447 - De-Escalation to Re-Escalation: Listener Q&A With Amanda Katherine

Full transcript available

Welcome, Amanda!

Today we have a special guest joining us to help us answer some of our Patreon listener questions. Amanda Katherine (she/they) — — is on a mission to help you face your fears, speak your truth and get you one step closer to living your f*ck yes life.

She has worked as a trauma informed coach, writer and facilitator since 2016 and as an artist, actor and storyteller for the better part of two decades. In 2018, they launched their podcast, Live Your F*ck Yes Life — the space to be for conscious conversations and candid shares around shit nobody really fcking talks about. In 2019, she shared her journey of navigating a preventative double mastectomy at the age of 27 in her self published book, I Chopped Off My Tits. And she’s spent the last few years facilitating and supporting queer folks and recovering people pleasers through her Live Your F*ck Yes Life events & workshops and 1:1 coaching around all things relationship anarchy, non monogamy, coming out later in life, demisexuality, grief and beyond.

Today’s questions

1. “My husband (they/them) and I have been together for 7 years. We had a major break in trust last year and after doing some processing, decided to deescalate our relationship pretty significantly. At the same time, I was escalating my relationship with my other partner (we've been together for about 2 years). My husband and I have remained best friends, but pretty strictly platonically. My other partner ended up moving in this summer, and we have a pretty healthy family dynamic, but we are still figuring out how to navigate this new experience together. My husband and I are now interested in spending more intentional time together to get to know each other again and reescalate some aspects. I am pretty busy in my everyday life though. I worry, after only having one romantic+ relationship with my other partner for the last year, how I should go about splitting my time so my current relationship doesn't suffer while I work on the one with my husband? What's the best way to navigate this to ensure my other partner doesn't feel deprioritized during this time? I love both of them so much.”

2. “What can they share about their experiences with deescalation? Do they have any tips or tools? I identify as Ambiamorous. Post-divorce, I entered a relationship with a polyamorist and have been practicing polyamory with them as one of my partners for over 3 years. It feels like we've been deescalating. It's really hard to figure out what's expected of me amongst all the changes. Any tips there? Should we redo the relationship smorgasboard? Should we explicitly renegotiate everything?”

3. “My partner and I have had a close relationship of different kinds (best friends, dating, queerplatonic) over many years and have recently transitioned to a serious, committed romantic relationship. They knew I was non-monogamous when we got together and they are on board philosophically, but they have cPTSD and their experience of being in non-monogamy was very similar to what Irene Morning talked about on the "polyamory paradox" episode where it became dangerous for them. My other relationship ended and so we've decided to intentionally become monogamous for a set period of time, focus on our own relationship, and then re-evaluate. If we do decide to open up again, what advice do you have for doing that in a way that is mindful of both of our needs and also respectful of anyone else we may get involved with?”

4. “My partner and I have both long identified as non monogamous, and when we met we were each in long term relationships with other people and entered into a very non hierarchical poly model. Fast forward most of a decade, and we are both experiencing desires for having a single home with the other, matrimony, and even for monogamy that we never expected of ourselves or the relationship. For roughly two years, neither of us has been interested in pursuing new relationships, and even sometimes sad that it isn’t just the two of us. We’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the questions that have come out of this: What does ‘fair’ look like when relationships are aspiring to different levels of entanglement? How do you reconcile the feeling of unprecedented contentment and fulfillment with a major identity crisis and poly imposter syndrome? (And, less existentially, what the hell is going on? Is this normal?)”

Check out Amanda’s podcast here, find her on Instagram @liveyourfuckyeslife and TikTok @myfuckyeslife, or connect with her on her website. If you’re interested in her book, it can be found here too.

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 discussing questions submitted by our listeners on topics like de-escalation, re-escalation, and trying to figure out what you really want from your relationships. We are joined today for this discussion by Amanda Katherine, a trauma-informed coach, storyteller, author, and creator of the Live Your F*ck Yes Life podcast.

She also shared her story of navigating a preventative double mastectomy at the age of 27 in her self-published book, I Chopped Off My Tits, which is a fantastic title for a book. She spent the last few years facilitating and supporting queer folks and recovering people pleasers through her Live Your F*ck Yes Life events and workshops and one-on-one coaching around all things relationship anarchy, non-monogamy, coming out later in life, demisexuality, grief, and beyond.

Also, listeners, if you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show all the time, you can check out our book, Multiamory Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, where we cover some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books are sold.

Alternatively, you can check out the first nine episodes of this podcast where we also go over some of those widely used and shared communication tools. Unfortunately, Emily was not able to join us this week for recording this episode, even though she is the one editing it. Today it will just be me, Dedeker, and our very special guest, Amanda Katherine. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us today.

Amanda: Thank you for having me. It's always so funny hearing your bio read back to you.

Dedeker: Of course. Yes.

Amanda: I was like, "Oh, yes, I did that.

Jase: "Oh, right. That thing."

Dedeker: It's this funny thing because Amanda, you're someone, whenever I see your Instagram posts and stuff like that, I'm always like, "Oh, I want to have a conversation with her about that." I want to just like sit and talk to you about all these things. It's nice to have the excuse of having a podcast to be able to just like talk to someone.

Amanda: I get that.

Dedeker: With a low, low cost of recording it and you have to listen to your bio, read back to you, that's all.

Amanda: It's helpful that we also vibe and like each other and have had multiple podcasts recordings in the past on my podcast. It's like, "Cool."

Jase: Right. It's great.

Dedeker: Let's go ahead and dive in. Recently, you've been talking about relationship anarchy within a monogamous context which is something that really excites me because we were talking a little bit before recording that relationship anarchy is a term tends to get roped underneath this umbrella of non-monogamy. I feel like I've been on the soapbox for a long time that I think that one can be a relationship anarchist and practicing some form of monogamy at the same time. What's been your personal experience with applying all of that?

Amanda: I fully agree with you and that's something that I thought I needed to identify as polyamorous as an identity marker because when I learned about relationship anarchy is when I was first exiting the monogamous world. I was like, "Oh, well of course these must go hand in hand then." The more that I explored what relationship anarchy really was, the more I realized, "Oh, even when I was monogamous prior to coming out and being non-monogamous," I was still practicing relationship anarchist tenets and really living according to that manifesto life, whatever, in ways that felt really true to me, even though I was sexually monogamous.

Since removing the identity marker of polyamorous and moving more into ambiamorous for myself, which we can talk about more if you guys want, and being like, but the thing that's been consistent my whole adult life is relationship anarchy. I think the reason it gets so lumped into non-monogamy as an umbrella under that term, is because it is a very non-normative way of thinking. Having no hierarchy in your relationships and all of these other tenets that make relationship anarchy so beautiful.

A lot of the time it is about autonomy. When people think autonomy, they think not having any limits. That usually is included in the sexual world but that erases a big part of the culture and of people who exist under the ace umbrella. I identify as demisexual and sex, as much as I love it, once I'm in a really committed relationship, it's something that takes me a while to even get there with a person or want to ever get there with a person.

The idea of needing to be sexually non-monogamous in order to be a relationship anarchist just didn't really make sense to me. I've spoken to a lot of other people in the East community who feel really similarly because they have platonic partners, but then it's like, "Oh, well, does that make me polyamorous?"

I think that that's an interesting debate. I think a lot of people in the polyamorous community would say, "Fuck, yes, of course, it does." A lot of people would say, "Well, no. Because if you're not having multiple sexual partners and you're not allowing that for yourself--" I'm currently in a sexually monogamous relationship with one of my partners, but I have other people that I qualify as partners in my life that are platonic, that I'm equally as committed to.

It's like, well, where do I live on this? I don't know. I'm a relationship anarchist and I know that for me, I don't really see myself as monogamous in the context of toxic monogamous culture and the tenets of that but I am sexually monogamous at the moment, so I have question marks. For me, it feels wild to say that because I'm only having sex with one person, I am no longer all of these value-based things that exist when it comes to relationship anarchy.

Dedeker: It's interesting because this makes me think of, I think the pressure to be demonstrative and essentially to perform one's self and one's relationships. You're someone who's chosen to be an educator and to be quite public about your relationship format and how they work. It's the kind of thing where you could not. You could just be like, "These are all my partners and it's none of your business whether I'm having sex with one or all of them." You maybe wouldn't be leveled with the same criticism of someone being like, "Oh no, you can't be a relationship anarchist because I can tell from your sex life."

It just highlights to me sort of the absurdity of, I think this need to demonstrate publicly. I wouldn't have to be super, super open about exactly who I'm having sex with to see whether or not I make the cut of whether I'm polyamorous enough or relationship anarchist enough.

Amanda: I think it also is interesting because, for me, the more I've talked about my platonic partnerships, the more it's been made even more evident to me that people just do not perceive platonic relationships as valid or as important and still pedestalize only relationships where you're having sex. I'm like so interesting that if I were to demonstrate a platonic partner that I live with, that we have multiple date nights every week, and then I'm casually having sex with somebody once a week. You would still put that person above this-- It's just fascinating to me that that narrative is still so, so ingrained.

Dedeker: For sure.

Jase: I think something that keeps coming up for me for several years now is rather than the distinction being about having sex with this person or not, where people will go, "Okay, it's not that, but it's is it a romantic relationship or a platonic one?" Then it's that weird question of, well, what does that even mean? What is romance? What does romantic mean?

I've yet to find anyone who has a good clear answer for it. Because just like you said, it's sure we have date nights, maybe we cuddle, maybe we hold hands, maybe we sleep in the same bed, but we're not having sex. Does that mean all those things are not romantic in the same way they might be if we were having sex, we would then paint all those things with this romantic brush instead. It's just a weird, tricky question where that sex piece, no one says it, but is inherently implied in what we think of as romantic relationships.

Amanda: Which I've always found really confusing because I don't have any deep relationships that I don't qualify as romantic. That's been true my whole life because, for me, all those things that you just talked about are really romantic things. I do that with all of my relationships, whether they're friends, partners, or beyond. I'm going to hold your hand, I'm going to cuddle with you, we're going to do those things. I'm going to go out of my way and write you a letter and tell you how much I love you. I'm going to buy you flowers on your opening night. It's like all these things that I would do for a partner, I would do for one of my closest friends. Just because I'm not having sex with them doesn't mean it's not romantic, at least to me.

Jase: Yes. Well, and so that's what's interesting about even the label platonic, is that does platonic mean just not sexual? I don't think that's how people use it. If you think about a marriage, for example, or maybe we had sex at one point, but we haven't in the last 10 years, most people wouldn't call that a platonic relationship necessarily. It's like even that label, just like romantic, is kind of a confusing one.

Amanda: Yes. That's interesting because I think I would, I think that-

Jase: Oh, really?

Amanda: -that's how I at least use the term platonic in my life-

Jase: Just to mean non-sexual.

Amanda: -because there's not really another way to describe it.

Jase: Sure.

Amanda: To me, romantic isn't dubbed with sexual, like they're separate things, so I'm like, "Well, I guess platonic then means the absence of sex or intimacy that is of a sexual nature." Yes. I don't-- language.

Dedeker: Well, speaking of language, I just want to throw in what I think is the common criticism around platonic partnerships, which is the, how's this different from a good friendship?

Amanda: Oh my gosh, yes.

Dedeker: Yes. What's your response there?

Amanda: Well, I would not consider my close friends when it comes to big life decisions the way that I do my platonic partners. If I was offered a gig and it meant that I was going to move to New York for a year, I would talk to my partners about how that might impact our relationship and make a collaborative decision together around that. Versus, I wouldn't be like, "Hey, what do you think--" I might be like, "What are your thoughts? Let me know, I'm going to New York."

I would more likely just tell a friend, then collaborate on a decision around that. That's a really big factor for me. Also, at least at where I am at in my stage of life, I would not live with somebody that wasn't a partner of mine. Whether that's a platonic partner or someone I'm having sex with, I'm like, I don't care. Maybe all of them. At some point, we'll see. It would be nice to have a big castle.

Also, being someone's emergency contact, those tend to be my partners, I am my platonic partner's emergency contact and vice versa. There's other instances as well, but those are the big ones, is like, I'm really considering them and collaborating with them when it comes to my own path in life.

Jase: Yes. With these kinds of labels, it is so interesting because the way you're using those terms and describing what they mean to you, I feel like I wouldn't use them the same way. Like with platonic for example, but even partner versus friend and all of that, but all of it, we want to get to the heart of what's the purpose of the labels at all. The purpose of them is to help us communicate with each other in a way that makes some sense.

I think that in your case, if what you want to convey is, "This is a person who I will run important life decisions by, and this is someone who I would expect to be the one to take me to the hospital, or that I would do that for them," those sorts of things. Then saying partner, I think people immediately assume those things, and so yes, it works as a good shorthand for that kind of thing.

I think on the other side, you run into that thing of, if I call them my partner, then everyone assumes I have sex with them. Which maybe doesn't matter, maybe it does. It depends on the situation. Labels are such a tricky fluid thing.

Dedeker: Indeed.

Amanda: Sometimes I love them and sometimes I hate them. There's really no middle ground for me with them. They've been so liberating for me in so many ways, and other times I'm like, "Can none of us have labels? Let's just live in this fluid state and just be."

Dedeker: I've been campaigning for us to all communicate via interpretive dance for years now.

Amanda: I'm game. So with you.

Dedeker: Okay. Well, speaking of labels, we've given you a shout-out on the show before as a nice representation of ambiamory, and you do a lot of education on ambiamory. Let's start with, how did you discover that label and come around to adopting it for yourself?

Amanda: Yes. I actually discovered it via a commenter on my TikTok. It was probably about a year ago now, I was six months post leaving my marriage and found myself single for the first time in a really long time. I had had multiple partners previous to leaving, and then one of them, we ended like a few months before I left. It was the first time in my adult life I found myself single.

I'm 32 now, I left when I was 31, I guess. I kept bumping up against, "Well, okay, what do I actually need in this moment right now?" I kept being like, "I could be in a non-monogamous relationship and I also could be in a monogamous relationship." Then I was like, "But what does that mean from an identity standpoint?" Because I had been calling myself polyamorous for years because it made sense to me, and I was in that relationship dynamic.

Then I learned that term. I was having these kind of philosophical questions on some of my TikToks, and a person was like, "Have you heard of this term before? I had only just recently learned it, but it sounds like a lot of what you're saying would be this." I read it and I was like, "Yes, that's me."

Jase: Nice.

Amanda: It's so ironic because everything that I identify with when it comes to labels is very much in this gray world, where it leaves room for play, it leaves room for "yes, and" instead of "ors". It made so much sense that I was like, "Yes, I fully could be in either dynamic and be really happy. I have been before in both and been really happy and I'm open to both in the future depending on how my life moves and the people that I meet and what makes sense within each unique relationship agreement that I have." It just really felt like coming home.

Dedeker: I think that's-- We've said this many times on the show that that's when a label is working at its best when it feels like coming home. When it starts to feel like, "I have this particular costume that I need to make sure fits me at all times," that can be a little bit restricting, and I think can suck out that playfulness or that exploratory or adventurousness around identity. That makes a lot of sense.

I'm going to swoop in again with the common criticism, and I promise I'm just playing devil's advocate here.

Amanda: No, I love it. Hit me up.

Dedeker: These are not my opinions or my criticisms. These are all just what I gather from the polyamorous internet. I've seen this around the more strident corner of the polyamorous internet, people being like, "Well, I would never date someone who is also open to monogamy. That just sounds like they're wishy-washy, or that just sounds like as soon as someone monogamous comes along, they're going to leave me." Have you encountered that ever?

Amanda: Not in my personal dating life, but I was that person when I was polyamorous because I was in a marriage and I was like, "I'm chosen to commit myself to this person for life," because that's what marriage is all about, right? I was like, "If I'm going to be dating somebody, if they're open to monogamy, then there's no way, if that's where their path might want to go in the future, there's no way that the potential for longevity for us is going to work because of my own choices."

Because once I commit, I'm a commit-for-life type of person, unless real stuff really gets tricky and we have to mutually de-escalate or whatever it is, I knew that that would probably be more of a likely chance for heartbreak for me down the road. It's been so interesting because since I've come into my ambiamorous self and met a lot of people who are monogamists but are really open to exploring other things, I'm finding that they actually have way more relationship anarchist views and tendencies than I would've ever thought monogamous labeled people to hold. They just haven't had the option or the opportunity to explore.

Those are the people that I've actually ended up creating these very, very committed relationships with. It's been fascinating for me to see the flip side of what these open-to-monogamous people are and being like, "Oh wow, you're just like the most committed and open-minded people I've met in my dating experience."

In the last three years, I probably dated in some serious way, 20 to 30 people, and most of them have self-identified as polyamorous. It's been really fascinating to then meet people who self-identify more as monogamous but are very like so open-minded and so curious, and so like, "Yes, I'll try a threesome," or "Yes, I definitely could date someone else." They just had never thought it could even be an option, you know?

Dedeker: Yes. I think I've run into that more and more as my own client base has expanded into people where this sort of scene is brand new to them, and they're starting to explore. I'm starting to meet more people who are like, "I don't quite know what type of relationship that I want, but I know that it's not complete monogamy. That's the thing that I know, I know I don't want this kind of toxic or classic style of monogamy. I want just something else."

I'm not sure if that's a full-blown polyamory or relationship. I think that that's actually really exciting to see because I'm just like, "I don't need to commit or I don't need to convince everybody to be non-monogamous by any means. I think we need all types, but I think it's really important that we have a foundation of just more people being open-minded about relationship rather than less. That's okay if I'm just one step back from monogamy into the mildest flavor of monogamish. I'm like, "That still counts." I think that's still breaking the mold and challenging the status quo.

Amanda: Agreed. Yes, I think also because it's becoming more and more mainstream, we're seeing it more in television shows. Even in the smallest ways, people are starting to have the curiosity piqued. It's the same way that once queerness started becoming more present in the media, more and more people felt safe to come and ask questions about themselves, about their sexuality, and we're coming out later in life. We've been seeing that so much, even the last five years.

I feel like the pandemic really put that on, which is so great. I think that's happening also in the non-monogamous world because I don't know. I always say this like, I don't think anyone is fully monogamous. I don't think anyone is fully straight. I think we live very much on a spectrum. If we were to really deep down question all of these things, there'd be maybe a percentage of us that's curious in one way or the other. I love that more and more people are asking those questions and opening their hearts up because there is this sense of safety. More and more people are talking about it. You guys are pioneers in that space when it comes to non-monogamy. It's really huge and I think it's so, so great.

Jase: I think it is time for us to move on to answering some of the questions that our listeners sent in for this. As we get started, I have a few little disclaimers here. First is that all three of us here on the show today have spent a lot of time studying healthy relationships, researching these things, learning about them, but we're not mind readers yet we're working on it. Our advice is solely based on the limited information that we have from the questions, our own assumptions and understandings about that. Take everything with a grain of salt for that reason.

Also, you, listeners, are ultimately the only expert on your own lives and your own situations because you're the only one with all the pieces of information about what makes you you and what decisions are right for you. Take this and hopefully gain some insights and use it to help you make your own fantastic decisions and have great relationships. Let's jump on in.

The first question that we have here, I will just read. This is a little bit on the long side, so I'll read it and then we can summarize it at the end if we need to, "My husband, they/them pronouns, and I have been together for seven years. We had a major break in trust last year, and after doing some processing, decided to de-escalate our relationship pretty significantly. At the same time, I was escalating my relationship with my other partner. We've been together about two years.

My husband and I have remained best friends, but pretty strictly platonically. My other partner ended up moving in this summer, and we have a pretty healthy family dynamic, but we're still figuring out how to navigate this new experience together. My husband and I are now interested in spending some more intentional time together to get to know each other again and re-escalate some aspects of that relationship. I'm pretty busy in my everyday life, though, and I worry that after having only one romantic plus," is the term they use, which is fun.

"One romantic plus relationship with my other partner for the last year, how I should go about splitting my time so that my current relationship doesn't suffer while I work on re-escalating this one with my husband. What's the best way to navigate this to ensure my other partner doesn't feel deprioritized during this time? I love them so much." Signed Anxious Hinge. Thank you for signing your question. We've been requesting that. We love it. Dear Anxious Hinge, what do we have?

Amanda: I also just love that, signed Anxious Hinge, because that's so real. I feel like Hinge, partners, it can be such a struggle to know where to place your time, energy, prioritization. I love that. Also, I guess to Romantic Plus, I want to know more.

Jase: I feel like there's more to talk about there.

Amanda: I know. Cool. Well, we can bounce off of whatever. My first instinct is just to say you're already doing it. The fact that you're coming to us with a question like this and so clearly wanting to make sure that you are being a supportive partner to both of your people is massive. I hope that you're telling them that you're doing these things or thinking about these things because I think just doing that alone is a massive thing.

My first thing would be to say if you haven't already communicated to both of your partners that you're having these thoughts and you want to make sure that you're finding a path that makes everyone as comfortable as possible during these transitions to do that. Yes, that would be my first thing.

Dedeker: Something that stuck out to me was this seems like a situation where it could be easy. I don't know if the question-asker is doing this or not. I think when you're, I guess, re-escalating a previously long-standing relationship, sometimes everyone can be coming to it with an assumption that, "Oh, if we re-engage, it's going to be exactly how it was back then." I'm not just saying exactly how it was as far as what issues you were or weren't working through, but I mean as far as level of commitment, amount of time spent together, whether or not you're going to have sex or not. How much you're going to just entangle your lives together.

That there may be an underlying assumption like, "Oh, if I'm re-escalating with my husband, it's going to be like we hit pause last year and now we're hit and play again." I think it might be good to check within yourself if that assumption is there. Maybe check with your husband if that assumption is there. Check with your other partner if that assumption is there. I think this is a situation where whether or not the relationship anarchy smorgasbord is great.

Being able to, with your husband, realize, actually, we're redoing this or rebuilding this and trying to rebuild it in a new way instead of assuming we're just hitting play again after we put our relationship on pause. Another piece of this is that I've found that I don't know if this image is going to make sense to anybody else, but I think in our lives, sometimes we were like this shifting jigsaw puzzle as far as where we fit in our time and our energy and our priorities.

It's probably unlikely that once this particular puzzle piece of the relationship with your husband was removed, that that gap stayed there. You probably filled it in with maybe time with your other partner or time doing other things or energy and focus going elsewhere. Again, it's that same thing. It's not like that puzzle piece is just going to pop straight back into the same hole. I think it's re-evaluating how much time do I actually have or actually feel motivated to give to this new re-escalated relationship.

Amanda: I also would talk to both partners individually and you specifically say to navigate this to ensure my other partner doesn't feel deprioritized as I'm re-escalating. I would maybe check in and ask what does it mean? Let's just start as if we've never talked about this before. What does it mean to be prioritized? What does that look like? What are the things that I do that make you feel prioritized? Is it how much time we're spending together? Is it love notes that I'm writing you? Is it that we have a radar every month or whenever it is?

What does it feel like when I prioritize you? How can I make sure to be maintaining those things? Or how can we talk about making time on the calendar for those things so that you don't feel like that's changing on us while I'm continuing to sift through the nuances of this? Because I think as much as I see this as a unique circumstance in terms of like a re-escalation, I also see this as any time that you're bringing in a partnership to when you already have a pre-existing partnership and you're trying to figure out how to make sure that everyone's feeling fed and met and supported.

I think it can be as simple as a conversation. So many things are a lot of the time. I think we did the overthinking game of, "This is never going to work. How can we do it?" When in reality it's like, "Oh, I just want to make sure we're having really great date night once a week and our sex life doesn't really change." Oh, cool. Okay, thanks.

Jase: I wanted to jump in with just some words of hopeful encouragement, which is just that I know it's common to worry about taking time away from one partner if you're starting a new relationship or in this case, re-escalating this one. It's also very possible that your other partner is going to go, just like you said Amanda, like, "Yes, great, no problem. I still want us to be doing these things, but great. This is fine. This is fine with me."

I bring that up specifically because it's been something on my mind this past year since Dedeker started another relationship and spending more of her time with someone who's also--

Dedeker: Also, re-escalation.

Jase: Also a re-escalation.

Dedeker: Also, I'll come back to her.

Jase: I didn't put that together.

Amanda: Oh.

Jase: Wow.

Dedeker: I never used that term. That's why I also didn't put it together in my head.

Jase: That's so funny.

Dedeker: I never have thought of it as a re-escalation, but that's literally what it's been.

Jase: Basically, for a year before that, neither of us, Dedeker nor myself had any other partners. you could have looked at it as that, "Oh, no. Jase is going to be sad because he had all this time from Dedeker and now he doesn't." That hasn't been my experience of it. That hasn't been at all an issue because it's something that we communicate about a lot. That yes, okay, maybe we have fewer nights together of watching YouTube till we fall asleep.

That's not the stuff that really matters compared to our date nights or our little film festivals for two that we do together or having dinner or celebrating different holidays or doing stuff like that that's the real stuff that matters. I can watch YouTube on my own and also feel great about that.

Just to throw that out there is that if you do have this conversation and your partner is telling you, "This is fine with me, this is great," it's very likely that that is the truth and that you don't need to worry about it as much.

I know I carry with me a lot of guilt when it comes to having multiple relationships. I think is just that baggage we're all given growing up in a default monogamy culture. Just to be hopeful and say, You know, there's a good chance that's not the case actually."

Amanda: I love that.

Dedeker: Well, thank you, Anxious Hinge. Hopefully, you become a more hopeful hinge.

Jase: A hopeful hinge.

Amanda: Hopeful hinge.

Dedeker: Yes.

Jase: That's better alliteration anyway.

Amanda: Completely.

Jase: Before we go into our next question, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show. If you enjoy this content and want us to be able to keep putting this out there into the world for free, sharing advice and research studies, and amazing guests like Amanda every week out there for the whole world to listen to, the best way you can do that is just take a moment, check out our advertisers, if any seem interesting to you, go check them out. Then of course you can support us directly by going to multiamory.com/join and learning about that there.

Dedeker: Hello. We are back. We're going to dive into our next listener question. They write, "What can you share about your experiences with de-escalation? Do you have any tips or tools? I identify as ambiamorous. Post-divorce I entered a relationship with a polyamorist and I've been practicing polyamory with them as one of my partners for over three years. It feels like we've been de-escalating. It's really hard to figure out what's expected of me amongst all of the changes. Any tips there? Should we redo the relationships smorgasbord? Should we explicitly renegotiate everything?" On the opposite side of the last question.

Amanda: I feel like de-escalation is such a toughie because there's just no fucking blueprint for it and we're just taught to immediately go no contact. It's so tricky. What really sticks out to me though is the line, "It feels like we've been de-escalating," and then, "It's hard to figure out what's expected of me amongst the changes." My red flags went way high because from my lens, you two might have different perspectives, but from my lens, if you're de-escalating, you're doing it together. You're making the conscious choice to de-escalate, or one person is saying, "I am no longer comfortable with this portion of our relationship, and thus I'm setting this boundary."

Then it's up to you if you're going to accept that in your world or not, and then no longer have that person in a relationship or whatever it is. I think my first instinct is to say, have you had a conversation about this, or is it just you're noticing changes and you're trying to adapt to them and roll with the punches and you feel like things are changing in a de-escalating way? Have you had a direct conversation around what's happening in our relationship? If not, do that. Please do that so that you can get the clarity you need because nobody can just willy-nilly figure out how to move through a shift in a relationship without communication, or at least I couldn't do that. I would be freaking the fuck out.

Jase: Yes, that's such an interesting question because I think that the heart of what they're asking is about I'm feeling this thing, what should I do about it? I've been feeling this change happening. Like you mentioned, having that uncertainty of, "I think this is happening, but I don't know if it's intentional on their part, if this is just accidental, if this is something we need to change or something we should go with." I definitely can understand that.

I also think there've been situations in my life where it's been that maybe something's changing here and maybe that's okay to just let that change as it will rather than trying to pin it down. I think it really depends. There's times where wanting to be more clear is better.

Dedeker: I don't know about that. I think we're all socialized from I suppose, casual dating rules where everyone accepts and expects, oh yes, sometimes you're casually dating and yes, I don't know, you just stop talking to each other and then we just avoid actually talking about it and then eventually we're not dating anymore. I think that can bleed over into more entangled relationships, and I don't think that's a good thing. I've been in relationships in the past where maybe I've started to notice, "Ooh, I think something is shifting." Maybe that actually feels good. Maybe, oh, I've noticed we're not texting every day or not texting as much as we have.

Maybe I don't mind that, but I think it's still important to have a check-in of, "Hey, I've noticed this thing and I just want to check and see, is this something that we both want? Does like this level of content actually work for us? Are we both feeling good about that?" I think it's still good to at least check. I think especially if you're having a bunch of question marks come up, I'm just like, you may as well clear the air.

Amanda: Yes. Well, and the person says three years that they've been with this particular partner, which is not, from my standpoint, a short amount of time. Yes, in terms of navigating de-escalations generally speaking, I think getting clear on what is important to you as an individual in the context of that relationship, what you would want to still exist before then coming together and having a conversation of, "Okay, what do we want this to look like now," is really helpful because I think it can be really easy, especially if someone is taking initiative around it. It sounds like your partner is doing the de-escalation feelings.

It can be really easy to be like, "Okay, well, I'll just--" Especially if you're a recovering people-pleaser, to just do what they are wanting or morph into that space and just be like, at least I have a part of you. At least have a piece of this. I think gaining that individual clarity first of what do I definitely need in order to maintain this relationship at all before going into the conversation is really monumental so that you can hold your own.

Jase: I'm going to take us onto the next question here. This one is, "My partner and I have had a close relationship of different kinds. Best friends, dating, queerplatonic over many years, and have recently transitioned to a serious committed romantic relationship. They knew I was non-monogamous when we got together and they're onboard philosophically, but they have CPTSD and their experience of being in non-monogamy was very similar to what Irene Morning talked about on the Polyamory Paradox episode of this show where it became dangerous for them.

My other relationship ended and we've decided to intentionally become monogamous for a set period of time, focus on our own relationship, and then reevaluate. If we do decide to open up again, what advice do you have for doing that in a way that is mindful of both of our needs and also respectful of anyone else we may get involved with." It's a lot of pieces in this one here.

Dedeker: The first thing that I want to jump on is, we don't have this information, but this seems like it could be a conversation that when their partner is talking about having PTSD based on their experience of non-monogamy in the past, was the point of them disclosing that to you being a way of telling you, "Non-monogamy is not going to work for me," or was that, "Hey, I've had this bad experience in the past, and so we need to be just more mindful, or I may need to go a lot slower, or we need to try a different format in particular?"

That's what I want to get clear on. I don't think either of those are "the wrong answer" necessarily. Maybe it's just a reminder to be careful and get really clear on what's actually going on here and what your partner's actually communicating to you, I think that's the main thing.

Amanda: I can speak about my particular experience being in a relationship with someone who has CPTSD because it's a very particular form of PTSD that can be really challenging for both the person who has it and the person who's partnered to know how to navigate it. Especially regarding polyamory, CPTSD tends to tackle a person's feeling around safety and security. It can be really challenging when you're in non-traditional relationships to have that in the first place.

Yes, I think what you're saying is really important, Dedeker, because it's one thing for you to say, "Okay, these have been my experiences in the past. I really want to be with you in this way. I acknowledge that you're non-monogamous and this is also my experience. Since we've never had a relationship look like this, in order for me to be able to open myself up to stepping into that space with you in the future, I really need to set a secure, safe space in our relationship to be able to get there."

If that's the conversation that's being had, then I think that there's possibility for the question-asker, to be able to have the potential for non-monogamy in their future again. I also know firsthand that it can be really hard even if that security and safety is built, because the reality is that we've been programmed to believe things aren't safe and are a threat to our security that aren't inherently, or necessarily that. I think sex with other people can often be one of the most paramount ways that we believe that.

That's not the best advice, but more of just like, I hope that that's the conversation that was had because that's where it was for me. It definitely did allow for non-monogamy to exist within my world while still being partnered with somebody who had very intense flashbacks and cPTSD was definitely a piece of their puzzle.

Jase: Something that this is making me think of, and maybe this is just because it's fresh in my brain, but I had a counseling session today and my counselor was talking to me about basically the concept of trying to take away other people's pain or sadness. We want to do that for people we care about for our friends, whoever it is.

Basically, she was talking about this very difficult lesson that she had to learn at one point, which is sometimes by trying to take that away from them, you might be robbing them of the thing that they need to go through experiencing, and that there's a difference between I see someone suffering and I want to try to remove that suffering versus someone coming to you and saying, I want help with this thing.

We don't have the context, so I don't know what's happening here, but I just want to throw that out there. If hearing those words makes you mad, that's exactly how my counselor described this. She was like, "When I first heard that, I was like, "Fuck right off. No way. Go to hell. I'm going to help my friends fuck you." She was like, "It took me a while to get past that reaction and to realize that." That's a nuanced thing.

That's not to say do or don't do anything, but just something to be aware of in a situation like this and thinking about Amanda, what you were talking about there of, "This is part of my identity, that's part of your identity, how can we work together to be true to ourselves and take care of ourselves in this," to just be aware of that tendency to be like, "Oh, I'm just going to do whatever's going to make it feel like it's easier for you." Maybe that's not what they want from you. Maybe that's not what they need from you. Just to throw that into the mix, to complicate things further.

Dedeker: Well, it reminds me, I think something that Libby Sinback said on her show once upon a time, or maybe she said it to me in a personal conversation. Again, these things all collapse together when you have a podcast. She mentioned the fact that there's this adage that floats around about how you can't be in a relationship until you've healed all your shit. You can't love someone else until you love yourself and that sometimes those old adages do us a disservice because we do heal in relationship. We can have really wonderful corrective experiences in relationship.

This is something that comes up with my clients all the time, especially clients who have a history of maybe they were the victim of their partner cheating on them, or maybe they had just some bad non-monogamous experiences in general, or maybe they had a really rough time in the past opening up a monogamous relationship. It's very easy for all of us to collect quite a bit of baggage. I don't know any human being who's been in more than one relationship that doesn't have any relationship pain or baggage.

Sometimes having the experience where your nervous system is going nuts and being like, "Oh my God, this can't be safe, this can't be safe, this can't be safe, " but then it is safe. Your partner comes back from the date and you reconnect and then you actually like, "Oh, actually I got through that, and it feels okay." That's really, really helpful and corrective for your nervous system and so that could be on the table for this relationship. That could also be too much pressure to put on a relationship to have to "heal this person from their past experiences." I think maybe to bring it all together, it does depend on what does this partner actually want out of this, and how do they want to move forward with this?

Amanda: Yes. Also, how can you protect yourself in the process of navigating this as well, because yes, you want to have a healthy relationship with your partner? Yes, you want to see them in as little pain as possible, but it's not your job to take away their pain, like what Jase was saying. As someone who's raising their hand, who tried really hard to help past partners, just like I did everything I could and put my needs on the back burner, I promise you it blows up in the end. It is not the right choice for anybody to do that because you will just find yourself losing yourself in order to try and save this person. That's not a healthy relationship for either of you. That's not a collaborative relationship. If you find yourself doing that at any point, just like keep that light bulb on and be like, "Huh?"

Jase: Right. It's such an easy tendency. I would just add to that too, that even if you feel like, "Oh, but I'm doing that for the sake of my partner," if that eventually comes to the surface of you've been holding yourself back or not being true to yourself for their sake, if they're someone who does care about you, that's ultimately going to end up hurting them and feel like a betrayal to them, even though you did it to help them and for them. Yes, it's very valuable to keep that in mind the whole time.

Dedeker: All right, let's move on to our next listener question. "My partner and I have both long identified as non-monogamous. When we met, we were each in long-term relationships with other people and entered into a very non-hierarchical poly model. Fast forward most of a decade, and we're both experiencing desires for having a single home with the other matrimony and even for monogamy that we never expected of ourselves or the relationship.

For roughly two years, neither of us has been interested in pursuing new relationships, and we're even sometimes sad that it isn't just the two of us. We love to hear your thoughts on some of the questions that have come out of this. What does fair look like when relationships are aspiring to different levels of entanglement? How do you reconcile these feelings of unprecedented contentment and fulfillment with a major identity crisis and poly imposter syndrome and less existentially, what the hell is going on? Is this normal?"

Amanda: Oh, the poly imposter syndrome is real.

Dedeker: Yes, so real. So real.

Jase: Yes. If they'd signed it off with like poly imposter in Pittsburgh or something like that, I would've been, "Perfect."

Amanda: You're really all about the alliterations today, Jase.

Jase: I really want it. Love it.

Dedeker: Jase loves it.

Amanda: Me too. I just want to say it is normal and that I so personally identify with all of these questions and just like, "Why am I feeling this way, and if I am wanting this, does that make me any less valid?" In my past relationships was I really not knowing myself then and now I am, or vice versa? I had so many questions like that when I left my relationship that was central to my polyamory experience.

Just know that like a lot of people go through this and you're not alone. I think that we are way more nuanced beings than we give ourselves credit for and that we also are not planted forever in the same place type people. To expect that what you needed 10 years ago is going to be the same as what you are needing now, I think is like a batshit concept that we've all been programmed to believe. It's why I don't see relationships ending after 10 years as a failure. I see that as a massive fucking success because you built a life with somebody for 10 years.

You moved through that. Beautiful, this chapter of your life was filled with non-monogamy and multiple partners and now it sounds like you're looking at the next chapter and wanting maybe matrimony and maybe monogamy and really wanting to just hold each other tight and close.

Does that mean your values have changed? No. It just is reflective of what you're needing in this moment together, and it's beautiful that you're in the same page around it. I think that's where a lot of heartache can come into play when it comes to relationship shifting and people just organically moving through life.

Yes, I don't know. I'm over here being like, "Fuck yes." Honor where you're at because I know I needed that reminder and not like a slew of polyamorous people being like, "Well, this is terrible and this means you're no longer a part of the community," and whatever the fuck that people might say.

Dedeker: I know myself 10 years ago would be much more of that judgy person. Oh, yes Twitter. Where I'm at now, and I credit this change from working with so many clients and just working with so many people's relationships that this really isn't a scorecard as far as like how polyamorous you can be, or are you being polyamorous or non-monogamous enough? Really it comes down to are you being a good person to the people that you're in relationship with? I mean that very broadly. That includes your friendships and your family and things like that. Like are you being a good person and are you living in integrity with what your values are? Now, in this situation that may look like having to sit down with other partners to be clear about like, "Hey, I think I'm going to get married to this other person because this is what we want to do. How about you and I talk about what feelings that brings up, what that might mean for our relationship, what we want around that." Maybe that's your version of being a good person and showing up in your integrity. I think it doesn't have anything to do with like, "Are you polyamorous enough?"

I know I say this a lot. I think I can see wrapped up in this that in the past 10 years or so we've come to assume that all non-hierarchical polyamory is good and all hierarchical polyamory is bad. I've now encountered people who practice pretty hierarchical polyamory that do it in really wonderful ways where they're actually being really conscientious and really caring for the people that they're connected to. Then I've seen people who practice non-hierarchical polyamory who are real shitty at it and not treating people really that great or not being good communicators.

Whether this is about hierarchy or not, or whether it's just about, "Oh, I just happened to want to marry this one particular partner, or want to just happen to spend more time with this particular partner," I think it comes down to your own moral compass and your own sense of ethics about how you do that while still caring and showing up for the people around you.

Jase: I want to jump in now and throw some questions. Back to this question asker though. There's a couple of things that jumped out to me in this that are, I think, worth examining a little bit and looking at. One of those is just the matrimony part because I know that there were also some concerns in the parts of the question we didn't read about, "Well, how will people take my other relationship seriously if I'm married to one person," those sorts of concerns. It's a tricky thing and there's no clear answer to it, but to think about what is it about getting married that's so attractive? What is it about that that's appealing? Just getting clear on that.

There's not necessarily a wrong answer, but marriage is a legal contractual, potentially expensive to undo decision.

Amanda: Very expensive to undo. I would know.

Jase: Even if it all goes very cleanly in everyone's pals about how it goes down, it's still expensive. If you're not pals at that point, it's much, much worse. I guess I would just throw that out there as one thing that jumped out to me, of, I would caution you against-- Because it seems like there's a lot going on here. It's like, "Do we just want to be with each other? Do I identify as polyamorous anymore?" All of that and the marriage thing. I feel like I would just encourage not letting all of those collapse into one decision and instead maybe looking at each of those pieces separately.

The second piece that jumps out to me is this sentence that says, "Neither of us has been interested in pursuing new relationships. Even sometimes sad that it isn't just the two of us." This implies to me that you do still have other partners, both of you, and are expressing this sometimes sadness. It's not just the two of us. Again, I want to ask some questions of, do you mean that to say, "I don't feel very attached to my other relationships and maybe I would rather extricate myself from those?" Or is it that I love this romantic connected feeling I have of being, "Oh, this is my person and I want us to become more entangled in a way that feels more hierarchical and that maybe that would satisfy what I'm looking for?

The whole like, "We're sad, it's not just the two of us," to me is the fact that it's expressed that way, it's not saying that we only want to be with each other. It's not saying, "I don't want to be with these other people," but this, "We're sad, it's not just the two of us," brings up a lot of question marks for me of like, what's that mean? What's there? Is it that you do just want to be with each other or is this just about, "We want to express the intense closeness and entanglement that we want this relationship to have?

Amanda: This is a tricky one. I would be struggling if I were in this particular situation for sure, because it's navigating a lot of hearts. I don't know how many, but it's definitely more than two.

Amanda: That's hard. I also think that I'm glad this question got asked because I think actually a lot of people navigate this while navigating polyamory. I know that I had had questions and conversations like this in the past as well, where I'm like, "Would it just be easier if we stopped." If maybe one of us wasn't in a relationship and the other one was, but expressed a lot of unhappiness there and it's like, "Maybe let's just come back to what feels easier." Which for better or worse, a lot of people equate with monogamy. I've definitely been through periods with that myself, so I understand the questions and how painful it can feel to ask them in the first place. Kudos to you for even trying to explore it.

Jase: I think it's just great to be asking the questions and to be open to realizing things might change and that there's a lot to discover here. I don't mean any of my stuff to be discouraging of all this. More encouraging of saying "Yes, ask more questions."

Dedeker: This may be a bit of a tangent, but it's making me wish that we had more polyamorous elders and role models to look to. Now, they do exist, of course. The people that I see as my non-monogamous elders, I could count on one hand. That's for a number of reasons. It's our generation has social media and there's a lot more awareness and there's a lot more comfort in being out about being non-monogamous. I think it's something where if we had more people to turn to who've been doing this their entire lives, being able to say, "Oh yes. I totally went through this period of time where I was actually I think monogamy and marriage is a thing for me and then 10 years later I was back at non-monogamy."

Or more people who were like, "Yes, I was non-monogamous for 20 years and then monogamous, and then it was great." Again, being able to see more people who've maybe lived out their lives in this way, facing these questions and facing these ups and downs in relationship. I know y'all are out there, but I'm good. I'm just saying not many of us have access to these kind of role models to be able to talk to people about this.

Jase: This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your experiences, Amanda. We really appreciate it.

Amanda: I'm so happy to be here.

Jase: Can you tell our listeners where they can find more of you and your work, your podcast, your book? All these things.

Amanda: All the things. You can find most of my stuff just on my website, which is amandakatherineloy.com. There you can get access to my book, my free resources, any of my coaching information is there. I do a lot of peer support for more accessible stuff. In terms of socials, I am now at Live Your F*ck Yes Life. My old account got permanently wrongfully banned.

Dedeker: No.

Jase: No.

Amanda: Which has been a huge bummer and I've been trying to fight it, but alas, the Meta gods have decided that they will not respond to my emails. We're over there, so come help me rebuild. Then if you're on the Tik of Toks, I'm over there @myfuckyeslife. My podcast is called Live Your F*ck Yes Life. Apple is not a fan of swear words, so we had to star the "U" of fuck, but it is still very much fuck in my world. Come on over and do whatever feels good to your heart.