Wisdom From Our Polyamorous Elders with Susan Bratton, Part 1

Episode 096:
Wisdom From Our Polyamorous Elders with Susan Bratton Part 1

Discover the keys to unlocking the joys of relationship diversity as I sit down with Susan Bratton, an authority on intimacy who brings a treasure trove of insights into the realms of polyamory, communication, and deep connection. This episode is a roadmap to understanding and nurturing the unique needs within any relationship, especially within the intricate polycule dynamic. Susan, with her infectious enthusiasm, unpacks the lessons from generations of relationship diversity, offering strategies from sexual biohacking to fostering lifelong passion. You're in for an enlightening discussion that not only highlights the beauty of diverse relationships but also the pivotal role of communication in making every intimate encounter meaningful.

Susan introduces you to the "platinum rule" of relationships, underscoring the importance of treating partners according to their desires and needs. You'll learn how this rule distinguishes itself from the old "golden rule" and how it can enhance understanding and fulfillment within your own relationships.

This episode is your invitation to transform your relationships through the profound journey of self-exploration with practical steps and exercises that can set you on a path to more compassionate and loving connections.

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Podcast Music by Zachariah Hickman

Transcript

Susan Bratton: 0:00

One of the things that the creators of NLP figured out was something called values elicitation. And values elicitation is this idea that you have a different set of values than I do, and if I understand your values and you understand my values, then I can give you what you need. I can give you what it is you need and you can give me what I need. You won't have to treat me like you want to be treated. You'll treat me like you want to be treated. You'll treat me like I want to be treated. And that way, when you're in a polycule, you can know what each person really needs out of this relationship and give it to them, and you can ask for what you need, and it becomes very clear to your partner how to make you happy.

Carrie Jeroslow: 0:44

Welcome to the Relationship Diversity Podcast, where we celebrate, question and explore all aspects of relationship structure diversity, from soloramory 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 Jaroslow, 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. Bring more unique perspectives into the conversation.

Carrie Jeroslow: 1:47

Today I'm talking with the amazing Susan Bratton, who's an intimacy expert and a powerful advocate for pleasure, intimacy and polyamory. This was such a fun conversation. Her energy is infectious and her wisdom is enlightening. This gave me so many full belly laughs as well as loads of aha moments. This is another conversation that I decided to break up into two parts. There were just too many juicy parts and I didn't want to cut a single thing. So today is part one of this episode, and then stay tuned for next week for part two, but first a little about her.

Carrie Jeroslow: 2:28

Susan Bratton is an intimacy expert to millions and a champion and advocate for those who desire intimacy and passion their whole life long. She created hundreds of techniques that transform having sex into making love and is the world's most well-respected sexual biohacker. Susan is co-founder and CEO of two companies Personal Life Media Inc. A publisher of the Better Lover brand of heart-connected lovemaking techniques, bedroom communication skills and sexual regenerative therapies, and the 20 LLC, a manufacturer of organic and botanical supplements that enhance sexual vitality. She's also an active and caring spokesperson for Gaines Wave and Femi Wave and the Dr Joel Kaplan Company, three sexual biohacking regenerative therapies for increasing one's sex span to achieve ageless sexuality. Susan is a bestselling author and publisher of 44 books and programs, including Sexual Soulmates, relationship drive, ravish him, steamy sex ed, the passion patch, hormone balancing and hot to trot.

Carrie Jeroslow: 3:52

Susan speaks eloquently from the stage and frequently appears on ABC, cbs, the CW and NBC, as well as being the number one downloaded episode guest on a myriad of podcasts. Let's get into part one of this amazing conversation. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Relationship Diversity Podcast. Oh, I have got a powerhouse for you today and I am all revved up for this interview. Today we are talking with Susan Bratton, an intimacy expert to millions, and she is such a powerful voice advocating for the importance of pleasure, sex positivity and polyamory, and we're going to get into all of these things today in this conversation. So, susan, welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here.

Susan Bratton: 4:53

Keri, I have arrived as charged up as my drawer of vibrators.

Carrie Jeroslow: 4:58

Oh, yes, I love that. Oh my gosh. Well, I feel the energy Good. So, oh my gosh, okay. So you've got so many things that you are an expert on and we're going to try and get to a lot of those things today.

Susan Bratton: 5:18

That's what happens when you get old Carrie you have a lot to say I'm with you on that.

Carrie Jeroslow: 5:24

So I'm in my fifties. I know it's like you kind of stack up right.

Susan Bratton: 5:28

You stack up the experience.

Carrie Jeroslow: 5:30

Yeah, you do Exactly Well. So I'd love to start with you telling us a little bit about yourself. For those who don't know, and for those who are not one of the millions that you're helping with intimacy, I would love to learn more about you and how you got into doing what you do.

Susan Bratton: 5:49

Yeah, my pleasure. So, first of all, I am super excited that I live in a world where I can be on a podcast called Relationship Diversity. I mean, you know, I've been having diverse relationships for more than half my life and it's just nice that the world is really changing and that so many generations coming up behind me being in my 60s and my poly friends in their 70s and 80s okay, the people that gave me the downloads about how to run my poly life, what they had learned from doing it for decades, I feel like a part of what I do is I just pass on the wisdom too. I'm just a conduit for the people who came before me and loved me enough to give me the wisdom and guidance to keep my poly diversity relationships, keep my polydiversity relationships. They're never perfect.

Susan Bratton: 6:46

Shit goes sideways, carrie, it does, but how to keep bringing it back to what serves us all? So that, I think, is really it's an honor to be here. Number one and number two, I was telling you before we started and I wanted to say it while we were recording that I, just when I listen to your episodes, I just feel like you hold such a meta frame for the world of relationship diversity. You have such thoughtful responses to your guests that I was really looking forward to being here with you today, because I love your brain. Your brain is turning me on, keri. I love it.

Carrie Jeroslow: 7:31

Okay, well, that means a lot, because I feel like my brain works in its own unique way.

Susan Bratton: 7:36

Which is really nice for what you do.

Carrie Jeroslow: 7:38

Thank you Very good.

Susan Bratton: 7:40

So happy to be here. Yeah, so all right Backstory. Who is this?

Carrie Jeroslow: 7:45

Susan Bratton with this drawer vibrator is all turned on.

Susan Bratton: 7:50

What's the buzz about her? So I'm 62 years old as of this recording, having the best sex of my life. I am currently in a relationship with my husband and business partner of 32 years and we are great and we have been not great great, not great great. Not great great like you do when you're married to somebody for 32 years. Some of it our own bullshit, some of it external circumstances, sometimes our own fault and sometimes not, but we call ourselves.

Susan Bratton: 8:23

We have our own hashtag, our own fault and sometimes not, but we call ourselves. We have our own hashtag and we have for before there were hashtags Carrie, and we call ourselves Team Sweetie, and he is my life person. He is my human. We have a 27-year-old amazing daughter, adventurous marine science daughter, and we run our business together and have for nearly 20 years. We have two companies together. One is a publishing house called Personal Life Media and I have personally written over 44 books and programs on passionate lovemaking and bedroom communication skills and what I call intimate wellness and sometimes called sexual biohacking, because that's a fun word, too fun phrase too.

Susan Bratton: 9:13

And then we have another company that is a sexual vitality supplement company called the 20, which is based on Pareto's principle, the 80-20 rule, that 20% of what you're doing is making pretty much 80% of the effect. If you only knew which 20% was working, like you're doing some things right. You just knew what they were. And that is an interesting area because I have studied essentially botanicals what people might call aphrodisiacs I would have called indigenous botanicals that people have been using for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years that give them the effect of feeling horny, libido, desire, and we love to feel desire. And one of the things that's wonderful about relationship diversity is for those of us that like variety, that increases our desire. And it's interesting too that your overall health is the other side of the same coin as your libido. If you don't feel well, you don't have a lot of turn on and sexual energy. But when you do, when you are healthy and you have a lot of libido and you're like, when you feel good and you want intimate connection and pleasure and you have great orgasmic capacity and you have deep heart connection to your partner or partners, you have a quality of life that other people simply don't have. Their life is a bit more flat. It doesn't have a resonance and a vitality. Your passion fuels all of your passions. And if you're at a fork in the road and you're the person who has had trauma, shame, religious repression, societal shame, never had good partners, haven't had access, for some reason mostly due to censorship to good sex techniques, you don't really ever find sex great, so you let it go by the wayside, or you have health issues or what have you, and you don't get to have hot sex your whole life. You end up as a very different person at the end of your life than someone who is like oh, I love to have partners and great sex. I'm always learning about sex. I'm learning oral skills, I'm practicing my cowgirl. I'm trying some new vibrators. I just had an ejaculatory orgasm for the first time. Oh, wow, I found my peace spot, whatever it is, and you're in this. I love my partners. I love experiences. I'm incrementing. It's a part of my maturation. My personal growth is my sexual growth. It keeps getting better because I put my attention on it and I have all these great orgasms. I've got this hormone cascade. I've got all this blood flow to my brain. I feel co-regulated by my lovers. I'm more calm and relaxed. I feel more resourceful.

Susan Bratton: 12:10

You end up in a different place in your life than your cohorts do who, for whatever reason, don't get to have that, and I can tell you that most people go down the sad path and that there's probably about 10 to 15% of our population that goes down the sexy path. So there are massive obstacles to having great sex and intimacy that fuels you for your life, and what I really do is I help the people who are what I call the sexual seekers really do is I help the people who are what I call the sexual seekers. I have always been a sexual seeker and I have always been interested in having good sex and I haven't always had it and I've fought for it and I've put myself through great amounts of very edgy experiences to seek it, to learn it and to expand my knowledge and, for whatever reason, I love to forge the path and share it behind me. I like to teach people the things I've learned and I like to write about and shoot video about passionate lovemaking. How you do it, my flavor of sex is what I would call heart-connected, conscious lovemaking. What that means to me is. It's not friction, it's connection, it is I am here, willingly, with full honesty, and I am present in this moment with you. I'm here and I want to be and I feel good about it. That's the consciousness, that's the shame we work through and the checking out and the dissociation that come from our society and trauma that we can work through to get to. I'm present here, I want this, I'm showing up. And then the lovemaking piece is.

Susan Bratton: 14:03

There are a lot of things that I've done, whether it's a gangbang, if you will, or performative types of things. My husband happens to be an exhibitionist, and so we have gone to many sex parties where he's been. He's liked to be up on the big speaker fucking me or whatever, and that's okay. I like that too. I like performative sex, but that's not the stuff that I write about and speak about. What I like to do is say I'm an orgasmonaut. I like to go to the far reaches of orgasmic outer space. I like to find our human orgasmic potential and I like to teach people all of the types of orgasms they can have and how to co-create them or create them for themselves in solo pleasure. And then I also like to teach people not just sex techniques and pleasuring skills, but communication skills. There's an ascension model of sexual communication skills that I've figured out over the years that really help people and there's somewhat of an order to learning them that helps people feel like they really increment the value of their sex.

Susan Bratton: 15:12

Because, as you know, carrie, communication is the foundation of good sex. We all understand that rationally. It's like well, tell me how to do it, that's what I like to do. I like to tell people how to do it. So that's me. And I have been in my marriage for 32 years, open for 20 of it, so two thirds of it. So I've been with my husband longer than I haven't. I've been open and poly longer than I've been monogamous and we've had many, many different variations of what that means. But there have been some fundamental components that are the stool of strength to our poly experiences that we've had over the decades. That I think could be valuable to your listeners as well. So that's me in not so tiny a nutshell.

Carrie Jeroslow: 16:02

Oh my gosh, there's so much there that I have questions about where to start. There's so much of what you said that really feels resonant with me, specifically the heartfelt connection, heart opening, lovemaking, which is always been what I've wanted, just because I lead with my heart and I feel alive with my heart. So that really resonated with me. And, oh my gosh, susan, there's just so much, okay, well, I'm curious.

Susan Bratton: 16:43

I feel like I just gave you a good orgasm and you need to take a pause. I know you just flipped your hair and went whoo Seriously, dang, I'm hot Okay. So let's go to the thing that got you the hottest let's go right where you really want to go, keri, let's go.

Carrie Jeroslow: 16:59

I want to know, because I'm fascinated by stories and you said that you were always a sexual being, but there was a time right where you had this emergence, I would say, of your sexual being.

Carrie Jeroslow: 17:13

I want to know a little bit about that moment, because for anyone out there who's like, wow, that sounds amazing, but I am not anywhere there, I'm still feeling super repressed. Feeling super repressed. And the other thing I will say is I love this image of going to the end of your life and thinking like what am I going to be at the end of my life? Because I just had this whole experience where I think back to my grandmother, who really regretted a lot of her life, and I asked her that very question like what do you think of your life? Like practically on her deathbed, and she was like Carrie Ann, I would never do it again. And I'm thinking I want to be at the end of my life saying I will do this all over again, even the challenging moments of finding who I am. And so I guess that's what I want to ask you with your own story what was that time where you realize I'm not living the truth of who I am, and how did you get there?

Susan Bratton: 18:12

Well, and, as you do, you nailed it with the word truth. You are so good at hearing people talk and getting right into the heart of what the issue is. Damn girl, you're good at that. I love that about you. I really do. You are very good at hearing and coming to the thing, and that's exactly what you just did. Before we got on the show, I told you how good you are at that and you literally just did it for that whole thing and you went how do you live your truth? And I'm like that's what I did. That's literally what happened. So you're amazing. Oh, thank you. Have you ever heard of a book called Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton?

Carrie Jeroslow: 18:54

I have heard of that book, but I have not read it.

Susan Bratton: 18:57

Yeah, it is a good book. It was the transformative moment for me. I was 42 years old, I'd been married for almost 12 years, I had had regular sex with my husband and it was okay for the first year or two of our marriage. But I quickly grew tired of it and disillusioned and I began to basically just do anything I could to get out of it, because at the time in our relationship sex meant basically what I now call grab a boob and stick it in, very, very unsatisfying sexually for me. I never had an orgasm from intercourse. I had a, really one of those ancient. I think it should be in the museum of sex, my old vibrator. I mean, if I went to the museum of sex I'm sure I would see that bitch in there.

Carrie Jeroslow: 19:50

That's hysterical.

Susan Bratton: 19:52

I know I'm that old, so it's nice to give yourself orgasms from vibrators, but it's not as nice as orgasms with humans and vibrators or orgasms with humans, and I like both of those. I use a lot of tech in my sex and we all enjoy that. We all use all different kinds of crazy shit. I use a lot of tech in my sex and we all enjoy that. We all use all different kinds of crazy shit. I can even tell you some of the latest stuff I'm doing right now with sex and tech. But I was just really disillusioned and I was just doing whatever I could do to get out of sex.

Susan Bratton: 20:18

My husband was at his wits end, trying to figure out how to get me to have sex with him. He loves sex. He is a brainiac who is very kinesthetic. He lives in five monitor land with numbers on every monitor and when he is done with that bullshit he wants to go deep into pleasure. And he was miserable. So he was having an affair with a woman who was in a sexless marriage, herself trying to cope with me not wanting sex, and on our 11th wedding anniversary I said what are we doing here? This is no good. We're platonic. You avoid me, you're angry with me, you're checked out of our relationship. This is not what I want, nor you want. And he said well, you're not having sex with me. So I'm trying to stay in this marriage for our daughter.

Susan Bratton: 21:04

But I'm miserable and I thought, oh, I got to fucking shit. All right, I'll try and fuck him. And I tried to do it, but it was just not satisfying for me and it was just like, oh, I hated it. So we said, all right, we've got to do something about it. What we did was we ordered some books on Amazon to try to learn how to have sex and decided to go to therapy, and one of the things we did was we worked through the trauma that I had had and the trauma that I had had. It was really helpful to work through that, but that was not what was keeping me from having sex. It was really that I was never getting the engorgement and stimulation of my vulva, my breasts, my lips, my body, and the time that it would take me to get aroused. Everybody women's bodies 20 or 30 minutes to achieve kind of the erectile tumescence, if you will, of the male body which gets there in a couple of minutes. They've got much faster acting arousal.

Susan Bratton: 22:06

So we decided to go to some sex workshops. We went to the Human Awareness Institute, which is haiorg For those of you that are anywhere near Northern California. I highly recommend it. We learned everything from expanded orgasm and orgasmic meditation to female ejaculation. I looked at my pussy in a mirror and described it. All the things that you do, these are the things in the process, and that was what instantly made our sex life good. All of a sudden we started having a good sex life and we recovered. But then we started having such good sex that we were like let's fuck some other people. This is fun.

Susan Bratton: 22:43

I mean literally, it was just learning what to do. It was so easy to learn what to do and so we started like asking some of our friends we thought were hot and they're like you are disgusting, no way, what is wrong with you, freaks, you know? We're like, well, I guess we better not proposition our friends. And we were kind of casting about trying to figure out how to have other experiences. And one of our friends was like listen, there's this poly community that we're in and they have a lot of really good parties and they're awesome people and we're going to get you an invite to come into it. And we got into that. And then we started going to sex parties and we started having a really good time. And at that time we also met some of our poly mentors, the people who were 60, 70, and even 80 years old, who had gone before us for decades and really taught us the rules. And at first I would typify what we were doing as being in an open relationship.

Susan Bratton: 23:41

But pretty soon we realized that one of our worries was STIs and that we really wanted to protect ourselves from getting sexually transmitted infections. And it's interesting because 20 years later I am now the chief advocacy officer of a company called BasisDx. Basisdx is a company in the Silicon Valley that grew out of the pandemic. They were a COVID testing company before we had COVID tests in our house. And as we began to get COVID tests in our house, they said you know what we need? We need STI tests in our house so that we can just get as fast a response. I mean now we're used to, like you, put a swab on a thing and in 15 minutes if you have the thing. And they said we want to be that for STIs. And one of the main key takeaways from our poly progenitors, our mentors in the poly world, was this notion. And tell me if you've ever heard this phrase before a fluid bonded screening group. Yeah, I have. Great, I'm glad to hear it. It gets passed around, which is fantastic. This you want passed around not STIs.

Susan Bratton: 24:56

So we pretty much only ever had sex of any kind, except for just like using our hands and kissing that we don't have to have tests for, but mouth to genital or genital to genital experiences with other humans. We've always tested first, and so I've just been teaching people how to have the safe sex talk, when to have the safe sex talk, what STIs to get. For decades I have been teaching these simple things because people are embarrassed to talk about it and I wanna empower people. So, god, I am so happy to end up being the chief advocacy officer of the world's next generation STI testing company, where they mail you a kit, you can have it around your house, and when you get a couple of kits and keep them and then oh wow, let's have sex, okay, in 48 hours we can get our answers. That's amazing.

Susan Bratton: 25:48

Let's do our pinpricks of our fingers and a swab and a little urine and mail it back and get the results. Until we get the results, we'll touch, we'll kiss, we'll learn each other's bodies, we'll get each other off and then, when we get the results back, we'll know that it's safe to take the next step. So I just really love that piece of it. So we have always done the poly thing. People have come in and out.

Susan Bratton: 26:15

Of our foundation we think about Team Sweetie is like the foundation and people come in, they spend a year, nine years, whatever it might be that's the longest lover we've had was nine years and then they go, and when they go, that's fine too. We've loved them and things change and we've had people across the gender spectrum in our polycule and that's just worked really well for us. So that's essentially what it was like and how we learned how easy it is to be a great lover if someone just tells you what to do, which is why I've dedicated my life to writing passionate lovemaking step-by-step techniques for people to follow. I want to go out there and figure it out and then bring back the map for you so that you can realize how great it is to be a really skilled lover Like. One of my brands is Better Lover. Betterlovercom is one of my websites, which is just like perfect for me.

Carrie Jeroslow: 27:17

Yeah Well, it's a very inspiring story because I think definitely in this mono mindset and the mononormativity and just people in monogamous marriages, to me there's nothing wrong with monogamy. It's a choice if it's intentional and not a default right. But I see a lot of people in that space that you were 11 years into your marriage of saying I feel like I have to have sex with my husband because he wants to have sex with me or with my partner. My partner wants to have sex more than me. I don't feel turned on and it sounds like you went through a process of getting to know who you were at that time. And I think getting to know who we are and this is one thing I talk about a lot is we are always evolving. So it's not like oh, I know myself, okay, now for the rest of my life, I'm that person. No, it is the continual evolution and the dedication of saying I need to be on the process of knowing myself and asking myself all the time is this still working for me?

Carrie Jeroslow: 28:22

This is the communication element that I think you're talking about and I'm so curious I want to learn about from these polyamorous elders, as I'll call them polyamorous wise people. What was some of the advice that you got that was just life changing and that completely shifted your experience of what might have happened in a polyamorous adventure when you first started to what actually did happen? Because I do think polyamory is having a moment and I'm hoping this is the tipping moment where people are like, oh, non-monogamy is an option and there's a lot more education, a lot more people educating. But when you were talking with these elders who have been practicing polyamory for decades, what were some of the things that they told you?

Susan Bratton: 29:12

Yeah, yeah, I think the genie's out of the bottle and open relationship and non-monogamy is going to just keep growing and growing and growing and growing. There's a very big shift in our society now. We're moving from a white male patriarchal frame into diversity, equity and inclusion. Gender spectrum Women control their bodies. The majority of people in college right now are female, so we are getting salary parity. I was thinking about the pill right now.

Susan Bratton: 29:44

There's a lot of conversation on the pro and the con about birth control right now. But when I was born, that was when birth control was invented. My mother, my grandmother, they didn't have the choices that we have. And so for all of the functional doctors out there saying birth control will fuck you up, I understand that, but for many women it will not fuck you up as badly as having unwanted children. I mean, there's always. Everything has its pluses and minuses. It's our own decisions. And when we get financial parity and educational parity, when we move into supporting all people of everything like and enjoying and loving that, when all of these things change, it's just so. Uh, there's just such a shit. I mean, now there are more people in america who say that they are non-religious than religious. You know. So it's. There's no going back. It's's going to be like this.

Susan Bratton: 30:46

And what the elders taught me were number one was the fluid bonding, the STI testing, keeping safe because the data is coming out now. I remember when I was 20 years old and my boyfriend cheated on me and he gave me herpes and he gave me genital herpes and I have suffered with herpes my whole life. Now I've never given it to anyone because I don't have sex of any kind when I have an outbreak and luckily they've diminished over the years, which is great. As I've come more into my power and my truth, I have less stress and so I just don't have the outbreaks that I used to have when I worked for someone else and I felt just not safe in the universe. I feel a lot safer now.

Susan Bratton: 31:29

But what the poly people really talked to me about was the fluid bonded screening group and how to keep yourself safe so you don't get things like herpes. Now they're saying that it is likely that it contributes to dementia and trigeminal neuralgia, to these terribly painful neuropathies, and that's just one of the viruses that you test for. Like what are the studies on mycoplasmic genitalia or gonorrhea or Gardnerella or trichinomyosis? We know about syphilis, but we don't know a lot about all of these things. Or you know, we know about syphilis, but we don't know a lot about all of these things. And so keeping us physically safe was probably the most important thing that we learned.

Susan Bratton: 32:19

And then the second thing was the modeling of their behavior, which was, I'll say, that my mentor, dr Patty Taylor, really helped me understand how she ran her polyamorous relationship. And she has a long, long-term, decades, decades, decades boyfriend, and her husband has a long, long-term girlfriend and they all love each other, they know each other. They don't all have sex together, but they have been in poly and navigated that and so being able to see how they did it, how they communicated, how honest they were, because the radical honesty piece when I was 42, and my husband was 40, where we just started getting really, really honest about what was going on with both of us, where he admitted that he was having this extracurricular so that he could keep his sanity. Where I admitted that sex didn't feel good thatricular so that he could keep his sanity. Where I admitted that sex didn't feel good, that when he entered me it literally took my turn on down instead of up because he was penetrating me too soon. I wasn't ready. You know all these kinds of things where we just got really, really truthful with each other. That was what we learned from our poly elders was number one you have to tell each other the truth about everything. Your truth. Number two you have to be really good at calendaring and being fair with each other around the time that you have what each person needs and what it is that they want and what it is that you want.

Susan Bratton: 33:46

I often talk about something that I call. I've even been on television I don't talk about Polly with this, but I have this little like thing I do television segments. This is what they tease the segment. What they say is the golden rule ruining your relationship or mucking up your marriage? Stay tuned to find out with intimacy expert Susan Bratton. And they're like what is the golden rule and how is it mucking up our marriage? And it's basically this notion that I say well, it's really what you want to do is not the golden rule, which is, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you, because your partner is a totally different person than you are. It's the platinum rule, it's the higher game you want to play in poly especially. It doesn't matter whether you're monogamous or not. It's treat your partner the way they want to be treated. So let me give you a very specific example of that.

Susan Bratton: 34:38

My husband, as I had mentioned earlier, is a genius like super brainiac genius who needs to. His brain is like hungry for data and it loves to just like if you imagine like the matrix with the green numbers going across the screen, that's what's going on in his head all the time. He's just like numbers, data, like brilliant. He likes really needy things to think about. He's just incredible. He runs all the tech in our business and all the finance and all that stuff and when he is done with that, he needs physical touch. He needs hands-on touch and when we first got together I felt like he was constantly glomming on me, like he was always grabbing at me and stuff. What I didn't realize was that that was his need for kinesthetic co -regulation to get him out of his head and into his body and ground him. I remember one of the things we did in our kind of personal growth era and it's not like we stopped doing personal growth, but we had this like big amount of personal growth. We did One of the things I learned I ended up working for Tony Robbins for a while, and one of the things that he teaches is something that comes from neuro-linguistic programming, nlp, which is basically the operating system of our brain how to talk brain to brain so you understand each other.

Susan Bratton: 35:59

That's what NLP is. It's like being a clear communicator and understanding how the brain processes information, and one of the things that the creators of NLP figured out was something called values elicitation, and values elicitation is this idea that you have a different set of values than I do, and if I understand your values and you understand my values, then I can give you what you need. You're the platinum rule I can give you what it is you need and you can give me what I need. You won't have to treat me like you want to be treated. You'll treat me like I want to be treated, and so I created a long time ago I think probably 12 years ago I created something that's probably one of my top selling little downloads. It's on Amazon, but don't buy it there because it's $27. You can get it at myrelationshipmagiccom. It's a workbook that you print out and it walks you through your relationship values elicitation process and you can do it for print two copies.

Susan Bratton: 37:01

Give one, two or five copies for all your poly partners right give one, two or five copies for all your poly partners right, and that way when you're in a polycule, you can know what each person really needs out of this relationship and give it to them. For example, my husband works a lot. He works I don't even know how many hours a week, and he wouldn't do it if he didn't like it. I can't work at my computer that much, and so my other partner is an athlete and we go do physical things, a lot more physical things, when my husband's not working. He would like to make love, he'd like to give me a yoni massage, he'd like to make out, he'd like to get massaged, he just wants to relax and like he's. He's basically a sport fucker. His sport is fucking. That's what he likes to do it. No complaints here. I love him to fuck me and I like to fuck him back.

Susan Bratton: 37:58

And one of my biggest things that I've been doing is working on orgasmic intercourse techniques intercourse techniques step-by-step how to become a massively orgasmic fucker both parties. So when you understand what your relationship values are, you can ask for what you need and it becomes very clear to your partner how to make you happy. So one of the things that my second partner does is he goes and does shit with me. We ski, we go for swims in the ocean, we go for bike rides, and sometimes my husband will go and sometimes he'll be like no, no, no, I'm good, I'm working, you guys go, and that just has really helped us all. So myrelationshipmagiccom is where you'd get that printout for $9.95, I think it is or something. I just had it as a discount and I highly recommend everybody in the world know what their relationship values are, because once you understand, oh, my husband's number one is passion, and what that means to him is he wants me to wear lingerie and slutty shoes.

Susan Bratton: 38:58

He wants to see me naked. He wants me to sit on his lap. He needs like 25 kisses a day on the lips. He wants me to grab his butt, he wants me to grab his package. He wants me to just be sexy and cute to him all the time, and I love to be sexy and cute for him and that's just the top thing for him. My number one is security. I need to be safe because I had a very unsafe childhood and so he is my protector, my security. He's like my stable platform, he's the wind beneath my wings, and he has been for 32 years. He has always been like baby. I love what you're doing now. Keep doing that. Go more, give us more, give us more. I want more. He's the guy that makes all the machinery work. That is what I stand on, to have the voice that I have in the world.

Carrie Jeroslow: 39:45

Okay, friends, I'm going to pause this conversation right here, but there is so much more to come, so tune in. Next week, susan and I talk about the evolution of polyamory where it is now, as well as what she's learned from these polyamorous elders and the common pitfalls that they told her to look out for. She's going to pass that wisdom on to you, so stay tuned. 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. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe to the podcast. You being here and participating in the conversation about relationship diversity is what helps us create a space of inclusivity and acceptance together. The more comfortable and normal it is to acknowledge the vast and varied relating we all do, the faster we'll shift to a paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships. New episodes are released every Thursday. Stay connected with me through my YouTube channel, where I'll give you even more free resources and information, all about relationship diversity. I'm super excited to go deeper into YouTube because I'll be able to connect and have conversations directly with you. You'll find the link in the show notes. Stay curious.

Carrie Jeroslow: 41:31

Every relationship is as unique as you are. Are you wondering why you never seem to find lasting fulfillment in your relationships? Or do you create the same kinds of relationship experiences over and over again? Can you never seem to find even one person who you want to explore a relationship with? Have you just given up hope altogether? If this sounds like you, my recent book why Do they Always Break Up With Me is the perfect place to start. The foundation of any relationship, whether intimate or not, is the relationship we have with ourselves. In the book, I lead you through eight clear steps to start or continue your self-exploration journey. You'll learn about the importance of self-acceptance, gratitude, belief, shifting and forgiveness, and given exercises to experience these life-changing concepts. This is the process I use to shift my relationships from continual heartbreak to what they are now fulfilling, soul-nourishing, compassionate and loving. It is possible for you. This book can set you on a path to get there, currently available through Amazon or through the link in the show notes.