What Makes Polyamory Work (Part 1) with Libby Sinback

Episode 093:
What Makes Polyamory Work (Part 1) with Libby Sinback

This week's episode is super special to me. I got to have a conversation with my friend, Libby Sinback, a relationship coach and host of "Making Polyamory Work."  We've had several long conversations but this is one that got recorded!

It's a heart-to-heart talk with the insightful Libby,

Inspired by her AND wanting to include everything we talked about, I broke this conversation into 2 episodes with Part 2 coming out next week.

In this part, we share our personal experiences about relationships, healing, leaning into discomfort and so much more. Libby also shares her past experiences with her own journey into polyamory.

Libby has so much experience personally and with the thousands of clients she has worked with individually and through her group program.

You don't want to miss this one!

Connect with Libby:
Website | Making Polyamory Work Podcast

One of my favorite MPW episodes: For Your Mom

This is Relationships Reimagined.

Join the conversation as we dive into a new paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships.
  
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Get my book, “Why Do They Always Break Up with Me? The Ultimate Guide to Overcome Heartbreak for Good

Podcast Music by Zachariah Hickman

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

And I think about that all the time, with all of these different spectrums that we exist on. Am I really really other focused and do I need to learn to be more selfish? Am I really selfish and I need to learn to be more other focused? Am I really really walled up and I need to learn how to open? Am I really loud and I need to learn how to take up less space? Or am I someone who makes themselves really small and I need to learn to get bigger? So whenever I'm meeting with anybody, like a friend, a client, a person in my group, I'm always thinking about like there's no one path for every person. There's what's your path and where do you want to expand and grow? From? The place that you started.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Welcome to the Relationship Diversity Podcast, where we celebrate, question and explore all aspects of relationship structure diversity, from solaramary to monogamy to polyamory and everything in between, because every relationship is as unique as you are. We'll bust through societal programming to break open and dissect everything we thought we knew about relationships, to ask the challenging but transformational questions who am I and what do I really want in my relationships? I'm your guide, keri Jarislow, bestselling author, speaker, intuitive and coach. Join me as we reimagine all that our most intimate relationships can become. Today's episode is part of our conversation series. I'm just one voice in this relationship diversity movement and it's important to bring more unique perspectives into the conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Today, I'm talking with my friend, libby Sinback. I love to this conversation because it feels like the kind of conversation we'd have anytime. We connect Two friends exploring relationship ideas together, but this conversation happened to get recorded. Libby inspires me in so many ways, and one of which is trying something new with this episode, which is turning it into two episodes. We talked for such a long time and it all felt so juicy, so instead of having to choose to cut something, I just didn't wanna do that. I decided to include it all, but I had to break it up into two episodes because we talked for easily an hour and a half. So here is part one, and stay tuned for part two to be released next week. But for those of you who don't know Libby, here's a little bit about her.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Libby Sinback is a relationship coach, educator and host of the podcast Making Polyamory Work. She's also a mom to two and a partner to three amazing humans. Libby helps people who live and love outside the box create nourishing, authentic, boundless love in their life. Libby believes love is why we're here and how we heal. Let's get into the conversation. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Relationship Diversity Podcast. I am so honored to have my guest with me today for many, many reasons. Today I have the fabulous Libby Sinback with me, and here is why this is so special to me.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Early in my journey of something different than monogamy, I came across Libby's podcast, which is called Making Polyamory Work, and if you have not listened to that podcast, please go listen to it right now. It will be linked in the comments. You will be able to get to it very quickly. But Libby's way of being in the world and speaking in that podcast is, I felt, like I was listening to my best friend speak to me and tell me some things that are really hard, but in the most compassionate way, so that I could really drink it all in.

Speaker 2: 3:55

And I wanna say specifically, before we say hello to you, Libby, that your podcast and I've told you this your podcast for your mom was the most special podcast I think I've ever listened to. I listened to it probably six times, cried every single time, and this was before I came out to my mom, and it was really super special to me because I was able to have my mom listen to that before she passed. And so, with all of my heart, I just want to welcome you to the podcast and thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Oh my gosh, carrie, I don't know if I can talk now. I'm like I'm blushing, you can't see, but I, oh my gosh. Thank you so much for that warm and beautiful welcome. I'm so happy to be here too.

Speaker 2: 4:44

And I just wanna throw out.

Speaker 1: 4:46

I've been really enjoying getting to know you.

Speaker 2: 4:48

I know well that's. The beautiful thing is that I now can call Libby my friend, and that's really special to me too and we've actually even met in person. Omg, more than once Right, more than once we've met in person. We don't live too far away from each other, so I'm really honored to call you friend and colleague, and also you inspire me, so thank you, oh, thank you, and you have so much knowledge and experience in polyamory that we're all that we're gonna get into. But I'd love to start with you telling anyone out there who has not heard of you a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 1: 5:33

I am a mom of two kids who are elementary school aged. I have three partners, not that the duration of partners necessarily matters, but the one I've had the shortest amount of time we've been together for about seven years. I guess identifiers might be good too. I'm a white cis lady in my 40s and I live in a house that I own in the outskirts of Atlanta, georgia, and I help people with their relationships in whatever way that I can, which for me, has been creating the podcast, making polyamory work and also coaching people and running a couple of different groups that I do and teaching workshops and just whatever I can do to help people love each other better. That's my goal in life to help people love each other better.

Speaker 2: 6:21

I love your tagline Love is why we're here and it's how we heal. That speaks directly to my heart, because I believe that Love is missing in the world a lot and it's caused so much divisiveness. And I know that you point it towards relationships and how we relate intimately to the people in our lives, including ourselves. But I'd love for you to talk about how do we bring more love into our lives if we've pushed that away for so long, and I think that it's out of protection. It's how we've learned. I can't speak for everyone, but I know many times I have pushed love away because I protect my heart, because I've been hurt because of something that's happened. What do you feel keeps people from embracing love?

Speaker 1: 7:22

Let's pause there for just a second, because I think this is a question that is probably pretty personal to you. Am I getting that?

Speaker 2: 7:31

Yeah, well, definitely I lead with my heart. For sure, I see that yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:37

And then you've gotten bruised along the way, is what I'm hearing.

Speaker 2: 7:40

Yeah, and for me it started early from everything was great and then everything wasn't. That for me, that was my experience, and so I guarded my heart for a very long time until I started to feel safe with certain people. But even those little hurts along the way still creates that barrier and for me, I love to love, I love to love. It just feels so juicy and warm in my body. I feel inspired by it, I feel sparked by it, and there's still moments that my heart gets hurt.

Speaker 1: 8:21

So even now, with the people who you know, love you right? Not as much.

Speaker 2: 8:27

I feel a lot of trust in that, oh.

Speaker 1: 8:30

But come on, you're telling me that your husband never just gets you. Well, sure, and then you're like oh how, babe, I need to go recover from that one. That was a little.

Speaker 2: 8:46

Well sure, we do that to each other. I am definitely not innocent in that, and I think we know each other well enough that we try to not be intentional. We don't want to intentionally hurt each other, but we're also the most vulnerable with each other and that's, I think, is tied to the heart, right Vulnerability.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, and like that what you said there that you still feel safe being vulnerable with this person, even though also they're a human and they mess up and they can hurt you and what I'm hearing from you is there's a period of time where you really got hurt and it felt like, oh, it doesn't actually feel okay for me to be vulnerable. That feels like too much.

Speaker 2: 9:37

Yeah, I can trace that all the way back to 12 years old.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Yeah, yeah me too, Me too actually.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Really. Yeah, it's really funny. I was expecting on this yesterday when I was thinking about my kids, because I was talking to a parenting professional that I'm getting some support from, and she asked me and I was really annoyed that she asked me this, but of course I was going to be with it. She was like, well, so what was it like for you at that age? And I was like, oh, let me think about that.

Speaker 1: 10:08

And I remember when I was very young I am a young Gen Xer, so I'm like, like I said, I'm in my almost mid 40s and so I grew up in the latchkey age and I definitely was a latchkey kid and I was also an only child and I was also undiagnosed neurodivergent and grew up in the outskirts of Atlanta, georgia. So I was not oh and queer and didn't know that either. You can't imagine that middle school is a very fun time for someone like that, with not a lot of parental support around to guide you and a very different way of organizing my brain and how I think and a very different way of expressing myself, and I was also unfortunately, not shy. It would have been great if I could have just kept it all inside and not let anybody see what was going on, but I couldn't keep it in.

Speaker 1: 11:00

I was actually painfully vulnerable at that age, but it was because I couldn't help it. I didn't know another way to be, and part of that was because at home I did whatever I wanted and lived in my own world as a child. So I too got knocked around a lot because I was this wide open nervous system as a young kid and I don't think I really figured out how to really reign it in. Probably I think I was like 16 or 17 or something like that and I got my heart severely broken by my two best friends that I grew up with in school, and that's actually the first and still remains. The biggest heartbreak of my life was these two friends that I had become really tight with and then they just dumped me and it was rough. And then I think that was when I was like, oh, maybe I should protect myself a little bit. And then I would say from there I did probably get some armor at that point.

Speaker 2: 11:58

Yeah Well, that's amazing that you stayed open until even through the pain in middle school. Middle school was the worst for me.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Oh, I don't think I had a choice, carrie, I didn't know how, like I didn't know how. And the thing is, my mom she's super armored just out in the world, like with me. I always was like you're this soft marshmallow who cries at the drop of a hat, but in the world she was so armored and never showed any of that, and so I was like I don't want to be like that, so I definitely want to be more soft and open, and so I don't think I had a choice. That's the thing I was thinking about is like no one ever taught me anything and I was like I said, and I was also could not pick up on anything very easily to save my life because of my brain and I think this actually ties to why I do what I do and why I'm good at it is because I showed up to young adulthood with a lot of cluelessness about how people worked and a lot of cluelessness about how to relate, and so I had to build it all intentionally with my prefrontal cortex fully formed. None of it was like in my muscle memory, none of it was like automatic, like.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Oh, I just know I had a really sensitive and continued to have a very sensitive sensory system who can pick up on a lot of data, but I didn't know what any of that data meant or what to do with it, until I started intentionally figuring it out, and so I just became a student of relating, because I again only child all alone, a lot, didn't have a lot of friends. When I was younger, I was like I want a million people around me, I want to be so connected and I want to be really good at it. And how do I do that? Because I clearly don't know. I don't have any of the things that I need.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Well, I almost feel that that served you in a way, because at 12 years old for me, I got absolutely hurt, like the biggest wound, the biggest hurt from my father, and all I wanted to do was protect, and so I had more of that wall that needed to be broken down, and I think that's a gift, although maybe you didn't feel it at the moment of the neurodivergence of like, I just don't know. So now that I have all this intellect formed that I can actually learn how to learn about relating. Not now I have to bust open this big wall that is around my heart. That was my experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:29

Well, so wait, can I ask you Cause? You did bust through, it sounds like, and so you're asking me how to bust through it. But I'm wondering how did you bust through?

Speaker 2: 14:40

it Through a lot of perseverance and I think actually the thing that did it the most was the turmoil that I feel like I went through, because I could never make a relationship work Like it just never lasted more than six months. I wanted deeply to be partnered with someone all the way up into my twenties and I just it just never worked. I created the same experience over and over again, which was the guy breaking up with me, and I got clued in that this had to do with my dad leaving my mom.

Speaker 1: 15:21

That's interesting, that's so interesting. So you have a story here that you created these relationships where you were destined to be left.

Speaker 2: 15:34

Yes, and it was all from what I witnessed at 12 years old, which was my dad leaving my mom, and it was always the same experience it was the guy falling in love with some other person or cheating on me. It was just exactly pretty much played out when I realized that, oh, this is a pattern, this is just this belief that I took on is how men were with women. That was just specifically how it sat in and I really looked at that and then did different kind of healing modalities. For me it was energetic healing that started to shift it and that led me into my marriage, which also then led me into another breakup, and then that was the moment where everything shifted. But it took a lot of perseverance and thankfully I'm on the other side of it, because I think I spent so many nights crying about it. So that was my story, but what was your story of working through? Wow?

Speaker 1: 16:44

Do you know, it's funny. I can actually still remember what I did and I will tell you what I did. My best friend to this day will tell me that she thought I was crazy, and I think a lot of people actually think I'm crazy. I think if anybody gets to know me enough, they actually think I'm a little bit crazy and I'm sorry to see where it at.

Speaker 2: 17:03

I think crazy is good.

Speaker 1: 17:04

I don't use it in a derogatory way.

Speaker 2: 17:06

You're right, right.

Speaker 1: 17:08

So it's funny that you talk about like you created a scenario where you were with this series of men who left you and then that opened you up. And I guess I do wanna circle back to I will tell you a little bit more about me, but I'm really, really curious Because I feel like there was probably a moment for you too. There was a moment for me. There was a moment for you, because what I'm hearing is I created this scenario because of some false beliefs that I had about relationships and how they worked and what I needed to do and how I needed to show up in them, and you said, like I eventually busted through this wall of protection and invulnerability and it's like I had to be left enough times to realize that I needed to break through that. Am I getting it?

Speaker 1: 17:53

Yeah, I think that the moment where you were like okay, I see that last little bit that I need to bust through, I wanna do it.

Speaker 2: 18:02

That was after my divorce, yeah, and it was the moment where I said, okay, here now. My husband hadn't left me, it was his decision to get a divorce, but I realized more than ever that it was for me. My relationship with my father was unhealed and that I had blamed him for so much of my inability to be in relationship. And when I took that blame off of him and owned my story, that was the moment that I empowered myself to look at what was going on within me and then all of those beliefs that I formed, and just to bring it forward to just last year, as my mom has passed and we're learning a lot more about that time. And now it's coming through the eyes of a 53-year-old who has been in relationships, not a 12-year-old who put their parents' relationship on a pedestal. I am realizing that so much of the story that I filled in was not true. Wow, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:19

Yeah, well, now you're writing your own story.

Speaker 2: 19:23

Yes, I am yeah, and then moving that into my children's lives as well, and because I see, as you, you know for parents if they're not working on their own stuff and there's passing down all of the beliefs, even if we are working on it, I'm sorry but it is a different story. It's a different story that you know, that my kids are seeing and, of course, I'm taking the things that I wish I had seen at 12 years old and bringing that into the conversation with my kids, who are writing their own stories to you.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. I love, um, I love that when you realized that you were letting someone who wasn't even involved write your story and you were like, oh, what if I just stopped letting that be what determines my story and just start picking up the pen and writing it. And from there it's not easy. From there, like right, then you actually have to start writing something new and it's a whole different ball game. But I just, I love and taking responsibility for your shit.

Speaker 2: 20:33

It's like oh no, I can't blame that on my dad. No Shit. I got my own stuff.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I would. I would say I don't know that I was consciously in that place of blame, but I think I had the same thing of. I was really. I was afraid because my parents got divorced when I was 10. My grandparents on both sides had been divorced and I was just. I remember. I don't remember what age I was, but I was.

Speaker 1: 21:00

I was some age in my early teens where I just was looking at around at all of the relationships that I knew, all the marriages, all of the partnerships that I was aware of, and I was just like I don't actually want to. I don't feel like I have a good model of what a good loving relationship looks like. And then I started to be afraid. Geez, if I don't have a good model in front of me about how this can be, then am I just programmed really badly? Am I programmed to spit out unhealthy relating? And so I think I was great of myself and afraid. And also then again, the repeated experience of, yeah, I actually have no fucking idea how to relate because I none of this makes sense to me. I would have this recurring nightmare that I would sit down to a card game with friends of mine and they were all playing and they all knew the rules and I didn't. And that was a recurring nightmare. That's symbolic and like, yeah, and I would just be trying to figure it out and I would make all kinds of mistakes but nobody would explain to me like why I made the mistake I did and so, oh, what a very clear like what that was about. But I remember what I had was actually a string of relationships from well, from like 21 to 24, I don't think I dated anybody. I was really into partner dancing and I was getting all of my touch needs and all of my juiciness needs met through swing dancing and blues dancing with partners. And I'm not a very sexual person, as it turns out, even though I'm very interested and fascinated by sex. I remember there's another funny thing about me. I posted in a swing dance forum one time. I was like a really good dance is like better than sex, right, and people made fun of me. They told me that I obviously hadn't had good sex yet, which was actually true. But I still stand by that at 45, having had a lot of really good sex, actually, I still stand by a really good dance is as good as sometimes better than sex, for sure, because, like I don't know, an orgasm doesn't actually last that long, although sex isn't all about orgasm not even close, but poof like a dance. And I can keep going with a dance for a whole lot longer. Yeah, yeah, anyway, I'm digressing.

Speaker 1: 23:11

So for me it was a string from like 25. Well, no, no, this was when I was younger. I would have these three month relationships and I would break up with all of them, and then I expanded to have a series of like one year relationships and again I would just break up with all of them. And I remember my mom would tell me that she thought I was commitment phobic because my dad and her got divorced, and she was like that's not a story that I'm carrying, it doesn't feel true to me, and then it wasn't true.

Speaker 1: 23:41

But I really do think it was this protection and this perfectionism that I had about other people and also this fear of being uncool, because I was so uncool when I was younger. So I just need to, like, stay really protected and I don't want to be soft, and gosh, if that guy's being soft, bro, so yuck, that's how I was, if you can believe it in my twenties. And then I remember there was this guy that I was into and he was being very like hot and cold, very cagey, very unreliable, but also really clearly into me. And I remember sitting in my bathtub actually and going, okay, libby, like you want to be this heart open person, that's who you are inside, what's true, and you want to be that. So just be that with this guy, just be that, just like, let it go, just like let it flow. And I just made the choice to do it. And, of course, can you guess how that went?

Speaker 2: 24:39

Yeah, I'm thinking that he probably broke up with you.

Speaker 1: 24:45

Well, yeah, but he was also very, again, very hot and cold. So he broke up with me, but not clearly enough, and so he strung me along in this weird on again, off again, in there not six months long maze of like, also a lot of dishonesty, a lot of really mixed signals and again it was a wonderful and I was just like this bug on a windshield, over and over again, just splatting myself at it. And the funny thing is I'm not embarrassed about any of it, because even though I absolutely picked the wrong person well, quote, unquote, wrong person like that was not going to work out. For me to dive into my openheartedness again with this person was absolutely never going to result in a beautiful relationship, but it was such an education for me. I cried almost every single day for six months. Like I said, my best friend thought I was nuts. She was like this guy clearly is not good for you. Will you stop seeing him? Will you stop hanging out with him? Will you get over this? Whatever you're doing, just stop it. She couldn't take it because it was so like the roller coaster up and down and it was like you know what Actually this is really reflecting on it now it's really it was really good for me because I really learned a lot in that period of time about how to be, like, how to show up how much hurt I could actually be by being vulnerable.

Speaker 1: 26:10

Now I'll say also I think I'm actually was pretty lucky because there was a lot of things that there were a lot of ways that he really probably could have taken a lot of advantage of me. That he didn't just because he wasn't a totally terrible person, but there were a lot of terrible things that he did that he could have not done with someone who was showing up that open-hearted. But I learned, like, how to be open-hearted and that I could be hurt and not loved and I could still feel okay in my open-heartedness. I could still feel good about the love that I was feeling, even when that person wasn't able to meet me there. And eventually I went no contact with him because he would never have stopped drawing me in and then spitting me out. And drawing me in and spitting me out, he would never have stopped doing that. He would probably still be doing that to this day if I let him, because there was something I don't know was going on with him, but like Well, it's an interesting roller coaster, right?

Speaker 2: 26:58

Because, if you do, you feel like when he was there, when he was hot and your heart was open and then he became cold, that you just kept your heart open, or did you go through your own roller coaster of closing it but then choosing to open it again, or it was just open, it was just full throttle the whole time.

Speaker 1: 27:21

Yeah, I just kind of like I think I just bounced around, I went back to it. Like, in some ways, I went back to a younger version of myself, but with also more maturity and granted, I think this was when I was still in my 20s and so I was pretty young and I learned a lot since that experience. But that experience was pretty pivotal for me in terms of this is how I want to be, this is how I want to do it, and I get to decide how I want to do it, irrespective of how that other person decides to do it, and that I don't actually have to. This is a weird thing about me. I realized I don't. I really I don't actually have to be safe and loved back in order to love. I don't actually need that. One of the things about me that is true and again I think it.

Speaker 1: 28:04

It resulted in a lot of bumps and bruises when I was younger, but I still have it in me, this like is there something hard? I'm going to run headlong for it? Is there something that might be painful? I'm all about it. Let's do some pain, let's try it out. What's the worst that can happen? And I really credit the amount of safety I probably had growing up. Even though there was a lot of loneliness, there was also a lot of safety. Nothing really really terrible happened to me when I was young and helpless to bring a lot of that fear on. So I would say that that's probably privilege that I have that in me, that, like sure, let's just go for it, because it's never. It never really went to a fully dangerous and unsafe place when I was younger. So now it's not that I'm not afraid, it's that I really am so interested in messing up and doing hard things and learning from it.

Speaker 2: 28:54

Well see, I think that is more what it is, because I had privilege, I had safety, and yet I don't necessarily run for you know the discomfort.

Speaker 2: 29:07

The danger and you know that to me it is a choice and I love that you brought up it was a choice for you because I think at the end of the day, well, we sit and we go. Okay, am I going to be this way or am I going to choose another way? And maybe it's moment to moment, maybe it's not as big and broad as like I'm just going to open my heart for this relationship and go in. But it's that. But I also believe, like you, running towards discomfort, this is going to be hard. I'm just going to go through it and learn from.

Speaker 1: 29:41

It is an amazing mindset and heart set to be in, because I lean, but then I pull away and you know and pull away One of my theories of how people and I don't know if this is karmic or spiritual I think I could see a way of seeing it that way but I really believe we get put on this earth to learn a thing, right, and that's not the only thing we're here to do, but I think that is one thing we're here to do, and so I think we all show up with like a starting place, and then the thing we're here to do is to not stay there, to go. What is it like over there? And then what is it like to come back to my starting place? And then what is it like to go really far over there, maybe too far over there? Then what's it like? Where would I like to sit, you know?

Speaker 1: 30:27

And so I think for me again, I showed up in the world this very vulnerable, unhearted, very awkward and annoying, frankly, person as a young person, and I had to learn some more containment, some more discernment, some more carefulness, and so that's been the swing for me. And so now I would say as a person, and again in more in midlife, I don't rush at discomfort in the same way anymore. I've recognized I have to slow down with myself. I recognize I use more discernment, I use more carefulness. I don't just say the thing anymore. I used to be. I used to just always just say the thing, and now I go I see the thing I could say Is this the time? So that's been my work now.

Speaker 1: 31:16

But for some people and it sounds like maybe for you you're really good at pausing and being careful and cautious and what you need to do is open up more and lean more and see how far the leaning needs to be for you for it to feel juicy and good, but not like holy shit.

Speaker 1: 31:32

I'm terrified and I think about that all the time with all of these different spectrums that we exist on. Am I really really other focused and do I need to learn to be more selfish? Am I really selfish and I need to learn to be more other focused? Am I really really walled up and I need to learn how to open? Am I really loud and I need to learn how to take up less space? Or am I someone who makes themselves really small and I need to learn to get bigger? So whenever I'm meeting with anybody, like a friend, a client, a person in my group, I'm always thinking about like there's no one path for every person. There's what's your path and where do you want to expand and grow from the place that you started?

Speaker 2: 32:14

Yeah, I talk about that a lot in this podcast of everyone is unique, so we all have our unique journey and we've all brought our unique past into our unique present and even like everything that you just said is a path right, because it's like, yes, sometimes I am self focused and sometimes I'm way other focused, and that could be even in one year, and then I start feeling out of balance with things. This, for me, has been coming up pretty strongly over the last couple of weeks, is last maybe month and a half, is I feel, so three dimensional in the body that my spirit, which it was always my strength, has become unbalanced and so really journeying and understanding that life is an evolution, we are evolving and learning more and then bringing that in and seeing how that sits in our lives and out of balance. In balance, I'd love to start talking and learning about how you came into polyamory, because we heard about the early relationship with the guy who was hot and cold. Where did Holly Amory come into your life? Or loving more than one person.

Speaker 1: 33:30

One place I could point to the origin is when I was a teenager and reading some of my mom's trashy romance novels and there were a few that had non monogamy in them and I would just be like, oh, it seems cool and I read stranger in a strange land. Also when I was a teenager and I know a lot of people actually point to that book which man on a reread does not hold up. I can't recommend that book because it's very cringe with the sexism and homophobia that shows up in there. But at the time I was like, yeah, that actually just makes sense to me. I didn't have a lot of romantic notions about marriage being the end all be all because of how I grew up and also, just again, my observing people in marriages that didn't actually seem all that happy or alive to me, and so I wasn't gung ho about marriage from a very young age like in my teens. I think the only reason why I wasn't one of these cool kids now who are practicing polyamory in their early 20s or even younger is because I did not think anybody else would go for it. But I was definitely into the idea from a very young age. And then I remember when I was in my late teens I was dating this person who was very sweet and I adored him, but he was passive in the relationship and then I started reading about domination and submission. When we stopped seeing each other, he moved away and we stopped seeing each other and so, at 19 years old, started exploring the kink community in the city I was living in and I met like a little polycule basically, and pulled around with them for a little while and it was fun, it was informative. I wasn't ready for it and I didn't have any vocabulary or language for what was happening. I remember I played around with a couple and they were so weirdly coupling and one of the partners was talking about how, during a sexual encounter, was really focused on making sure that their partner was prioritizing them in the encounter, and I was just like this is weird and I don't like it. It's making me feel not just like a play thing, but definitely intentionally being made to feel less important, and I was like this isn't fun for me. I don't know why I don't have any language. I didn't again no language for it because this was back in 1998. I was very young, so that was my early exploration.

Speaker 1: 35:47

And then, when I was in my 20s, I dated someone who was in an open marriage and that was really cool. I was dating him. And then I was dating this other guy and I met his wife and hung out with her, and I'm still friends with them, actually, even though this was over 20 years ago. And I think the only reason, like I said, that I wasn't super polyamorous from the beginning was just because there wasn't the internet the way there is now. There wasn't a way for me to find community, and I really was in that wrestle that Gabor Matei talks about of the between authenticity and acceptance and belonging, and I was very interested in belonging. That was really important to me. So I did a lot of things that didn't feel totally in alignment with who I really was, because I wanted to belong and so that would be the early thing.

Speaker 1: 36:43

And then I remember when I met my husband this was back in 2009, my two best friends, both independently, had become polyamorous, one of them because she could not stay monogamous in any way In any of her previous relationships, and so she got into a relationship where she wanted to stay committed and she was like but I just can't be monogamous.

Speaker 1: 37:07

And he was like, okay, well, I guess let's be poly then. And so that was her story. And then another friend of mine had fallen in love with someone who was poly and so decided to try it and lean into it and was getting really into it. So I had these two really close people in my life who were both practicing that. So again the belonging was not as active. It was more okay for me to be there if they were there, and I remember laughing about it because I was like I was definitely not monogamous before either of you, but here I am in this monogamous, like doing this monogamy thing, and you guys are living the dream and I remember being like, okay, I really want to do this.

Speaker 1: 37:46

If my friends can do it, I can do it. And so that, combined with a friend of mine approaching me and saying I'm in an open relationship and I'd love to date you and you seem like you're in an open relationship, and I had been with my husband for, I think, a little less than a year, and I said I'm not in an open relationship, but let me get back to you. And I talked to him about it and he was like, well, let's try it, let's try it, let's see how we do. I did not fully know that he had already been in an open relationship previously he had and it had gone terribly.

Speaker 1: 38:19

He had in college his college girlfriend who later became his long time partner. Before me. She went away for a year abroad while they were in college together and started dating somebody over there while still being in a relationship with him. And then that boyfriend and her moved in with my husband into like shared college housing and so they all lived together.

Speaker 1: 38:40

And Drew says like I was just really, really jealous and I couldn't deal with it and none of us knew what we were doing, and so it was a similar thing where nobody knew what they were doing and it just went really badly and I think resulted in them breaking up for a little while.

Speaker 1: 38:52

But then they got back together, but without that additional person. So he had had some experience with it and his really good friend and roommate at the time we started dating was also like Polly and Kinky, so again there was more of that acceptance for him too, and so he was like I want to try it. And I did know a little bit more about what I was doing at that point because I had these friends as resources and they pointed me to all kinds of stuff and I had already known a lot about it just because I was interested, because I liked it and I was into it. But so I knew a little bit more about how to communicate about stuff and how to go slow. And also I think it helped that that particular first relationship didn't go very far. We hung out, we made out, we went on a few dates but it didn't turn into anything significant that first time. So it was a kind of a nice little dry run.

Speaker 2: 39:44

So what I'm thinking right? It wasn't a bad experience that you say, oh, I don't want to ever do that again.

Speaker 1: 39:49

Right, right, right right. It just kind of petered out on its own, and not because anybody tried to make that happen, but just because it just wasn't the right fit. And I think from there we were like, can we keep doing this? And we said, as long as it feels good? And we kept changing the shape of it, and but first we were just open. But then I was like I think I want to be in relationships with other people because I think that's how I'm built, and he was like well, let's see how it goes. And he was always the type of person who really was a relating, outside the box kind of person in general. He even traces that back to like when he was in high school he wasn't in love with any one person. Growing up at that age he fell in love with a whole group of people, so he already had that too. It's just that I don't think he was driven. He's more flexible, I think. I don't think he's driven in any one particular direction.

Speaker 2: 40:41

Yeah, I think that having that foundation of well, I just I've always loved a lot of people and it just felt very natural to me is such a great foundation. I don't think everyone has it, I know I don't have it. And lately polyamory is having its moment right, Nominogamy is having its moment. It's having a moment I should say more than ever.

Speaker 1: 41:07

I would say right now yeah, it's out a lot.

Speaker 2: 41:09

A lot of people are interested in it, trying it, wanting to try it. There's a lot more education, which is great, and I think there are many people who identify as like this is something that I've always felt, and it's now putting words to what I've always felt. And then there's other people who are like well, I want this to make sense to me, but I'm struggling with it. Okay, friends, this is where I'm going to pause this episode, but stay tuned for part two of this interview because we are going to get into Libby's perspectives about what makes polyamory work. She is an expert in this area, so stay tuned for next week. Thanks so much for listening to the Relationship Diversity podcast. Want to learn more about relationship diversity? I've got a free guide I'd love to send you. Go to wwwrelationshipdiversitypodcastcom to get yours sent right to you.

Speaker 2: 42:15

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