446 - Multiamory Presents: Navigating Abuse as a Non-Monogamous Person (Dedeker's Interview on Initiated Survivor)
Check out Initiated Survivor!
This week, we’re showcasing an interview Dedeker did on Kelsey Harper’s podcast Initiated Survivor discussing intimate partner violence within an non-monogamous context. Kelsey is a clinical psychologist and a survivor of sexual violence, and on her show she speaks directly with other survivors to hear their stories and offer practical skills for reclaiming their lives. Please be aware of the content being covered in this interview; the intimate partner violence is not graphically discussed but it is mentioned.
Be sure to check out other episodes of Initiated Survivor if you enjoyed this interview!
Transcript
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Dedeker: Hi, Multiamory listeners. This week, we are featuring an interview that I did on the podcast Initiated Survivor, hosted by Kelsey Harper. Kelsey is a clinical psychologist, and also a survivor of sexual violence. On her show, she speaks directly with other survivors to hear their stories and offer practical skills for reclaiming their lives. In this particular episode, I spoke with Kelsey about my personal experience surviving intimate partner violence within a non-monogamous context.
I think there are already very few resources for survivors of violence that center queer people, and it's been my experience that there are basically zero resources that speak directly to non-monogamous and polyamorous people. When Kelsey invited me to speak on the show, I was incredibly honored and excited to be able to share my experience and help others who have been in the same boat to not feel quite so alone.
Of course, I have to give a content warning that we are talking about IPV, about intimate partner violence, though not in any gratuitous or graphic detail. I hope you enjoy this interview. If you enjoy the show, please go and check out Kelsey's show, Initiated Survivor.
Kelsey: Fast Forward Productions, THE WOMEN ARE SPEAKING. Welcome to Initiated Survivor, where we connect to our fiercest community of survivors, and badassery ensues. I'm Kelsey Harper. I'm a clinical psychologist and survivor. I love to bring us together to share our stories, as well as practical tips to recover and reclaim our lives. As a community, we have truly formidable power to change our world, so thank you so much for being here.
Here, we discuss topics relevant to survivors of gender-based violence. Some of these discussions may be triggering and contain adult content. Please be mindful of your needs throughout.
Hi, Dedeker. Thank you so much for being here today.
Dedeker: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this.
Kelsey: I think, as we were setting up this conversation, I was getting more and more excited, because you have such wonderful expertise and wisdom to share with people. I think this is going to be such a valuable time to share with everyone.
Dedeker: Thank you. I always get nervous whenever expertise gets attached to my name, but I don't know what other label to attach, so I guess I'll accept it.
Kelsey: I know. It is weird. It does feel like it's potential pressure.
Dedeker: I speak Japanese conversationally. I have conversational fluency, probably not professional fluency, but there is a word in Japanese called monoshiri. It literally translates to just, like, "You know a thing." It's a good, I think, in-between description. That's how I like to think about, I know some things. Maybe not all the things, but some things.
Kelsey: Nice. Oh, that's really cool, I know some things. You know some things,-
Dedeker: I know some things, as it turns out.
Kelsey: -and after this, we'll all know some things, possibly. Can you share a little bit with us about your story?
Dedeker: Yes. The most important context for people to have behind my story is that for the past 10, 11 years or so, I've been practicing what the researchers label as consensual non-monogamy, also sometimes called ethical non-monogamy. My particular flavor of it is sometimes called polyamory. Now, I don't know how much I need to explain polyamory. What I have seen over the course of the past decade is that it's become much more mainstream.
It's become a term that people are much more familiar with versus a decade ago, so that's been good. Just to give a broad-strokes explanation to people, what that means for me is, it means I have multiple romantic partners at once, fully out in the open, fully consensually, getting consent for this from everyone involved. There's no cloak-and-dagger cheating, or lying, or dishonesty. It's just having multiple romantic and sexual partners all out in the open.
This is something that I've been practicing for a very, very long time. Sometimes to the extent where I forget how jarring it is to some people to think about that paradigm, or think about that framework. Like I said, I'm really glad to see that there's just so many more resources and more communities out there embracing this, and being much more open about this. I have been out of the closet, essentially, for several years now. I have written a book on the subject.
I have an ongoing podcast about the subject. It's very much part of my persona, both my personal identity and professional identity. Then life threw me a huge curve ball a few years back, back in 2016 or so, when I found myself in a relationship where things turned physically abusive. Let me try to think about exactly how many details I want to give here. Basically, long story short, I was going through a period of time where I was trying on the whole digital nomad thing.
My work was remote, so I was hopping around a bunch of different countries, staying a month here, a month there. I had two partners at the time, who both lived back in the States, and I met someone on my travels. A few months later, after my travels, I decided to go stay with this person for a little while. Again, long story short, without wanting to go into all the super nitty gritty, the relationship took a turn for the worse. It ended up becoming physically abusive.
I was in a position, at the time, I was in the middle of editing my book. I didn't have a lot of money. I was pretty much underemployed. I was in another country, where I didn't really know the language. I didn't really have any social ties, or any support network, where the first incident of abuse happened. It was like the rug was pulled out from underneath me. I had no idea what to do.
I think that it was one of those things where, I think, so many people would attest to, you hear about domestic violence or intimate partner violence as an abstraction. If you've never had a touch point to it, it's so easy to think, "Oh, if I was in that situation, this is exactly what I would do. Oh, I wouldn't tolerate that," or, "Oh, I would leave way before it got to that point." I thought, for sure, I was that person. I had already been in some bad relationships and toxic relationships, unhealthy relationships.
I was someone who was training as a coach. I was working with people in their relationships, so I very much saw myself as, "I know things about relationships. Clearly, ending up in a situation that's abusive, that's not going to happen to me. I can recognize that from a mile away." Then it happened. I am struggling to find the words to describe it, but it just completely threw me for a loop. It was already-- My worldview and paradigm did not account for this happening to me, my life.
Therefore, I didn't even know what to do. I didn't even know how to understand it, how to process it, how to talk about it. I was also really, really scared to leave this relationship, to move out of the place where I was staying. There was so much fear. I think so many of the typical things that so many survivors go through. Looking back on that, that's the thing that's always sometimes surprising, but also sometimes not surprising to me.
Just the sudden state of intense cognitive dissonance that occurred within me, of-- This horrible thing has happened. It's continuing to happen, but I'm still here. I know it's not okay for this thing to be happening, but I also am too scared to leave. Also, I don't think I can tell anybody, because the minute I tell someone, I think my life is just going to explode. I was just absolutely paralyzed.
I think that's something that people who have not been in that situation can't quite relate to or understand, just the intense paralysis that can occur. For me, I was fortunate enough that I was still in a relationship. I left to go back to the States. When I left to go back to the States, there was a little bit of a turning point within me, which, again, I didn't even realize was happening.
It's like, as soon as I was able to literally put an ocean between myself and this person, even though we were technically still together, I said, "Okay, I think I can actually do this now. I think I can actually leave this relationship." Bear in mind, still didn't tell anybody what was going on. Still totally kept the abuse a secret. Got close to telling people, but just really couldn't let the words come out of my mouth.
Basically, what I needed at that point, to actually leave the relationship, is-- I did feel like I needed some external permission, weirdly. Once I was finally ready to do it, I basically talked to two people. I finally told two people. I went to a therapist for the first time time in my life, had never gone to therapy. Hired a therapist, literally to have one session, so the therapist could tell me, "Yes, you should probably leave. It's okay to leave."
Then the other person that I told was-- I finally told my mom, the day before I broke up with him, because my mom was a survivor of domestic violence as well. It's not something that we ever talked about very much, but I knew that that was the case. She was literally the only person then that I knew had gone through something like this. Of course, I know now, that connected to me many, many more people who are survivors of assault and of abuse, but she was the only one that I actually knew at the time.
She also gave me permission, and then she's just like, "Yes, that's not okay. You should break up with this person." Then I was able to break up with them. Then the story doesn't end there, it doesn't end just at the happy ending of-- Then she triumphed and she walked off into the sunset, and everything was okay, because then, I had to face telling my partners. I think this is the unique part of the situation, where I was in active romantic partnerships alongside the same time while someone was abusing me.
Again, just another level of cognitive dissonance there, that I think took place. I finally had to tell my partners what was going on. Even after that, I still was operating out of this assumption of, like, "Okay, I'm out of the relationship. Everything's going to be good now, everything's going to be resolved." Then, six months later, was when the PTSD started coming up.
That was really what catapulted me onto a big old epic journey of healing and understanding myself, and really growing, changing, and understanding trauma, and learning that's brought me here today. That was the broad strokes version of my story.
Kelsey: Wow. I think about that kind of dramatic and sudden severe cognitive dissonance, of that paradigm shift, of-- I had that too, when I was raped. The weird-- This is the best that I can describe it, because it also sounds so weird to say it, where it's like, "I didn't plan on this happening." It's just like-- Yes, nobody does. Also, at the same time, a similar kind of thought, of like, "I knew all the risk factors, I obey all the rules, all that kind of stuff, to prevent this kind of thing, and look what happened."
That paradigm shift of having to understand this dynamic here, and especially some of those common risk factors, or not necessarily risk factors, but things that make you very vulnerable when abuse happens, in the sense of being underemployed and being in a country that is not one of your origin, not knowing the language, being completely alienated, and how often that happens to people as part of this.
I think even people that feel very well-educated on these relationships, we understand that there's things like grooming that take place, and love bombing, and all of these cycles that break down the parts of us that would know what the warning signs are, and all of that going on in the context of a tremendous amount of vulnerability. What, for you, feels like helped shift that cognitive dissonance?
It sounds like putting an ocean between you helped a bit, because there was also this action of, "I know that what I need right now is somebody to tell me it's okay to do this," which also feels, already, a shift in that cognitive dissonance, of like-- Even if it's not completely flipped yet, there's some movement that's happened, of, "I can go get some services or support. I know there's a thing that could happen, that will help me make that flip." What do you think that was for you?
Dedeker: The first thing that comes to mind for me was that-- I think there was something about going back to the States, and now I am reconnecting with my partner who is in the States, and literally physically being back in a situation where I'm in a partnership that feels safe. Again, I have this very distinct memory of falling back from that trip and reuniting with my partner Jase, and going over to his house and falling asleep on the couch, next to him, while he was playing video games.
Part of it was the jet lag, but I just remember feeling my body-- There was this deep, deep relaxation, of not even realizing how tense I had been the whole time that I was in this domestic violence situation, just constantly, and being back around this other partner, where things are safe, good, healthy, and functioning. Again, a unique experience. That's not something that everybody necessarily has, because I had multiple partners, but I don't know, it was something about just having that reminder.
When I was living with the guy who abused me, it's not like my other partners disappeared, or whatever. Of course, we were still in contact and talking to each other, things like that, but there was something about being physically around someone who loved me, who touched me, and who had sex with me, but who was safe, who I wasn't constantly afraid was going to hurt me, say something hurtful, things like that. That did really, really shift that.
I do think having those embodied experiences of safety and security can get the message through so much faster, just having that told to your face, or just reading it in a book. I wanted to add to what you're saying about these things that make us vulnerable, and these images that we create around what we think we can expect when it comes to abuse, assault, or things like that.
I know, very much, a factor in my case was, my former partner, the one that perpetuated the abuse, did not fit the image in my mind of what an abuser looks like, acts like, and sounds like. I think this is probably because of pop culture, because of movies and TV, but I think the low-hanging fruit image of a "wife beater" is-- He's probably literally wearing a wife beater, and maybe poor, maybe drunk, maybe addicted to drugs, maybe just really, really mentally unstable. My partner wasn't any of those things.
He had a master's degree in a language that wasn't even his native language. He had this super high-paying job, very, very respected, carrying a lot of responsibility, and very put together. I think that was part of it as well. That's something that I do come up with when I'm talking to people about abuse and cycles of abuse, is-- People don't realize that this literally happens at every socio-economic level, in every racial class, among every kind of different sexuality and different gender.
We have, this very, very narrow image of what an assaulted person looks like, and what an assaulter or abuser looks like and acts like, which really is not sufficient.
Jase: Hey everybody, we hope you're enjoying this episode. We're going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support this show. We love being part of a community of people who are making content and putting it out there into the world for free. The way that we're able to do that is through our sponsorships and through support from listeners like you.
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Kelsey: Yes, it's like how rape culture really thrives on perpetuating this idea and imagery that also perpetuates the idea that rapists are this outlier creature. They're hiding in the bushes, they're strangers, they're these psycho, pathologically minded people that are just these complete outliers in society and culture, and it just permits and enables perpetrators to actually exist among us, and for themselves to be like, "Yes, I'm doing these things, but I'm not that, so this isn't a problem that needs to be solved."
For also rape culture to persist in saying the problem itself is such an outlier, it's such a fluke. You just have to be prepared to prevent it, or to try to stay as safe as possible, rather than that this is a problem that is so pervasive that it actually has deep roots in our culture for its existence. Very similarly, I think that intimate partner violence is absolutely one of those ones where we have the stereotyped image that gets continually perpetuated as a way of continuing to reinforce and support it occurring.
There's so many things that benefit from intimate partner violence functioning in our culture and communities too.
Dedeker: Yes, yes. Hard agree on that one.
Kelsey: Yes. It sounds-- You're sharing such a beautiful moment, of being asleep on the couch with your partner, and also being able to observe, truly, within you, this just very real experience, in the sensations and embodiment of safety, and in a safe attachment, safe, secure attachment with your partner. How did the partners come in and support you through this?
Dedeker: Well, I will say that I think there's a lot of stuff that's hard about being polyamorous, and there's a lot of stuff that's really hard about having any kind of non-normative relationship in our heteronormative, mono-normative society. I do think one of the areas that was a great benefit was just knowing that, even if I leave this particular partner, I'm still going to have access to love, affection, care, support, sex, touch, all those things, which is not something, necessarily, that if I was in a monogamous partnership, I would have.
Maybe I could be like, "Okay, well, I know my family will come through for me," or, "Maybe my friends will come through for me," or, "Maybe there's other resources I can look toward." I think even in your regular everyday garden variety breakup, there's still that fear. "What if this means I'm unlovable? What if no one's going to love me again? What if no one's going to touch me again? What if no one's going to make me feel safe again?"
I do think that was very beneficial for me, to at least have that at the end of the day, to know that, yes, it's going to be-- Even though this person is abusing me, I still love them, it was still devastating to think about ending the relationship and breaking up with them, but at least I know I'm not going to be just completely emotionally alone while I'm nursing this broken heart and recovering. There was that.
Now, bringing my two partners up to speed on what had actually happened was hard. I think that part of the reason why I didn't tell anybody what was going on as it was happening was this shame, this intense shame. It's completely illogical, but our culture does set up survivors and victims to immediately think, "I did something to cause this. Either I did something to cause this, or I provoked this, or I made the wrong choice, or I should have left earlier, or I should have left at a particular time."
Of course, for me, as more time went on and there were more incidences, and I just didn't leave, that pit of shame just gets deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Then the cost of actually telling someone becomes higher, and higher, and higher, and higher. My nightmare was-- I would tell someone, and, of course, their first response would be, "Why didn't you leave? Why aren't you leaving? Why did you let this happen?" The sad thing is that that concern is not completely invalid.
People do say those things. People say those things all the time. People say them in very public forums. Victim blaming, it unfortunately is still alive and well. It was really hard. I think another reason why I just went to this one therapy session and also talked to my mom is, I had this sense of-- I need to practice with a total stranger that I'm just paying to hear this story, so that I can say these words out loud so someone can know, so this isn't my first time around just telling somebody, when I tell my partners.
What was interesting-- I call it interesting now, at the time, it was really difficult to get through. What was interesting was, both of my partners had very, very different reactions. Jase, of course, was devastated, was upset, and had his own emotions that came up around it. I think he just had a little bit more know-how about dealing with victims of assault or supporting someone that you love, who's been a victim.
He was very gentle. He wasn't very pushy, he didn't ask any deep, probing questions. He didn't really didn't ask a lot of questions at all. He really let me be the one to lead the conversation and lead the storytelling. I think he did some of his own research, looking up resources that are directed toward people who have loved ones who have come forward as being victims or as being survivors. That was really, really helpful.
Then my partner, Alex, was-- I think he had much more of a shocked and almost angry reaction. Both angry at the guy who hurt me and a little bit angry at me, also. I think there was a little bit of this, "Oh, my God, how could you not tell me? How could you keep this from me? How could this be going on?" He and I have resolved that since then. I think it did help that Jase actually reached out to him.
The two of them collaborated, which is another hidden bonus of certain forms of polyamory. That relationship is called a metamour relationship, with your partner's other partner, that they reached out to each other, to help share resources and talk about, and could be sources of support, in supporting me, so that I'm not the one carrying the full burden of having to educate my supporters on how to support me.
Basically, after he and Jase connected on that, Alex's response completely changed overnight, I think he realized, "Okay, I need to go about this a much different way. I need to handle my own angry emotions in a different way." I'm happy to say that Alex and I have since talked about that and unpacked that. We've resolved that, essentially. Yes, that was also something I was like, "All right, there's no one who's teaching about this."
There's no textbook that's talking about that, necessarily, I do think that, probably, a lot of survivors learn that there's such a wide variety of responses from people in your life. I really had no idea what to expect. I was only expecting the worst.
Kelsey: Many ways to try to prepare for it and to stay safe. Especially that shame informing, it was raising a lot of the alarms for me, of how we talk about that. One of the signs that somebody might be in an abusive relationship is that they're getting isolated from their peers, which is definitely-- It is true that they have partners that will do that sometimes in very direct or indirect ways, of, "Why do you hang out with those people," can be a very indirect way.
I think what you're bringing up, also, is how our culture of victim blaming also serves to isolate and to alienate you from the community, and how potentially harmful, and was very harmful. How that is so harmful for so many people, that there is this dynamic of the relationship, and the violence is perpetrated in the relationship, isn't actually just in the relationship. There is violence perpetrated by our culture, in how we interact with issues around violence, and partnerships, and specifically gender-based violence.
I think that's such a valuable thing to show too, especially for people out there that are feeling like, "I do feel extremely isolated and alienated," but that wasn't necessarily just the partner who did that. The shame and guilt that might come up around that too, because we just eliminate the whole culture community topic from the topic, when we discuss these kinds of things.
I think what's really fantastic is, you're also describing how you had a micro-community intervention that happened for you, with your partners. That's what, when I think of-- Some of my guests have talked about this too, of the vision for the future, is not to continue this reactive carceral reaction to violence, but to actually move more towards strengthening and restoring power to communities, to perform justice and healing, and really, reconnection.
That's something that you're actually describing, it sounds like happened for you with your partners, particularly. It's just sending so many little heart emojis through my mind, of your two partners contacting each other and supporting each other on how to best be a support for you. That feels to me, like-- Oh, that's the definition of love, when people go out of their way to learn how to be there for you.
Dedeker: Yes. I think that-- Again, I'll echo the same sentiment, though. There's a lot of things about choosing to practice non-monogamy that's really difficult. Something that I do really appreciate about the non-monogamous community is, there is an inherent understanding that maybe this tiny little nuclear family unit that we've all been encouraged to cram ourselves into, maybe that's not serving everybody.
Maybe we need more than just this one other monogamous partner and our two kids, and we just stay in our house, and we only care about what happens to the family unit. We don't really care about the neighborhood, we don't really care about the community at large. It's really just about me, my partner, my family. While that does work for some people, I think it's a conversation that happens more often in non-monogamous spaces, because first of all, fundamentally, people are breaking that structure.
They're breaking out of just having one partner, into having multiple partners. Some people are experimenting with raising kids in community. Whether that's a combination of myself, my co-parent, who's no longer a romantic partner, but their new partner and my two partners, or whatever, people are definitely happy to experiment with different ways of being. I think there is much more this emphasis on, we need more to sustain ourselves than just a nuclear family, or just one partner.
That doesn't mean we all have to go out and get six romantic partners, but it means that maybe we need to be leaning into our friends more. Maybe we need to be prioritizing our friends in the same way that we would prioritize a single romantic partner, these are the relationships that also give us life, that also support us. It's not just about the one spouse, necessarily.
The moments that, for me, too, have just warmed my heart the most, have been those scenarios where it's not just having multiple partners coming together, but my two partners collaborating with my best friend, or playing video games with an ex-partner of mine, it's not weird, or awkward, or me connecting with my partner's other partner, in being able to support them in particular ways.
It does seem like this way of living and relating, at least in my experience, opens up more of those channels and more of that willingness, to say-- The way that we've been taught to relate and create these tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little nuclear micro-communities, maybe we can break that a little bit and reach out for more of our needs.
Kelsey: Yes, I know for me, the experiences with connecting with relationships that felt like community building, almost feeling like getting woven in. It feels like I'm now a part of either this greater fabric, for a metaphor, or like a stray that's getting taken into the pack, in a way. How healing that is, how devastating isolation feels. Sometimes that isolation, we're surrounded by people, and we can even intellectually understand that people know or get what's going on.
I know, for me, it was like-- I know this is a thing. I know that there are other survivors. I know that this world exists, and it's like I literally cannot feel or find a way to connect in, and how devastating that feels, and then to be connected in community, and not just as part of, like, people understand me, they're here for me, and they're supporting me, but like how you described, that there's so many modes of functioning.
The way that we also contribute to the community also helps us feel woven in, purposeful, and deliberate, and I know that was a huge part for me, that felt like it turned the corner on recovery, coming from a place of, "I'm just surviving, I'm literally getting through day-to-day," to, like, "Okay, actually, I'm rebuilding and I'm becoming someone new in this new world that I live in," and how powerful being woven in, in such a purposeful way was, for that.
Dedeker: Yes, even just the power of your body and your nervous system being okay to connect with other human beings again, because when another human being has done maybe the most painful, terrifying, awful thing that you've ever experienced up to that point, I think there is the natural wanting to turn inward, to isolate, and to shut down. Being able to be back in that mode again, of connecting to other people, being able to be vulnerable again, and open yourself up to other people, that can be so, so transformational, for sure.
Kelsey: Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Thank you all for joining us in this episode and connecting with our Badass community. Thank you to Sam Valentine and her awesome team at Fast Forward Productions for producing, editing, publishing, and all around making this podcast possible. If you found something in this episode that resonated with you, please rate and review on your favorite podcast platform.
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This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Neither the hosts nor the guests are rendering mental health or other professional advice, and this podcast does not constitute an established professional relationship. If you are looking for mental health care or professional help, please seek it out. We have some links in the show notes that may assist with this, or you can contact your insurance carrier for a referral.
Dedeker: Again, that was from the show Initiated Survivor, hosted by Kelsey Harper. You can find more of Kelsey's work at drkelseyharper.com, or by following Initiated Survivor wherever you get your podcasts.