Dr. Liz: Yeah. Yeah. How do you keep the spark alive in long-term relationships? 

Rebecca: Oh, that is – I think that is a really – it seems like an easy question and is also a really tough question because it’s going to depend so much on who you are as individuals and who you are in your relationship.

So, I’ve been married to my husband for 13 years.

We’ve been together for 16 years, a long time, and we have definitely throughout our relationship found ourselves in rots or just not communicating well, snapping with each other, just not feeling the closeness or the intimacy that we would like to have. 

And I think when we go back in time and think about what led to that, it came down to just really poor communication, breakdowns in communication, and not keeping novelty a focus in our relationship.

And so that’s something that we’ve worked really hard on is to both think independently and then find time to come together to talk about what something we’d like to try, what something we would like to go do and maybe that’s more intimate or maybe that’s more just kind of in life, what something new we want to do this weekend to make sure that we are not always in the same routine. 

We’ve got young kids now who keep us very busy and very tired.

And we definitely fall into like that common I think parent trap of their agenda, their needs, or keeping that routine for their sake and we just forget to take that time for each other.

We forget to take that time as a family to do different things and fun things or exciting things. 

But when it comes to he and I, definitely keeping more openness I think to each other than maybe we’ve had earlier in our relationship and really trying to listen to what does he want, what does she need, what would we like to do?

Maybe it’s not something one of us has kind of thought about or concerned before but really trying to just be open to that and then try new things.

And along the way, we’ve had a lot of fun finding that novelty and keeping that sparkling. 

And then the other thing I think that comes to mind too is maybe finding ways to bring kink or to bring other things into “normal” activities.

So if we are – if it is just going to be like a movie night or kind of a quiet night in that way but can we still add something to that to make that a little bit more exciting or add that kind of intimacy or desire or fun into something even if we just – we’ve come home kind of exhausted from the day and aren’t wanting to do a whole lot?

But really trying to keep the spark in that way. 

Dr. Liz: Yeah.

I had a TV night with a dom that I played with where we didn’t do any like explicit kink or sex stuff but I watched the show sitting on the floor at his feet with him like petting my head.

And that alone was such a beautifully intimate and kinky experience and it helped a lot with feeling that kind of connection and passion and desire even though we weren’t doing things that were as explicitly sexual or kinky. 

Rebecca: Yes. 

Dr. Liz: When I see questions like this, a lot of times what I think about is the book, Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski.

She talks about your sexual excitatory system and your sexual inhibitory system.

So the sexual inhibitory system is like a brake.

It’s the stuff that prevents you from being able to engage in sex, wanting to engage in sex, feeling desire for sex.

Sexual excitatory system is like your gas pedal, which is the stuff that makes you want to go and want to do things, and have desire. 

So the thing about these two systems is that there needs to be a certain type of balance between them in order for you to be able to get into the space to have sex and to have that excitement to have sex with each other and to be intimate with each other.

And so if there’s something slamming on your brakes really hard, it’s going to be really tough for that gas pedal to do anything no matter how hard you’re pressing it.

If your gas is super hard all the time, you may not notice the breaks even when you need them. 

And so, I think that part of this is about looking at in keeping the spark alive, is there anything that’s pushing on the brake pedal that’s making it hard for that spark to be present?  

Things like not doing the dishes, not doing the laundry, screaming children, stress at work, haven’t got enough sleep, physical illness, disability, there are all these things that make shit much harder especially as we get older.

My body is a whole mess. 

Rebecca: Yeah, I was going to say pain. 

Dr. Liz: So much pain. Right?

Right?

Because it’s a bad pain, not the good pain.

And so I think that even just taking the time to within yourself and with each other look at like is stuff that’s smashing on our brake pedals can help you figure out what you can lift away that will make it more possible for that spark to be present, because most of the time, the gas pedal is already working some.

It just maybe inhibited by that system that’s keeping stuff tamped down. 

Rebecca: Yeah. 

Dr. Liz: I would also say, looking at the spark is a lot also about are we feeding our relationship in general?

Are we paying attention to each other?

Are we showing interest in each other?

Are we spending time that is quality time with each other that’s connected time?

Because I think that especially the longer relationship goes on, at the start, we are like telling each other how great we are all the time and so excited to see each other and texting all day and sending cute little memes and videos and all of this stuff that puts love into our love bank and the longer relationship goes, the lesson those kinds of activities we tend to do but we are still making withdrawals from the love bank when we have conflicts, when like are stressed out, when there’s stuff that make stuff hard. 

And so, I think finding ways to really purposefully blend in more of those loving activities make the spark easier because you don’t want to fuck someone who you’re mad at and resentful of.

When you are trying to think about sex and all you can think about is the fact that they haven’t done an audition in two weeks, you’re not going to fuck.

That’s just not going to happen. 

So I think it’s really helpful to look at again, like what’s putting on the brakes, how can you feed that system in general to feel more closeness and intimacy with each other that’s not explicitly sexual and then start looking at things like kink, costumes, porn, any of that stuff.

Those things are great and you need the other elements supporting it because those form the foundation of being able to have that good sexual connection. 

So I think like again, look at the foundation as well.

I think it’s super simple to look at like is there a hot porn we can send each other?

Yeah, there is.

There’s so much hot porn.

Is there like a fun new toy we can try?

Absolutely!

Create new toys all the time.

But if you’re still having a lot of resentment or feeling unseen or uncared for or lonely or way too stressed out or in so much pain, it doesn’t matter how much porn you watch, it’s not going to work. 

Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely.

I think that really speaks to it and having that foundation.

I was at a workshop recently and one of the things they talked about was just having daily rituals, right?

I think to your point, if you don’t have that kind of warm good morning or goodbye before you go your separate ways for the day or you don’t have that when you come back together, it’s so easy to get into, “Did you go grocery shopping? Did you do the laundry? Did you wash the dishes? Why is the kitchen dirty again?” kind of whatever it is.

And if you are not conscious or – what is the word am I looking for? 

Dr. Liz: Purposeful? 

Rebecca: Exactly. 

Dr. Liz: Purposeful. 

Rebecca: We will go with that. Intentional. 

Dr. Liz: Yeah. Good word. Yeah.  

Rebecca: If you are not intentional about having those rituals and having that foundation, it doesn’t matter how many costumes or toys or videos or things you read because your system is so overwhelmed by the day-to-day grind. 

Dr. Liz: Yeah. I think that there is research that’s like you should have 7 positives for every negative or something in order for things to balance.

So like look at the balance, right?

If you are asking them about dishes, super fucking valid.

I strongly recommend the fair play system which comes as either a book or a set of cards that helps you divide the tasks that need to happen in your household.

It works for families.

It works for roommates and things.

And it’s specifically designed to help cishet men actually do stuff around the house. 

Anyway, moving off on that but like I think that there is this way that we start to assume that we can talk about the negatives and then give the positives after, and that’s generally a death spiral, right?

As soon as we are starting to withhold positives while not being mindful of negatives, we are just going to keep draining that connection. 

Rebecca: Yeah. 

Dr. Liz: Yeah. 

Rebecca: Absolutely. 

How do I know if a partner is gaslighting me?

This is a complex question.

And the thing about gaslighting is that it is by its very nature, designed to be as invisible as possible.

Some things that I would say to look out for.

If during conflicts, you feel really confused about why there is even a conflict.

That’s something to be looking out for.

What’s going on?

Why is it that you don’t understand why the conflict is happening?

If you feel crazy all the time.

You feel like you are just not remembering anything clearly like your partner keeps saying these things happened that you don’t remember at all, something to look out for.

If when you tell your experience of how something happened and the two of you just have like wildly different experiences, not just in terms of like your interpretations and your feelings, but in terms of how you are recalling the objective events that happened.

Something to just be aware of, of like what’s going on here, why are we experiencing this so differently?

I think that if you are concerned that a partner might be gaslighting you, you’re already at a place where it’s worth paying some attention to, not in a like go sit your partner down and be like, “I think you’re gaslighting me.”

I think if you are worried that you are being gaslit, one of the best things you can do is just start taking a lot of notes.

After each conflict, take a bunch of notes.

If it seems like you all recall things super differently, take some notes.

And keep those in a place where you can access them and your partner can’t.

It can be physical on paper notes.

It can be digital in the cloud notes, whatever works for you.

But just start taking a lot of notes because they give you something to reference back to.

If there are certain kinds of things that tend to create these conflicts that are super confusing to you then after the thing happens, write down notes about what the thing was so that if a conflict comes up, you have notes from like right after it happened which is when you will recall best what was going on.

Those notes give you the ability to really check yourself and say like, “Am I totally making this up myself? Am I totally misremembering things? Was I not present to this?”

It gives you something to reference that can help you anchor yourself in your experience of reality.

And the thing that I would say here is that gaslighting or gaslighting like situations can happen for a lot of reasons.

So for instance, like I have ADHD.

Part of that for me means that sometimes I just do not remember stuff that happened.

And so someone might say to me, “I told you blah, blah, blah.”

And I have no recollection of that conversation and they might absolutely be right.

It is a thing I know about myself.

And so, if that happens once or twice, I figure that that is just my brain doing its thing and having its own strengths and weaknesses.

If it starts happening a lot especially around stuff that is important, that’s when I start paying more attention.

If somebody has had a brain injury, they may recall things differently.

If somebody is in the middle of a very significant spike in mental health symptoms, that can affect how we remember things.

The more that we are in that kind of mess of our feelings, the harder it can be for us to experience the world other than through the stories that those feelings are telling us.

I just within the last few weeks have clawed my way out of a very deep depressive episode that has been going on on and off for years like three years at this point.

And there were days in the last four months where when I look back now outside of the main press of those feelings, I can recognize the ways in which my experience of reality was so heavily colored by what was going on in my brain that the way that I thought things were happening, the things that I thought were happening were not as accurate as I thought they were.

I was – my brain was hijacked by those very intense feelings.

And so, that is another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes if we are remembering things very differently, if what we are being told is very different than our recollection, it’s helpful to check in on like could one of us have been hijacked in our brain by something?

Is there something else going on that could create this problem?

If you genuinely think that someone is gaslighting you, that’s a huge deal whether they are doing it intentionally or not.

And I think for a lot of us, we’ve been taught this model of like, “Make it work for as long as you can no matter what. Hold on to it. Work on it. Relationships are hard.”

Relationships take work but you don’t have to stay until you’re so drained that you can’t possibly do anything but leave.

If I’m in a relationship and I feel pretty strongly that my partner is gaslighting me, outside of a few very specific situations, I’m not going to stay in that relationship because unless there is a very clear situational reason that the person was doing that, I don’t need that.

I don’t want that in my life.

I don’t want to change them.

I don’t want to be with them on their growth process.

We are all learning and growing.

And I am a therapist.

This is my job.

And when somebody is in that significant and severe of a situation, being close to them can often start to feel like work for me and I don’t want to be working as a professional in my interpersonal relationships.

That’s not what I want.

So part of it also is for you figuring out if you’re pretty sure a partner is gaslighting you, what do you want to do about it?

Do you want to stay and see if they can change?

Why?

Why not?

Give yourself space to really open up the possibilities here because you don’t have to stay.

You get to leave a relationship at any time for any reason or no reason.

There can be consequences to doing that, but you don’t have to stay ever.

You can walk if you want to.

And if you need support in terms of resources, there are a lot of great abuse support resources.

There are a lot of great local groups that do this kind of work.

But you don’t ever have to do any certain set of steps before you get to break up with somebody.

You can just break up.

You can just walk away.

You can just take a break.

You can walk away and never talk to them again.

You have options.

And so like remind yourself that you get to have choices.

You don’t have to stay with somebody who you think is doing something really harmful to you.

And if you start taking notes and you get some really clear indicators that you are being gaslit, you can address that with the person and see if they are open to receiving that and working on it and changing it.

You can walk.

It’s up to you.

You get to choose what to do there.

Give yourself that power.

I think that especially if this is in the context of a larger abusive dynamic, a lot of times, you’ve lost track of where your power is and that’s super, super real.

So if what you need is for somebody to tell you that you can walk away, it doesn’t matter how hurt they would be, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t put in the required amount of work according to whatever other outside source, you get to leave.

You get to.

I give you permission to walk away.

Yeah.

OK.

There’s one more comment in the chat that I wanted to read.

OK.

So I think this is going back to the masturbation question.

“So if someone prefers solo sex to interpersonal, it’s not necessarily a bad fit for everybody and there are also other relationship models to explore.”

Yeah, sure.

Totally.

Again, sometimes it’s a good fit.

Sometimes it’s a bad one.

For me personally because of how I connect with people, being in a significant romantic or intimate relationship with someone who doesn’t really want to do partner sex just doesn’t work for me.

There are some people with whom it would work great.

There are some people with whom it would be messy and complicated and everything in between.

Even as a polyamorous person, the way that I am is not like – I think that there is sometimes this misconception of like if you are getting enough sex, it doesn’t matter who it’s coming from.

And at least for me, that is not true.

I don’t want to just be having a certain quantity of sex.

Sex for me is about a way in which I connect with, communicate with, check in with, experience presence with the person with whom I’m in a relationship whether that is a casual friends with benefits thing, a one-time hook-up or long-term ongoing romantic relationship.

Sex is a big part of how I interact with people who are in the sexual, romantic buckets for me.

That is how I am. It is not how everybody is.

And so, being honest about who you are and how you function helps you find people who are the right fit for you.

If somebody said to me like, “Yeah, I really don’t love having interpersonal sex. I’ll do it sometimes but mostly, I prefer solo sex.”

I would say like, “We could be great friends. Maybe we can go hang out. We meet together, whatever it is.”

But like for a dating or romantic or sexual relationship, that’s just not going to be a great fit for me.

And that’s OK.

There’s nothing with them.

There’s nothing wrong with me.

That is just how it is.

All right.

And I think when we talk about things like this, about when one person wants to have sex and the other doesn’t, it brings up a lot of big feelings for people.

Understandably because most of us if we’ve had that experience personally, it has probably been pretty rough when we had it.

I think that there are ways that people who are on the asexual side of the spectrum, get very shamed and maligned and treat it like a problem.

And there are also ways that people on the megasexual side of the spectrum or they like more sexual, they like primarily sexual connection side of the spectrum, get maligned and shamed and told that they’re wrong and bad.

And none of the people are bad.

For me, sex is a central part to how I connect to people.

That is how I function.

It is not something that I can change any more than an asexual person can start spontaneously desiring sex.

That is just how I am.

It is just a part of how I function, how I have functioned for a very long time.

And that’s OK.

And it’s OK for me to know that people who are more to that asexual side of the spectrum are probably not a good fit for me.

I’m not saying they are bad people.

I’m not saying that like they wouldn’t be great in other ways or that I don’t want to know them or have them.

They are not going to be a good fit for me as a partner.

And I think that we all need to make sure that we are feeling like we get to be honest about who we are how we work rather than having to try to fit into somebody else’s idea of how that’s supposed to look.

Can frequently masturbating negatively impact my sex life?

It can in the way that anything can.

If you are spending 12 hours a day playing video games, that can negatively impact your sex life.

If you are working 16 hours a day, that can negatively impact your sex life.

The thing here is about balance and it’s also about being mindful of why we are doing things and what we are doing them for.

So masturbation is something that in our sex negative culture, people have a lot of shame and stigma about masturbation.

It’s something that is dirty and wrong.

You’re not supposed to do it.

People who are viewed as men, particularly cis men, are given a little bit more leeway to do it whereas, people who are viewed as cis women in particular are told not to along with other people who are assigned female at birth.

And so for the vast majority of us, our relationship to masturbation is messy.

Whether we agree with the societal programming we were given or not, it’s in there.

And that means that we may have messy weird feelings about something even if what we are doing is not actually wrong.

And having messy feelings about something can create impact from it that are not inherent to the activity but that are about the shame we carry from it.

Part of the reason that sex addiction is not a thing, it is not a real diagnosis is because the addiction model for sex tends to particularly on the treatment side of things reinforce this idea of sexuality is shameful, porn as a problem, masturbation is harmful, fantasizing about people other your partner is harmful.

And all of that build-up of shame tends to increase masturbatory behavior in people who are identifying themselves as sex addicts because for a lot of them, masturbation is one of their big release valves.

So if they feeling overwhelmed, if they are feeling really sad, if they are feeling like they want to just like tune something out, they don’t want to feel something, if they want to numb, a lot of times what they will use is masturbation.

And so if through the treatment process you’re building their shame, you’re going to build the behavior as well.

It’s going to create a really terrible cycle.

For regular folks, what we know from the research is that the amount that most people masturbate even if you think you’re masturbating a lot is totally fucking fine.

And in fact, masturbation often improves your health.

For people with penises who still have a prostate, regular masturbation helps to reduce your risk of prostate problems.

For people who have vulvas and vaginas, masturbation can be really helpful in terms of helping you understand and know your body in terms of helping you feel connected to your body and your sexuality, particularly since most of us have been told that our vulvas and vaginas are dirty and gross.

It can help you be better in sex with your partners because you know what you like so you can ask for it.

You understand how bodies work so you’re able to better play with other bodies.

There are a lot of positive effects of masturbation.

And just like working 16 hours a day, it can make it really hard to have a good sex life.

If you are masturbating in a way that is not a healthy relationship with it for you, that can negatively impact your sex life.

So when I talk about like a healthy relationship with masturbation, what I mean is like what are you doing it for?

Are you doing it because it’s fun and you enjoy it?

Are you doing it because you just want to clear your day from your mind?

Are you doing it because you’re feeling something and want to feel something else?

What is it that you’re looking for?

We talked – I talked in the last question that I answered about everybody is doing the best that they can with the tools that they have.

The fewer tools you have, the harder it’s going to be to be able to perform at a variety different situations.

So if you only have a hammer and you need to put together some IKEA furniture, you might be able to make it work but it’s going to be a whole product that’s going to be real challenging.

If you only have a screwdriver and you want to put some pictures up on the wall, you might be able to make it work but it’s going to be very challenging.

The reason that it is helpful for us to have a variety of tools for dealing with challenging feelings, for dealing with positive feelings, for getting through day, for self-soothing, for increasing joy for connection, is that the more tools we have, the more likely it is that we are going to be able to select a good tool for the situation that we are in and also the more likely it is that we will be able to maintain a positive relationship or a balanced or a healthy relationship with those tools.

Because again, if all you have is a hammer and somebody comes in and who is like, “Hey, I need to borrow your hammer for two weeks,” that’s going to feel really different than if you have whole tool, chest full of tools.

I think that the other ways that masturbation can negatively impact your sex life would be if you are doing it in such a way that causes physical harm or damage.

People with penises, the most common way this tends to happen is they don’t use lube when they masturbate.

It is – I don’t get it.

But a lot of people with penises grow up without having access to lube especially high quality lubes and so a lot of them just got into the habit of masturbating dry.

And masturbating dry is not necessarily bad but if you’re someone who doesn’t have a foreskin, it is really easy to cause chaffing, microtears.

It is easy to damage the nerve endings that are very sensitive and very delicate in your genital region.

And because it is mucosal membrane, if you don’t have adequate lubricant, you’re causing those tears.

That can increase the risk of STIs.

It can increase the risk of urinary tract infections, yeast infections.

Yes, even people with penises can get yeast infections.

There’s just a whole lot of ways that it can cause problems.

So if you are someone with a vulva and you are using your vibrator until you have thoroughly chaffed your labia, that can negatively impact your sex life.

If you are using a toy without sufficient warm-up, you can tear the tissues of the hole that you put it into.

So again, the issue here is not that you are masturbating.

The issue is that the amount of stress or strain you are putting on that part of your body is greater than the amount that is helpful for you to do or that is healthy for that tissue.

So take care of your body.

If you have a penis and you masturbate, use lube.

Please use lube.

It’s so good.

It will make your life so much better.

That gives you so many more options.

If you’re someone who uses vibrators, just use some lube with them so that they can move around some and don’t chaff your skin as much.

If it’s starting to feel kind of funky, put some more lube down.

If you’re starting to feel kind of numb, take a little break.

Just pay attention to your body.

Stay connected to it while you masturbate.

If you are masturbating because you would prefer to have sex with your partner but they don’t want to have sex, what tend – what can happen in those situations especially if it’s a longer term issue is that your masturbation also gets wrapped with any rejection or resentment or fear or upset or betrayal that you have around the way that your sex life is functioning with your partner.

And so, just be aware of like how that’s happening.

And I think it’s helpful for all of us with stuff that we do frequently to just check in with ourselves about like how is my relationship to this thing going?

I am someone who have used substances over the years and there have been times where I’ve had to like sit myself down and say, “OK, Liz, your relationship to cannabis seems to be changing pretty significantly. How is that going? Is this something that still feels like it is balanced and in alignment with your values and what you want your life to look like or does this seem like it is getting out of balanced? That this is starting to not work well for you? And if is, what do you want to do about it?”

You can do this with alcohol.

You can do it with videogames.

You can do it with the internet.

You can do it with anything.

Just looking at like how is your relationship with this going?

How do you want it to be and like what do you want to do about where it is right now?

And I think that that kind of awareness and that ability to give yourself space to think about things, talk about things, and figure things out can make a big difference in terms of making sure that masturbating doesn’t negatively impact your sex life.

If you are in a relationship with someone who is upset when you masturbate, you all need to have some conversations about that.

I think for a lot of people, there can be some jealousy of masturbation of like why are you using that sexual energy on yourself?

You should use it on me.

And we live in rape culture.

We live in a culture that in dating, teaches us entitlement to our partner’s bodies and attention and time and affection so I get where that comes from.

And everybody gets to masturbate no matter what kind of relationship you are in.

If it is a situation where you really want to be having sex and your partner is masturbating and then saying no to sex, something is happening and you all need to talk about it.

You may need to talk about it with a professional but like something is going on there.

So what is it?

Is that masturbating is more accessible to them right now?

Is it that there is some conflict that they haven’t talked about?

What’s going on?

But yeah, in and of itself, masturbating frequently doesn’t necessarily negatively impact your sex life.

Just pay attention to how much time are you using on it.

Are you using it in ways that are unhelpful for you or that can go down unhealthy paths?

Are you making sure you’re taking care of yourself while you do it?

Is it impacting your relationships?

And if so, what’s that about?

Is this a conflict between the two of you?

Is this is a way that this particular behavior has created more problems?

And just give yourself space.

Yeah.

All right.

We got a comment.

Some people prefer solo sex over interpersonal.

Totally real.

Totally valid.

And like that maybe a situation where these partners are not a good match.

I am someone who loves having sex.

I like to have a lot of sex.

I like to have sex with my partners.

I also like to masturbate.

But if I was in a relationship with someone who mostly wanted to do solo sex and then occasionally have sex with me, that probably wouldn’t be a good fit for me.

And that’s not saying there’s anything wrong or bad about them.

It’s just that like that’s unlikely to work well for me in the long term because a big part of how I connect with people is sex.

And so if that’s not on the table for them, that’s totally valid. It doesn’t have to be.

We are just not going to be a great fit.

And I think that giving yourself space for like nobody to be wrong, nobody to be the bad guy but it’s just not a good fit makes so much easier to make those calls and say like, “OK. You want this. I want this. It doesn’t seem like those worked well together. How do we want this relationship to look given that information?”

Can people still cheat in polyamorous relationships?

Yes!

Absolutely.

This is like can abuse happen in BDSM?

Yeah, totally.

The difference is consent.

So in BDSM, when we hit people, we do it in a way that they enjoy and in a way that we have agreed to do it with them and we have structures in place to let each other know if stuff is not working.

Plus, we work on aftercare.

Making sure that after we do these things that are intense, we have ways to take care of each other.

In polyamory, usually we have some sort of understanding with the people who are in our lives about what we are agreeing to do, what we are agreeing not to do, how we communicate about changes, and what will it mean if we end up breaking an agreement or doing something that goes against the agreements that we already had.

If you and your partner have an agreement to use barriers with other partners and one of you is having a real great time with someone and decided to like, “Fuck it! I don’t need a condom. It will be fine.”

You’ve broken an agreement.

That can be defined as cheating.

If you have an agreement that you’ll let each other know if you hook up with anybody new and one of you goes and fuck somebody and doesn’t tell the other person, congratulations you have cheated in polyamory.

So I think that where people get caught up here is they think like cheating is a thing for monogamy that like doing anything with anyone but your one person is what makes it cheating so in polyamory cheating doesn’t exist.

When cheating is actually about breaking of agreements, right?

When you have an agreement with someone and you break it, that is the kind of breach that cheating is.

We have a specific word for doing sex things or some people also call certain kinds of intimate emotional or social actions cheating as well, which I think is like real challenging to actually think of as cheating because it gets too messy so fast.

But regardless, the idea is that cheating is a specific version of betrayal.

It’s a specific subset of ways that people break agreements that they have with each other.

So if in a polyamorous relationship someone breaks the agreements that they have with their partner around sexual, romantic, intimate connections, absolutely that can be cheating.

I think that – there is often a recommend that if somebody cheats, they should just try non-monogamy, and like sometimes that is a good recommendation.

Sometimes this is somebody who just like doesn’t know how to communicate their needs and will do much better when they’re able to do things that they want to do.

The thing is, if you can’t communicate your needs, you are still going to struggle in polyamory because we communicate way more than the average monogamous person.

So like if what you’re thinking is, “I’m going to be polyamorous and then I can just fuck anybody I want with no consequences,” I mean probably not, probably not going to happen.

So yes, you can still cheat in polyamorous relationships.

The tools that you need to be successful in a monogamous relationship are the same that you need to be successful in polyamory.

It’s just you tend to find your points of growth much more quickly because there are more variables involved.

Please don’t cheat.

I mean OK.

So cheating – some people like getting away with things.

There’s a whole lot of reasons that may be.

I firmly believe that everybody is doing the best that they can with the tools that they have.

If the best that somebody can do is trying to get away with things behind somebody else’s back, to me that speaks to a lack of good tools.

That is somebody who needs way more help developing tools to either take care of themselves, to communicate, to set boundaries, whatever it is.

I think that there are also some people who cheat because they are desperate and they don’t know what else to do.

If you’ve read my book, if you’ve listened to me talk some places, you probably already know that when I was 23, I got married.

We separated when I was 26.

And the reason on the surface that that marriage ended was because I cheated on him.

I am not proud of having cheated.

And in fact, I cheated twice.

And after the first time, I felt so terrible about it that I wanted to rip my own guts out.

It was – I felt horrible about it.

I cheated because I was in an emotionally abusive relationship and I finally had somebody who saw me and was interested in me and listened to the things that I said and made me feel like a person worthy of affection and attention and attraction.

And that was something that I had not felt for so long that it was like I could breathe for the first time in years.

Cheating was not the right way to deal with that.

It was at the time the best that I could do because I – I’m 40 now. I turned 40 in October.

I have done a ton of work on myself over the last decade, decade and a half.

And the place that I was coming from was having grown up in an emotionally abusive household where there is no point trying to change how things are.

It is just how they are.

The best you can do is find some happiness behind the person’s back or try to do something that wouldn’t make them too upset or just like do what you have to do to survive and accept that it’s going to end up biting you in the ass at some point.

As a result, the tools that I had for dealing with someone being awful to me were not good tools.

And I started getting better tools as I went through graduate school and as I continued growing and maturing as a person and as a therapist and as an officer in the Army.

And as I learned, I got better tools but when I cheated, I was cheating because I didn’t know what else to do.

I could not imagine leaving my marriage.

I could not imagine him letting me leave.

I could not imagine having the strength to hold to it if he decided to try to convince me to return.

And that’s a big part of why I cheated the second time.

I knew that if I cheated again, he would leave and it would be done.

There would be no way he would try to convince me to come back.

It would be over over.

Some part of me knew that I needed that to get away.

That in order for me to get out of that relationship, I needed for him to have a reason to not convince me to stay.

And again, not a good choice. Sometimes all we have is shitty choices.

So when we talk about cheating, the thing that I try to remind people of is that people in general do things for a reason.

We may not understand the reason.

It may not make sense to us.

But there is a reason there.

And it behooves us to find some amount of curiosity about that reason if we want to stay connected to that person.

If cheating is a non-negotiable deal breaker for you, that is also completely OK.

You are never obligated to let somebody back in your life after they betray your trust.

That is never something you are owed.

If you do want to keep someone in your life after this kind of betrayal, I think it is important to undo this kind of polarizing binary that often forms after cheating of like, “I am the poor, helpless victim who got cheated on. I’m a good person and this bad thing happened to me that you did and you have to pay for and you are a terrible, evil villain who did the bad thing. It must be for bad reasons.”

And like that’s not helpful, right?

I don’t think that it is ever anybody’s fault that they were cheated on necessarily.

There are always odd cases that are exceptions.

But this is to say that having curiosity about why the person cheated is going to be super helpful in cutting out of that binary so that you can heal that connection if you want to stay in it, because you – there’s no good that comes of a connection that is predicated on, “I’m the good one who was hurt and you have to make it up to me until I feel like you’ve done enough.”

That is such a messy power dynamic and there is no good incentive for the person who was hurt to get over being hurt because getting over being hurt means losing that new power that they acquired.

And that’s not in like say, everybody is Machiavellian like plotting and scheming, that is just to say that we humans, we are not like these amazing, beautiful evolved creatures.

We are messing fucking apes.

We are like hairless apes we have brains that can do amazing things and they are also full of garbage.

And when we suddenly have power in a situation where we never had it before, that is hard to let go of whether we have it for good reasons or not good ones.

And so, finding curiosity if what you want to do is stay connected to that person can help you come out of that space of you’re a bad person who did this bad thing and instead look at this messy human being who is a real person just like you because you also are a messy human being.

What advice would you give someone wanting to add toys to the bedroom for the first time?

And the follow-up to that is, how can you be safe using toys with multiple partners?

So this is a question I get predominantly from people who are cisgender, straight, and monogamous.

The reason being, that most queers have used toys in the bedroom already.

Folks who are trans usually have used toys at some point.

So most of the time, this question is one that is presented by folks who are cisgender and straight and therefore, kind of more still in a mainstream dating model.

And in a mainstream dating model, there is an idea that your sex toy and your partner are in competition with each other and so the more you enjoy your sex toy, the more threatening it is to your partner.

In particular, this tends to be manifested as if the woman in a straight relationship has sex toys, that is a threat to her male partner because under cisheteropatriarchy, we have decided that the most important part of a man when it comes to relationships is his genitals.

And like that’s sad as fuck.

I’m going to tell you right.

Look, I have recently started getting more involved on Tumblr.

I’m not going to tell you my handle because I’m only there for pervy stuff and none of you all need to see my nudes.

But it is interesting to me when I receive messages from cisman, particularly straight man, the ways that what they think to offer are almost always centered on their penis.

And like look, don’t get me wrong.

I love a good dick.

I am here for a good bio cock.

I am here for a good silicone cock.

But there is so much about you that can make me cum that has nothing to do with your penis.

So I think that part of the hesitation around involving toys during sex is about this feeling of threat or competition where if a woman wants to bring in a toy, it means the man isn’t good enough.

His dick isn’t big enough.

He is not fucking her well enough.

That’s not at all what it’s about.

The reality is that for some people, it is – they aren’t going to have an orgasm unless they have very particular kinds of stimulation.

Or for some people, they just find it super freaking fun to play with toys in addition to a friend.

When you were a kid, you and a friend could run around playing make-believe outside or you could play basketball.

Deciding to play basketball doesn’t mean that playing make-believe is bad or inadequate.

It just means that sometimes you want to play basketball.

So when you are looking at introducing toys to the bedroom, it’s important to have a conversation about it with your partner to just check in on what comes up for them when they think about there being toys in the bedroom.

Are they feeling nervous or intimated?

Are they scared about it?

Are there things that they are just not really open to?

Are there things that sound super fun and hot for them?

And then find high-quality toys that use body-safe materials.

So this is going to get into the how can you be safe using toys in multiple partners.

One thing that has become much more commonly talked about over the last decade or so is the kinds of materials that companies use to make adult toys.

Adult toys, at least here in the United States, are treated as novelties.

They are not regulated.

They are not tested.

They are treated as novelties in part because in many states, it is illegal for you to buy them unless they are novelties.

So because of this, for many, many, many years, a lot of sex toys were made with materials that can leach unsafe chemicals into your body that can cause significant irritation, even cancer in some cases.

And so, it is really, really, really important to know what materials your toys are made of.

In addition, the porosity of the materials or how porous it is, affect how easy it is to clean the material.

So if you think about in your kitchen, a cutting board made of bamboo versus a cutting board made of plastic.

A plastic cutting board, you pop in the dishwasher, it gets real hot and soapy, everything dies.

You’re good to go.

If you have a bamboo cutting board, you wash it really well but it’s porous.

The fibers of the bamboo want to suck in moisture.

They want to suck in things.

And so over time, it can become infected with bacteria or fungi.

It can get moldy.

There are a lot of things that can happen.

And so, when we are looking at sex toys, you want to find toys that are made of high-quality nonporous material so that tends to be glass, metal, silicone.

And you want platinum-grade silicon whenever possible.

Now for a while, there were not very many toys available at reasonable price points that are made of high-quality body-safe materials.

But now, there are.

Now, you can find a lot of options of toys made of body-safe materials at a wide variety of price points.

If you look at my website, my gifts guide that I made around the winter solstice has a list of a bunch of different kinds of toys at different price points and all of those are made of body-safe materials.

If you are buying from a reputable supplier of adult toys, so something like SheVibe or Spectrum Boutique, you can almost always find information on the materials the toys are made with and most of those kinds of stores will either stock only body-safe materials or be able to let you know if there are toys there that they would recommend, being more cautious about not sharing between partners or using some of barrier with them in order to prevent any kind of problems with leaching or other issues.

The other thing I would say about things to know before you introduce toys is that there’s a huge world of different kinds of toys that you could use during play with your partner.

I think a lot of people have this idea of like it’s either no toys or all the way to the other side, bananas, everything toys.

And there are so many options.

You can incorporate whatever you want.

If what you want is just a vibe for your clit, there are hundreds of options for you.

If what you want is a little butt plug or a medium butt plug or a large butt plug, there are so many options.

I recommend b-Vibe’s products.

They are fantastic.

B-Vibe is so great.

I love their Rimming Plug in particular.

That Rimming Plug, amazing.

Cannot get better.

There are also things like dildo, strap-on harnesses.

There are strap-on harnesses that have one hole for a toy and one hole for a bio dick so you could double penetrate your partner alone.

There are toys that sheaths that can go on the outside of a bio dick so you can have a larger cock for a night.

There are so, so, so many options out there that are toys that you can use.

And I tell people in general like be wary of places that advertise toys as like for men, for women, for couples because what’s the difference between a dildo that goes in a vagina and a dildo that goes in a butt?

They are the same thing like there’s no – something that goes in a hole is something that goes in a hole.

Something that buzzes is something that buzzes.

Toys aren’t gendered.

Toys aren’t specific to very particular anatomies with very few exceptions.

And so think about what kind of experience you want with the toy and shop for that rather than looking at genders or couple toys.

Some of the more common couple toys are things like We-Vibe Sync which is a u-shape with a vibrator on each tip so that you put into someone with a vagina and they have one on their G-spot and one on their clit.

Those toys are fine.

The toys that are marketed for couples usually totally fine toys and you can use any toy as a couple.

There is no law against using a “for her” dildo as a couple.

There is no law against using a “for him” toy with a partner.

Things like cock rings are toys and they can be great so you can stay hard, super long, and not have to worry about it.

There are also really weird wild toys out there if you want to do strange things and have fun with it.

My favorite toy that has been around the last couple of years is the balldo, which is a silicon sheath that you put over testicles to turn them into a dildo.

And like I don’t even know how that would work but I’m fascinated and I can’t wait to try it someday.

So yeah, if you are looking to adding toys, have a conversation with your partner.

If either of you is having fears or insecurities about it, talk about those.

Find ways to be honest about it, to reassure each other, and then talk about what kinds of experiences you might want to try.

It’s helpful here to create an environment where it is thought of as like an experiment rather than something with high expectations.

The idea is to see what it is like for us to use this toy.

It is not we are going to have the best night of our lives, because the first time you are using toys especially the first time you are using any particular toy, there’s going to be a learning curve.

It’s going to be kind of awkward.

You’re probably going to laugh at some point.

Sometimes it gets weird because you don’t know how to make things happen, that’s OK.

The goal is to see, do we like this?

Do we enjoy it?

What might we change next time?

The goal is not hottest sex ever the first time we use a toy.

That’s just a ton of pressure to put on yourselves.

And the thing is, the more pressure a sexual experience has, the less hot it usually ends up being because you’re just trying so hard to make it work.

So yeah, low pressure, high possibility, play around with an experiment, low expectations, talk about it a lot, and get a variety of things if you can.

The thing about a lot of toys especially if we are talking the insertables, the size of insertable that you are going to enjoy, the shape of insertable you are going to enjoy, you may have no idea until you try it.

A lot of people, the first butt plug they get is like the little small, small butt plug.

The problem is, for most folks, those small size butt plugs aren’t big enough to keep themselves in a butt because there is not enough of a difference between the width of the plug and the width of the stem.

So just try some options, right?

Don’t get the most expensive toy right away.

Just because it’s more expensive doesn’t mean it’s better necessarily.

If you can find a nice local education-rooted sex shop, strongly recommend going to one of those and talking to people about it.

You can let them know like, “We’ve never used toys before. We are thinking about using some toys, Here’s stuff that we’re into. What would you recommend?”

People at those stores are so happy to talk to you.

They are not going to think you are weird.

Trust me.

They have heard a dozen weirder things today.

It is so hard.

People who work in the realm of sexuality, it is so hard to find something you can tell us that weirds us out or makes us think that you’re strange because believe me, there’s so much out there.

It’s a huge world.

But yeah, go talk to some people.

Get advice.

Get tips.

Try a bunch of different things.

Give yourself spaces to experiment.

And if you want to use toys with multiple people, again, make sure you’re getting body-safe materials that are sanitizable.

The great thing about a silicon dildo is that as long as it doesn’t have any electronics in it so no motor or anything, you can just boil it and it will be safe to use.

Boil it for 10 minutes, make your little pot of dick soup and you’ll have a dildo that is completely sanitized, ready to use with the next person.

You can also run it through the dishwasher with no soap on the top rock and that will also sanitize it.

Clean it first.

And you don’t need to buy expensive toilet cleaners, just use soap.

Soap is soap.

Don’t use a highly abrasive soap.

But if it’s OK for like your hands, it’s probably fine for your toys.

If you are using toys with multiple partners, if you are inserting stuff, it’s usually safer to put a condom on it because even if you can sanitize it, most people don’t clean their toys as thoroughly as they think they will or as thoroughly as might be good for them to clean them.

So put condoms on it.

Use a barrier.

Wash between people.

You should generally wash your toys as soon after using as possible so that stuff doesn’t get stuck on it or seep into it.

Even if it’s a body-safe material, if you are leaving stuff on it for a long time, that’s going to be harder for you to clean off.

And just let people know if you use a toy with multiple people.

Some folks have stronger feelings about that than others.

Some people don’t want you to use a toy on them that you’ve used with other people.

Some people don’t care as long as you wash it between folks.

So just make sure that you let people know whether the toy that you are going to use with them is one that you have only used alone or if it’s one that you’ve used with other people.

And again, just like – just have fun with it.

In an ideal world, we play with toys because playing with toys is fun.

And that’s when you’re 2 years old, when you’re 20 years old, when you’re 90 years old.

So just try some toys.

See what feels good.

See what you like.

See what you enjoy.

Don’t worry about it having to go any particular way.

And give yourself some space to try something new.

What is the difference between BDSM and abuse?

So the short answer is informed consent.

When we break it down, abuse is about a pattern of control.

Abuse is about a way of establishing control, creating isolation so that you can reinforce that control.

Abuse can use a lot of different tools.

Abuse can use language.

It can use money.

It can use physical violence.

It can use threats.

It can use threats to pets or children.

There are a lot of ways that abuse can manifest.

But at its core, it is about control.

It is about entitlement.

It is about exercising your will over somebody else despite what they want or need.

BDSM is about play.

Dan Savage has often called BDSM cops and robbers for grown-ups with your pants off.

BDSM is about taking things that in the day-to-day world are taboo, are forbidden, are dangerous, are wrong, and creating a safer space with which to interact with them so that we can explore those things, face them, challenge them, work through them, play with them in new ways.

The reason I say that the biggest difference between BDSM and abuse is informed consent is because like I said, abuse can take a lot of different forms.

It can take the form of financial control, so determining whether somebody gets access to money, how much money they get access to, how much money they get to have in their account.

In an abuse situation, that is about a partner exercising control by controlling the access to money and finances of their partner.

And it is about maintaining that control for the purpose of control, for the purpose of power, whether the partner wants it or not.

In abuse, generally it’s abuse because the partner is not into it, does not enjoy it.

They may be tolerating it.

They may have excuses for it.

They may have reasons that they stay.

But it is not something that they have consented to.

They did not get an opportunity to say, “Hey, here are the pros and cons. Here is what I’m thinking. If you want to stop at any time, let me know.”

In BDSM, you might have folks like findoms, financial dominance, who have submissives who agree to give them a certain amount of control over their finances.

The difference being, this is a negotiated relationship where everybody sits down and says, “Hey, here’s what this will look like. Here’s what I get out of it. Here is what I don’t like.”

And at any point, the person, submissive, who has handed over control, can choose to take that control back.

They can choose to say, “I no longer want you to have access to these things.”

And unless the dominant is being abusive, the dominant will say, “Absolutely. Thank you so much for telling me. We will stop doing this thing that does not work for you.”

The thing about consent is that for it to be consent, it must be informed, it must be revocable at any time, it must be freely given, it must be explicit.

So the FRIES model of consent, which you can look up, is a great one for thinking about these different components.

I think I might have forgotten one of them, but it’s FRIES like French fries.

And when we think about an abusive situation, their consent to that financial control is generally not freely given and it’s certainly not revocable.

It’s usually not explicit.

It is not informed.

So there is no – and there is no safe way to be able to stop it.

So the same exact situation of somebody controlling someone else’s access to money or which money they get access to or what their money is used for could be BDSM, could be abuse.

The big difference is, did they consent?

Did they negotiate?

Is it clear how to stop it?

Is the person who has that power who has been handed that power handling it with care?

Do they give it back when it’s asked for?

There are people in the BDSM scene who abuse their partners, who have done abusive things.

There are people who are abusive who also are involved in BDSM or do BDSM activities.

So there is no – there is this way a lot of times that people will talk about the BDSM scene as like, “Well, because we negotiate, it’s not abuse.”

And like yes, if it is clearly negotiated and freely consented with informed consent then yes, it is not abuse.

That does not mean that there cannot be abuse under a BDSM context.

What it means is that BDSM in and of itself is not abuse.

But because the BDSM scene is a scene full of people, there is abuse that happens within it because anywhere there are people, there is abuse that happens.

There are a lot of ways that many people are dreaming of futures that are free of coercion and control, that are free of abusive control, that are about reimagining systems of how we handle each other when we do things that are harmful and how we help to reduce harm at its roots rather than just addressing the symptoms of it or the individuals who are manifesting the symptoms of this abusive system that we all live under because look, the research shows Millennials, my generation, are the first generation to not get more conservative as they age because we see how abusive this whole freaking system is.

All of it is just so horrifically abusive in terms of the way that we are treated by our governments, by our employers, by health insurers. It’s endless the abuse that is present in human systems right now.

And so, because BDSM has humans in it, there are people who do abuse in BDSM. And BDSM in and of itself is not abuse.

People might get hit.

That doesn’t mean that it’s abuse.

Right?

In a boxing match, people get hit.

Is that abuse?

No, because there is no system of control, right?

The people in a boxing match aren’t hitting each other as a way to gain some kind of ongoing control over each other.

They aren’t trying to isolate the person from others.

They aren’t trying to regain an ongoing day-to-day kind of control over the person they are boxing.

They are going in to do a sport that they enjoy.

In BDSM, we are going in to have some fun with our neurochemicals, our neurotransmitters.

We are just playing with our brains and our nervous systems and our muscles.

And that’s not abuse.

Pain may happen.

People may get bruises.

People may get cuts.

People may be into scars.

They may be into a lot of different things.

But just because there is an impact on the physical body does not mean that it is abuse, because of these things that they have freely chosen, that they have consented, that they have created a safe container for.

So again, big difference between BDSM and abuse is informed consent.

People are able to negotiate for what they do and don’t want.

They get to set limits.

Those limits are respected.

They get to use a safe word or otherwise end a scene or interaction at any time if it stops working for them.

They get to walk away and leave and not be treated as though that is a problem or have someone try to re-exert their control over them.

When it is a system of control, when it is a systemic pattern, i.e., a pervasive pattern of controlling the other person and exerting control over them in an ongoing way, that is abuse.

Especially for those folks who aren’t in the BDSM scene, who don’t know people in like long-term ongoing master/slave relationships, who haven’t seen a hardcore impact scene, I get why it is confusing.

If someone says like, “I am this person’s slave. They get to decide what I wear. They get to decide what I eat.”

That sounds like abuse.

That sounds awful.

And for the person agreeing to be a slave, often, that is liberating and freeing.

They don’t have to make those choices.

Somebody else makes it for them.

A lot of people who choose higher control versions of BDSM are people who really enjoy being able to relinquish control in some ways, who really enjoy having somebody else set parameters for them with the knowledge that they can renegotiate.

So again, informed consent is the biggest difference between BDSM and abuse.

Do you understand what the pros and cons are?

Do you negotiate it clearly?

Are you able to revoke your consent at any time?

When you want a change or are revoking your consent, does the person you are talking to respect that and honor that and treat that like a valid concern and a valid choice?

That’s the big difference.

Just because people play with painful things whether that’s psychological or physical or spiritual, that doesn’t mean that it is abuse.

Look, if you have ever watched a video, a TV show, a movie, or whatever, and it hurt you deeply but like in a beautiful way and then you share it with a friend, that’s the same kind of thing that abuse is or that BDSM is.

It’s about engaging with our tough feelings in a way that is shared and communal and safe or safer.

Nothing is ever a hundred safer, but safer where we get an informed choice, where we get to negotiate things.

We get to have a say even as we experience things that are hard or challenging or painful.

How do I work through feelings of ownership within polyamory?

This is a really good question because I think it identifies something that a lot of people have trouble naming and that it makes it harder for them to work through, which is that a lot of the way that the mainstream dating script teaches us to be in relationship is coming from this very like control-ownership position model.

There is this way that the mainstream mononormative, cishet normative, particularly white supremacist model is about ownership.

There is a joke that’s not really a joke which is that things like marriage used to be a property transaction.

It was when the property formerly known as daughter became the property known as wife.

Up until even like the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, people who are women or who were viewed as women weren’t allowed to have their own bank accounts, even here in the United States, couldn’t get a mortgage on their own, all kinds of stuff.

And so, when a model is based on this very ownership-centered model, this disempowerment-based model, this model based on control, particularly of those of marginalized genders, it is hard when we move into nonmonogamy to unpack those beliefs about ownership and control that we’ve been operating under for so long particularly if we haven’t identified that the model we are operating from is one that is based on ownership and control.

I think that there are plenty of ways to do monogamy that are not about ownership and control and there are plenty of ways to do nonmonogamy that are about ownership and control.

But if we are talking about kind of the core of a model, the core of the mainstream dating model is one of possession, “This is my partner. I am your happiness. I get to decide what you do. I get to decide how you spend your time. I get to decide who you see. I get to dictate what behavior is OK for you.”

It is a very control-centered model, a very possession-centered model.

So if in polyamory what you are attempting to do is unpack this mononormative script, it’s very important to unpack the ownership component of that.

And that part of that is this kind of set of grieving experiments and also acceptance experiments around understanding that you never own another person really and that ownership in this mononormative model really stands in as a way to assuage fears and anxieties by providing a kind of false sense of – a false guarantee that things will continue.

In a mononormative model, ownership tells you that your partner can’t leave you because they belong to you, that if you just control them enough, they would not even be tempted.

They would not have anything around them that could pull them away and you can just keep them forever.

And in polyamory, by allowing or encouraging our partner to love other people and have sex with other people, we have to at least at the base level, let go of some of that ownership because we don’t own their sex any longer.

We don’t get to decide what they do with their bodies.

We don’t get to decide how they spend all of their time because some of that time is going to be allocated to other people.

In an ideal world, even in monogamy, you wouldn’t own your partner’s time.

They should be spending it with hobbies and friends and doing other things with it.

It should be a thing that they agree to give to you rather than a thing that you are entitled to.

And so I think that one of the elements here is recognizing where we feel entitled to things from partners and unpacking for ourselves like, "Is this sense of entitlement something that I actually feel good about that it feels like it’s in alignment with my values? Is this sense of entitlement a way that I am trying to get a need met? Is it a way that I am trying to comfort myself when I experience fear or worry or anxiety or uncertainty? Is this a way that I’m trying to soothe attachment wounds, trying to create security through external means rather than developing security internally and relationally?”

And so I think this idea like working through feelings of ownership in polyamory is really complicated because it gets at the core of a lot of how we understand what it is to be in partnership, what it is to be in love, what it is to be in relationship with someone, what it is to romantic.

And again, it’s going to involve some grieving.

You are going to have to grieve that you are actually never going to know for sure that your partner would not leave you.

The only way to guarantee that your partner will never leave you, will never cheat on you is to handcuff yourself to them and never sleep.

That’s the only way.

And so, if you are not willing to do that, there is always going to be a chance that they can leave.

There is always going to be a chance that they will change, that their heart will change, their desires will change.

There is always going to be a chance that what they want changes.

And so, I think that when we think an ownership model, what we are looking at doing is trying to get other people to give us what we want so that we don’t have to decide what to do if or when they say no.

The book, The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner is a really great resource for looking at some of this way that we often look to others to take responsibility for being a change agent when perhaps we need to look at what’s actually within our control and what we can make choices about.

When we are trying to assert ownership over someone else, usually what we are trying to do is convince them to give us what we want and need and like force them to do it when it might be better for us to like take a look at like, what is it that I want and need?

What is negotiable and what’s not?

And if this person can’t give me the things that are nonnegotiable for me, does it make more sense for me to try to wring it out of them no matter the cost or does it make more sense for me to say, “OK, so the things that I want aren’t necessarily wrong that they don’t want to give them to me is a valid choice that they get to make but that may mean that we are not really suited to each other.”

So part of ownership is avoidance of a breakup.

It’s about avoiding the end of a thing.

It’s about taking away your need to say, “If you can’t give me what I need then I need to reevaluate and make some choices.”

And what that feels like internally a lot of times is like, “Well, you would not do what I want so now I have to lose something.”

And that’s not fair because you’re the one who should lose something not me.

But that’s not how reality works, right?

When I’m in relationship with someone, all I can do is be honest about what I want and need.

And they get to choose whether they want to do that.

They get to choose whether they want to follow through on providing what I want and need.

They get to choose whether they follow through on agreements.

I can’t choose that for them.

And if they continue to make choices that don’t make me feel like they are giving me respect, that don’t make me feel like they are going to be able to meet the needs that I have then at least from my perspective, it is far more ethical for me to restructure or leave that relationship than to try to find some way to force them to give it to me.

I have to accept that people get to choose to not give me what I need even if they care about me, even if I feel like they should give it to me.

They still get to choose not to, and there is nothing that I can do that will make myself perfect or lovable enough that they will always give it to me or that will make them change their mind about what they want to do.

All I can do is present my wants and needs.

Let them know what those are.

Give them an opportunity to follow through on agreements to figure out ways to help both of us feel loved and seen.

But there’s no amount of ownership that can actually exist in relationship in any kind of healthy way that will actually lead to you getting what you want and need, because even if you somehow browbeat your partner into giving you what you want and need, they’re doing it from a place of resentment.

That’s not going to be good for you all.

They are not going to be happy about it.

It’s still not going to fit.

So I think that part of this getting past this ownership model is acknowledging that the world is unpredictable, acknowledging that most of the security that we find for ourselves that’s based in this mono normative model is illusory at best.

We can pretend that we have security.

We can pretend that we have control.

But at the end of the day, we don’t.

Our partners are still independent beings who are going to do what they want to do.

And if someone wants to leave you, they are going to leave.

If someone wants to cheat, they are going to cheat.

Our job is not to convince our partners to be good to us.

Our job is to love ourselves enough to recognize when something isn’t a fit and let that go, because if you have to convince someone to be good to you, it’s not going to work.

Ownership is about forcing someone to be a good partner to you.

Ownership is about limiting someone else to make yourself feel safe.

And at least for me, that’s not in alignment with my values.

And so when I feel that urge, that desire to like clamped down on somebody else so that I would not as scared, I just remind myself that that’s not how I want to live.

That’s not how I want them to treat me.

That’s not how I want to be treating them even.

And I just figure out like for myself, is this something that I can comfort myself about?

Is this something I talk to my therapist about?

Is this something that’s just not a fit?

And if it’s not a fit, is that something where we have to do a restructure?

Do we have to do a very significant restructure?

Do we have to break up?

But like this person gets to make their choice, even if their choice is hurtful to me, even if their choice is not what I want, they get to choose it.

So letting go of ownership within polyamory, mostly it’s about accepting that the world has a lot of chaos that we don’t get to control and all we do get to control is how we communicate what we ask for and what we do based on how people treat us.

What tips do you have for someone going through a polyamorous breakup?

I think that there is a common misconception that if you are polyamorous and you have multiple partners and you have a breakup with one of them, it’s not as big a deal as if you are monogamous because you still have people.

And that’s not true.

If someone has multiple closed friends and one of the friends stops talking to them, that’s going to be hard even if they have other friends.

So if you are going through a breakup and you are polyamorous, I think my first tip is like make space for you to feel whatever it is that you are feeling.

That thing about feelings and emotions is that for the most part, the feelings that we have are coming to us for a reason and they need to run their own natural course.

You can try to stop yourself from having feelings that are challenging, you can try to avoid feelings that are hard and you might be able to pause them for a while or put them on a back burner for a while, but feelings that are part of your genuine reaction to a situation aren’t going to just go away because you don’t feel like having them.

If you are going through a breakup, you are probably going to feel a mess of things, right?

Grief is what we feel when we lose something, and grief can be about death, it can also be about things like breakups.

It can be about losing a job.

There’s a lot of ways that grief can show up for us in our lives.

And here in the United States, we tend to be very bad at grieving.

So, the old school model grief talks about the stages of grief, talks about it as a linear process.

We know that it’s like far less linear than it’s presented, but the stages of grief tend to be denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance.

So if you are going through a breakup, depending upon if you are the one who – the one where if both of you agree that it’s time to break up or if you are a person who was being broken up with at a time that you did not want the relationship to end, you may have different amounts of denial or bargaining.

So like if you initiate a breakup and you’re like, “Hey, I don’t think that this is working,” most likely, you’ve already gone through processes related to the denial and bargaining.

Many of us go through a phase where we try to figure out how to not have a problem with something that is problem for us.

That is one of the many manifestations of denial.

We will also often go through a phase where we are trying to figure out how to be OK with something that we are not OK with or how we can get enough of the thing that we need that maybe we will not need it so much.

That’s often another manifestation of bargaining where we are trying to figure out how to not have to move through a process of challenging change and instead be able to stay as close to where we are as possible.

So if you are a person initiating breakup, often you’ve already done a lot of the denial and bargaining processes that you are going to end up doing.

There may be other pieces that come up related to what kind of connection if any you maintain with the person with whom you are having this breakup but a lot of times, you’ve gone through that.

If you are being broken up with especially if you did not see it coming, if this hasn’t been something that was like on your radar for a while, there may be those periods of denial and bargaining that you have to go through in order to be able to move through that grief.

Anger, very common.

Sometimes we get angry at ourselves.

Sometimes we get angry at someone else.

That may be the person who is no longer our partner.

That may be a metamour.

That may be somebody else entirely.

You might get angry at the world or at circumstances.

Anger is a totally natural emotion to feel.

It’s not OK to hurt other people with our anger, but it is important to be able to feel anger and to have a relationship with your anger where you aren’t treating it like something that is either so overwhelming you can’t go anywhere near it or like so unwanted that you can’t hear it.

Anger is essential to our ability to move through things like grief, to move through people pushing or disrespecting our boundaries. Give yourself space for the anger that you have.

Just be mindful of what you do about that anger.

Depression, sadness is very common in a breakup.

Sadness because it didn’t work.

Sadness because you may believe that you tried too hard for too long.

There are a lot of reasons that we can end up feeling sad.

Give yourself space to feel whatever is coming up for you around that related to sadness.

And then acceptance is kind of a place to end up.

By which I mean, it is a place that we often park for a while in progressively longer amount of time until we don’t spend much time in the other places.

This is not a linear process.

You may spend some time at acceptance and then something kicks off and you are like way back to anger for a while.

That’s OK.

One of my favorite quotes about grief from Motherland: Fort Salem, which is a great show about witches if you haven’t watch it is, “Grief is stubborn and wild.”

Grief moves on its own timeline.

Grief has its own way of doing things.

We can direct it.

We can maybe ask it to give us a moment to do other things.

But grief is going to do what it wants to do and the best thing that we can do is make space for it and make sure that we are creating intentional time and focus and places in our life to be able to experience what we are feeling so that we can move through it to something else.

The other thing I would say about a breakup specific to polyamory is that in the culture of the United States as well as some other places in the kind of like British influence, Western European influence world, for a lot of us, our very closest emotional connections, the people upon whom we rely the most for support are our romantic and sexual partners.

And so if you are going through a breakup, it is important for you to be aware of how much you are leaning on your partners for support around that breakup and to make sure that you are checking in with them about how they feel about how you are interacting with them about the breakup.

Sometimes you have a partner who is like happy to make all the space for you.

Sometimes you might have a partner who wants to support you but doesn’t want your relationship to be taken over by processing grief.

Both of those are valid.

Neither of those are wrong.

So just like understand that part of this process is going to be feeling out with those people who are in your life, how much space they have for supporting you around this grief whether that’s listening to you talk about things, whether that’s helping you problem-solve, whether that’s being there while you cry.

For a lot of us, our communities are very highly interconnected and so people may have connections with the person with whom you are experiencing a breakup that makes them being like a primary support person for you more complicated.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t be that or would not be that.

It just means that it is important for us to be very mindful, very intentional about how we use the people or rely on or ask for support from the people in our lives who our other romantic connections or other sexual connections or other deep connections when we are experiencing a breakup.

And that’s true for like your closed friends.

That’s true for everybody, right?

When we are in the middle of something really hard and shitty, it is very easy to lose track of how the needs that we have for support maybe impacting the people that we are going to to fulfill those needs.

We may be making demands of people rather than requests in a way that makes it hard for them to be honest with us about their capacity, which then makes it harder for them to actually show up for us in a supportive role.

So just be aware of like who you are leaning on and how much.

Check in with them a lot to make sure that it’s working for them.

And if they need space from it, if they can’t be there for you, honor that request and see who else you can go to in your support network for help.

I think the last tip I would give when you are going through a breakup in polyamory, though this also applies in monogamy world, is just be aware of how you are talking about the person that you are no longer in a relationship with while you go through the breakup.

If it is a particularly fraught breakup, if there are a lot of very like strong emotions around it, it can be very tempting to head to social media, to head to the group chat and like trash this person in a very big and public ways that at the moment feel very really good for us.

But that as we get some time and distance from it may feel like that’s less in alignment with how we want to be that may be really harmful to the person that may end up kind of backfiring on us.

And so, just be like aware of how you are talking about this person in the wake of the breakup.

If you need someone to vent to, make sure that you get their consent to vent to them, make sure that you remember that if what you are doing is venting, you may not a hundred percent mean everything that you are saying.

And so, give yourself space to feel those feelings and say those unkind things without putting them on the internet forever, without making it something that everybody thinks about that person forever.

And I say this as somebody who has both gone on the internet and said things about their ex and also as someone who has been like very thoroughly trashed on the internet by an ex in a way that lost me a whole bunch of friends very quickly.

So just be aware.

I have seen several times people going through what looked at the time like a breakup trashing their partner on the internet and then a couple of weeks later getting back together.

And now, there is that whole thing on the internet and all of their friends commenting in support and now they’re trying to be back together, like how do you actually handle that at that point?

Right?

So just be mindful that when we are feeling angry and hurt, it is easy to lash out in ways that we may not feel good about when we are out of the like heat of those feelings.

And so, take some space.

If you need to vent, do it face to face or over a phone call rather than in writing or on social media.

Try to find ways to give yourself space to have those feelings and process them without creating situations that are going to blow back on other people.

Now, if we are talking about a situation where there was abuse or violations of consent, that is a whole different ballgame.

So this is talking about like relatively normal breakup drama, relatively normal breakup issues.

Again, just like be aware.

Be aware that the way you feel about this may not be the way you feel forever. If you are feeling super angry about it, you may not be feeling super angry in two months.

You may not be feeling super angry in two weeks. And just don’t say something on the internet that you are not pretty darn sure you are going to want to have on there forever.

If you are in the middle of a big feeling, you have no way to know whether you’re going to want it there forever because our feelings are very good at convincing us about things that we want to do or that we are going to be totally OK with that are just not going to be the case when we are out of that big feelings.

So if you feeling big feelings, that is not a time to make decisions that have long term consequences.

Just give yourself some space.

You can always come back.

If you in a few weeks are out of those big feelings and you still need to write that post on the internet about that person, you can make that decision then give yourself time and space.

I’m seeing polyamory shown up a lot more in the mainstream media. How do you think the media portray as polyamory versus what is the reality? 

So I think it’s getting better than it used to but for a very long time, the portrayal of polyamory in media was upper-middle class to rich white folks who are cisgender, who are fairly heteronormative, who practice hierarchical polyamory and it’s like a hot bi babe and her girlfriends and a dude and his girlfriends and like it almost always use the stock photo of like three to five sets of white feet sticking out from under the covers. 

So I think that there was a way in which the media portrayed and does to an extent still portray polyamory as a thing that white people do and that stays as close to traditional script about dating as possible.

So it’s like normal dating just with more people and that’s not really how it’s practiced by the majority of folks that I know. 

Most of the folks who I know and spent time with, they don’t really do hierarchy in their relationships.

That’s not a thing that’s important to them.

There are wide variety of races, a wide variety of genders, a wide variety of body types and shapes.

A lot of us are fairly broke.

Some people have a lot of money, but a lot of us are not super well-off because we are living in a time in late-stage capitalism where most of us are suffering. 

We tend to be less in this model of like central couple who has other people and instead more in like a spread out polycule loosely associated network where it’s not that there’s like a central couple who has other people.

It’s that like all of us have a variety of relationships of varying degrees of closeness that may overlap, that may not, it depends. 

Most of the polyamory that we see in the mainstream media doesn’t show anybody with visible disabilities doing it rather than lots of people do.

It tends to be a lot of like neurotypical folks where a lot of us are neurodiverse.

So I think that as with a lot of media, the picture in media is this very like thin, white, heteronormative, cisnormative, abled, fairly well-off financially, ideal, and the real world is much messier and more complicated. 

I think too that there’s – right now is a very interesting time in media because there’s a whole bunch of shows that are basically about people microdosing nonmonogamy as a way to improve their monogamy or find their right monogamous partner.

So if you think about like Love is Blind, The Ultimatum, Too Hot to Handle.

Really there’s a bunch of shows that are about date a bunch of people for a while to find the one for you. 

The Ultimatum I thought was the funniest because it was like all right, you all are couples, one of you wants to get married, the other doesn’t so meet all the other couples and then pick someone from a different couple to move in with for a while to see if you would rather be with them.

Because like whoa!

Just going right to moving in.

Wow!

Like you holing but straight, very strange. 

And I think that it’s again, really an interesting time because it seems like a lot of the media that has various kinds of nonmonogamy happening in it was definitely written by monogamous people because it still has those underlying mononormative values. 

When folks who are nonmonogamous write the media, it tends to be very different than that.

In the last – in 2022, I’ve got contacted by two reality shows and one person who is working on dramatic series related to nonmonogamy and both of the reality shows came to me with a premise that was very much come up with something that like monogamous folks came up with and my call with them had me saying like, “That’s not really how it works, here is what would make more sense,” whereas the dramatic series is being written by someone who is nonmonogamous.

And so like even just from the start of that call, there was way less that I had to do that like clarified that that’s – like this is how real people do it. 

So I think that there’s still this way that because monogamy is much more common, because it’s the mainstream, because of the expected way of doing relationships, the lens that people take to nonmonogamy in media is still very much informed by mononormativity. 

All right.

One more sip of water.

OK.

So we had a comment.

Stigmatized beliefs such as what? 

OK.

So I think this was talking – when we were talking about the therapist stuff.

So it is just true that in this society, if you are nonmonogamous, if you are kinky, if you are queer, if you are trans, you are far more likely to experience oppression and stigmatization than if you are cis, straight, vanilla, monogamous, white.

That is just the truth.

You can be fired for being nonmonogamous.

You can lose your kids for being nonmonogamous. 

As a therapist, I know of several therapists in States who have lost their licenses for being nonmonogamous.

Not having sex with a client, nothing even close to that.

Just that they are nonmonogamous and that violates the very vague morality clause that is in many different licensing laws. 

When I talk about stigmatized beliefs here, I’m talking about legally and socially stigmatized that socially, if you are tell people you are polyamorous, monogamous folks, a lot of them tend to have an issue with you and not want you anywhere near their partners.

And in terms of like legally and structurally, it can have very real consequences for you in terms of ability to find employment or housing or maintaining custody of children or deal with financial issues, end-of-life issues, like there are just a lot of ways that you’re impacted.

So that is what I mean by being part of a stigmatized group. 

How do you handle holidays like Valentine’s Day while having multiple partners? 

So I think that there are a lot of different ways to handle a situation where there is a certain amount of either real or perceived scarcity, and a number of people who want access to whatever that resource is. So this could be your birthday, right?

So if you have three different partners and each of them want individual time with you on your birthday, that may not be possible to do. 

And so part of what I encourage folks to do before even talking about specific ways to handle that holiday is to have that conversations with each of the people in your life who are important to you about how they feel about holidays, which holidays in particular they feel most strongly about, is it important that your celebration for that holiday happens on the holiday itself or is there flexibility.

There a lot of different ways to look at it. 

I am not someone who cares a ton about Valentine’s Day necessarily.

In fact, for several years, my Valentine’s tradition was going out to a Brazilian steakhouse with my culinary and hedonism sweetie because like neither of us want to feel the pressure of like romance on Valentine’s Day, but we love eating great food and we could bring a great bottle of wine and pay a cheap corkage and have a phenomenal meal.

So that was what we did.

He didn’t ever really spend it with his romantic partner and I didn’t really want to spend it with any of my folks so it worked out very well for us. 

There are going to be some people in your world who care very much about spending time on that specific holiday with people who are important to them.

There are going to be some people who don’t.

As much as possible, getting ideas from people first about like how important it is to get that specific holiday can be a very helpful for negotiating these kind of there’s only one Valentine’s Day, you can only have one dinner on Valentine’s Day unless your body works very differently from mine at least.

So check in about who cares about it being that specific day versus OK with like the weekend before or the weekend after or some other kind of like timeframe for it to happen. 

Then also check in with yourself about like do you want to do the Valentine’s Day thing?

The thing about Valentine’s Day and a lot of restaurants is that it’s a great idea but it often ends up being a not great time because there’s a lot of pressure.

A lot of restaurants are charging higher prices.

They are very, very busy.

It can be just really tough navigating Valentine’s Day in general. 

And so if you are someone who does not want to do a dinner on Valentine’s Day, it is OK if that is how you are and you can let your partners know like that’s not a thing for you.

You would be happy to give them a card.

You would be happy to like get an ice cream another day but like Valentine’s Day, you rather just not deal with it. 

If you do want to do Valentine’s Day and you have partners who want to do Valentine’s Day, I think that as with anything, this is a process of figuring out like what is it that you want, what would feel really good for you, what are the impacts on other people of different choices you can make about whether you spend the time with them or not and how do you want to balance the things that are the right fit for you with the way that they will impact other people. 

If there is someone in your life to whom Valentine’s Day is very, very, very important but you don’t really want to spend Valentine’s Day with them, it’s OK for you to decide that that’s not a good fit for you and to let them know that, and they might be very upset about that. 

The thing about Valentine’s Day is that for a lot of us in nonmonogamy communities, it’s something that is much more cisnormative, heteronormative, mononormative than we tend to jive.

And so like if that’s not your jam, you get to say that’s not your jam. 

If you love Valentine’s Day and you have multiple partners you want to spend it with, you can always check in with them and see if they are OK with it being a group time on Valentine’s rather than it being like a one-on-one time. 

I know of some folks who do like polycule night on Valentine’s Day so that everybody gets to be there with the people that they care about.

And if you have the kind of polycule that works in that kind of like kitchen table or birthday party or family style polyamory then that’s a great way to handle it. 

And like realistically, if you have multiple partners who all want to be with you on Valentine’s Day and they all want the time alone, somebody is not going to what they want.

And I think where people run into a lot of problems around this is when they are trying like super hard to navigate everybody’s different wants and needs and not necessarily tuning into like their own wants and needs. 

And as a result, they’re kind of pussyfoot around and try not to like hurt anybody’s feelings and not give definitive comments, and that ends up hurting a lot of people more than if you just sit down and say like, “Hey, I know that you would really love to spend time on Valentine’s Day together, this year, I’m going to be spending time on Valentine’s Day with this person instead of alone. What I would love to talk with you about is like is there another way that we can help you feel loved and cared for that does not involve spending the time together on this day? Like could we do a really nice dinner the following Saturday? Could we do a fun getaways a few weeks after?” 

Finding a way to help that person feel seen and cared for, validating that it’s disappointing that they are not getting what they wanted while being upfront and honest about the fact that you have made a choice.

This is the choice that you are making.

You want to figure out how to make it work for everybody and you are not going to be giving this person what they want. 

Again, I think that in the spirit of trying to not hurt people, sometimes we end up hurting people way more by talking around things, trying not to give them the news that they are not going to want, and that just makes it worse.

So make these decisions as much as you can with plenty of forenotice so that people could find other plans if they want to. 

One of the worse things in the world is being told like two days before Valentine’s that actually you are not going to have fun this year with this person.

So give people as much notice as you can, be as kind as you can, and be decisive.

I think again, we create a lot more suffering when we are sitting indecisiveness trying to people-please rather than being authentic about our own wants and needs.