Relationship Diversity Podcast
Every relationship is as unique as you are. Relationship Diversity Podcast aims to celebrate, question, and explore all aspects of relationships and relationship structure diversity. Together, we’ll bust through societal programming to break open and dissect everything we thought we knew about relationships. We’ll ask challenging and transformational questions, like: Who am I? What do I really want in my relationships? Am I in this relationship structure because it’s all I know or is it really the fullest expression of who I am? Being curious, having courage to look within, and asking these important questions creates the space for joy-filled, soul-nourishing relationships. Your host and guide, Carrie Jeroslow is an International Best-Selling Author, Conscious Relationship Coach, and Intuitive. Through this podcast, she helps to normalize discussions about all different kinds of relationship structures from soloamory to monogamy to polyamory, and everything in between. This is a space of inclusivity and acceptance. The time is NOW to shift the conversation to a new paradigm of conscious, intentional, and diverse relationships.Join in as we reimagine all that our most intimate relationships can become.
Relationship Diversity Podcast
Ep. 114: Decolonizing Relationships: BIPOC Perspectives with Dr. Badiee PolyTherapist
Episode 114:
Decolonizing Relationships: BIPOC Perspectives with Dr. Badiee, PolyTherapist
In this episode of the Relationship Diversity Podcast, I have a profound conversation with Dr. Badiee, a polytherapist and professor of psychology at California State University.
We discuss the complexities faced by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) individuals in polyamorous and non-monogamous relationships within the context of white supremacy. Dr. Badiee shares her personal and professional journey, emphasizing the need to center BIPOC voices in polyamorous discourse. The conversation covers the importance of critical self-reflection, decolonizing relationships, and increasing representation in academic literature.
Dr. Badiee reveals insights from her recent research on polyamorous BIPOC communities and highlights the rich contributions these communities bring to the understanding of love and relationships.
Connect with Dr. Badiee:
Instagram | Threads | TikTok | Website
00:00 Understanding the Challenges of BIPOC in Non-Monogamous Relationships
00:42 Introduction to the Relationship Diversity Podcast
01:43 Meet Dr. Badiee: A Pioneer in Polyamorous Therapy
05:33 Dr. Badiee's Personal Journey and Professional Focus
07:14 The Intersection of Race, Culture, and Polyamory
08:48 The Importance of Community in Polyamorous BIPOC Experiences
19:44 Dr. Badiee's Research and Contributions to Polyamory Literature
30:37 Final Thoughts and Future Visions for Diverse Relationships
33:32 Conclusion and How to Connect with Dr. Badiee
This is Relationships Reimagined.
Join the conversation as we dive into a new paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships.
✴️ ✴️ ✴️ ✴️ ✴️ ✴️
Get Your Free Relationship Diversity Guide
Connect with me:
YouTube
Get my book, “Why Do They Always Break Up with Me? The Ultimate Guide to Overcome Heartbreak for Good
Podcast Music by Zachariah Hickman
Please note: I am not a doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, counselor, or social worker. I am not attempting to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any physical, mental, or emotional issue, disease, or condition. The information provided in or through my podcast is not intended to be a substitute for the professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment provided by your own Medical Provider or Mental Health Provider. Always seek the advice of your own Medical Provider and/or Mental Health Provider regarding any questions or concerns you have about your specific circumstance.
In the context of white supremacy. People of color already are facing racism, and then the additional oppression that people might face as well. So that all makes it more complicated for polyamorous BIPOC to be out, because there's more risk for us to be out, not just within job situations or things like that, but also within our own communities, because there could be rejection within your own communities. And as BIPOC we need our communities so deeply. We need them for our survival. Sometimes they've been our source of strength in a white supremacy system and so the idea of being out you would lose ties to that community. It can make it very difficult and it's not worth it for some people and it's not worth it for some people.
Carrie Jeroslow: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. Today I'm excited to be talking with Dr Batty, polytherapist, about the impact she's making in the polyamorous and non-monogamous narrative. After seeing how much the experiences and perspectives of Black, indigenous and people of color were missing in mainstream poly literature and discourse, she became inspired to change that. But first a little about her.
Carrie Jeroslow:Dr Batty is a professor of psychology at California State University, san Bernardino, an educator, scholar, psychologist and practitioner of polyamory. Dr Batty is a licensed clinical counseling psychologist and owner of Polytherapist Psychology Corporation. Her services include speaking engagements, consulting and psychotherapy, where she's provided therapy to polyamorous individuals, couples and polycules for over a decade. In addition to polyamorous people, dr Batty specializes in Black Indigenous People of Color, bipoc, lgbtqqiap plus folk and people with ADHD. Her identities as Iranian, american, bisexual, queer, polyamorous and femme shape and inform her work as an educator. She's conducted speaking engagements to a wide variety of audiences, including therapists, community agencies and polyamorous groups. Her published scholarly work includes a scientific article co-authored with Evita Sawyers entitled Black Queer Femme and Non-Binary Individuals Polyamory an Act of Liberation in the journal Sexualities and a chapter on polyamory in the Encyclopedia of Marriage, family and Couples Counseling. She aims to change the mainstream discourse on polyamory by centering polyamorous BIPOC in her scholarly and therapeutic work.
Carrie Jeroslow:Dr Batty has officially practiced polyamory since 2011, but to some extent identified with it for her entire adult life. She's grateful to have two amazing life partners. Let's get into the conversation. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Relationship Diversity Podcast. I am really excited about my guest today, and I know I say that a lot, but I'm really, really excited because I am wanting to bring more diverse voices in terms of cultures, race and different identities to this podcast, because we need to hear different stories and life experiences. And so, with that, welcome Dr Batty to the podcast.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here.
Carrie Jeroslow:You have such rich experience and I would say, from your identities alone. So I'm going to read your identities. According to you, you identify as a Iranian, american, bisexual, queer, polyamorous, femme and neuro spicy. I love it. I love it because there's so much there that I personally don't have experience with. I haven't talked to people in many of those and then the intersection of all of them creates an identity all within itself, and you are a therapist, a researcher. You've got a wealth of information that you can share with people. So I'm really excited to dive into this conversation. Before we get into your important work, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and the work you do in the world.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:Yes, I would love to do that. Thank you for the warm introduction. You shared some of my identities. Those aren't my only identities, but they do very much inform my work, inform how I see the world on a pretty much daily basis. So those are definitely very important to me. I love my academic work and that's been really fulfilling. But I'm really excited to now focus more on the polyamorous community in my career. I'm at a point in my career where I really can just focus on the polyamorous community, which I'm so passionate about and I'm so excited to do that at this stage and really try to help my polyamorous community. So that's where my work is. It's in training therapists to work with polyamorous and non-monogamous clients. It's in doing scholarly work on polyamory, particularly with BIPOC, with people of color Black, indigenous and people of color to bring that more into the scientific literature. So I'm very passionate about that and creating community spaces and providing therapy. So I'm looking forward to being more immersed in the polyamorous community at this point in my career.
Carrie Jeroslow:That's amazing and much needed, because I think there's some articles I've read that polyamorous is a white, elitist experience, and it's not true and it is what is shown for many different reasons. I'd love for you to talk about what you're seeing and the holes that you're seeing in poly literature, specifically with BIPOC and different cultures.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:Absolutely so I'll share a little bit of that as related to how I grew up.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:So, with all my identities being what they are, I never really found a place I could fit, including in queer communities, and then when I found polyamorous communities, I still never felt like I truly fit until I went into a BIPOC polyamorous space and I've really been trying to understand for the last few years what is it about predominantly white spaces that I don't feel as authentic, not that if there's some white folk there, but if it's a predominantly white space. And so I've been really trying to unpack that within my work but also really center voices that because whiteness is so dominant, the way that whiteness has been constructed to Black and Indigenous people have been genocided and erased and enslaved, and that's how whiteness was constructed, and so those voices in particular are really missing from the polyamorous discourse, even though in pre-colonization some indigenous cultures did practice non-monogamy. Some African cultures did practice non-monogamy, so that was very much imposed, and so the idea that it's a white thing now is so bothersome because y'all didn't invent this. Actually this was going on before you got here.
Carrie Jeroslow:Right.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:Right yeah.
Carrie Jeroslow:I've heard it talked about from Black polyamorous people as a return to our roots, even if it's not the relationship aspect, it's the community aspect. Can you explain that a little bit more?
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:Absolutely, absolutely. I totally agree with that. I think that absolutely it's a return. It can be.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:For a lot of us it's not something new. It's a return. It's part of our decolonizing process where we are really going back to our roots prior to colonization. So for me personally it's been going into the works of Persian poetry, like I've really gone into Rumi's oath that he wrote to his spiritual guide and there is such beauty there and how Rumi defined love and how multi just it was. Love was just so much more profound than I think we generally think of love in US culture and US language. So the expansion of love has been such a fulfilling part of my spiritual journey and also part of my decolonizing and unlearning some of these oppressive structures. So going to Rumi's poetry is part of my polyamory process of understanding love on a more profound, is part of my polyamory process of understanding love on a more profound, on a more complete level. So that's an example of it. Going back to my roots, polyamory is returning to my roots of this more expansive form of love.
Carrie Jeroslow:Yeah, that's powerful because I think, jointly, all of us are trying to destigmatize alternative I don't even like the word alternative but other ways to love, other ways to be in relationship. Because of this programming of monogamy and relationships being one man, one woman and it goes even deeper than that which is the research I think you're bringing into this world and into this field I would like to go back a little bit and learn a little bit more about your personal experience with polyamory, what that discovery was like.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:Yeah. So I don't think I ever was truly monogamous, but I didn't have the words for it. But once I got into relationships, I had really struggled with fitting into the norms of monogamy. But I would always be very honest, I would always immediately talk to the person, but it was like their whole view of me shifted all of a sudden. So I had a lot of shame and I didn't have the words, so I didn't even know there was such thing. I just thought I was being a bad partner, basically, and a bad person. I had internalized a lot of shame about that.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:And then in 2009, salon published a series of articles on non-monogamy and I read one and it just clicked for me because at that point I was thinking, well, I'm not just not going to get into a relationship, obviously I'm not capable of it, so I'm not going to do it. So I'm just going to be alone. That's okay. I like my own company, I'll just be alone, that's fine. But then I found the non monogamy and I was like, oh, everything clicked and I realized this is me. And then it took me a little bit longer to find polyamory as a term, but within a couple of years I would say I was officially polyamorous. So I say, like 2011 is when I came out to myself and people that were very close to me, I started coming out and then been more coming out since then.
Carrie Jeroslow:And where does your education and then your work as a therapist? Where did that come in to your lifeline?
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:That's a great question. It was somewhere in my PhD, I think, that I found the language for polyamory. People knew that I was non-monogamous before that, but I think by the time I was getting ready to finish. So when you get your PhD, you have to do an internship for a year where you go and do full-time therapy for a year and the place that I was at I loved it.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:But I remember comments about non-monogamy from therapists, from training directors, saying things like, oh, I've never seen a healthy polyamorous relationship, even though I was right there. But at that point I was in a healthy polyamorous relationship and I'm like literally right there and you're saying this and I realized, wow, even therapists who are so multicultural, competent and all these other ways, they still have such a bias when it comes to non-monogamy. And I really saw this need from then on. So that was in my internship here after I graduated with my PhD and I started working with more non-monogamous clients and then ended up getting into the education aspect. So I've done a lot of different trainings anywhere from an hour to three hour trainings for therapists to be able to work with non-monogamy and specifically with polyamory. So yeah, that's how I got into it.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:I just saw that there was this big need and the research supports that as well. There's research on how therapists even have these biases. So the same biases that exist in the popular culture, like being immoral, being unethical, being pathologized, something's wrong with you, something's wrong with your relationship All of those biases. Therapists have those also, and they've also done a study where clients talk about the biases that their therapists and how it harmed them. So we have lots of different evidence that therapists, unfortunately, are not equipped or have biases when it comes to non-monogamous folk. So that's a big need that I really want to work on addressing.
Carrie Jeroslow:Definitely, because it's very easy to blame. This is what I've heard from other therapists is the problem is non-monogamy. That's what's causing it and that is rarely the truth. There's usually problems before that right.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:You're so right Because, let's say, infidelity is, I think, the first or second reason people break up. Right, unethical, non-monogamy, and nobody ever questions that monogamy as a structure though Nobody ever says, could it be the monogamy? That's the issue. But when you're non-monogamous, everybody thinks that's the issue and it's like no, it's just like any other relationship. So, yeah, that's just not true. It's just not true. And actually the research shows the opposite, that either polyamorous people are equal to their monogamous peers and trust, companion at love and all these other ways, but sometimes even more so. Sometimes there's more polyamorous people are reporting higher trust, higher love, higher passion with polyamorous partners than monogamous folk do with their partners. So the research actually either shows that it's not founded, it's equal, or it's actually the opposite.
Carrie Jeroslow:That makes a lot of sense because there's a lot more communication, need for communication, clear communication and openness for it to work, so that then creates more trust. I'd love to hear more about the demographics that you work with in terms of diverse race, culture and relationship diversity, polyamory, non-monogamy, swinging open relationships.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:So in the context of white supremacy, people of color already are facing racism, so there's that and then the additional oppression that people might face as well. So that all makes it more complicated for polyamorous BIPOC to be out, because there's more risk for us to be out, not just within job situations or things like that, but also within our own communities, because there could be rejection within your own communities. And as BIPOC we need our communities so deeply. We need them for our survival. Sometimes they've been our source of strength in a white supremacy system and so the idea of being out you would lose ties to that community. It can make it very difficult and it's not worth it for some people to be out to their families.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:And I think the concept of outness also is very white, because just being very flamboyant about it, I like pride, like I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's a very white culture thing, whereas I think in other cultures there's just not that same way of outness. That concept is a little bit, it's just different. For example, there's a study where they did queer men of color versus white men coming out and there wasn't benefits for the men of color to necessarily be out and just like the idea that everybody has to be out in every way is again very rigid, and that's also another aspect of white supremacy, this one right way sort of thing. So so it makes it more difficult to be out, to be visible Doesn't mean that people aren't obviously people are, but it is harder and you have to have some level of privilege. I think that you weren't not going to lose your job, that you're not going to lose your community, your livelihood. But then, on the flip side, being a person of color because you have lived in oppression on a daily basis, I think that polyamory can be one aspect of this larger journey of decolonizing yourself, of unpacking the white supremacy culture, unpacking racialized capitalism, all of those pieces. So it's also a very beautiful experience to be polyamorous as a person of color and then also finding that community, finding polyamorous BIPOC. It's like the community that you really want. That's the community I felt at home in for the first time ever, really, because I feel like all my identities are not necessarily honored in every space. So I think the community aspect is really, and I think, just in general, bipoc have more of a collectivist way of thinking. So I feel like the way that we practice polyamory.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:No-transcript. This has been very beautiful, that data. I'm so excited about it. It's not published yet. I'm still analyzing it, but just knowing what values are for BIPOC has been really a delight.
Carrie Jeroslow:I think that's what I was saying about community and specifically BIPOC. Is that community is a way of coming together yes, in the identity of BIPOC and polyamory, but it goes so much deeper than that. I wanted to go into this new paper that you've just published. We're recording in August and you have today just published a very important paper. I would love to hear more about this paper and your inspiration for it, and more of your findings.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:I am so excited about this paper. It was such a labor of love. In my hardest days of polyamory during the pandemic, I was so blessed to find the work of Vida Sawyers and she had these daily polyamory reminders and it got me through a really tough time. And through her I found other Black queer content creators as well. And again having this journey where I didn't feel like I ever fit into the polyamorous communities or polyamorous literature to see the work of Evita especially was so powerful and so much like taking into context our humanity as a person and going really in depth and into things, and I was so inspired by her work and it had such an impact on my personal polyamory journey and so excited that you're going to interview her as well. She really inspired me. And then, when I got to a place where I felt like, okay, now I'm in a place where I've processed those difficult things that happened to me and I really want to give back to these individuals who have not just made a difference in my life but also made a difference in so many others' lives, and I really want to bring their voices to the academic literature, which last time I checked there's quite a large amount, but there are no studies on polyamorous BIPOC.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:There's only two papers that talk about black polyamory specifically, and that's it. Everything else is very white, everything like the studies. Sometimes they don't even mention the racial and ethnic demographics, so you know that they're probably white, mostly white, but if they do, it's usually majority white, usually at least 90%. So much of what we know in the scientific literature is based on white polyamory and unfortunately, I wish this wasn't the case. But sometimes documenting something academically does preserve it to some extent, and I don't think that should't the case. But sometimes documenting something academically does preserve it to some extent, and I don't think that should be the case, but it is the case, it's true, and I wanted to make sure that these voices were preserved and that they would shape the discourse, because I honestly was like what they're saying and their content is a million times better than what I'm seeing in these papers.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:So there was a lot of papers about liberation and polyamory being liberatory. You can't be liberatory without acknowledging race, without unpacking race. There's just no way, especially in a US context. And yeah, there's a lot of unpacking of queerness, of gender, but that's it, and it was done among white people. And so finding these Black queer creators and knowing how much of a difference they made in my life and being like I really want to uplift these voices because they deserve to be in the academic literature, and probably the only reason they're not is because they didn't have the opportunity and the oppression that they faced. If they wanted to be, they could have been, and so I wanted these brilliant minds to be in the academic literature. So it was such a wonderful journey for me going deep into their content, analyzing it on a deep level, diving deep into Black queer studies literature as well. It was such a labor of love and I'm so happy about it. I'm so excited to share it with the world.
Carrie Jeroslow:That is incredible, because these are voices we need to hear. For someone who maybe has trouble reading academic papers but really wants to get the information, understand it and broaden their awareness. What are things that you could share with us that you learned?
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:I think one of the things that I did that was really fascinating was documenting a history of the word queer, and so that was really fascinating to trace back how queer was used in the US and then later how queer theory was adopted into academia. But originally the original queers in the US were actually Black folk. In the 1890s the term queer came into political discourse and as a tool to criminalize Black folk, and actually it was defined as and this is a direct quote uncontrollable Black bodies that could only be interpreted and governed through policing and incarceration, and then, obviously, if there's any visible queerness, there's additional scrutiny and everything. So that was a really fascinating thing to know that black people are the original queers, which was why I also think black people should be centered in discussions of queerness and expanding the concept of queerness, because their voices are now left out, like the queer theory really emerged in the 80s, the 90s and queer activism, and that was very white and not really including as much Black queer voices, and so I highly recommend learning from Black queer folk, because I feel like they've been left out and there's so much that they have to teach us because of their intersecting identities. So that was one thing that was really interesting that I learned.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:I learned about the context of slavery in the US captivity, that context of captivity that Black Americans were forced into. There's metaphorical ways that it continues and that that shows up in all of our relationships, this idea of Black people keeping them in captivity. That gets internalized, that anti-Blackness gets internalized by all of us and affects everyone. And that also relates to the hierarchies we have in capitalism, because I don't want to be captive, so I have to be better than this next person. So that was a big takeaway learning how much slavery has impacted and continuation of it has impacted everyone's relationships and everyone needs to unpack that. I think I had a sense of that, but it really hit at home that that was the case.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:One thing I learned is that improving safety in polyamorous communities is not just about inviting people of color to your events. It's also about this critical self-reflection, of really trying to unpack how have you been affected by white supremacy, how have you been benefited from it, how have you been harmed by it? So, like for me, I am a person of color but I am light skinned and so I have benefited from white supremacy and that my light skin gives me a proximity to whiteness that someone who is darker skinned wouldn't benefit from. So that's how I benefit from whites. That's a very superficial way, but that's one way that I benefit from white supremacy. So what does that mean? How does that look like? What are some ways that I can notice that having that proximity to whiteness maybe showed up in my behavior? So it's really unpacking those things within yourself. That's such an important thing to do. To make BIPOC feel safer is really just doing that critical examination within yourself. So that was a big takeaway.
Carrie Jeroslow:Yeah, I love that. I want to hear more takeaways and we'll talk more about what I can do to help, and one of the things that you just said is critical self-reflection, and that's a very important aspect that we can all do, and so let's continue with some more takeaways. How many pages is?
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:this. It's 20 pages. It's really long. Yeah, I think one thing that was so beautiful that I just didn't think about it this way was sometimes I don't know if you've ever, maybe on your podcast, asked people about their polyamory. Well, you did. Yeah, you asked me about my polyamory origin story. Yeah, but you've heard a lot of polyamory origin stories, but I think one of the most beautiful ones that I heard came from this paper, where it was from.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:Cherie Calico Roman was the person that said it, but basically she grew up in these Muslim communities and she said that in that time, people did have multiple partners and she was talking with her cousin about it, and there's an expression also in her culture that you want for your sister what you want for yourself.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:You want the best that you want. You also want that for your loved ones, for people, and so she was talking with, I think, a cousin or something, and the person told her if you had a great partner, wouldn't you want the world to experience them? And I thought, wow, what a beautiful, selfless way. Similarly, sinead Jackson Kendall had a similar experience, who I also cite in the article where she talks about that experience of learning the generosity that she learned in her culture extended to her polyamory, and so I think that's really beautiful and prompted a lot of self reflection for me of like, how did the things I love about Iranian culture, like generosity, how do they relate to my polyamory? So I think it was a beautiful thing to learn that people's polyamory origin stories can be rooted and care for others.
Carrie Jeroslow:Yeah, wow, I think we can learn so much from these voices. I think we can learn so much from these voices and so, with you bringing more light to these voices, bringing it in poly literature and getting the research in. It is part of us learning from other races and cultures and learning more about their lives, and education and awareness is so important for someone like me who just doesn't have that experience. Where do you see this work going? What are your visions?
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:I envision doing multiple ways of this one topic, which is polyamorous BIPOC. So, for example, I just did a study that I collected data on over 400 polyamorous BIPOC about different aspects of their experiences, and the one that I'm analyzing right now is about their values related to polyamory. But I'm also going to look at BIPOC's experiences of how they think their experiences is different from white folk, because the vast majority of them said, yes, that it is very different, and so I'm going to be looking at that as well. I'm going to want to publish something on, specifically, what is unique about the polyamorous BIPOC experience. I also asked them about their therapy needs, so I also want to publish something on therapy as well. So this is all in a process of a year or two, but it's not going to be something that's done overnight. But those are some of the areas that I see my research growing in.
Carrie Jeroslow:Well, we'll just have to have you on in a year again so we can learn more about this. What would be your most ideal, beautiful vision of the evolution of diverse relationships from your perspective? What does that look like 10, 15 years from now?
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:I hope that we can have a more complete, including all voices, including voices that have been silenced. I just hope we can have a more informed from all these different groups that are polyamorous but don't show up in the literature Again partly because of it's just harder to be out. So then people are like, well, polyamory is all white. So I think just being able to unpack aspects of white supremacy culture on a deeper level, on racialized capitalism, I hope that people do that deeper exploration of really trying to unpack that within themselves. So that's something that I really try to talk about ways to do that. I think the people that you're going to have on also give great ways to unpack those things. I think the more you can do that, the safer you're going to make things for other people.
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:And then just taking accountability too and realizing intent is not impact. I think, as a polyamorous culture, I want us to have that as a value, because I think, as polyamorous people, there's so much that you have to do because you're having these different emotional relationships. So I feel like there's more work and talking through things, because the connections are just numerically more and qualitatively more, so there's just more things. So I think we really have the opportunity to lead the way in terms of creating values and unpacking those things If we just allow ourselves and I think we have to allow ourselves and really look at ourselves critically as a community and really bring in those voices and elevate those voices and also within ourselves as well and take accountability when we have hurt someone, because that's just what you're going to do in connection sometimes and it's okay and you can take accountability without centering yourself and move forward.
Carrie Jeroslow:And grow and evolve within yourself. Yes, so I love all of those. That gives me really tangible ways that I can support and continue to educate myself, do self-reflection and take accountability for my words, for my actions, for my thoughts, for my feelings, and continually ask questions and get more information. I really appreciate your work because it is really important for not only the polyamorous community but for the world and for this country. Definitely we need more education and the idea of this decolonizing relationships and just life is really important if we are to evolve as a country and as a world. Important if we are to evolve as a country and as a world. Dr Batty, polytherapist, how can people find you if they want to learn more about your work, if they want to work with you?
Dr. Manijeh Badiee:what's the best way for them to connect with you. So I am committed to posting daily content about polyamory, decolonizing relationships and mental health through my social media platforms, which is on Instagram and threads Dr Batty, polytherapist, and on TikTok it's polytherapist, and my website's polytherapistcom.
Carrie Jeroslow:Polytherapistcom. We're going to have all of those links in the show notes, and you really inspire me by the work that you're doing on Instagram every day. She posts every day and it's really thoughtful content. So if you are wanting to educate yourself more which is one of the pieces we talked about please go follow her on Instagram and TikTok and threads and go check out her website, because she's doing some really important work and helping us all to make this world a better place. So thank you, Dr Batty, so much for being here and I look forward to connecting in a year from now to hear all about what you've done since this interview.
Carrie Jeroslow: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, to a paradigm of conscious, intentional and diverse relationships.
Carrie Jeroslow:New episodes are released every Thursday. Stay connected with me through my website, kerryjerislowcom, Instagram or TikTok. Stay curious.
Carrie Jeroslow: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 all together? If this sounds like you, my, 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.
