465 - Is Single Life Superior? Why Independence Matters for Everyone

Being single today

We’re past breakup season at this point, and so it’s time to talk about independence! Independence is something we should all strive for, whether we’re single or not, and so we’re going over some trends and research about the landscape of being single:

The greedy marriage

Sometimes, romantic relationships can shrink someone’s broader social circle, or consume your time and energy and restricting opportunities for self-development.

In their paper “Marriage: the Good, the Bad, and the Greedy," Naomi Gerstel of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Natalia Sarkisian of Boston College found that based on two nation-wide surveys, married couples spend less time than singles calling, writing, and visiting with their friends, neighbors, and extended family.

Single people also often maintain stronger friendships and social ties, which contributes to an overall happiness advantage.

There’s also the risk of overdependence in relationships: relying excessively on a partner for happiness or identity can be detrimental. It’s common for individual passions and hobbies take a backseat.

According to Geoff MacDonald, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who researches relationships and singlehood:

  • People who are satisfied with their sex life are happier to be single.

    • In general, coupled people have more sex than single people.

    • The singles who are happiest tend to be the ones with fulfilling sex lives.

  • People become more satisfied with being single around age 40.

    • People who really wanted partnership have found it.

    • Overall life satisfaction has been shown to go up around that time.

    • People have enough experience to establish their own values and interests instead of falling into societal pressure.

Prioritize your own desires

Regardless of whether you’re in a relationship or not, it’s crucial for your long-term emotional wellbeing to foster your own passions. Prioritizing your dreams and needs doesn’t only apply to single people!

Strong bonds with friends, family, and community are vital as well, and nurturing those relationships with some quality time is a good idea.

Make a point to set time aside for hobbies and activities you personally enjoy.

Work on developing self-sufficiency and meeting your own needs to avoid having your happiness become entirely partner-dependent.

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're talking about the joys of being single even if you're not single. Right now is a time where many people have either gotten out of relationships and are adjusting to a new way of living their life, being more single, I could say. As well as a time when a lot of people are starting new relationships and they're suddenly entwining with someone and maybe losing out on some of the good parts of being single or being more independent.

In this episode, we're going to be exploring some information about singleness in general and trends in that, especially in the United States. Then we're also going to look at what are the things that make people successful in terms of life happiness as single people. Then look at how we can incorporate that into our lives, whether we are actually single or not. If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools, we reference on this show. Check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships.

It covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships, whether those are friends, family, or romantic partners. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever you like to get books.

Emily: I have not been single in a really long time.

Dedeker: Yes, me too.

Emily: I tried to remember the last time I was single, and I think it was in college, which was now over 13 years ago.

Dedeker: Goodness.

Emily: That's a long time to not be single.

Dedeker: I have had some weird moments where, especially if I've gotten out of a relationship recently where I'm like, "Oh, yes, now it's that time where I'm single and I got to get back to myself," and I have to be like, "Oh, wait, no, I'm not technically single, I'm still in relationships with other people," but there's this part of me that has become newly single.

Emily: There you go.

Dedeker: It's different. I don't know if it counts. I think someone who's been actually single living by themselves for a really long time would say, "That doesn't count."

Jase: I think that's the point of this episode is to explore the whole range, I guess, of what singleness means. I think that even the term single is really built around a society where you're either married or single, and those are your only two real options. That the whole concept of singleness is there. Because in our modern day, when do you become not single? Is it if you're dating at all? Is it if you have friends with benefits, are you still single or not? If you hang out with them too much, do you now become not single?

Then the question like Dedeker brought up of, say, you're non-monogamous, or even if you're monogamous but you're a long distance from your partner for significant portions of the time, does your life become more single during those times when you're less entwined or more entwined? I think that's part of the heart of this is it's about independence and the choices that we make with other people versus ones we make on our own and what types of connections we value and prioritize in our lives. That's all the landscape that we're going to be exploring on this journey today.

Dedeker: I love a good journey. I like being able to throw this needle and look at this sense of how do you find independence even if you are dating people, even if you're living with a partner, even if maybe you're living with multiple partners.

Emily: My best friend, James, who has a lovely, wonderful partner, who's his husband for a number of years, I think at least the last five years, he will regularly take trips to Vegas or various places alone. I remember him telling me that one of the first times that he did that, his parents were like, "Wait a minute, are you and Andrew not doing well? What's going on? Is everything okay?" He's like, "I just want to go to Vegas and do some things that maybe Andrew doesn't love to do like hang out at the pool, and drink mimosas, or something, and I'm just going to read and be nerdy by myself," and it's totally fine.

I really respect that in people who have maybe more normative relationships than non-monogamous people, for example, that they are able to say, "Hey, I need my alone time. My partner needs their alone time. It's really important to be able to do that even though we are entwined in a very legal sense in a very public way as well."

Dedeker: Sure.

Jase: I think that part of this goes with this assumption I guess, one, that no one would want to be single if they had a choice. No one would want to be alone if they had a choice. I think that's one assumption that a lot of people bring to this. I've had the same struggles when Dedeker would be in Australia when she had a partner there, and she might be there for several months where if I were telling people about someone knew that I met or the person at the coffee shop or whatever.

I'm just like, "Oh, yes, my-- oh, Australia, that's cool. My partner, my girlfriend is there right now," and then realizing, shit, now, I've walked into a weird situation that I have to explain why she's gone for so many months because they're like, "Is it for work?" I'd be like, "Oh, she has family there that she's visiting." They're like, "Oh, and you're not going with her?" I'm like, "Oh, not this time." I'm just like, "Oh, shit." It's become weird now because there's all these assumptions that come with it.

Emily: Absolutely.

Jase: I think also when it comes to that, I think a lot of people assume that-- especially if people are partnered, they assume that if I were alone or if my partner were alone, that's when they're going to go wild doing all the stuff that they can't do while they're with me, or that I can't do when I'm with them, which I think from a monogamous mindset, it goes to sex and dating new people. Whereas I think that from my experience is more of the, "Wow, I get to stay up late playing video games with my friends and being loud" or watching movies that Dedeker doesn't like, or something like that.

I think that. several years ago, I think when non-monogamy was newer to me, it was a little bit more of a sense of like, "Oh, I should be dating now because that's what I do when I'm in this single state, I'm in the alone state. I should be doing these things. I should be looking for these types of connections." I think that as I've learned to let go of that and instead realize, what are the things I just really like having my independence to do, those times of singleness, single-lookingness, look very different and are honestly much more fulfilling.

Let's talk about singleness in general, just trends and things like that. It's something we talked about on a few episodes, but it's been at least a couple of years since the last time that we talked about this specifically. The first thing to realize is that it's more and more common. According to Pew Research, in 1990, around 29% of US adults live unpartnered. That's worth noting that, again, the definition of what's single or not is unclear, but this is that they live unpartnered. They live on their own, or with roommates, or someone who's not a romantic partner. In 1990, it was 29%, and in this most recent one that I found, which was from 2021, it was around 40%.

Emily: Wow.

Jase: That's a pretty significant increase over 31 years in that amount of time, so yes, becoming a lot more common. Specifically, the population of people between 25 and 54 who have never been married make up a larger portion of that now. Basically that that group has been growing, which again makes sense. I'm like, "Yes, of course, that makes sense." That's gone up 14% since 1990 as far as how much they represent of that study. Pretty significant to basically say that we have this much more significant number of people that are not just single, but that to a certain extent seem to be single by choice or at least never married.

Dedeker: Makes sense.

Emily: In terms of single, do they mean single because they have never been married at all but they may still be partnered in some way, or single like they don't even live with a partner, or they don't even have a partner, that kind of single? Because I think that when we talk about single, we tend to mean that other one, the not currently having a partner.

Jase: As I mentioned at the beginning, that one's hard to pin down what counts as a partner, when is a relationship serious enough, whatever. In this particular research study, it has to do with where you're living with someone you identify as a romantic partner. Maybe they had partners, maybe they were dating lots of people, we don't know, but it's more about that they're living a more single-looking life because you're able to measure that a little more clearly.

Dedeker: What we're also saying is that the research shows that approximately half of singles today lack an interest in dating or seeking relationships. I can see some people really handwringing about that. On the flip side, I can see that as a good thing that maybe there's more people who are feeling more comfortable and better able to accomplish the things in life that they want to accomplish without needing to be dating or needing to be in a relationship or a couple of relationships in order to accomplish that.

Emily: This was something that I had to come to terms with, with my mother, for example, who is pretty single by choice and has decided really that she doesn't want somebody to come into her life to screw up I think her happiness and equilibrium.

Dedeker: Interesting.

Emily: I guess it took me a little while, but I can understand that I think a little bit more as I age, because especially for her, she has such a routine, she has such a way of doing things that is very specific to her and her happiness. I do think that having somebody come in and disrupt that would be really difficult for her. Can the two of you think of other ways why a person would not want to be partnered and choose to remain single?

Jase: I think that the independence piece, and I think also more people realizing that they don't necessarily have to be in romantic relationships to have a fulfilling sex life is another one that some people could really freak out about that being the case. I think that could be part of it. I imagine there could be aspects of people feeling like they need to prioritize careers more than being in partnerships or it could also just be that people feel like putting off seeking partners until later in life is a viable option. I think that could be part of it too, that maybe we are making some progress on doing away with this myth that once you're past a certain age, you're no good to anybody.

Dedeker: For sure.

Jase: Because we've seen the age at which people are getting married is also going higher. It's later in life.

Dedeker: I think that's a valid point that maybe we have more resources at our disposal now that enables us to have access to a support network, have access to people to have sex with. Of course, that's always going to be very highly individualized depending on the person's context. Or maybe a lot of us are just burnt. A lot of us are children of divorce and have that hangover looming over us. There's a lot in the mix.

Jase: Absolutely. If we were to look at some of the research here, there was a research article that was published in 2022 called What Makes Single Life Attractive: an Explorative Examination of the Advantages of Singlehood. That's a very wordy title there. One of the things that this found is that when they interviewed I think a few hundred singles and asked them what appeals to them about it, why do they like this, that specifically it was the freedom to pursue their personal goals and freedom from things being dictated by a partner.

Emily: Yes. Exactly.

Dedeker: That makes sense.

Jase: I thought that wording was a little bit surprising to me, but I could see that and I wonder if there might be a bit of a gender division on that. I didn't see those numbers specifically, but if there could be maybe a rising category of single heterosexual women who are like, "Yes, I don't like the fact that I'm often expected to subsume my goals into my male partner's goals." Maybe that's total speaking off the cuff for me. I don't know if that's true at all.

Emily: From a statistical standpoint, isn't it true that women tend to not necessarily feel as fulfilled in their marriages, whereas men tend to, and their life expectancy goes up, but for women, that's not the case?

Dedeker: Yes. I think that's been corroborated by a couple of different research studies.

Jase: It is another one though that I hope is changing and maybe we're just not seeing the effects of it. We've talked about that before when we've talked about codependency actually, where for men, traditionally their only emotionally connective relationship is with their spouse. The whole thing about life expectancy being lower for single men after divorce especially, that might be the cause. Again, it's a little bit hard to pinpoint that for sure but I wonder if, especially with younger generations now, this being a little bit more of a move to men being able to be more emotionally supportive of each other.

I think we've still got ways to go there, but I think that trend is moving to where we might see less of that effect of men, especially as they get older, don't want to be single because then they have no one to talk to and no one to support them. That maybe we'll actually see that balance out a little bit.

Dedeker: Maybe. I know the statistics that I've seen more recently about people who are older in dating, people who maybe have already been married, maybe been divorced, or maybe they're widows or widowers or things like that. I'm talking later in life like 60s, 70s or so, that men tend to be much more interested in living with a partner again. Women are much more like, "No man, I'm never going to live with a partner ever again. I don't want to jump back into being somebody's caretaker."

Emily: Totally.

Jase: Yes, that's a great point. I definitely think that could be a significant contributing factor here. Some of the inspiration for this episode came from an article from Time Magazine from time.com just titled, Yes, single People Can Be Happy and Healthy. I think it says it all right there on the tin. In this article, one of the main experts that they interviewed was this person, Jeff MacDonald, who's a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He gave some interesting insights and one of them was this insight that unpartnered people tend to prioritize their mental and physical well-being alongside strong relationships with their families.

That actually there might be a better sense of self-care amongst people who are not partnered than those who are.

Dedeker: Interesting.

Jase: He doesn't say why that is. Again, it makes me wonder, is it because you've just got more energy and bandwidth for those because you're not spending at all on trying to maintain a relationship?

Emily: Maybe.

Jase: Or is it this just social idea that when you're partnered, you I guess let yourself go is how people would say it, or just this assumption that you shouldn't work on personal improvement once you're partnered because that might mean you're trying to find somebody else? I feel like there's a lot of weird baggage and psychology that comes along with that.

Emily: Sure. There are a lot of common misconceptions out there about being single and I think it's really essential to challenge this really harmful perception that being single automatically means that you are more unhappy than those who are partnered. I have found that especially looking at people who are in later years in life, for example, like my mother. I feel like she's happier now than I've ever seen her because she's not looking for a person and feeling, in essence, failure for not finding someone or not finding a dad for me was definitely a thing that she was trying to do in a lot of times in her life.

It's great to realize that people can find happiness in some solitude and still, she has such wonderful friendships with people that she walks with and with family members and all of those things. She finds fulfillment in other ways. People within relationships can also be miserable. They can be really upset and really hate their lives even if they are coupled with another person.

Jase: I think that a piece we'll get into a little more later too is that we associate singleness with solitude and a lot of the research shows that's not the case at all actually. That people who are single have very strong social connections with their family, with their friends, things like that. There's a lot of misconceptions out there to do away with. Now let's move into what are some of these advantages. I think we've touched on it a little bit, but let's explore that a little bit more. First, we're going to take a quick break to talk about supporting this show. If you appreciate this content, if you enjoy it, if you find it helpful, become one of our patrons at patreon.com/multiamory.

You can join there and get access to a really amazing private community on Discord as well as Facebook. Then, of course, take a moment, check out our sponsors on this show. They do contribute to us being able to keep producing this show. Taking a moment to check them out if they're interesting to you, use our promo codes does directly support our show. Jumping into this, the place that I think we should start is that whole idea of aloneness or the idea that the cure for being alone is a romantic relationship. There was an article, this was in the New York Times back in 2007, but it coined this term, the Greedy Marriage.

Emily: It's such an interesting term.

Dedeker: It's so fascinating.

Jase: I just thought it was an interesting term. Basically, the concept of it is that when people are married, they tend to focus their social energy or their connective time and effort inside into that relationship and not as much out to other people like their friends, their colleagues, their family, stuff like that. There was actually a study from Gerstel and Sarkisian, this is from University of Massachusetts and Boston College, who wrote a paper called Marriage: The Good, the Bad, and the Greedy, which again, getting into this greediness idea. They took results from two different nationwide social surveys.

They found that married couples actually spend less time calling, writing, and visiting with their friends, neighbors, and extended family compared to single people.

Emily: I would believe that.

Jase: Which I think really challenges that myth that the single person is the loner or the less social. It actually might be the opposite, that the married people are the antisocial ones, according to these results here.

Dedeker: That not being partnered, it forces you to diversify your social pool-

Emily: That's true.

Dedeker: -a little bit more. Whereas when you are partnered, even if you have multiple partners, there is still a lot of these cultural forces that encourage you to put all of your stock and seek fulfillment for all of your needs through just your romantic partnerships.

Emily: Again, that idea that if you are partnered, you need to be spending all of your free time with that person and not with others. I think that that's really challenging, to be on the receiving end of, and then realize ultimately like, "Wait a minute, crap, this person that was so important in my life for so long, a cherished friend potentially, or a sibling or something along those lines," that you realize, wow, I really have not been putting time and effort into that relationship because I've been so caught up in my life with my spouse or with my kids. Not saying that those aren't important people as well, but it's difficult to not feel as though you're prioritized by somebody just because they are with another person.

Jase: I think that I can identify with this one myself, especially during times when Dedeker and I are living in the same house.

Dedeker: Which is not always consistent.

Jase: Not always consistent, but has been the case definitely for the last I guess couple of years now. I do find that for myself, I will sometimes struggle with feelings of guilt if I want to make plans with my friends, whether that's staying in and just playing games with them online, or if it's going out and doing something that I struggle with just this internalized sense of guilt about that. Luckily Dedeker's very supportive. I've talked to her about this and that she will try to help too, to encourage me to be like, "Yes, of course, yes, do that." I do that for her, but for myself, I still feel this guilt as if a partner would feel slighted by that or would feel betrayed by that.

I think it's just so ingrained in the way that we've been taught to think about relationships, or at least the way I was.

Dedeker: I was about to say, "Oh, you're so silly. You should let go of that." Then I realized I've had times where if I feel like I've been out of the house too much--

Jase: You have mentioned that.

Dedeker: A combination of, oh, not only did I spend time with another partner this week, but also I was in lyra class twice a week, and then I went and hung out with this friend. I got some weird feelings that came up about, "You're just leaving your partner at the house all the time and leaving him alone. What are you doing? Why aren't you there all the time?" Having to come to you to check myself, and check in with you, of, "Are you feeling okay? Am I abandoning you? Am I leaving you alone too much?" Pretty much every time you're like, "No, man, leave more."

Jase: You're like, "Get out of here." Sometimes it's hard to convey that in a way that's supportive and not saying, "I don't want you here," but to just be like, "No, please. It's great. Go do it."

Emily: That's really interesting. I think a lot of times people can get overdependent on a partner by basically putting all of their happiness eggs in the basket of the partnership or the relationship. What I mean by that is that you decide that all of your passions and interests may take a backseat to the needs of the relationship or the needs of your partner potentially even. I've absolutely had this happen in my life where I think, "Okay, I need to make sure that I am showing my partner that I care about them, and so I'm going to choose not to do some things that might take away time from them or feel as though maybe I care more about that thing than I do about them."

That gets in this weird codependent cycle that's pretty ugly potentially as time goes on. If you ever want to break away from that for example, that may become a really difficult thing to be able to do because they expect that you are just going to basically be at their beck and call.

Dedeker: It's that hard balancing act where we don't want to be overly codependent on somebody, but we also don't want to be completely withholding at the same time. The basis of our humanity is a certain amount of shared dependence, but then we do live in a culture at large that both demonizes codependence, while also really encouraging you to do it-

Emily: It's true

Jase: It's so true.

Dedeker: -in a relationship.

Jase: I think something worth pointing out with the way this can be detrimental. It's not just letting go of your own interests or things like that, but it's also putting a lot of burden on that other person to be the one who takes care of you in all these ways. I think that's another piece where ironically, we could come into this thinking, this relationship's important to me. This is the one where I should be putting all my emotional energy, that kind of thing.

By putting all this responsibility on that person to be your therapist, be your personal trainer, be your mom or dad type role at times, that can lead to losing a lot of the parts that are supposed to be the intimate, close, affectionate parts of this relationship. Because you've also had to make them do all these other jobs. It's like ironically, we not only are putting less energy into our other relationships, but we also might be hurting this one that we think we're putting all of our energy into by the fact that we're trying to put too much into that.

Emily: I think it's really important to have boundaries even in your close relationships. Those are difficult to establish, especially if you haven't established them before, and then try to establish them later. I think that change can be really difficult to create and to maintain. It is important for partners to have separate interests. It's really important for them to have friendships outside of just the main relationship or the multiple relationships. Because again, we can't get fulfilled in absolutely every way by one person. I think it's so attractive to find a partner or to have somebody who has really important other relationships in their life and who is getting fulfilled in a variety of ways, not just from you.

Jase: There are a couple more pieces that I thought were very interesting that came from Professor McDonald who is in that Yes, single People Can Be Happy article from time.com. A couple of observations I thought were interesting. The first was that people who are satisfied with their sex life are happier when they're single. If we unpack that for a second. Basically, one thing is that a lot of people who are married or coupled, assume incorrectly that single people have all these sexual opportunities.

They're having so much more sex than I am when the reality is based on the research that in general, coupled people, not necessarily married, but coupled people have more sex in general than single people do, than people who are uncoupled. However, they found that the singles who were the happiest were the ones who felt like their sex life was fulfilling. I do think, again, this is one of those things that if you traveled back in time, even a couple of generations, that's unthinkable, that a single person could have a satisfying sex life.

The horror, what are we doing? Because society's falling apart. I think it's worth realizing that sex, or at least finding what a satisfying sex life is for you, contributes to your happiness regardless of what type of relationship status you're in. That's worth thinking about that. For you finding that satisfaction, maybe having less sex because you felt like you had pressure to when you were in certain types of relationships or it could be having different types of sex or more of it or something, but just realizing that's still a valid and important thing that contributes to your happiness. The other one is he mentioned that people become more satisfied with being single at around age 40.

Dedeker: Really?

Emily: Heck yes, Jase.

Dedeker: Fascinating.

Emily: Then the two of us have something to look forward to. How lovely.

Jase: He doesn't really know why because again, causation and correlation, it's hard to find causation and really know the reasons for it. A few theories that he threw out there, one is that maybe people have self-selected themselves into groups by then. The people who are like, "I will only be happy if I'm coupled," have done it by then. You're left with more people who are happy to be single, and that's why they are. Maybe that's one option. Also, he mentioned that overall, life satisfaction has been shown to go up as you get into your 40s just in general for people, and so I'm like, "Okay, that's cool."

Dedeker: Maybe there's something about your differentiation, individuation process. Your maturing process as you get older.

Jase: That's my theory about it is that you've had a little more time to establish your own values and your interests outside of just the ones you've had in relationships and then maybe also by then, you're less invested in social pressure. If we think about the evolution of a human that once we go from childhood into our adolescence, we become hyper-focused on how do we fit into the social circle. When we're younger, we're just doing our own whatever for the most part, focused on just our immediate family, and then suddenly where we fit in socially becomes really important.

Then I think it takes us a very long time to get out of that, and I don't want to say out of it entirely but to also then develop some of that independence again. Maybe that's a contributing factor here as well. Learning these statistics about this age of 40 being significant is very interesting because in our private Discord server for our patrons, we actually have a channel in there that was created because people requested it, which is a channel specifically for 40 and up discussions. I think there was something there of people realizing, "Hey, you know what, we want to have some slightly different conversations depending on our age."

It can change the way we prioritize things, the way we think about things. It's just a really cool example of one of the many channels that have been created and that are constantly being updated because of people realizing there's a need for these different types of discussion. That's really cool stuff that we get to see in our private Discord server, which our patrons can get access to. If you go to multiamory.com/join, you can get more information about that and of course, that directly supports this show.

Additionally, take a moment to check out our sponsors and use our promo codes and links in our episode description, because that also directly helps us support the fact that we put this show out into the world for free every week.

Dedeker: I think what all of this is leading up to, whether you are currently unpartnered or living by yourself, or if you are partnered or living with a partner, that clearly there's something valuable and precious about finding the places where you can prioritize your own desires. It's not necessarily prioritizing your desires at the cost of somebody else's desires and just cutting out everybody else or completely disregarding anyone else that you're connected to. This is something that you can do, not just if you're single. This is something that you can do even if you have other people connected to you.

Emily: Absolutely. I think that if you are in a transitionary phase, especially as I have said about myself, going through ending one relationship, starting another, trying to figure out what it is that I really want in my own life and in my relationships in general, I think that that's a really wonderful time in which to explore all of those things in which to get very clear with yourself, "Hey, I want to maybe get better at this aspect of my life." I want to focus on things like self-improvement.

I want to maybe start a new career or get better at something in my existing career or have a move in terms of my career. Or I just really want to cultivate better relationships with my friends and my family during this time because those are what I find to be most fulfilling at this particular moment.

Jase: I think if you find yourself in that transitional time of maybe getting out of one relationship into another or that you are dating now or starting new relationships, that, that's also a great time to start setting a good precedent. Because I know that a lot of us, especially when we're younger, can really rush to entwine our relationship with someone else and really become consumed by that relationship. It's the main thing we think about and all of our choices are for the benefit of that.

This kind of transitional new time is a really cool opportunity to establish some boundaries or just establish the fact that you also like to have your own time or that you have your own interests. I think the key here is also that it's attractive to you that your partner has other interests, has other friends.

Emily: Totally.

Dedeker: Yes, that's a good way

Jase: Both of you are like, "Oh my God, yes."

Emily: Oh, my God, yes, please.

Jase: This is something that-- I'm blanking now on who it was that first said this when I read it years ago, back in the early days of this podcast. This idea of seeing your partner from a distance anew, seeing them do a thing they're interested in is hot, is exciting.

Emily: So hot.

Jase: That often married couples can lose that because they're doing everything together now and they lose some of their individual hobbies. Whether that's playing in a band or painting or doing some kind of dance or crafts or whatever, that they can just go for the easy thing of, "I will just watch Netflix," or "Oh, we should do something together because it would be selfish of me to do my own thing. To really realize that it's actually cool getting to see your partner do that thing and go, "Oh, wow, hey." Because you know what, when you first met each other, they were doing different stuff than you. They had their own interests.

Dedeker: True.

Jase: You thought that was interesting enough to start dating them. Let's keep that going or bring that back. I think that's a really powerful one for people also who are in longer-term relationships already.

Emily: As we close out this episode, we really encourage you all to ask yourself the following questions. First, how can you be more independent within your current relationship status? How can you take some of the things that we talked about today and maybe incorporate them into your life? If you are single or if you are partnered, maybe take stock of, wait a minute, do I find that I'm actually spending a lot of time with my partner and therefore other things that are important to me in my life or other people that are important to me in my life have fallen by the wayside? Is there something that I can do about that? How can I actively cultivate a life outside of just this partnership?

Dedeker: This is really important, especially if you're new to being non-monogamous, that there's a certain amount of being able to find your way back to what it is like to be two independent people in a partnership together who have independent plans and independent schedules and independent desires instead of two people that are just dependent on each other for deciding those things. Sometimes when people haven't reconnected with that, there's an immediate tension there when it's the first time their partner is going off on a date and it's the first thing they've really done independently in a long time, that, that can add another layer of difficulty on top of it to making that transition.

Jase: Boy howdy, yes. That's a hard one to unlearn. Then it's important to ask the question of, how can I be more independent. Then how can that independence actually improve my ability to connect with other people, including my partner if I have one or my friends rather than hindering it? That's what we've been trying to get at with all of this is, I think some people think of this dichotomy between having a good connection with my partner or being independent and that you have to choose between the two.

I actually think that there's a lot to support that one can help the other. That maintaining some of your independence in terms of just your interests and having other relationships with friends or family or coworkers or social groups or whatever, can actually improve your connection with your partner or your partners as well. I think an interesting closing thought here for those of you who are in more established relationships is when you come together, what do you talk about?

Do you have anything new to tell them that's not just what happened at work that day? Or stuff that you two have to do logistically in your house or in your life together? Do you have other stuff that you're talking about? This could be as simple as I have an interest in reading books or watching shows that are different from you. That could be one way, but I think it gets even better as you have other social groups and other friends and deep conversations. Because it just gives you better, cooler, more interesting stuff to talk about together.

Emily: Boy howdy.

PodcastMultiamorysingle, being single, single life, independence