm starting to not be able to care so much about anything or feel like I'm getting fulfilled by these things. Which I think can ironically lead us then to seek out more partners or more relationships to try to get that fulfillment that we're missing and can't even make the cycle worse.
Dedeker: Yes, I guess that's true. I think we see that with some people that can fall into maybe like NRE chasing or novelty chasing perhaps. Where it's if you feel like, "Oh, I've lost that high from this person that now I've been dating for six months or a year or whatever. Or I feel like now this relationship takes more of my energy and I'm not getting that same NRE high back, so I got to go find that with the next person."
Jase: Ironically, making it worse just burning yourself out more. With all of this, and I think we've been teasing it, and maybe it's obvious to you when you've hit that fully burned-out, social-emotional polysaturation point. Maybe you're not sure, maybe you're like, "Am I at that? I don't know. How could I determine? Or how can I tell earlier when this is happening if I'm on my way to this so I can avoid getting into it again?" The place to start here is to take a moment and check in with yourself. If you've been non-monogamous for a while, you can probably think back to different points in your life when you've felt more like this or not.
To think about first, are you feeling saturated as in I'm at capacity? I barely have time or maybe I don't even have time for the relationships I have right now, I could not possibly take on any more. Or are you maybe feeling satisfied, like that poly-satisfied thing that we talked about earlier of, maybe you have some extra bandwidth, but you're kind of good. Maybe that's okay. I think identifying that can help you get more of a feel for how much more bandwidth you might have so that you can be like, "Ooh, having this amount of buffer is good. This is the new goal. I want to have this flexibility here." I think it's interesting when you think back on your life, and I'm curious to hear from both of you about this, too. What are the things that told you shit? I'm saturated now, I've gone too far. We dug too deep. Our researcher for this episode--
Dedeker: Release a real ball rug of burnout. The burnout ball rug. No.
Jase: Ooh, the burnout ball rug. Our researcher for this episode, Dr. Keyanah Nurse put a note in here that for her, it's when she doesn't have any time for spontaneity. Where every hour is scheduled in an obligation to somebody, that's when she knows like, "Ah, I've done it. I've stretched myself too thin. This is too much. I'm at that saturation point." Not the satisfied point, but that fully saturated point.
Dedeker: I think for me a number of different symptoms will show up if I'm thinking specifically about relationship burnout. Definitely not having any alone time is definitely a part of it. If my social obligations, and I mean not just relationships with partners, but also with friends. If when I put those in the calendar, it starts to feel like an ugh, I want to cancel on this person, or I don't really want to go see this person. Even if I was the one who initiated wanting to hang out or whatever. That's a sign. If I'm starting to do that thing where I'm staying up later and later and later because that's like my only alone time, or it's my only time to read or play video games or do any kind of unstructured leisure activity and then that's starting to eat into my sleep, I think that's a part of it.
For me, I think what I've also learned from the past is I feel like maybe it's because of doing this show for so long. I feel like I hold myself to a very high standard of what I provide in a partnership or what I should provide in a partnership or how much I should communicate or how much I should be attending to a relationship. I think I just feel it in my gut that if I've taken on a number of partners and I just have that anxious feeling, I think that's how I know.
Emily: I really think this oversaturation stuff can apply to so many areas of our life. Because for me, sometimes it includes not just my commitments to people, but my commitments to stuff that I'm doing or jobs that I'm doing or whatever. Again, we have to do those things often because they're making us money and we're in this capitalist machine and all of that. If you are truly taking on too much you can start to feel that. If it feels like a resentment, that's what happens to me. A resentment of the world or a resentment of people that aren't having to work as hard as you or a lot of feelings, sorry for myself, things like that.
All of those types of little feelings internally or clues for me that hey, you need to change something here. Not just the world at large is out to get you or you're working too hard or whatever, but maybe you've taken on too much. I think that that's a good distinction right there to look internally and figure out what it is that needs to be changed. Because we really can't do everything all the time and maybe sometimes we take on way too much that we just simply can't handle at any given point. I know that I do. I think those are good ways to look out for that.
Jase: Something that just occurred to me while both of you were talking that happened to me more, again, years ago when I was doing a lot more dating, is when I find myself trying to focus on how to make my dating more efficient somehow.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: It's that kind of like, "Okay, can I arrange it to hang out with both of these people or these three people at the same time, so it's not going to take as much of my time." It's like trying to figure out what are the hacks I can do to make this more manageable. It's funny, I did that. Never even occurred to me, so just now thinking back on this and going, "Yes, that a pretty clear indication of that this is too much. If I'm trying to figure out how I can make it more efficient." Because it is like you said Dedeker of that feeling of like, "Oh, okay. Gosh, okay, when can I fit this in?" That's not a feeling I want to have about dates or hanging out with partners. I want to be excited about that or at least comfortable and like, "Oh, yes, that's going to be nice." I've definitely been at times where that's not how it feels because there's just too much going on.
Emily: What can we do about polysaturation? Is there anything to be done here? How do we avoid this burnout this polysaturation or how do we recover from it if we're a part of it and if we're in the thick of it currently?
Dedeker: I want to jump in just to say I really appreciate that point that Jase iterated that I think was from that Polyland article about how the goal doesn't have to be to reach the saturation point. Again, we can feel like, oh, I'm polyamorous or I'm non-monogamous. This is my identity and so this is what I should be doing. I should be filling up all my available time with partners. That can motivate that feeling. Or honestly, I think this can be a hangover from monogamy culture as well that we're taught, if you find the one, if you find your partner, you should be dedicating as much time and energy as you possibly can to that relationship.
Emily: All your free time.
Dedeker: Yes, that should be taking up most of your time so we can transpose that onto nonmonogamy and feel like, "Okay, the goal is to fill up this huge chunk of time with all my partnerships." I think for me, even just remembering that is really good insight.
Emily: We talked about this last week. Boundaries, a big one. Wow. Those are really internal boundaries for yourself, in my opinion. Not, again, anything that you're placing on anyone, but just saying to yourself, "Hey, I know that I'm at capacity, I know that I'm getting to a place where I need to change the way in which I'm doing something. Let me put some boundaries in place so that I can give myself time. For instance, nine o'clock every night, I'm going to stop whatever it is I'm doing and I'm going to set things down, start getting ready for bed, maybe take some time to read, take some time to do something fun just for me."
Jase: I love that Keyanah put this in here where she's the one who mentioned boundaries is a way. What I like about it is I think it's actually a really good example and one that maybe we could use more often when talking about boundaries and how we always present them as they are something that you do for yourself and by yourself. It's completely enforced by yourself, and it's to protect yourself and protect your well-being, and that it's not always fun to do. I think this is such an interesting example of that where it's, "Okay, maybe I've learned this about myself, or I realize, like, gosh, I can really overcommit myself. Even though I want to date this new person, or even though I want to get that dopamine hit of going on a first date and meeting someone new, maybe my boundary for myself is I'm like, I'm at capacity right now. I know even though that might be fun, I'm going to get myself into this situation that's going to be not fun for longer than it was fun."
I think that's such a good example of how it's like, Yes, boundaries aren't always fun, but they can really be so important and help avoid unhealthy situations. I really like that Keyanah put that in here.
Emily: Along with that scheduling intentional quality time for yourself so that you have time to deal with your stress about whatever it is that you're stressed about, it could be your job, it could be too many partners. It could just be, "Wow, I'm at a really challenging point in my career or in my life. So much is going on right now. So much is going on for us. I think we're feeling this over and over again."
Jase: I think just also this scheduling quality time for yourself, just in general, even besides dealing with any particular stress. It's just I know for myself, and I think we actually talked about this way back within the first couple of years of doing this podcast of this idea of scheduling one night a week that's your date with yourself, that to put that buffer in place so that it's not just like, "Any free time I have, some partners going to claim it." But kind of this, like, "No, I've got at least this little bit of protected time every week that's just for me." I think that--
Emily: Gosh, that sounds great. I definitely don't do that.
Dedeker: It does some good.
Emily: Yes, I'm like, "A week, maybe once a month," but that's lovely. Emily and Amelia Nagoski wrote a book called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. They talk about this thing completing the cycle. Dealing with the stress, whatever it is that that stress is in your life, even if the stressor has left you or ended, and they say, deal with the stress so that you can be well enough to deal with the stressor. If that stressor maybe comes back eventually at a different time in your life, you can deal with that stress that keeps happening to you and happening to your body so that you'll be better equipped for the future.
Jase: They make this interesting distinction about highlighting this difference between stress, which is the feeling you have, your body's response, and then the stressor, which is the thing causing that, the thing that's affecting that. That could be a relationship, it could be your job, could be a lack of sleep. There's any number of things that this could be. It could be health problems, all sorts of different things. The idea that there's the stress, which is the thing you're experiencing, and the stressor and that dealing with the two of those are separate from each other, that they point out that even if you were to get rid of the stressor, maybe this was a shitty relationship and I've broken up with it, that doesn't necessarily mean my stress is gone.
You still have to process that too. Or in that quote that Emily just read, deal with the stress so you can be well enough to deal with the stressor, it's maybe because I'm feeling so stressed, I'm unable to do these healthy coping mechanisms to deal with how much my job is asking of me or how much my family needs from me or whatever it is. By finding ways to handle my stress, I can then better manage that stressor to then help me have less stress. I just think that's a really interesting distinction that they make and definitely something worth thinking about.
To give an example of what we mean here is when a stressor happens, your body's stress response is all those hormones that are happening. It's endorphins, it's epinephrine that's pumping all of this extra stuff into your heart and your muscles. You become less sensitive to pain, your palms maybe get sweaty, your mouth gets dry. All these things that are part of this stress response that might save your life if you're being hunted by a bear or something like that. In our day-to-day lives, we don't get that physical expression of this. We can get stuck in, "There's all these hormones making me feel shitty and causing harm to my body so that I can run away from a tiger, but there's no tiger to run away from."
They talk about this concept of completing the cycle, which refers to letting your body move through this physically activated state and that that doesn't happen just because the stressor is gone, that that stress is still in you and getting that out of there. They talk about this is especially true if there's a chronic stressor in our lives. Activating this over and over and over again. It's much easier to get than stuck in that physical, physiological, neurological state of stress or it could be that there are things preventing you from expressing the stress that you're feeling maybe it's not socially appropriate to yell and scream and push things over or something like that . Or it could be safety that maybe it wouldn't be safe for us to express this.
They emphasize this idea of finding ways and this could be something where you would seek out professional help, but to help complete that cycle to allow that stress to be completed and can move out of you and to not think that, "Oh, just because I removed the stressor, now I should be fine."
Dedeker: This is very similar to a lot of the principles that are presented in somatic therapy and in somatic experiencing therapy that I'm trained in, but often some good ways of moving some of this exhausted stress, chronic stress, burnout stress through you, things like physical activity. It doesn't have to be going out and jogging around the block or going out and lifting weights. It could literally just be like shaking your body around in the car, or it could be some gentle stretching, or it could be jumping up and down, it could be whatever it is that your body is able to do that feels like it can move that out of you, right? Can move that energy out of you.
It could be paying attention to your breathing, being really intentional about very slow, deep breathing, especially really slowing down the out-breath. Or it could be leaning into the people around you. It's like if you've been running around all day at work, you're in a really stressful work environment, and then you come home, instead of it being about, "Okay, I got to button it up and make dinner and be okay, maybe it really is about I'm going to sit down with my partner and we're going to have a little chat on the couch about our day and have some tea together. It's just going to be 10 minutes. That's how I'm going to let go of some of this." It could be crying if you want to cry. Honestly, most of the time I think it's better to cry rather than just trying to hold back crying. Again, it doesn't have to be big and dramatic and in front of a bunch of people, it can be quietly in the closet by yourself if you want to.
Emily: In the walk and at work.
Dedeker: Oh, yes.
Jase: That's a good one, yes.
Dedeker: That's a good one.
Emily: You've done that before.
Jase: The floor of the kitchen's a good spot for me.
Dedeker: Aww.
Emily: Just laying it all out there to you all out there.
Dedeker: It could be leaning into getting affection. It could be something like wanting your partner or a friend or just someone you trust to squeeze you or do something very physically stimulating to your body again just to get things moving. It could be laughter, could be creative self-expression. There's a lot of options. A good place to start is just really starting to tune into your body and getting curious about what sounds would feel nice or what does it sound like my body wants to do right now which may be different from what sounds like it would be nice right now and then finding a way to approximate that.
Again, being able to complete the cycle is important because keeping your body in that activated physiological state which again is created by chronic stress. If you have a trauma history and that's constantly being activated, that can be an issue. This builds up over time and it can lead to other serious health issues. Again, all this goes back to the task of ideally avoiding burnout and avoiding oversaturation in the first place if you can.
Emily: If you are saturated or you feel like you're approaching saturation in your life, just try to be honest with everyone, the people that are closest to you and explain that feeling to them. Explain that maybe you'll be making some changes in the future or very soon to try to help with that saturation, to try to help ease those feelings. I think if they care about you, they're hopefully going to understand your need to take care of yourself in that moment. This also goes with new partners who may not know you as well, who may be a little bit more, "Oh I thought we just got into a relationship and it sounds like maybe you're pumping the brakes a little bit here."
You may be really excited about that new connection and tell them that but perhaps you're at a period of time where you need to only see them twice a month or once a month just because you've got a lot going on right now. I think it's good to manage expectations early on so that people aren't upset when they realize, "Oh, shit this person isn't going to be as available as I thought that they were going to be."
Jase: This is a trap I've fallen into a lot of times in the past.
Emily: I was thinking of you.
Jase: Where it would often be there was some circumstance in my life that put more free time on my plate. When I was going from gig to gig, it would be that time in between jobs where it's like, "Gosh, I've got all this extra free time. I'm going to start dating." Maybe if I start dating someone new during this time, "I'm like, yes, I'm available. Come over every night, we can hang out all the time. It's going to be great." Then there's that thing of like, "Shoot. How do I maintain this now?" Or, "Oh, okay, now my other partner who is on a trip now they're back and now suddenly I've got less time for this new person and that can feel like a slight to them or I'm going to try to make it work with the same amount of time that I was spending."
It's just an easy trap to fall into when your circumstances are changing week to week or month to month. To me, that comes back to a more difficult lesson I had to learn about the boundary thing which is understanding what's my real sustainable bandwidth for relationships and realizing that even if right now I've got more time, I need to try to keep to that one that I know is sustainable because even though I might want to do this right now, in the long run, this is going to end up adding more stress and frustration and hurt and things like that.
Dedeker: Also, something to bear in mind, some of us can forget this, you can also ask for things.
Emily: What?
Dedeker: Just as an example, if you're identifying, "Hey, there's a big emotional or a mental load that's fallen on me or that I've chosen to take on, or that I assume that I need to take on or be the one to take on, you can also ask your partners to help contribute to that or you can ask your partners even for a temporary favor of, I know I was the one who was supposed to take on like planning our date this week, but I'm just feeling really overwhelmed do you mind taking that on? Do you mind being the one to pick out where we're going to go and make the reservations or whatever it is."
Or with things like calendaring, the thing that all non-monogamous people need to eventually develop as a skill. "If it can be like, I'm so sorry, I'm just really overwhelmed right now, can you be the one to take a look at our schedule and figure out a time when we're going to hang out with these friends together or whatever it is? Something we've talked about on the show before specifically regarding having a radar, scheduling a radar, planning a radar. We affectionately call it radar daddying. Being really explicit of like, "Can you be the radar daddy this month of being the one to schedule it, to remember it, to remind us that we're going to do it, to make a plan of where and when we're going to do it?"
Things like that, because also ideally your partnerships are a two-way street. The whole point of being in human connection is that we're able to take care of each other. Maybe you might want to examine like, am I taking on too much? Am I taking on stuff that I wasn't asked to take on, or even if that's not the case, can I just ask? Can I just ask for help? Can I just ask for help from the people that love me? Chances are people will be happy to help you. Also, you may look at other areas of your life that you might want to adjust to give yourself some more breathing room.
Maybe even though you're saturated, you're really enjoying your partnerships and you like being able to spend this amount of time with the people that you're seeing and having this level of relationship. That maybe means, are there other things in my life that I could stand to do less frequently, dedicate less of my time or energy or bandwidth to the best of my ability?
Jase: That one's such a challenge for me. If it's like I'm taking on too many projects of that is there one of these that I could say, "Okay, I'm going to put this down for a while and maybe resume this in the future?" That's a tough balance. You don't want to just abandon all of your personal pursuits just for the sake of maintaining a ton of relationships. I often commit myself to too many different projects that I want to do. I've always got probably 20 different ones that I'd like to be doing and then maybe five that I'm actively doing something on. As an example of just some places to consider and look at for where you might be able to find some of that extra bandwidth.
It's possible that you'll need some help with that. I know this is something that I will often talk with my therapist about of this like, "Okay, I've got too much going on, can you help me figure out where can I get back some of this energy? What can I be doing to better take care of myself?" I've often found that spending less time on certain things, I may actually do just as good a job of that thing and also be in a healthier, better state and getting more sleep to show up better in all the areas of my life. Looking at some of these other tweaks in areas that it might not just be this one-to-one, "Ah, I have to have one less partner than this." It could be renegotiating those relationships or any other part of your life.
Just to end on this note of think creatively, think outside the box and look at what might be some other things that I could do because ultimately the goal here is that you want to be having a happy and fulfilling life, and you want to be showing up for your partners and your friends and your family in ways that are effective and that that matter and that are caring and there's not just everything is, ugh, this sense of obligation. By taking this time to really think about this and evaluate it and have some boundaries, hopefully, we can be doing a better job of that. I do feel like I've gotten better at it over the years.