The Life Of Bryony - 38. The Life of YOU: Is Monogamy for Everyone?

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Welcome to The Life of YOU! The bonus series where we tackle your dilemmas and share advice to navigate life’s trickier moments. Today, I’m joined by the brilliant Ruby Rare, sex educator and author of The Non-Monogamy Playbook, for a candid Q&A session on love, relationships, and exploring non-monogamy with confidence. Today: 💬 Jealous Jo wonders how people in open relationships find the time for it all. 💔 Ben fears his monogamous relationship is at risk as his partner considers opening things up. 🤔 Tom asks how to explore non-monogamy without reducing it to just sex. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU 🗣️ Got a question or a story to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512—just start your message with LOB. 💬 Use the WhatsApp shortcut - https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB 📧 Prefer email? Drop me a line at [e-mail]. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might need it—it really helps! CREDITS: 🎙️ Presenter: Bryony Gordon 🎙️ Guest: Ruby Rare 🎧 Producer: Jonathan O’Sullivan 📢 Executive Producer: Mike Wooller A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to The Life of You, the bonus episode where we tackle your dilemmas and share advice to navigate life's trickiest moments. I'm joined once again by sex educator, author and absolute legend Ruby Rare. What I love in dating non-monogamously is I'll meet someone and maybe we won't get on, but also if we get on, maybe it's a friendship. Ruby's just released the non-monogamy playbook, a guide to exploring relationships beyond boring monogamy

with confidence, care and curiosity. Your question's answered right after this. Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month. Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. I'm single, self-employed and own a dog. I barely have time to hoover my flat. Meanwhile, my best mate at work has a husband, a boyfriend and is on all the dating apps. Where do people with open relationships find the time? Seriously, I'm curious to know and that's from jealous Joe. I'm with jealous

Joe on this one. I get it. I get it. There can be this misconception that if you're open in some way, you have to actively be living and doing it all the time. And like, and that's exhausting. Like I can't do it. I'm going from one house to your other life. I also like need to do a wash and like call my mum and sort out my council tax. Like my whole life isn't non-monogamy. And I am quite disciplined with the way that I use dating apps. I'm not on them all the time.

I'll like check them once a day. What's the best one? My favorite is Field. I like Hinge as well, but I think Field is kind of the go-to app for people who are into non-monogamy stuff and kink. I did go on Field once for researching something. Research.

But no, seriously. And I'm like, oh, is that profile still there? I mean, I wouldn't know, I don't go on it. But anyway, I was like, I felt like my grandma. I was like, what? I mean, I forget how much of a different world it is when you're new to that kind of environment. Okay, so also when I was single, there weren't apps. It was like, okay, keep it online?

No, there wasn't apps. It was like, okay, keep it online. No, there wasn't even that. We had to basically go to a ball and dance around. No, basically there was mysinglefriend.com. That was it. Which was where your friend wrote a... Which I think we should bring back because I love that concept of your mates are the best people to hype you up

and the best people to set you up. Basically the way you found people was, in my case, was work in the office. Work with a pub. Yeah. And I still love a bit of kind of in real life meet cute. I'm very here for that. But it's easier to meet people on apps for me.

And also you open yourself up to all of these different worlds and people who you would never cross paths with but it's you've got to be realistic about this there's a whole thing like there's a chapter in the book called like how to date multiple people and still find time to do your laundry like a lot of this is kind of practical time management stuff and you need to make sure that you've got enough time to give other people the respect and the care that they deserve even if it's something really casual. Like for some people, I've got mates who I kind of have a partner and have kids and have given this a go and it can work maybe a bit, but they've also had to go like,

I'm gonna have to pause this for a minute. Like one day I'd love to get back into this, but now I'm trying to look after two small children. Like, who am I kidding that I can go on dates all the time? Yeah, I mean, it's gorgeous, but like, don't, we don't need to set these like ridiculous standards for ourselves. This is a paid advertisement for better health therapy online. What are some of your relationship green flags? We often hear about the red flags we should avoid in the dating world. But what if we focus more on looking for green flags in friends and partners?

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This is a long question from Ben. I've been in a three-year monogamous relationship with my boyfriend, where gay men and most of our friends are in open relationships. His friends seem to have very healthy open relationships with clear rules and communication. Can I just say, I don't know many people with closed relationships that have clear rules and communication. Can I just say I don't know many people with closed relationships that have clear rules and communication. I do genuinely think this book is like very helpful for monogamous couples as well. But I've just watched my best mate become heartbroken as his husband fell in love with

someone they've been having threesomes with for the past eight weeks. It was horrific and my worst nightmare. I know my partner will want to talk about opening our relationship soon, but I'm not sure I can go through with it. At the same time, I'm scared that saying no will lead to resentment and ruin our relationship. Do I just have to shut up and put up?

And that is from Ben. No, don't shut up and put up. No, Ben. Absolutely not. Even I can answer this question for you, Ben. Yeah, it sounds like the impact of his friend's experience has really affected him. Shit things can happen sometimes, and that's really difficult. And I

don't want to shy away from that or dismiss that. Sometimes the things that we really fear do actually happen. And we have to be prepared for that as well, although still be optimistic and with that good communication trust in ourselves that we can talk about things pre-emptively and do as much damage control around that stuff as possible. If there is some kind of curiosity that he has to try this at some point, that's one thing. If it's a hard no and he is just not interested and just wants to be monogamous, I think he's got to be honest with himself about if this is a no or a maybe.

And rather than like panicking and waiting for his partner to bring it up, I think he should initiate the conversation and say like, this is where I'm at, these are my fears, these are my worries, this is just a no for me and if at some point you're going to want to talk about this, we need to be honest about that. Or, I can't see myself doing this right now, maybe further down the line it's a maybe, how do you feel about that? I feel like monogamy is all about sex.

How do I explore this without reducing it just to hookups? And that is from Tom. Monogamy or non-monogamy. Non-monogamy. Non-monogamy. I mean, it's not just about sex. For some people it can be, but this is about human interaction and connection. Even if you're having really casual hookup sex,

I'm still a believer that you can do that with like building connections and there being care and like intrigue and nice stuff. And it doesn't have to be this completely like transactional kind of emotionless hookup culture. If you're into that, that's all good too. I think if this person is kind of looking to meet people and date, it's helpful to say upfront, like I'm not really into one-night stands. I like getting to know people and having a bit more of a connection. Because if someone isn't into that, hopefully they will be transparent about it and kind of not want to speak anymore because that's what they're looking for and that's not a match.

But I think most people are kind of up for getting to know someone. And what I love in dating non-monogamously is I'll meet someone and maybe we won't get on, but also if we get on, maybe it's a friendship. Maybe it's someone who I like, like go on nights out with and go to parties and kind of I'm in the sex positive community with. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe we're sleeping together. It's true. We're so binary, aren't we, about things? And I love that, that I've got really good friends who I've met on dating apps. Thanks Ruby.

Massive thank you to Ruby for her wisdom, humour and candour today. Her book, The Non-Monogamy Playbook, is a brilliant resource whether you're actively exploring open relationships or you just want to rethink what love, sex and commitment mean to you. And if you're feeling a bit of shame about sex, go read it because it might relieve some of that shame. If this episode sparks something for you, share it with a friend who might need to hear it or just WhatsApp it to your partner maybe? So what I'm gonna recommend this week, I'm very low maintenance everyone, I'm very low maintenance but the one thing I

occasionally do which makes me feel so extra is getting my nails done. I've got back into the habit of getting my nails done one hour every three weeks because I get like b-hab or whatever it's called which is like the extra strong thing because I don't know about you ladies is that I never used to get my nails done because or or do my nails because I would always just chew off or pick off the polish and then they invented gel manicures which it makes it harder to pick it off but more satisfying when you do manage it. So that would just ruin my nail bed and I'd be like, well, this is just stupid. But they've invented now BIAB, which is like build it in a bottle, I think.

And it's very hard to take it off. And it just looks, if I could show you, my nails just look so shiny and epic and I can look down at them and go, I am such a high maintenance, bougie kind of girl. That's my recommendation. Like sometimes those little things you do can make a massive difference to your kind of belief in yourself. Take care of yourself and I'll see you Monday.