426 - Repulsed by Romance or Just Numb? Listener Q&A
It’s time for another Q&A!
Today’s episode is our monthly Q&A, featuring questions from our amazing listeners and Patreon supporters! The questions we’re diving into today are:
“After doing the podcast all these years, how do you find you use the tools that are now in the book in your non-romantic relationships? Like was it easier to communicate and navigate issues with your editor? Do you find yourself using the tools with relatives, like checking which kind of response the person is looking for?”
“How do you have open and honest conversations about expectations, boundaries, and emotional attachments with friends or anyone you have close non-romantic/sexual relationships with when a wider culture only assumes that these conversations are the sole remit of romantic/sexual relationships? ”
“How do you deal with feeling undesirable because it feels like every piece of mainstream romance media is telling you that someone like your partner would rather be with someone of a different gender/presentation/appearance, and on top of that, they have other partner(s) who are more similar to that?”
“Have any of you experienced having multiple breakups or de-escalations and found yourself on the other side with little or no desire to connect with someone new?”
“What should you be mindful of as a hinge when starting a new relationship and how can you make sure existing partners feel nurtured and reassured?”
Want to submit your own question to be answered for our next Q&A episode? Consider joining our Patreon community at www.patreon.com/multiamory!
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 diving into some questions and answers from you, our amazing listeners. Each month we have a Q&A post in our private discord server and Facebook groups. Join those groups and look out for the post each month if you want to get your question answered on the show. This week, we have some questions about how to communicate honestly and sincerely in relationships besides just our romantic ones, as well as some emotional challenges for de-escalating or breaking up, as well as some tips for opening up and starting a new relationship with someone new when you're already dating someone else.
We're covering a broad range of topics in many situations in this episode, we're so excited to get to these, and hopefully, you find things helpful for your situations. Also, if you're interested in more of the communication tools, especially the ones that we will probably mention frequently in this episode, like Radar and the Triforce of Communication, you can check out our book by going to multiamory.com/book, or you can go and listen to the first nine episodes of this podcast where we cover some of those fundamentals.
Dedeker: Before we get to the questions, we have to give the disclaimer that while we have spent a lot of time studying and learning about healthy relationships and communication, we are not mind readers. Our advice is based solely on the limited information that we have with these questions. Please take it with a grain of salt. Everyone's situation is unique. We encourage you, of course, to use your own judgment, seek professional help if it's needed. Ultimately, you are the only true expert on your own life and feelings, your decisions are your own. With that said, let's get started.
Emily: Alrighty. The first question is about our book, which is fun. After doing the podcast all these years, how do you find you use the tools that are now in the book in your non-romantic relationships? Was it easier to communicate and navigate issues with your editor? Do you find yourself using the tools with relatives, like checking which kind of response the person is looking for? Good question.
Dedeker: Was it easier to communicate with our editor? I don't know. The book writing process took so long and there were so many twists and turns and secret pits full of spikes that we fell into unexpectedly. If anything, it did confirm to me just how communication in general is such a precious and and delicate thing.
Jase: I will say that I think something that helped the three of us get through the whole process because as Dedeker hinted, there were some really stressful times and snags that came up. Honestly, less to do with the writing of the book and more with all the other logistics around, the printing and the layout and all those other details that had honestly not even occurred to me that that was going to be part of writing a book.
Hitting those snags, I think one of the tools actually from the book that we used a lot was Microscripts. Basically, it's like something would happen that was really stressful, but usually between the three of us, someone would find something funny about it, or maybe once we'd all recovered some joke that we could reference again later. Some funny turn of phrase that someone used or whatever. I think that we've become very good together of finding those little bits of idiosyncratic language, those little things that we can whip out as a joke to make each other laugh and to diffuse some of the tension that can come with just constantly having to make decisions and try to organize things when it's chaotic.
Emily: I think a really common theme throughout the book is meta-communication and also overcommunicating, especially when you're doing a lot of that in written form, it's difficult to get nuance out of just writing something down. I think you have to be extremely explicit in the way that you discuss and talk about something. That was really necessary, especially when we're in Google Docs going back and forth with things like our editor or our publisher is stuff like that. We really have to get like down to the nitty gritty and granular about what it is that they want from us and what it is that we need from them. Things like that.
Dedeker: I would say to expand this because the question also asked about using tools with relatives and non-romantic relationships in general, when I think over the process, and I also think about all of my non-romantic relationships, I think probably the two tools that were the most within my grasp was either the Triforce. Often that means not necessarily explicitly asking someone, "Hey, t1, t2, t3," or needing to give them a monologue about, "Hey, I use this particular formula for figuring out what you want to get out of the conversation."
Just being aware of that meta-communication level of things and being able to say, "Oh wow, I'm so sorry that you're going through that right now."
Emily: What is it that you need from me?
Dedeker: Yes, would it be helpful if you want to sit and like brainstorm about next steps or do you want to just talk through it and get your feelings out? Sometimes, it's like massaging it and translating the Multiamory ease into what, I don't know, a language that's maybe a little bit easier to understand out in the non-podcasting world. I think outside of that also probably the boundaries tool, honestly. I think once we start getting into business-related things where I don't know, I think having a really clear sense of what, do you feel okay with someone asking from you? When do you feel okay saying no? When do you not feel okay saying no?
Really getting into the nitty gritty of what's the resistance to putting up a boundary here? Is a boundary a most appropriate thing for this situation? I would say those are the things that have been the most helpful to me.
Jase: One thing I was going to throw out there that this has come up for me, especially in work situations, but also with certain family members or friends, where the way that we often talk about the triforce is, that idea of like, do you want advice or do you just want some emotional support. Between triforce two and three, that tends to most often be the two that get confused, someone wants one and you give them the other. What I found though is that in a lot of situations, like in the workplace to say like, "Do you just want some emotional support?" This doesn't feel like an appropriate thing to say.
I've been still trying to refine this, but trying to figure out what's the best way to present that option. What I've come up with so far is just going for support mostly. Like, oh my gosh yes, totally. Then wait for them to ask a question, something that's more clearly a question before I start jumping in with advice. Because I feel like sometimes just starting with that, listening out for the, are they asking for something specific versus are they just venting. Are we just bonding by them venting over this thing or is there a real question here?
That's been something that I think being aware of the triforce has made me much more in tune with that. Is there really a question here or am I just trying to jump in and tell them how to do things when there's really no question?
Emily: I think that's huge and something that I hope a lot of people who read our book take away from It is being better listeners as well. Just the importance of being able to try to see what it is that the person across from you needs rather than you jumping to the conclusion that you already know what it is that they need. I think that's huge and that's something that so many of us just automatically do because a lot of us are very ego-driven and believe that we just have the answer even if we don't or even if the person wants something other than that.
I would hope that exactly what you just said, Jase, that like you take the time to listen and to respond in a way that clearly is what they're wanting from that interaction rather than just automatically thinking, "I know what's best and I'm going to give it to you."
Jase: Yes. This next question is actually a little bit related. This one goes, how do you have open and honest conversations about expectations, boundaries, and emotional attachments with friends or anyone that you have close non-romantic, non-sexual relationships with when the wider culture only assumes that these conversations are the sole remit of romantic or sexual relationships?
There's almost an assumption in the society we live in, that these kinds of love relationships just run on autopilot, and we only ever talk to partners in serious committed relationships. Any attempt at having conversations about these relationships can sometimes be misconstrued as attempting to escalate the relationship or to turn it into something else. This gets especially messy when other friends might not be on the same page with relationship anarchy or just being aware of these concepts of communicating intentionally. Yes, all of this is so true. That's just like, "Yes. We need to talk about this one."
Dedeker: Yes. I'm trying to think back to any time I've had a friend approach me wanting to check in on something or have one of those "Serious we got to talk conversations," which I don't think we're used to having with our friends unless something's really wrong. We really got to work some stuff out. I'm trying to think about what helped that to feel normal. I don't know. I think just being forthright instead of it just being like, "Hey, can we have a check-in"?
Or "Hey, can we talk" conversation being more specific about like, "Hey, I've had X, Y, and Z on my mind lately. This is what I'm hoping for. If we can talk about it. Maybe I want to clarify, this is what I'm not hoping for. I'm not hoping that you think that I have some weird agenda or get freaked out or something like that. Can we take an hour to grab a coffee and talk about X, Y, and Z," or whatever it is. I think for me it's just, I don't know really being radically honest about what's going on. Again, I recognize that of course, there's always the risk that you're going to run into just the weirdness of spooking somebody, right?
Someone who doesn't understand because maybe it's dramatic to say you're breaking the social contract, but you're definitely pushing the envelope of the social contract, right? It's true. It is this assumption that like, "It's not appropriate for a friendship to have these kinds of conversations or that's weird. You're only going to do that if you want to really get intimately closer to someone." Again, I think it's always going to be that tension and finding that balance, right?
Jase: I'm also trying to think about how this has shown up either in things that I've brought up with partners or that they've brought up. The thing that keeps coming to mind is when we're in a relationship that we're approaching intentionally, and this question asker very nicely points out that even in the world, even in the larger culture where most people are not very intentional about their relationships period, there is still at least a bit more intention with the way most people approach their romantic and sexual relationships.
At least once they get to the point of committed or official or whatever, there's that like, "Okay, now I've given it a label. This is something that there's a certain expectation I'm going to put some effort and thought and communication into."
The degree to which that communication actually shows up, whatever. That's another question. I think that when you're outside of that type of relationship, the idea of doing something like a full-on radar where you're kind of like, "Let's sit down and really talk through the aspects of our relationship. How can we improve it? What do we want to work on"? Things like that feels like that's where you can very quickly make someone feel like, "Oh, gosh, is this becoming a much larger commitment than I thought? Are you trying to escalate this into something, even if it's not sexually, but is this becoming something that I'm not ready to take on all this extra emotional work and burden and stuff like that?"
What I feel like I've seen be more effective is as Dedeker mentioned of bring up a specific topic of like, "Hey, I want to talk about this thing has been on my mind about the amount of alone time I have. I was wondering if you could help me out with that. Sometimes, I get over-committed with work and my friends and stuff, and just help me remember that," as a cue for also them to realize if you're not hanging out with them, it's not personal against them, it's just, "I need more of my alone time," as an example, or maybe talking about expressing appreciation for something that they did.
If it is like I would like to have an expectation that this friend would be someone that I can talk to when something difficult happens in my life that maybe you do that once, communicate to them afterward. "That really meant a lot to me, I really appreciated that." This is on my mind actually, because I just sent a message like that to a friend of mine earlier today, or maybe last night I forget, being like, "Hey, I didn't say it at the time, but I just wanted to say I really appreciated your support the other day and your encouragement," and things like that. "That really meant a lot to me."
Our relationship was comfortable enough that I could say things like that. I wouldn't say that necessarily in all my different relationships, but in that case, it helped to positively reaffirm the things I wanted without being like, "We need to sit down and have a talk." That's what's popping into my mind right now. I'm curious if anyone else has some cool ideas on this.
Emily: I feel like so many of these conversations only occur with somebody that's not romantic if you are in conflict with them. I think that's the really challenging part about all of this. I think about a particular relationship, a particular friendship where there was a lot of turmoil in that friendship for a time. When we repaired it, that happened after a lot of letter writing to each other, not necessarily seeing each other that much. Finally, coming back together and more firmly establishing things like boundaries within that relationship, things that we felt like we were okay or not okay to talk about.
If you start discussing this particular thing or saying this particular thing, maybe I'm just going to take myself out of the conversation, stuff like that. It's tough because I would like to include those types of conversations in a relationship that's not romantic when it is going well, or even before that even becomes an issue, before the need for repair becomes an issue.
That's a really tough one, I agree. I think maybe if you establish it upfront in a friendship, especially if you feel like, "Hey, I'm getting really close to this person. I really want them to be in my life in a meaningful way. I would love to do the relationship anarchy smorgasbord with them," and talk about what their thoughts of this relationship are and what they're excited to include in it or not. If we want to go on a trip together or something like that, then maybe we can come up with a game plan for that through a monthly radar check-in, or do a short truncated period of time where something like a radar could be implemented.
I think it's interesting because when you're not enmeshed with a person day in and day out, like you potentially would be with a partner, it's like, "Why do you need these types of really granular communication tools?" I love the idea that you could incorporate them and we clearly talk about the fact that you should incorporate them but I agree with this question asker that it is an interesting conundrum of when is the right time?
Jase: A social puzzle.
Emily: Yes, a social puzzle. I love that.
Dedeker: I don't know if this is exactly in line with the question, but it is making me remember an article I read in The New York Times a few months ago that was talking about setting up an 8-minute phone call with your friends. It's specifically 8 minutes. The idea being that it's getting yourself to stay in connection with your friends, but we all have busy lives and families and jobs and a full calendar or whatever it is. Often, we have these friendships where maybe we've drifted apart, maybe they moved across the country, maybe it's just difficult for it to get our schedules in line.
The article was all about pitching your friends. I'm like, "Hey, let's just literally take 8 minutes. We're just going to talk on the phone and that's it and just talk about our day, talk about our lives, whatever." It's the kind of thing that makes me think of, maybe it's less about, "Hey, I need to put you on a formal radar," and maybe it's scaling that to something that makes more sense for the level of entanglement of the relationship and closeness and things like that. Maybe it is, "Hey, can we have Friday morning tea together," or is it literally just, "Can we have an 8-minute phone call on Saturday morning to catch up"?
Emily: You do Marco Polo with some of your friends, Dedeker? That made me think of--
Dedeker: I used to Marco Polo back in the day. Now, I'm more likely to exchange audio messages on a regular basis. Things like that.
Emily: That's really unique to me. I wouldn't generally do that, but I think that that's really interesting too, because you may have a time where you're like, "You know what, I don't really want to do that anymore." I appreciate the fact that just because you established one thing in a relationship doesn't mean that it has to continue forever. You can change and update and being able to have these types of communication, discussions with people, I think makes it possible for you to be able to do that.
Dedeker: Maybe the takeaway I guess that I would like is, unfortunately, we're not in a culture where we can just flip a switch and everyone's very relationship anarchy-versed or educated, and everyone's just so comfortable to be blurring the lines between what's reserved for romantic relationships versus what's reserved for friendships. We can find ways to sprinkle in little bits of intentionality. We can find ways to slowly enroll the people closest to us in the ways that we like to communicate with them, which maybe it is, "Hey, part of being my friend is I like to use the Triforce," Or "I like to have a check-in occasionally, or I like to create these rituals like a regular eight-minute phone call."
Maybe it's not going to be a carbon copy of the intentionality and tools that you bring to your romantic relationships, but there's still ways that we can sprinkle that in I think.
Jase: I think just one last thing that occurred to me I wanted to throw in here is for the men out there listening, when it comes to your male friendships, I have found, and your mileage may vary depending on your social circles, but I have found that both myself and my male friends who are not at all in the relationship anarchy world or non-monogamy world, or any of this kind of stuff, very much not, don't listen to the podcast, don't any of that. I've found that finding a way to give those messages, like the one that I mentioned earlier of that like, "Hey, I just wanted to say I really appreciated you supporting me."
Or, "You know what? I think it's really been awesome how you've been around to help out since my kid got born I really appreciate that." Or whatever it is. Those kinds of things that I think as men, sometimes were discouraged from being emotional and sentimental in that way with our guy friends. I found it is almost always, I can't even think of an exception, always received really well. I would also just throw that out there for anyone who's having that struggle to be like, go for it. Find a way that feels genuine and you think your friend won't feel is weird. I think that most people are more comfortable with that emotional appreciation and sharing than you might think they would be. Just to throw that out there.
Emily: Love that.
Dedeker: Well, I hope we answered the question. We got pretty broad with that.
Jase: I think it was the question covered a broad range.
Emily: It was a discussion.
Dedeker: I'm going to move on to this next question. This is also a longer one, but I think very important and relevant. How do you deal with feeling undesirable? Because it feels like every piece of mainstream media is telling you that someone like your partner would rather be with someone of a different gender or presentation or appearance. On top of that, they have other partners who are more similar to that. They give some backstory to clarify all that a little bit.
My partner is amazing and does so much to make me feel loved, desired, and wanted on a regular basis. For context, my partner is a very gender-conforming, but pansexual man, and I'm a very gender-non-conforming, androgynous, trans-masculine person. Whenever he has partners who are women or more feminine, I feel like they must be preferable to me because it feels like society says femininity is the most attractive thing to men. I don't know if this would be considered heteronormativity or internalized transphobia or not, but it makes me feel bad on a regular basis. The kicker is, he said multiple times that an androgynous presentation like mine is the most attractive thing to him but I just never see that sentiment expressed in the outside world.
I have a lot of thoughts about this, but do y'all want to sound off first?
Emily: It's a lot.
Jase: It translates to so many other things besides this specific one. It could be about anything about your appearance, your outwork presentation to the world.
Emily: The fact that I'm aging.
Dedeker: Oh God.
Jase: You're right. There's so many things.
Dedeker: I was going to go ahead and clarify that I know I personally don't have this exact lived experience, but again, I can think about many different proxies of feeling like, oh, the mainstream is setting up that my partner would probably like someone of this particular body type instead, or just of a particular, I don't know, physical or appearance type in general. Or maybe someone who acts in a particular way or has a particular type of job. We're all living unfortunately in the flow of there being, I don't know, particular stories and images presented to us of the way that things should be or what we should find attractive or what we should find sexy.
I think that this is an issue where of course there's going to be an internal piece to this, and there's going to be an external piece to this. The internal piece is the, you can't examine is this my own internalized transphobia, internalized misogyny, internalized whatever. You can think about what counter spells help you get through that, what are the affirmations? What are the ways that you can affirm your own desirableness, your own worthiness? You can go and get support, you can work it out with a therapist. You can find other people who you feel like are similar to you, who maybe share some of the same frustrations and you can vent those frustrations and things like that.
I know for myself, it's really important for me to be aware of my own media diet. That if I'm still consuming a media diet or a social media diet that reinforces a lot of those things, it can really make me feel shitty about myself very quickly. That's the internal piece of it, but then there's also an external piece of that. I think the external piece breaks down into looking at your own relationship, looking at your partner, and then also looking at your world. I think the relational part, it sounds like this person's partner is very supportive. They've clarified that their partner's very supportive, makes them feel loved, desired, sexy, stuff like that.
I think you can still talk about it with your partner. If it sounds like this channel of communication is open, and I think this is a great conversation, again, to really use the triforce to clarify because it could be, "Hey, I want to talk to you about something that I'm struggling with and some feelings that come up for me, and let's brainstorm on a way that could help make that feel better." Or it could just be, I don't need you to do anything different. I don't even need your sympathy. I just need you to hear me and I just need you to see that this is something that comes up for me.
I think that can be super helpful. Again, I think if you have a partner who is receptive to that and you're able to have this conversation at a time where you're calm, you're connected, you're feeling safe, could probably be a really good conversation. Then when we look externally to just the world, I don't fucking know, it's frustrating. It's frustrating for me and I live in a body that's considered conventionally attractive by many standards. I have my own particular corners of "weirdness" or "not being desirable", but even for me, for most of us, it's frustrating.
Emily: Even Emily Ratajkowski probably feels less than in some way at times. I'm sure.
Dedeker: I don't who that is, but she has a hot name so I assume that-
Emily: She's to me, very, very, very attractive. 100% like, I said earlier, the aging thing. That's been so difficult for me as I've continued to age. Because you look at old pictures of yourself or you look at people who are younger than you and you just know, "Yes, I'm never going to be that again, but it is what it is." So many people don't even get the opportunity to age. I think it's important to embrace the parts about yourself that you can love when you can. That's easier said than done. This is also easier said than done, but believe what your partner tells you about how much they love and respect, and care and find you attractive.
It may not matter in the grand scheme of things at times, but if there are moments where you can grasp onto that realization and that knowledge that I'm with someone who really treasures me in all of the ways that they tell me they do and that's what I should focus on believing.
Jase: Something that the question asker here brought up that we didn't read in the question because we tried to trim it down a little bit, but was talking about if they watch movies or TV shows that all the attractive people in the show are a certain way and tend to be feminine is the thing that's desired. Also talking about their partners' TikTok feed being filled with all these conventionally attractive, very feminine people and being like, "Oh gosh, that's what he's seeing all the time. That must be what he wants."
I just wanted to bring back and emphasize again what Dedeker talked about with the social media diet. That the fact that that's what's out there and whatever it is, it could be about attitudes about money, or attractiveness or race, or all sorts of things in addition to gender here, but just really being aware of what you're consuming and seeing if there's any ways that you can be consuming media that is different from that and is more of a variety than that.
I would recommend this just in general for everybody actually. Even if it's not just about your own personal feeling of self-worth and desirability, but just in general, it's great to expose yourself to more things and broaden your horizons in terms of who gets portrayed as powerful, who gets portrayed as sexy, who gets portrayed as, I don't know, masculine or feminine or any of those things. Who gets portrayed as intelligent, even?
There's lots of different ways this can look. Easier said than done, like everything. Looking out for those things, seeing if there are some influencers that you can follow who do have a more positive way of expressing something different than that mainstream, or looking for films and TV shows. A lot of times, if you broaden out to look for shows and films from other countries that have slightly different beauty standards.
A lot of it's pretty universal worldwide because of the dominance of certain cultural ideas in media, but you can still get a lot more variety than you would get just watching the mainstream blockbusters and things like that. Watching more independent films. I've been thinking about this too in terms of games. If you play video games or things like that, it's like you have to find them.
There are a lot of games now made by people who are very specifically being like, "Yes, I want my protagonist to not just be a White guy. I'm going to have to do something different with this. They're going to have a different body type," or dating simulators where the people that you're meant to be attracted to and want to date in the dating simulator have different body types and races and gender identities and things like that.
They exist, and the good news is you can leverage the algorithms for good as well, so as you start changing your social media diet and what games you download, and what movies you watch, those services are going to start recommending to you more things like that. If you're watching all this mainstream stuff, you're just going to get more and more of that because it assumes that's what you want. It's not going to encourage you to broaden your horizons. You've got to bring that piece and hopefully, it helps you with that.
Dedeker: Coming back to the whole world question, I'm afraid I only have complaints. I don't have solutions.
Emily: What are some of those complaints?
Dedeker: Something that has frustrated me for a long time now is I've made this effort for a few years now, of, "Okay, I'm going to--" I'm mostly off social media these days, but when I was more active on it was like, "Okay, I'm really going to tailor my feed to feature different body types, both men, women, non-binary people, things like that. Different people being portrayed as sexy, different people being portrayed as powerful," like Jase was saying. Different people being portrayed in different types of relationships that maybe you wouldn't expect based on the mainstream.
We've seen corporate culture and advertisers start to pick up on this. I think it was so famous when Dove started doing their body-positive campaign which still had a lot of its own problems. I think especially in a lot of the stuff that gets marketed to women, like in beauty products and fashion products. I'll see like, "Oh wow. They have all these plus size models or this model with acne or a model with vitiligo, or an aging model, an older model, a model with gray hair," or whatever.
I'm like, "Oh, that's so cool." Then I'm like, "Wait, why the fuck aren't you showing this to straight men?" Why the fuck aren't you also changing the story over there and portraying all these different women as sexy also there. No, I know, and it just freaking gets my goat. That's the mildest way that I can say it. I know that starting to change. I know, what was it last year, Sports Illustrated finally had a plus size cover model for their swimsuit edition.
It's starting to change, but how do I turn this into solutions? To who? Let's see, can I turn this car around into solutions? It gives me a new appreciation for anyone who puts themselves out there. Whether you are someone who's super famous or whether you just started Only Fans because you were bored or whatever it is. If you don't have a body type that's considered conventionally attractive, or you don't fit the mainstream and you're still putting yourself out there as sexy and desirable and confident, it helps. It does help.
I'm not saying that this is what we all have to do, but it's that same thing of representation helps awareness, helps people who do feel like they can connect to their own sexiness and desirability and have ways of expressing that and showing that. I think that helps. Does that track? I know that's only one small piece of a very large puzzle with very, very large far-reaching implications and systems that have been in place since long before we were born. I guess that's where all my complaining has led me to in this particular moment.
Jase: I think that just being aware of what we consume and all of us together being like, "Yes, let's look for more than just that typical thing." Because clearly with these companies, it's like they see, "Okay, someone's responding when we start showing something different." The more of us who respond positively to that, I do think it helps. I know it's frustratingly slow and frustrating to have to rely on capitalism to do that work, but that's the world that we're in.
That's where we are right now. Just one of the many little things that we can do is making our own content like Dedeker mentioned, or being proactive about looking for content that's different from that mainstream. Again, when it comes to movies or shows or video games or things like that, or even YouTubers or Tiktokers or anything like that. Before we move on to our last couple questions for today, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show.
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If any of them seem interesting to you, go check them out. It does directly help support our show, and if not, just taking the time to listen also helps us to get that sponsorship from those companies.
Emily: We're back. Let's move on to the next question. Have any of you experienced having multiple breakups or deescalations and found yourself on the other side with little or no desire to connect with someone new? I've been having the experience over the last couple of years of desireless, even when being presented with ostensibly good options to connect.
I found that connected to my grief is a feeling of numbness or repulsion around romantic and physical and deep emotional intimacy. If I'd been experiencing this all along, I'd probably see myself on the ace spectrum. Now I'm beginning to worry that I could actually get used to being alone. It feels bizarre, maladaptive and it's starting to scare me. I feel like I'm only recently coming out of it, but so many of the feelings I used to feel easily seem inaccessible.
Jase: I just wanted to start out by saying I really related to this question when this came in and that's why I wanted to be sure that we talked about it on this episode. I guess I just want to start with the big thing that I think is worth acknowledging here is based on when you're asking this now, I don't know the timing of all of this, but something that I've been trying to be really aware of for myself is, is the significant emotional impact of a pandemic happening during these last few years.
I think that it's led myself, and I feel like I've seen this in a lot of other people, to have a little bit more of this, I guess I call it numbness or a just not connectedness or just can't get excited about anything because it could all be taken away from you again at any moment. I think we had so much back and forth during the pandemic and there's still a lot of fear and concern and worry and it divided a lot of people and challenged a lot of relationships.
Even if these breakups and things happened before that, like in my case, my last de-escalation or breakup was right before the pandemic started, but still it was like that compounded that. It's like, oh, you're dealing with some grieving then also like everybody's grieving our world changing out from under us in a way and hasn't gone back. Let's face it.
Some people are like, "Wow, pandemic's over." Gosh, that was wild. It's like the world has changed and it'll never be the same for any of us and we've all changed. I guess I just want to start by saying acknowledge that and don't think, "Oh, something's just messed up with you, or something's messed up with me because I feel differently or I have a harder time getting excited about new relationships or having that easy access to some feelings."
Is something I've been going through as well. I feel like we've talked about it a little bit on this show in the past, but just that idea of it's hard to find some excitement sometimes or maybe some courage or bravery or enthusiasm that I used to have is harder to find, and yes, I think the pandemic is a significant part of that.
Dedeker: Again, without knowing how soon after these breakups this question was asked it's hard to tailor the answer, but I think this experience of not having the desire to connect, sometimes it can show up even more dramatically as that sense of, oh, "I'll never love again," or "Oh, it's just not worth it to put myself out there," or "I'm going to swear off dating," or whatever it is. I think that having that sense is actually adaptive, if you think about it especially when you're still recovering.
Like it's adaptive for your heart and your brain to be like, "Don't do that thing again, that you're hurting from. Let's just not do that." It's your nervous system and your brain and heart looking out for you to feel those things. To put you in this kind of low energy state, or maybe just a low craving state, a low desire state that there's probably a reason for that. If these things are still relatively fresh, I'd like to assure people that they don't need to get freaked out by that. It's okay.
Maybe even when you're in the thick of it to even indulge that a little bit. Over time, that does shift for most people. I mean, because the question asker is saying, "I'm beginning to worry that that this is not a good thing for me. That this is bizarre and this is maladaptive and this is scary." I don't know. I think it's the thing where, to rope it back to the pandemic, that if you're finding yourself not wanting to connect to anybody, and I'm talking not even just romantic like not even connecting to friends or to family members or stuff like that. If it's becoming easier to just get used to being isolated and alone, that's when I would start to worry a little bit.
Unless you're doing something very intentional, like you're a monk and you're going to go live in a cave for a year to deepen your spiritual practice, that's different, but in this case I think if it were me, I would take it beyond looking at it through a romantic lens and more looking at, am I getting intimacy and connection and socialization anywhere even if it's with people I already know. It doesn't have to be about going out and making new friends, but am I staying in touch with the people that I love and care about? Am I at least getting some type of intimacy and closeness? I think that's the first place that I would look before being worried about should I be wanting romantic intimacy or not?
Jase: Something else I just wanted to jump in with, because this is something I've been talking to my therapist about now for several months is, if it's specifically about dating and wanting to feel that desire or that excitement again like about having interest in it, that one of the things that he's talked to me about is this idea of just really thinking through like, okay, have you ever had good dates before? To start with that and being like, "Okay, yes. Sure, of course."
How did that go? Was that a good experience? Was that positive? It's like, "Okay, yes, yes I can think about sometimes it has been." It's just reminding myself that I do have some historical evidence that dating can be fun, can be exciting. I also have historical evidence that it's stressful or scary that I feel like I screw up or that someone's weird to me. There's all that too, but it's like those things are easier to go to for me right now, so really consciously trying to remember, yes, sometimes this girl is great.
When I met Dedeker or Emily or someone else important in my life, or maybe they became a best friend or something like that. Yes, I've got a lot of those really good examples, and I've got some bad ones which are easier to think of, but then the second part of that is that just thinking like that has not changed it overnight for me. I feel like I got discouraged a little bit of being like, yes, okay, that makes sense. I can think about that. Then just still feeling like, "No, I just don't, I'm just not feeling it."
But thinking, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to give it some time. Let myself think about that a little bit, let myself process it. Play with the idea of, oh, I could maybe go on a date that'd be interesting. Oh no, I don't know."
Let it go back and forth and let myself gradually work toward that and think about that and stay open to those possibilities. Like it's just so easy to go to a place of panic and worry about like, "Oh gosh, what if I'm broken and this isn't ever going to fix." But, instead really trying to lean into being patient while being proactive in changing it.
Emily: I just want to throw out there that being single is also a very valid okay choice. Even though yes, we have so many things like our last question telling us that we need to do certain things or live a certain way or look a certain way. A lot of that is you are only a valid, worthy person if you have a spouse or partnerships or romance in your life, but I think of my mom who very much decided, "I'm not going to be in a romantic partnership and hasn't been for the majority of my life," and I think she's found so much peace not being in any romantic partnerships, and that is great for her. It used to make me wonder, "Oh, would she be happier with somebody? Would things be different for her in her life?"
I really truly think that she's extremely content in her singleness and that that is the best thing for her at this point, and she gets romance through movies or in other various ways, and that is totally okay, and has a lot of great relationships outside of just romantic partnerships. A lot of great friendships. Our relationship is really strong. I think yes, if you want to go out and maybe eventually be in a romantic relationship again and find that that's the best thing for you and want to try it, go for it, but if you don't, that's also okay. It really is. At times, when I have been alone it's been healing. I think both of you said that to a degree, that sometimes you just do need to heal, and that being alone is the best way to do that.
Jase: Yes. I mean, being over-partnered and not getting any alone time is also a real problem. Another thing just that my therapist brings up a lot is remembering that everything is a season. Not in a seasons of love, but in a seasons of life kind of way, where it's just like, yes, things are going to come and go and they're going to change and they're not ever going to be exactly the same, but that also they are going to change again. It's like, I'm never going to go back to exactly the way it was before, but I'm also not going to stay exactly the way I am now forever, and that these seasons have external factors, like the actual seasons or pandemics or our jobs or our relationships with other people.
Then there's also internal motivations for the seasons. Like the question asker is saying here and I've been talking about. Even though every time he says it I'm like, " Yes." I do think there's a lot of truth to it of remembering nothing is permanent, that things are going to change both for good and bad, but just realizing I'm not stuck here forever.
Dedeker: That was beautiful, Jase.
Jase: Thank you. You can give credit to my therapist.
Dedeker: I will.
Emily: Thank you therapist.
Jase: Yes, you can thank my therapist. Tell him how beautiful it was. I can't take credit for it. All right, last question for today. I'm taking a little bit of a turn here. This one's about starting new relationships. I guess that's actually a nice segue here. The question is, what should you be mindful of as a hinge when starting a new relationship? How can you make sure that your existing partners feel nurtured and reassured? Just to clarify, the hinge means I have one partner and I'm going to start dating another one, and those two are not dating each other. Yes, what do we got?
Emily: Intentionality, first and foremost the way in which you go on dates and make special meaningful time with those people that are already established in your life. I think that so many of us will spend all our time getting sexy and all of these things for our new relationships and we tend to put those old ones in the corner and maybe just hang out on the couch with them and watch a movie, but don't take the time to really go out and make those very special meaningful times as well with them, so I'd say, for every fun date that you go on with some new person, maybe make sure you also go on a fun date with that established person that's really well thought out and intentional.
Jase: Yes, I like that. I also think that part of that encourages not rushing too fast on the new relationship as well, because it can be easy to be like, "Okay all of my time and resources are going to go toward this new person, because I'm excited about that," but if you are very conscious about, "I also want to be giving energy to my existing relationships that I value a lot," it can almost force you to pace yourself a little bit on the new relationship which can also end up having a lot of benefits of not overcommitting yourself and then having to step that back, which is something we've talked about before on the show, or just rushing into their life too much when they're not ready for it just because you're excited about it.
There's a lot of problems with rushing in. I love that that both is helping to nourish your existing relationships and also helping to pace you without artificially putting on the brakes or anything. It's like, "Hey, I've just got other stuff going on too that I should pay attention to, because in the long run, if this new relationship sticks around, that is the reality." That you'll have both relationships or however many relationships and you'll want to put your energy toward all of them.
Dedeker: I think it's important very early on to have conversations about relationship overlap and relationship entwinement. Going in and not assuming everyone is equally comfortable with crossing paths with their metamour, for instance, or assuming, oh, yes, we're all on board, that the end goal of this is going to be kitchen table polyamory or things like that.
If you're confused about all of that, you can go listen to our episode 322 where we kind of dove into some of these labels in this kind of spectrum of entwinement. Yes, I think that hopefully you've already had a conversation about these things with your existing partners and you have that information, but also making sure that you're getting that information from the new person as well. Getting a sense of their thoughts, their feelings, their preferences, and then finding a way to collaborate from there. Because yes, sometimes people just assume we're all on the same page, sometimes people assume, "Oh, if I'm not down to come to the kitchen table, I'm a bad polyamorous person or a bad partner," or things like that.
Really, it's just about getting curious about what everyone's comfortable with, what they're interested in, what their values are and how can we find something that kind of roughly meets everybody's needs.
Emily: If there's a way to do a radar check-in or add this to your existing radar, if you already have one going on in your relationships, if you have another partner's section of your radar, which many of us do in non-monogamous relationships or some of us call it the friend section or other relationship section, in there, that might be a great time if you don't have another existing relationship to talk about what it's going to be like when you do have a new relationship.
Maybe brainstorm together some ways that you're going to make sure that each of you check in with what's going on in that relationship with how you're going to make each other feel special and loved and seen and even discuss the times when it might be challenging for each of you. Are there specific things that maybe you want in those moments? You're not going to be able to preemptively know what all of those things are going to be, but to have a game plan beforehand I think is a nice idea. You can do that in a monthly check-in.
Jase: Yes, the monthly check-in part of the radar is great because then you get to keep checking in and modifying over time, too, because your levels of NRE are going to change how their feeling's going to change. It's hard as the other part to know how you're going to feel in advance. Knowing that you've got regular check-ins where you'll get to bring stuff up as that, the other partner can be really helpful. If you're the hinge, just making sure you're staying on top of doing those check-ins and radars can go a long way. I think that's a great suggestion.
To wrap up, we just want to say thank you to everyone who submitted your questions. We always really appreciate getting to hear what's going on for everyone. In our Discord server and in our private Facebook group, people are always bringing up stuff and chatting with each other, but we love it when you bring it to us to get to talk about on this show, because it helps us learn what matters, it inspires us for future episodes to do in much more detail as well as just getting to explore all these different things. Thank you all so much for that.
Also, quick thank you to everyone who came to our live in-person book signing events. We had such a fun time in Seattle and Los Angeles doing those. We'd love to come to more places, hopefully maybe later in the year or early next year. Just thank you to everyone who did come out. We had such a blast seeing you all in person and getting to talk to you.
All right, for our question of the week, this week, we want to ask everyone on our Instagram story, how do you help established relationships feel loved and reassured when you are beginning a new relationship? I'd even extend this to say your friends. How do you make sure that your friends still feel valued when you start a new relationship? That's a good one for us all to think about.