451 - Multiamory Presents: Defining Non-Romantic Relationships and More (Multiamory's Interview on The Wright Conversation)
Today we've got a very special episode: we're sharing an interview we did on Rachel Wright's show The Wright Conversations. In this episode we discuss going to therapy with family members, divorce, defining non-romantic relationships, inclusivity in relationship studies and much more!
Every week Rachel has a variety of excellent guests on, and gets into fantastic conversations about sex, relationships and mental health. Be sure to check out her show and we hope you enjoy this episode!
Visit her website to check out Rachel’s show and learn more about her and her work.
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.
Emily: Hey there, Multiamory listeners. This week, we are bringing you a very special conversation that we did earlier this year with Rachel Wright on her show, The Wright Conversation. We wanted to bring this episode to you today because we really value the conversation that we had with Rachel, and she had these super engaging questions. The conversation really went past the normal Polyamory 101 into something much deeper. We just really appreciated the discussion that we had with her, and we hope that you will as well.
In this episode, we discuss going to therapy with family members, we discuss divorce, defining non-romantic relationships, also inclusivity in relationship studies, and a whole ton more. Every week, Rachel has a variety of excellent guests on her show, and she gets into fantastic conversations with every one of them. She talks about things like sex, relationships, mental health, and a lot more. Be sure to check out her show, and we hope that you enjoy this episode.
Rachel: It's time to screw the norms. To fit in, we often hide what's on our minds, who we really are, or who we want to be, or even what we want to do, but now, you're having the right conversations. Here, we'll talk about sex, relationships, and mental health, and how they interact with each other, and so many other aspects of life. Shame can't survive when we're honest and curious with each other, and ourselves. It's time for your mind to scream less, and for you to screw more. I'm Rachel Wright, a non-monogamous queer psychotherapist, and your host.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to The Wright Conversations. I am so, so excited for our conversation today. It's a very special episode, and these folks don't actually know why yet. They're about to learn in real time. My very, very, very first day of practicing non-monogamy, the first thing I did was get a recommendation for a podcast, and it was Multiamory Podcast. Literally, we were like, "Okay, we're going to do it." My friend was like, "Okay, listen to this episode of Multiamory and download field." I was like, "What are those things?"
Emily: Do you know what the episode was?
Rachel: Oh, I can look back.
Dedeker: Oh, wow.
Rachel: I wrote it down in my journal. I was on a bus in New Hampshire. I remember it so vividly and like, "Oh, yes." Y'all were the first voices in my ears about non-monogamy other than my education as a therapist. This is a very full-circle moment.
Jase: That's great.
Rachel: I'm just very honored and happy to have you here.
Dedeker: I love knowing that. I'm so glad to hear we were there from day one and so that means everything went great since then, right?
Rachel: Perfection, actually.
Dedeker: No hurdles?
Jase: Great.
Rachel: No, it's been wonderful. For folks who don't necessarily know who you are yet, or maybe they do, but want to be reintroduced, Dedeker, can you tell us a little bit about your podcast and then we'll get into the book and what you guys do in this world?
Dedeker: Yes. My name is Dedeker Winston and along with my co-host, Jase Lindgren and Emily Matlack, we created and we currently host the Multiamory Podcast which is a research-backed relationship advice show that centers non-traditional relationships, which we have been recording and releasing weekly ever since 2014.
Rachel: So cool. Talk about ahead of your time like 2014, there was not a lot of dialogue around non-traditional relationships.
Dedeker: No, I still want to say we as always stand on the shoulders of giants because there were people ahead of us who helped to pave the way. I think all of us had read the classics that are still classics to this day, like The Ethical Slut and Sex at Dawn and things like that. There was, I think at that time, the one other non-monogamy podcast was Polyamory Weekly, and they had also been going for many, many years.
There were definitely people who started to blaze that path for us. I do think we started at a really interesting and pivotal time where it was right before the tide shifted a little bit, where all of a sudden there was much more of an explosion of, I think, people being more out, much more awareness, much more visibility, many more people creating resources, many more people just being comfortable openly identifying on their social media profiles that they're non-monogamous. It was a funny time to get started.
Rachel: Oh, go ahead, Jase.
Jase: I was just going to say, what was so cool is that one of the things we set out to do originally, when we made the decision to use our real names on the podcast instead of pseudonyms, which is what a lot of the existing content had done before that, was we had that debate of it's a little bit risky to do that, should we do it anyway? Part of it was we wanted to make it clear that this is something that doesn't have to be hidden, it's not shameful, you can just be a normal person trying to do the best you can in your relationships and have these types of relationships.
I'd love to say, one, it's because we did that and it worked. Look, here we are. I am at least glad that we got to be part of that movement with a lot of other people to help normalize this and just make it something that people could talk about. There's still a ways to go, but the amount of progress we've seen just in these nine years or so since we started the podcast has been incredible.
Rachel: Tell me a little bit about, and we won't harp on this for a long time, I promise, but how did you find each other and how did you decide to even do this?
Emily: Jase and I were in a monogamous relationship for quite a few years and then opened up. We met Dedeker and her current partner at the time through OKCupid. We started dating. We actually were a quad for a while, but quads tend to be very precarious. That broke up after a while, but during that time, the three of us felt really passionate and interested about communication and what is it that makes relationships better or worse.
Jase was also interested in creating a podcast and had that harebrained idea. We decided, "Sure, let's try it." Then, nine years later, here we are. Our relationship has taken a lot of forms over that time. Jase and Dedeker are still currently in a relationship and I'm not in a relationship with them and I'm actually monogamous now. The three of us still are doing the show after so many years.
Rachel: That just speaks to using the tools that you talk about, right?
Emily: Absolutely.
Rachel: I'm sure that many of the things that have been developed and discussed and researched have come from those evolutions over the years.
Emily: Oh, yes. I think that we probably wouldn't be where we are today if we didn't actually utilize the tools that we talk about and we definitely don't do them perfectly at all times. No way. I still kick myself sometimes where I'm like, "Wow, you know how to communicate better than that. You theoretically can do that, but yet in this moment you aren't." I do think it's been a lot of trial and error, but it's really a testament to our relationship and the bond that the three of us have that I think we've stayed together in this way for so, so long.
Rachel: That's really special.
Dedeker: I think the enduring power of you should know better when it comes to communication is huge. Like Emily was saying, for all of us in our personal relationships, in our relationship with each other, of course, we're not perfect by any means. Again, spending so many hours talking about these things means at least in the moments when we're all tired or stressed or irritated with each other or someone's having a bad day or some emotions are coming up that at least we have something to grab onto.
At least something will come out of the ether around needing to pause or need to take a break or just needing to remember, "Okay, I need to just step back and just listen or be compassionate." At least that's been something that's helped get us through many rough patches and ups and downs and changes in life circumstances and relationships over the years.
Rachel: Which I wish is something that-- I talk about this a lot, that I wish we taught these skills in school.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Rachel: Why aren't we teaching DBP in elementary school? Why aren't we talking about taking breaks during conflict in elementary school? These very fundamental things that are game changers for people and folks aren't learning about it until they're like 45.
Jase: that.
Dedeker: It's like we're not learning about it until we realize, "Oh, the default messaging and patterning that I came into this world with isn't working for me and now I have to unlearn." It's like, we're all coming to an unlearning process rather than just a learning process.
Rachel: You've been doing this podcast, and one day were you like, "And also, let's be insane and do a book," too? How--
Dedeker: Yes. That's how it went.
Emily: Jase, why don't you tell that?
Jase: Oh, sure. We, a couple years into the podcast, started Patreon as a way for people to support the show and also to join a community. We set a goal for ourselves way back of when we hit this certain number of members in our community, that we'll do something. We weren't sure what that something would be, but we'll do a new project. When we got there in 2019, many years later after we'd set that goal, we're like, "Okay, cool. What should it be?" We put out a poll to our audience, and the winning thing was a book.
That people wanted a written form, because I think a lot of people-- The people who love our show love podcasts, and the ones who love this show love podcasts, too, but not everybody in the world listens to podcasts all the time. There's something nice about having something that's written down and organized more clearly, like a book, and also that you can share or reference more easily than trying to figure out, "Was that at 20 minutes and 5 seconds into the podcast? Where was that?" To make that nicer reference.
Then we started down that journey, and it's taken us basically four years from that point till the book actually coming out just shy of four years, but we're here and it's very exciting to finally have it out in the world.
Rachel: It's so, so exciting. Thank you for bringing light to that process too. I'm currently in the process of finishing my proposal with my book agent. We're like --
Dedeker: Congratulations.
Rachel: Oh, thank you.
Emily: That's huge in and of itself, for sure.
Rachel: Who knew? I was like, "Oh, the proposal? This part's easy." Oh, my god.
Emily: It's like 50 pages of work. It's enormous.
Rachel: Yes. It's wild. My community is like, "Where's the book, Rachel? Where's the book?" I'm like, "Yes, talk to me in five years." Seriously.
Jase: Jeez.
Rachel: Yes. Thank you for naming that. I appreciate it.
Dedeker: Well, also at the same time also having a name, having to keep a show running also. Still producing weekly content. Some good things came out of that in that we expanded our team during that time. Not only did we start leaning more on our existing production assistants who help us every week, but also, we hired two research assistants, essentially. People to be the ones to be like--
Rachel: Awesome.
Emily: Who are academics.
Rachel: Who are academics who have access to academic libraries.
Emily: Yes, don't do what we do. Exactly.
Dedeker: Yes. That can be like, "Okay, you can access the studies. You can understand the studies, you can read them, you can condense them, you can make them palatable and accessible not only for us so that we can then also make those accessible for other people." That was the result of, "Oh, my god, how do we keep a show afloat while also writing a book at the same time?" Yes, we were insane, to go back to the way you put it.
Rachel: Yes. Well, insane in a very, very, very positive way. You talked earlier about this book and the show really being for nontraditional relationships. I think that the four of us can agree that that is not saying just non-monogamous relationships. I want to just toss it out to anyone who wants to answer this, but what does non-traditional relationship mean to you?
Emily: I think even if you are monogamous, if you do it in an intentional way, that can be labeled as a non-traditional relationship. If you're actually really thinking about what does that monogamy look like, what are the elements of monogamy that I want to keep in my relationship and what kind of prescribed elements that just everyone thinks, "Yes, this is what you do." What do you want to get rid of potentially?
How do you want to relate to your other friends or family members or people in your life that aren't just necessarily your partner? I think that could even be non-traditional because so many people just believe if they are partnered, that's it. That is always going to be number one. Nothing else matters, and you need to put that relationship above everything else. I think if we're intentional in the ways that we create all of our relationships, that's super important and super-- Just something that we can derive from non-monogamy or the wisdom of anything that's non-traditional, that chosen family.
Rachel: Yes, that's beautiful. I say often relationships are relationships are relationships are relationships. Whenever I say that for the first time, someone looks at me like, "What? What drug did you just take? Are you okay?" I'm like, "Yes. The skills that I use with my partners are the same skills that I use with my mom, and they're the same importance to me in my life." Does that mean that they are going to be prioritized equally every day, every hour? No, of course not, but that doesn't mean that one is more important in my life than the other. To your point, Emily, I think that it's important.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: I appreciate you bringing up the mom example, because during the pandemic, I went through this interesting experience with my own mother where-- That's a long relationship, as you might gather. As happens with long relationships--
Rachel: They tend to be, yes.
Emily: Lifelong. Lifelong. As it were, yes.
Dedeker: Long and complicated relationships, and unfortunately, my relationship with her hit a really low point towards the beginning of the pandemic. I felt so frustrated because I didn't feel very empowered around communication in that relationship. When I was thinking about what would I do with my friends, what would I do with my partners? I would be like, "Hey, I have this tool that we can try," or, "Hey, let's listen to this podcast episode together", or "maybe let's read this book together."
I didn't feel like I could do that with her, but then I was like, okay, but if I was really on the rocks with a partner, I would probably be like, "Let's go to therapy together." I was like, "People don't do that. People don't go to therapy with their moms." Then I was, "Wait, LMFT. F stands for family." Okay, so people do do that. I had this extremely challenging, but ultimately, really, really positive experience going to a licensed marriage and family therapist together with my mom.
I think I wouldn't have done that just a few years ago because of that weird thing of like, "But that's a parent relationship. That's different." It is so funny when I've spoken to a lot of my friends of my same generation about doing that, and most of my friends, especially not the ones who are non-monogamous, most of my friends are like, "Are you crazy? No, your parents are just your parents. You're stuck with that relationship being the way it is. You just have to deal with it. You go to therapy because of your mom, not with your mom."
I thought that was so interesting. I do think being more inundated in a community that's maybe more likely to embrace that mindset of relationships are relationships are relationships, probably led me to make that choice, as opposed to, I think in any other context, I probably wouldn't have, because I would have assumed, like, "No, the therapy thing, that's what you do with a romantic partner. Then with a mom, you just find ways to deal with it."
Rachel: Right. I absolutely despise that concept in any relationship of like, "Well, this is just how it is," or like, "Well, they're blood, so --"
Emily: You compartmentalize, and you just tuck your anger away or whatever. Yes.
Rachel: Yes, it's terrible. Do either of you, Jase or Emily, have any other relationships are relationships are relationship examples for yourselves?
Emily: Gosh, I mean, the three of us, I think, are a huge one, for sure.
Jase: Yes, definitely.
Emily: Platonic life partners, as you've said, Dedeker, so many times. Yes, that's a huge one. The fact that we have to utilize these tools with each other over and over and over again, and that we've really made this relationship with the three of us one of the core centers of our lives, I think. That's something that, again, as a monogamous person or someone who's in a monogamous relationship, I think other monogamous people may look at that and be like, "What? But you were in a romantic relationship with these people. Now you're not. What are you doing here?"
Rachel: Yes. I just recently went through-- I was also in a quad, and it started as me and my then-husband meeting my two now primary partners. We're now all divorced legally. This is so complicated to explain. My original husband is now no longer part of our relationship, and we're a triad now. The three of us are looking to go to Massachusetts to get domestic partnered three ways because our lawyer was on the front lines of the legislation there.
Dedeker: Wonderful.
Rachel: It's so interesting figuring out how my ex-husband, we still want to be in each other's lives. It wasn't a hostile thing, it wasn't an icky thing. It wasn't like a you're such a fucking douchebag thing. It's like a we love each other so much that this isn't working, and let's figure out how it can work. That growth mindset versus, like, "Well, we had sex, and we're married, so how could we possibly talk to each other after today?"
Dedeker: Right. Yes, that's so good to hear though. I know you're the one trying to interview us, but I want to interview you about that a little bit in the sense of-- well, so people always ask us when we describe how, yes, we were in a quad and then triad, and then the triad broke up and stuff like that. People are always asking like, what got you through that? How did you deal with that? What was the most challenging part of that? You don't have to relay the whole story, but I'm curious to hear from you, what do you feel was the most key part in getting through something like that?
Rachel: Oh, man. I wasn't expecting to answer questions.
No, I think that the biggest key piece was leaning on, and this is going to sound so fucking cliché, but leaning on the relationship skills that we were using before. I feel so grateful to have partners that are very pro-therapy, and as a therapist, that's a non-negotiable for me because I have fallen one too many times into the role of therapists in my relationships, and so it was very important to me that my partners, all of them, did not rely on me in that way.
Really being able to turn to each other and use the same language and be able to, how about we do this too? Can we have our family meeting? Whatever was working for us before, we just kept doing, but evolved it to fit whatever relationship structure was going on. Yes, as weird as it sounds, as much was changing, also keeping the fundamental skills and tools the same.
It's like the value system of respect in the relationship didn't shift because the relationship title shifted. When I shared about it on Instagram, which was a wild experience, one of the things that I put is like, no matter what your title is in my life, I want you in it. Title doesn't matter. The person is what matters. Forget the label. We can figure out how often we want to talk or see each other, but the title of that relationship doesn't dictate that anyway.
Emily: That's so interesting because with the two of them, I have this knee-jerk reaction to be like, yes, I do a podcast with my two exes. Maybe it sounds a little salacious, I don't know, kind of fun but-
Dedeker: Edgy.
Emily: Yes, edgy. Exactly.
Dedeker: It's a good hook.
Emily: They've been my co-host and partner in a different way for much longer than they've been my exes or much longer rather than I've been in relationship with them in a romantic way. That's probably not a really good thing to say. I do wonder, I'm like, "There is no label for what we are. It just is".
Dedeker: Exactly.
Jase: I was just going to jump in and say I struggle with that same thing of trying to explain to people my relationship with Emily where it's like yes, sure, if I want to just get some attention, the ex thing is a great direction, but if I'm really trying to communicate this more to a friend and not to some press outlet or something like that, it's like, I honestly often forget about the ex part. That's not at the top of my brain in terms of like, that's the box that Emily fits into.
Then it's like, okay, it's a good friend, but then it's like, but there's also more than that. We've been so intertwined financially by having a business together, which a lot of people only do with romantic partners, and being entwined financially as well as emotionally and spending so much time doing something that we really care about together, doing this podcast. It's frustrating sometimes to-- I don't know how to convey it to people. Eventually, it's just like, well, I don't know. "She's my friend. I don’t listen to podcasts. It's like I don't know what to do anymore.
Rachel: Well, and at some point it's like, what is the box? Who is the box for?
Jase: Right. I think in that case it's like, I want a shorter way to try to convey all of that to someone else to explain, like, "This is Emily." If you think about if I introduced you to a person you haven't met before, I might say, "Hey, this is my wife." People immediately are like, "Wow, okay. This person is important to you. You have a romantic relationship. You feel very strongly for each other." For me, as someone who knows you, I should know this person because they're a significant part of your life.
I feel like with friend, we don't have that same level of connotation there. Whereas if I were introducing Emily to someone, or talking about Emily, I want them to get more like that other picture, in terms of, how important this person is.
Rachel: Which is so interesting because how many couples, let's just say husband and wife, to be super fucking heteronormative, husband and wife, that saying this is my wife, they're actually like that person may not be very important to them, and they may not really give two shits about them, and they may not be financially intertwined, and all of the things that we make that word mean or whatever word mean is not the same thing that someone else thinks it means.
It's like these labels to try to convey the meaning. I have found sometimes almost create more confusion because we then assume that our meaning of that word is like the other person's meaning. It's like, "This is my best friend." Then, all of a sudden, you're like, "Okay, well, I know how my best friend is, so that must be what Rachel's best friend is like."
Jase: Yes, yes.
Dedeker: Yes, how fascinating. That makes me go back to what you were talking about earlier about relationship education and communication education. I think it is funny how, of course, we grow up with this pretty standard, pretty normative hierarchy of relationships modeled around us. I'm just thinking about also how early we get modeled the whole, well, this is my best friend thing. I think it's great to have a best friend, but I also think it's great to have more than one best friend.
Rachel: Yes.
Emily: So many best friends.
Rachel: That's something that gets tossed around. I watched The Bachelor for brain-numbing entertainment, and I have for years. It's great. In fact, my ex-husband and I used to have a podcast recapping it through the lens of a couples therapist. It was very .
Emily: Wow.
Rachel: One of the things that like is one of the cliches on that show is they're like, "I'm trying to find my best friend." I'm like, okay. That's
Emily: "Okay, you don't have one. Like, "What?"
Rachel: Exactly. I'm like, "Are you going to ditch your other people you knew before this reality show? I don't understand."
Jase: That is how a lot of people think about relationships though.
Emily: Exactly. Yes.
Jase: It's like when you find that, they're going to replace the role of basically everyone else in your life.
Rachel: Yes. Take over all the responsibilities, all the expectations, fill all your needs.
Jase: Exactly.
Dedeker: Well, I don't want to spoil any Ted Lasso for anybody, but I'll talk about it in very generic terms because that really pissed me off, that happened in an episode where someone got into a new relationship and immediately bailed on plans with their close friend. I think in the course of the show, we just see it as like, "Oh yes, that's totally normal. That's what you would do."
Jase: We'll see. There's still time. There's still time for them to come around.
Dedeker: There's still time, sure, but it's
Jase: We're invested as you can tell.
Dedeker: Being that interaction did make me think about that. Of like, "Oh yes, there it is. Normalized." Right?
Rachel: Yes.
Dedeker: Oh, yes, it totally makes sense that you would bail on plans with me last minute because you have a new relationship that you're in.
Rachel: Yes. There's so much normalized. I was watching the new season of Workin' Moms on Netflix, and there was a moment where one of the women to her partner says like, "Oh, are you jealous?" It's framed as this, like, "Oh, you must love me so much." If you're expressing jealousy. I literally out loud. I was like, "No, please stop."
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Jase: We hope you're enjoying this episode. We're just going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support our show and help us to continue bringing this content to everyone out there in the world for free every week. The first thing you can do is to just take a moment and listen to our sponsors, and if any seem interesting to you, go check them out. That really does directly help support our show financially. If you want to support directly and join our community, go to multiamory.com/join and learn more about that there.
It's constantly. Yes, yes. We were just watching an episode of Spy x Family just the other night, same thing where it was that like, "Oh, is she actually jealous?" Meaning she must actually like me. Same, same sort of thing. We just associate those two with each other.
Emily: This was not really related, but the words love bombing have been in two different shows that I watched recently, and I was like, "Oh, they're talking about the hot thing right now and love bombing is one of them and Ted Lasso was one of those shows." Yes, that's just interesting to see what's in the cultural zeitgeist, I guess, at that moment, and then what pops up on these shows.
Dedeker: I'm really frustrated because I am still gunning for someday when someone can effectively rope in a non-monogamy romance plot into a video game. All three of us are gamers and--
Rachel: Love it.
Dedeker: So far it's like-- Either it's non-existent, either. It's like, sure, you can romance multiple characters, but you're always going to reach a point--
Emily: You have to do one.
Dedeker: Yes, or someone's like, "Okay, you got to pick." You got to pick one or the only other handful of games that have tried this, either it's been like, I think the newest fallout was like, sure, you can romance, multiple characters but none of them ever really acknowledge it or talk about it. You just happen to be able to have parallel relationships and there's nothing that actually brings home any kind of sense of consensual non-monogamy, or games that I've played where they're like, "Great, you can be non-monogamous. That automatically means you're in a group relationship and you're having threesomes with people."
I'm like, "Okay, sure, these are maybe scratching the surface of some different non-monogamy practices, but I've yet to find someone who's found a way to effectively do that in a game, but hopefully that's on the horizon."
Rachel: I hope so too.
Jase: What we're trying to say is, if you, listener, out there are a game developer, and you would like some consultants to help out with this, hit us up, because we want this game to exist in the world.
Rachel: Truly. Also a TV show like a dating show.
Jase: All of those. Yes.
Rachel: The Bachelor is the same. It's like here's this crash course in non-monogamy. Here, be super uncomfortable without any skills and then, oh, at the end, be monogamous.
Emily: It's so ridiculous. It really is. Because you see the person falling in love with multiple people and it's like yes, of course, you are because you're going on these amazing dates and this is all that you're thinking about for six weeks or whatever, so you should just date both of them. Calm down.
Rachel: Then in the interview, they're like, "I can't believe it. I actually have feelings for more than one human." They're like, blown away. I'm like, "Yes, yes."
Emily: Imagine that.
Rachel: If imagine.
Dedeker: Well, I like to think about, again, because I'm so glad that you shared the education piece because it's something I'm also really passionate about. I just think about, what if someone had told me when I was in middle school that it's even possible to be attracted to more than one person, not even related to what kind of relationships do you get into.
That it's like, yes, that is something that we do as human beings. We can sometimes be attracted to more than one person at once. It's like that was even missing.
Rachel: Oh, completely. I have a diary entry from freshman year of high school. I was 14. I was dating my first serious person and I so deeply wanted to make out with this other really hot person in choir.
Emily: You're going to leave me. I totally kissed this guy in a play and we weren't supposed to. It was in A Few Good Men which is crazy.
Dedeker: The 14-year-old production of A Few Good Men.
Emily: Yes, and I was like-
Jase: A lot more progressive than you realize.
Emily: No, I was Joanne Galloway. I was the Demi Moore role and then he was the Tom Cruise role and I was like, "He's so hot, I'm going to kiss him" and I did, and I was also definitely dating a guy for a couple years, my little high school relationship. He was so mad. Holy shit. He was so pissed and I felt really bad but I also was like, "Who cares? Calm down."
Rachel: I literally wrote, I don't know if I'm ready to be in a relationship because I want to see what it's like to kiss this other person, but I don't want to break up with this other person. I don't understand why you put me at a buffet from food around the world, and you're like, "You're a slut if you eat a burrito and chow mein at the same time." It's like, "What are you talking about? I'm at a buffet." Oh, try to see. Yes. Oh, man, Emily, I bet we could exchange many more stories
Emily: I love that we were in choir, I guess.
Rachel: For anybody who wants to get this book, how can someone know it's for them? If someone out there, of course, for non-monogamous folks who have listened to your podcast, they're going to be like, "Oh my gosh, yes, that's like a no-brainer", how about for other folks out there? How can they know like, "Oh, yes." Aside from they know that I preach all the time relationships and relationships and relationships, so go buy this fucking book and you will benefit from it, I promise, but from the mouths of the authors?
Dedeker: Yes, I think that we can condense it down to maybe two things that are necessary in order to get something out of this book or to know that this book is for you, I think it's really helpful that you brought up the growth mindset thing because I do think that's part of it.
I think that's a big part of our show in general is having this sense of, Oh, if something's not going well in my relationship or if I'm having difficulty communicating, there are ways to fix that. There are tools to at least try. There are things to experiment with. There are ways that I can customize my relationships, customize the conversations that we're having that they actually fit us and feel comfortable for us, and work for us, so I think that's a big part of it.
Then the only other thing is, again, this is not a non-monogamy manual. It's not a how-to, you just have to be comfortable with non-monogamy existing because the fact that we do use examples from non-monogamous situations, but then we also use examples from monogamous situations as well. All the tools in our book are tools that we have developed over the course of the show, tools that not only do we use ourselves all the time, but also that our audience has picked up and run with.
We've gotten a lot of audience feedback on what's worked for them, what's not worked for them. They're tools that I use with my clients, I've gotten a lot of feedback that way of what helps with people and what doesn't help with their communication.
Basically, it's like if you are someone who's interested in having better relationship and again with the definition being that relationship is relationship is relationship, and want to get better at communication, and want something that's maybe easy to share with a partner, easy for you to book club with a partner, easy for the two of you or three of you, or how many of you to fill out, homework prompts, discussion questions, things like that, then this book is for you. Is there anything that I missed there, Jase and Em?
Emily: I don't think so. That was good.
Rachel: Yes, I'll soundbite that and send it back to you so you can use it on the website. One of the things that I really love about all of your approach to this is, I've always been a research nerd. I come from an academic background. I got all the way up to dissertation with my PhD and I was like, "This is stupid. I have too many student loans", and then just started practicing as a therapist at my master's level, but I always loved to being able to bring research-based techniques and making them accessible for people.
Again, like you were saying with your research assistants, people don't know how to read studies unless you go to school to learn how to read studies, which is shitty gatekeeping and I hate it, but given that that's the system right now, how can we make these things accessible? It seems like things like your-- I think it's the radar, is it radar check-in? Is that the?
Jase: Yes.
Rachel: Things like that pull from so many different research-based things. That's part of why I feel so comfortable. I haven't read through your whole book yet, and I feel fully comfortable recommending it wholeheartedly to everyone because I've seen how much effort and dedication y'all put into having these be based in something, not just like, "This works for one person, one time, so here's a guide."
Jase: That's something that we definitely see out there and even in a lot of books that are pretty popular where it's just someone just kind of came up with it and it worked for them and so they said this is how everyone should do it. I think sometimes they've gotten lucky and that's been helpful for other people and a lot of times, it's not. People can feel really bad that this system didn't work for them, or maybe it actually is worse for them.
One of the great advantages we had in writing the book is that we've been doing the podcast for as long as we have, so it's not like we just came up with these tools and the first time anyone's going to encounter them is when they read this book and that's the first time we'll get feedback is after the book's already out there.
That this is stuff we've been able to talk to people about and have focus groups and look up more research and refine over time. That's been really important to us and I think also just having the opportunity in the book to share more of the research that we talk about on the show, because like you said, most people are not trained how to read research studies.
Even if you are, a lot of them are long slogs to get to any of the useful information. Not only is it a skill you have to learn, but also it's a bummer to have to do, but at the same time, a lot of the way that the media portrays studies is they'll just pick out one thing and just say, "Oh, look, if you make dinner together, you get rich or whatever it is." They've totally taken some correlation and said it's a causation and then not explained how that, oh, and the study was done on five people and--
Dedeker: All undergrads.
Rachel: In Minnesota.
Jase: Yes, exactly. All heirs to Fortune 500 companies or something. They leave out all the details. Something we try to do on the show is when we talk about studies to give as much context as we think will help to understand the study a little bit better, as well as some caveats, without getting all caught up in and this was the standard deviation, and this is the S regression that we ran on this, whatever.
We don't need to get into that part of stuff because I wouldn't even understand that if it were presented to me that way. I'm like, "Wait, what? Show me a graph. What? So try to find that balance between being true to the studies, giving more reliable information and explaining it as we go, while still just giving you, "Here's the useful parts. Here's the parts that we think you could take and apply in your life."
Rachel: Beautiful.
Emily: Exactly what Jase said is a lot of these studies only are geared towards one particular group of people, and we do try to talk about that. I think I know that's something that our research assistants have said too, that so many people of color, so many gay people, so many people that aren't just this White demographic, essentially, who generally tend to be pretty young, the studies just don't really look at them.
I do think that that's a big thing that we have to be aware of and that we try to tell our listeners and we've talked about it some in the book as well with the hope also that studies are going to start bringing those people in as well. That's the thing that I think really needs to change in academia and in, I think as we look at relationships and how they're evolving and changing and how we as a society are as well, it needs to be more inclusive.
Rachel: Agreed. Let's also sound clip that and send it to every news channel ever and school.
Using the relationships are relationships are relationships concept that we all seem to agree is accurate, what is each of your favorite thing about being in a relationship with someone?
Dedeker: Oh, wow. What a question.
Emily: Wow. Yes. That's a great question.
Rachel: It doesn't have to be your only favorite, but one of your favorites.
Dedeker: I think, okay. Gosh, okay, I'm just shooting from the hip here, just off the top of my head. This has not been pre-rehearsed, so let's see what comes out. The first thing that comes up for me is I think there's something about being really fully known by somebody and yet also at the same time still being discovered. I think that at the beginning of a relationship, it can be so exciting to discover a new person and have them discovering you and delighting in you and asking questions about your history and about the things that you like and you get to do the same and that can be so exciting and sometimes we lose a sense of that as our relationships go on.
I do think the healthiest relationships I've ever been in, there's this simultaneous feeling of, "Wow, I can be so vulnerable with this person. This person has seen me at these low points. They've seen me at these really embarrassing points, but they still love me and they still cherish me and we're still discovering new things about each other." Right? Literally, last night when Jase and I were going down a really weird YouTube rabbit hole, I found out that you have very strong opinions about candy canes that I never knew and we've been together almost 10 years at this point.
Jase: They're basically the worst candy.
Dedeker: I had no idea.
Emily: More like peppermint?
Rachel: Worse than candy corn?
Dedeker: No, so such strong. I feel like he's getting angry on the couch. He's so passionate about this.
Rachel: Candy corn versus candy canes.
Jase: I would take candy corn any day.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Rachel: Really?
Jase: Candy canes are the worst.
Emily: It's not good for your teeth, but the peppermint is lovely. No?
Dedeker: Well, to bring it back to relationships, I love getting that experience in a long-term relationship. Then I think the special benefit of non-monogamy is getting to literally have that experience in parallel of I can feel really comfortable and nice and loved and cherished in this long-term relationship and be having this kind of fun, flirty, ooh, this new person that I'm discovering. Getting both those things at once, I think is something that really gets me going.
Jase: I do want to clarify real quick that I do also think candy corn sucks, but just between the two, I would put candy canes a little bit lower.
Rachel: I have to know.
Jase: Like hit me up being like, "What the fuck. Do you think that candy corn is good?" No, that's not what I'm saying.
Rachel: Is it the shape, the flavor, the texture?
Jase: Yes. There are some candy canes that are okay if they have a good flavor to them, but it's a weird shape that doesn't make any sense. There's no practical use. You just suck on it till it sharpens to a point and you stab yourself in the mouth. There's just no-- and the weird way the wrapper comes off it and you're sucking on it.
Emily: You've really thought about this.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: See? There's a whole other corner of Jase I'd never stumbled into.
Emily: I like . It's amazing.
Jase: You could be like, because you roll off the wrapper, but not all the way so that your hands aren't getting sticky while you're holding it, right? Then you're sucking on it, but because that shitty little plastic is so similar to the texture of the candy cane, you end up sucking on the plastic for a while and you're like, "Oh, wait, shit. I got to roll it." It's just a bad candy. It's just bad and I don't know why they're so ubiquitous for the holidays.
Dedeker: Jase what do you love about relationships? About being in relationships?
Jase: Oh, gosh. Emily go first. I've talked too much.
Emily: Okay.
Rachel: Jase is like, "I am consumed with candy canes right now. I need a moment."
Emily: This is similar in some ways to what Dedeker said. I think having the privilege, if you do get the privilege of having a lot of time with someone, is really interesting because it shows, you can look back and see, "Wow, I used to get so upset so easily about these things." As time has evolved and as I've evolved as a person and as my partner has as well, that shifted a lot and it's really cool to see when you don't get upset about things that you used to or you don't get triggered as easily or just simply something you've evolved past or broken that pattern.
I used to get really upset about little things and it just doesn't phase me as much anymore in a relationship. Or I used to be not really sure of who I was in my relationship and what I stood for in terms of myself and my partnership. I'm much more clear on that now and I'm much less worried about, I think, all of those little things that used to piss me off or hurt me or whatever. Things still do come up, but it's great to see the evolution over time and just watch what happens there.
Rachel: Love that. Thank you. All right, Jase. You can go.
Jase: Yes. I think for me, what I love about relationships in general is that I feel like I get to learn so much about myself through the relationships I have. That's one of the things that I love, one, about polyamory, but two, just about how learning more about relationships has opened me up to the idea that relationships are relationships are relationships and that I've also, especially in recent years, really put more intentionality into how I approach my friendships. Some of these relationships I've had for a very long time in my life, but traditionally would have just been like, "Oh, yes. That's my friend."
To be more intentional and really think about those relationships because a little bit of a different side of me comes out in all my different relationships. Right? It's almost like I'm tapping into a different part of my brain for the way that I joke with my friend Steve. He has this super quick wit and also really off the wall weird sense of humor, and when I'm with him, that's where I go. It's like I'm getting to use this part of my brain that I can't use anywhere else because no one would get it.
When I'm with Dedeker, we have all our little inside jokes. When I talk with Emily, we have ours. When there's the three of us, it's a whole different thing in the way that we interact. For me, it's like I'm getting to experience more pieces of myself and learn more about myself from all these different relationships.
Rachel: Thank you. I love all of those answers. I know that there are going to be many people out there listening who resonate with all of them and who may resonate with one. Thank you for going off the cuff with me there for a moment. Where can folks find you if they haven't already? Where is the best place for them to do so?
Emily: You can go to multiamory.com/book to find our book. Besides that, you can find us on Instagram @multiamory_podcast and then Twitter and Facebook at multiamory. If you're so inclined, join our Patreon as well.
Rachel: Yes. Check it out, friends. If you like the content that I put out and that you're used to getting from me, I promise that this will resonate with you and you also know I don't promise things. I really, I really, really do.
Dedeker: You heard it here first.
Rachel: Yes. Anything that you want to leave everyone listening with before we say bye? No pressure.
Jase: I would just say just to everyone listening out there, whatever kind of relationship you have or whatever you want to do that there are people like Rachel and like us who are here trying to help you do that the best way you can and not trying to make you do it in a totally different way just because of that. I think the other piece I would say is that also you don't need to be alone in trying to make your relationship work.
If you're with someone who's not also putting in the effort on their side, that's not a failure on your part. You deserve better than that and you deserve someone who is going to put in some effort on their side. It doesn't have to look exactly the same as you, but we all deserve to have good relationships That should just be a base level of willingness to communicate, willingness to work on our relationship rather than, "Well, that's the dream. Maybe someday in a fantasy world, I'll get that relationship."
I just want to encourage everyone to be like, "No, that's the base level." The bare minimum is someone who's willing to put effort into your relationship. I hope for that for all of you, in all your relationships.
Dedeker: I think I would piggyback off that to say, Rachel, you shared earlier about what helped you get through these relationship transitions was the fact that everyone was very pro-therapy and everyone had their own therapists. Way back in the day when our own quad was falling apart, none of us were going to therapy. I think maybe it goes beyond just screening for people who are pro-therapy or who are in therapy, even though I'm a huge fan of that, and I think that's a great thing.
I feel like it's finding people who are pro-growth, people who feel at least some sense of empowerment around, "Okay, we can change patterns. I can contribute in some way to change my patterns. You can contribute in some way to change your patterns, and then together we can find a way to communicate that works for us. We can find a better pattern for our relationship." I feel like that's the key. Is you're not feeling like we're stuck, like we're trapped, like there's absolutely no options. Feeling like you're partnered with people who can lean into that and are willing to work together to affect change, positive change in your relationships.
Rachel: Love that.
Emily: Relationships are very difficult. Give yourself some grace because you will up, and we all up like the three of us do all the time and that's okay.
Rachel: Also me.
Emily: Yes, yes, exactly. That's really okay. Also realize that our partners are not going to be perfect either, and so when you can, give them some grace, do.
Rachel: Beautiful. Thank you all so much for your time. I am so, so grateful to have you on, and I know everyone listening is going to get something really important out of this. Thank you.
Dedeker: Thank you for having us.
Emily: Thank you.
Jase: Thank you for the work that you do as well in supporting people. It means a lot to us that there's other people out there doing that and it's so great to be here.
Rachel: Thank you.
That's all for today, you sexy folks. What questions came to mind as you were listening? Continue the conversation with me over on Instagram @theWright_Rachel. Don't forget, please leave a rating and a review so that we can continue erasing shame and stigma together.