Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - The Arc of Love - The Poly Dinner Party

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Join Esther for a dinner table conversation on the topic of polyamory. The dinner was held to mark the anniversary of a panel discussion Esther was part of on the same topic ten years earlier. Together the original panel and a few new friends explore what has changed in the last decade as consensual non-monogamy has become more mainstream, why some advocate for their choices, and what consequences and challenges they still face as well. This is not a session but a fly on the wall conversation. Some of the guests chose to be anonymous, while others allowed us to use their names. To watch the talk from ten years ago "Special Arrangements: The Changing Face of the 21st Century Relationship"discussion panel on non-monogamy and polyamory with Sunny Bates (moderator), Reid Mihalko, Diana Adams, Esq., and Esther Perel, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iDluKrMvYw Diana Adams is the Executive Director of nonprofit advocacy group www.ChosenFamilyLawCenter.org and a mediator serving families nationwide to negotiate polyamorous agreements with www.DianaAdamsLaw.net. Reid Mihalko is a sex and relationship educator. More about his work at http://ReidAboutSex.com. What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you are about to hear is not a session. It's a one-time conversation organized around a dinner table on the topic of polyamory. It is not an endorsement, but an exploration on modern relationships for Esther Perel's Where Should We Begin series, The Arc of Love. where should we begin is always you being invited to be a fly on the wall to listen in on the therapeutic conversations of other couples or individuals this episode is different i didn't have a session with the people that you're going to listen to. I had dinner. And you are going to basically be invited to listen in on a dinner conversation that was quite spontaneous, impromptu, and that I decided suddenly to record because I thought, wow, this is an important conversation when it comes to the state of relationships at this moment. It was a conversation that emerged out of a panel that I was on 10 years ago on the subject of monogamy and consensual non-monogamy and polyamory.

And my two interlocutors happened to be in New York and basically kind of said, we should meet again 10 years later. Where have we gone? What has happened? How are things evolving? And then we thought, well, who else would be interesting to have at the table? So each of us kind of brought friends, basically,

people that we knew that we thought could contribute to an interesting conversation on the topic. Nothing was structured or organized. It was really to have an interesting evening, which, by the way, lasted five hours. That's how rich this conversation was. And I thought, I've had many conversations about sexlessness in relationships. I haven't had as many conversations about polyamory in relationships. I haven't had as many conversations about polyamory in relationships. So when you listen, you will find that some people are searching, some people have found,

some of them were immersed in this, these are their life choices, they talk about the consequences of the choices, they talk about the price they pay for the choices they made. Some people are advocating and others are investigating what choices lay available to them. And others are curious to listen in and watch other people make the choices that they are not yet or not at all inclined to make. And I'm just grateful to be listening. The conversation about polyamory is often quickly polarizing. For or against, it's good, it's bad. If we can just have a conversation that is actually more inquisitive, then I think we are tackling one of the important subjects of modern love at this moment.

And my invitation for you is to join us at the table of a dinner that you didn't attend, but that I'm inviting you to listen in to. The thing that stood out to me listening to the talk from 10 years ago was actually a comment that Astaire made at the beginning, that the choice that women have to be in a polyamorous relationship or to define their relationships is a choice that not many women have, particularly when we look at women making that choice, that it is a privilege to have that kind of access to design the relationship that you want, to have the most freedom, to have reproductive freedom, to have

family of choice. That still feels quite relevant to me in a larger global context. The thing that I think was maybe missing from that early conversation that still feels quite challenging today is that having the choice doesn't mean that the choice is easy. And for us, we're in a triad. We have come out to our families. We have slowly over the course of the last five years come out to those we work with, to friends in small increments and then increasingly larger increments. But it is scary to make the choice to come out to your friends and family and to be subject to questions about your sexuality and about your sex life, which is still where people's minds go. And it is scary to come out and say, we have chosen something different, but that does not mean that it has to be a threat to the choices that you have made. Certainly from a very personal standpoint, that was true for us coming out to our families.

I came from a family where my parents were extremely happily married, love each other. They're still married today. And it was so hard for my mother in particular to hear that I was polyamorous. I think it felt like a rejection of what she felt like. She was like, well, I did it. Everyone around me was getting divorced and we stayed together and somehow I failed you. No, it's exactly the opposite. For me, I feel it was her choice and her capacity to be in a committed and loving relationship that laid the foundation for me to be free enough to make the choices that I make.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that that choice is easy for others to accept. It still feels at times lonely to make the choice to design a relationship that really fits your needs and doesn't just follow some social script. Do you think that it's different if you say to your mom, I'm polyamorous versus I live in a triple or in a triad? Or to say I'm polyamorous. Non-monogamous is a different story. But is it your living arrangement because it's visual? I think it was challenging because it was visual. At the time that I came out to my family

and you came out to your family. We did it together at the time. Brandon and I are married, have been married together for 13 years and married for 10. And so our family had the impression that we were a cis, heterosexual, halfway married couple. And I think that a commentary that we've gotten from our family, but also close friends, as we came out, as we opened the door to say, sorry, we've actually been polyamorous this whole time and really doing quite well and excelling at it and creating relationships that are very meaningful to us. The adjustment was hard. And I think part of what was difficult is hearing from some friends and family, oh, we upheld you as this couple that we could really look up to.

And now that your marriage and your relationship doesn't look the same as ours, I no longer feel perhaps that my ideals are as good. I can't look up to you anymore in that same way. I think that was challenging for both of our families to feel that we had succeeded in some way, that they had planned for us. But you told them how. And they didn did like the secret to your happy marriage i don't think it mattered how we phrased it because i yeah i tried multiple angles with my mother and she was devastated for a period of time i don't i don't and i you know i i tried my best to try to educate and provide resources and have that conversation with her. But she was coming from this very religious framework, even though she's not going to church anymore. And that was just that that's that's where she was.

And she was devastated for a period of time, but she's come a long way. And now? And now, yeah, I just recently came out publicly on social media about being polyamorous and queer. And my mom and I had a lovely text exchange where she was saying that she doesn't feel like we should have to come out anymore. That that shouldn't be necessary. So she's come a long way. I think to answer your question, just as the third person in this triad here too, that it was definitely very much that way for my mother and my parents. You only talk about your mothers. That usually means that it's even harder

for the fathers. The fathers don't, my dad never really talked about it. He's just like, okay, I guess I don't even want to hear about it. For my mom, I'd said for years I was polyamorous. And I think that that's kind of just easy to not necessarily process what that really means very much. But the visual aspect of, yes, this is actually my family. These are the other two people that I'm in a committed, lifelong partnership with is like, you're really faced with that in a different way. I think it's also more rare probably to see that than a lot of polyamory which often has a couple that there's a sort of centering around. And I experienced that as well and you know one difference from when we did the talk ten years ago is that I would no longer describe my nesting partnership as a primary partnership just because I feel like I prefer to get away from the hierarchical language that I think is possessive and comes from capitalism ultimately.

We don't need to be possessing partners, even though it's just fun to say manharem and be possessive. Hashtag. Hashtag manharem but other than that i do think that i recognize that we have privilege as a nesting partnership such that we can go and see elderly relatives and look they don't have to think about it they know about it we're very out but you know if we are traveling as a couple with a child through the world through places where we could face discrimination we also are both we're a bisexual, different sex couple. We could go to countries where it would be dangerous

for us to be visibly trans or a same-sex couple or in a triad. So I recognize those kinds of privileges and I feel like that's one way that I'm grateful. And also, we've also faced that kind of family rejection. And that's one of the things that I think is incredibly difficult about coming out. People are always worried about losing their job.

That can happen. There's only nondiscrimination protections in two counties in the Boston area. Other than that, you can lose a job. But what's even more stressful for people coming out is often those elderly relatives. My favorite uncle, when I came out in 2008, has not talked to me since. Did not come to my mother's, his sister's scattering of ashes because he didn't want to meet my partner, you know? So those kinds of things really do cut deep and are deeply painful for people. And I think it's important for people to realize that we don't have non-discrimination

protection. So I get all these media calls all the time of like, how about you bring some of your polyamorous clients on? And I'm like, no, because they're my clients first and I'm advocating for them and they could lose their jobs or face a child custody case. So that's one of the reasons I think we need to reduce the stigma. Every time we pass a domestic partnership law for plural domestic partnership, as we have in Boston now, that kind of thing also reduces the stigma as we saw with same-sex partnership movement. One of the things that I think has changed, there was not a conversation necessarily about family, about children. And I remember a couple of people coming to me afterwards and saying, well, this is all fine and good, but what happens when you have children? And I'm wondering if you

could, particularly because you're in this world and that's what your chosen family is. And to the extent that you all have experience, I thought it'd love to hear how that has changed, because my sense is that it's opened up some. Absolutely. In my law practice since 2007, I've been supporting people and figuring out different kinds of co-parenting and queer family formation, but in particular polyamorous co-parenting. And to the contrary of what people might expect, my suggestion is always to slow down and communicate more. So I'm never in the situation of advocating that, you know, you have a new lover and they move in and act like a parent after a few months.

Because once a child is involved, what we do know, we can counteract a lot of the studies that have said children need stability of parental figures and therefore they need two married parents who are male and female. So what I've seen and I'm working with families is that I think it's really important that we get that stability for kids, but that that can really, that comes best in any kind of family or partnership by discussing what it is you want to create. And that stability can be a single mom by choice and her mother. That can be platonic, you know, gay best friend and the birthing mom.

There's lots of different ways that I've seen people create stability, including with polyamorous triads, for example, that I've helped to co-parent a child. And I think we've seen more and more that there's this possibility of parenting. I have an eight-year-old who is absolutely thriving and has wonderful relationships with other chosen family people. And while it wasn't easy, one of my partners moved in with us during the pandemic and helped with homeschooling my child. And there's different challenges. Just as we discussed in the original talk, you can choose the potential for monotony of monogamy, or you can choose the potential for monotony of monogamy, or you can choose the feelings of risk and vulnerability of polyamory.

There was definite intensity to having my boyfriend and my husband and I inside the house in pandemic for a lot longer than we all thought. And at the same time, my kid had maybe the best pandemic of any kid that I know, and we had three adults for one child. And that cannot be minimized. And I would do the same thing again. So let's take a break for a quick word from our sponsors so that we can go right back and plunge into the inner layers of the conversation on polyamory. My kids have had a family of choice forever. They have a whole community. I have very intense friendships. I have my husband, who I have never called my best friend. I have best friends.

He's my husband. And I have very close friendships with men and women and everything in between. I just didn't use the vocabulary. And I think you're the one who made that emphasis in the conversation. You talked about it as friendship. And it's an interesting thing, even when you describe, you're saying, you know, it's a platonic relation. And that to me is an interesting thing.

You know, many relationships are alive. And when they're alive, they're often erotic. And it's either in fantasy or it gets played out or it gets held back. And that makes it even more exciting. I mean, there's an energy. It doesn't have to be that you sleep with people to experience that energy with the people. And that stood out for me. I thought, we're not that far apart in many, many ways, but I have never framed it in that language.

Yeah, I appreciate the ways we frame things differently. And I think that one of the reasons that I do that is because I think that it elevates partnership too. It helps people to think when they trip over referring to somebody who's a dear friend as a partner. It clarifies that I mean somebody other than a romantic partner and that it doesn't have to be that you only have romantic partners and business partners because I help many, many people to decide they want to buy a house together. They want to share co-parenting. They want to grow old together.

38% of American adults are single and consider their best friend to be their closest person. So the laws that I've been passing have been acknowledging legally that they can be legal domestic partners and be the people who cross a border in a pandemic to be together, visit each other in the hospital, share health insurance. Why should I be able to do that with somebody I just met online and married and not with my best friend of 40 years? And so I think that that's why I use that term intentionally. It's a little bit of activism by sharing the idea that somebody could be a partner.

Because it's exactly what you're talking about, which is we have these intimate, intimate friendships. And then everyone's like, wait, are you gay? There's such curiosity because the beauty of that kind of a friendship, and I feel so blessed to have these kinds of friends in my life, where there's a level of intimacy where there's a level of intimacy. We develop a level of intimacy, but it doesn't fit into the categories. So that's part of what began to change. So clinically, you know, for a long time, couples therapy meant you knew which couple.

And then I began to switch, you know, who is the couple? Then I remember the first time a trouble came into the office. Then I remember beginning to say, we can't just use the word love and intimacy for romantic love. It exists in friendship. Then I began to bring friends. The pandemic really changed that because we could do Zoom and your best friends are not always next to you, but you could suddenly have sessions with those close friends. And I began to do friendship therapy, breakup of friendship, not just breakup of romantic love. And then I began to bring that into the training, you know, and which makes it complicated too, because you don't want to be a person who says the right fit is a straight jacket of monogamy, but you also don't want to be the person who says the right fit is a straight jacket of monogamy. But you also don't want to be the person who says the right fit is the expansive jacket of non-monogamy. You

want to let people figure out what works for them, wherever they are at in their life. And this subject is a subject in which often people have a very hard time holding both and tolerating the ambivalence and the ambiguity that accompanies it. It becomes, you know, it's like in the beginning days, if you were a therapist that was divorced, you were more likely to help your couple divorce. And if you were a therapist that stayed married, you were more likely to work towards your couple staying together. The bias is

very pregnant. And I want to share an appreciation that we use different framings, but you have done so much to elevate the importance and the value of friendship by giving those examples, by doing podcast episodes of the two male friends who've had a fractured friendship going through couples therapy together because why does this decades-long friendship not important enough in our mind as a society that that would be worth going to therapy and working on, right? Why shouldn't they maybe decide that they go on vacation together once a year or that they have special time together, that they have commitments, that they have agreements with each other, that they're going to talk about it if they have another argument,

right? I think that that has done a great service toward elevating those other kinds of connections as well, even as we use different terms for it. I remember the first times when I would bring it up, you know, not just bring up, have you considered, just are you a monogamous? Are you sexually exclusive? Our field has always taken that as a given. That's the norm with which you come in. From there, you can talk about the exception. Now, if you ask the question, you presuppose that it's not a given. You find out where do you live, where are you from, are you sexually exclusive,

how do you define your relationship? A set of questions that were never asked because they didn't need to be asked because everybody just assumed that's how you see change i would like to add an element to this that that you're talking about personal exploration brought up which is this tension that outsiders i think often look at non-monogamy and see which is a conflation between security and stability. And they see non-monogamy as disrupting stability, and therefore we must feel more insecure. But in fact, the way you framed it about personal exploration, about finding these areas to connect with different parts of ourselves, I think we have an opportunity in non-monogamy to find greater security through different types of attachments, secure attachment, through exploration of the

self with real bona fide connection, whether or not those connections are, quote unquote, as stable. So I may have a partner or a friend that I've had for many years of my life, but I may find just as much security with a new connection that I've made and a different type of security in a part of my identity that I didn't yet have seen. And I have seen that shift in our community and in the people that we coach and teach in workshops that we do. This sort of slow and tentative step towards decoupling the two. Or really looking at the ways in which non-magnetic opens the door to greater security. Part of what we have emphasized, we've used the word only one time here, is communal. And I wonder, you know, is the word poly a response actually to a hyper-individualistic model of coupling? And what we are really creating is, you know,

it's not special arrangements. It's actually traditional arrangements revisited. You know, aunties, families of choice, neighbors, close a social welfare state of two, you know. And I think that that's where there's the creative part around it. And it's too bad that it has to be seen as so groundbreaking and rebellious, actually. And instead of talking about polyamory, I think what we're talking about, not instead, but another way of looking at it is multiple ways that we're trying to deal with countering isolation. A question, I would love to hear your thoughts. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you were saying I have a lot of questions to ask.

I'm so thrilled to talk to all of you, and I find this conversation so stimulating. And I feel like the talk 10 years ago, Diana, I really resonated with you, and you were saying that when you were talking about financial independence, and that has driven so much of my life me feeling the need to be financially independent and the idea two years ago I was a monogamous person and my life has completely changed I am in the world of ethical non-monogamy which feels strangely worlds away from the world of polygamy or I'm sorry polyamory oh my god please forgive me from the non-monogamy feels worlds away from the world of polyamory. I'll give you an example from my own life currently. I have developed a loving relationship with a couple who are married and they consider me a friend. That's the label that we live in. And our relationship has grown. It is a sexual relationship, but I know their families. We spend holidays together. I love them very much. And I feel

content to be in this space where I am considered their friend. And I hope sincerely that it's a lifelong friendship that we share. On the other hand, I'm being sort of courted by another couple who are considering it feels like bringing me into a triad and so I feel like on one hand there's this couple that I love that's very like non-monogamous on this other hand it's a couple that's sort of like polyamorous and me as a I feel and please I would love to hear your thoughts on this. And forgive me if this is an ignorant question. Sometimes it feels like the distinction between that is like, is security and division of resources. There's absolutely no question that my friends on the non-monogamous side would ever consider providing me, like sharing resources or providing me with like security of their home or, you know, a space to live. Whereas the other couple, it feels

like that is on the table. I think that's a really great point because I do think in my work as a family mediator with, you know, people on the ethical non-monogamy and the polyamory side, you see that I think there is this issue of, you know, are you prioritizing the financial and time resources of a family unit? And that maybe, you know, being sexual with your friend is for fun, but something that we could be cut out versus is this person potentially the capacity at least to become a core family member, to have just as much importance in your family. I think that's one piece. And I think in part of that, there can be a bit of a scarcity and trying to preserve those resources, but also align to ourselves. Because one of the top issues I see when people are running into problems is when they have a sort of don't ask, don't tell agreement or a non-monogamy agreement, which is very common also in the gay male community. And it's sort of a rule that it's going to be just sex.

Humans don't work that way. You can't say I'm going to just have sex with a charismatic person I met or with my dear friend and not have emotional feelings for them. We just don't do that very well. We can't really make that promise. And so to me, it feels almost as false as making that agreement that like, you know, we're 25 and we promise we'll be together for the rest of our lives.

You can't really promise that necessarily. You don't know that. Your lapsus, your slip of the tongue between polygamy and polyamory was actually very accurate. Because that is the polygamous system is a system of materiality. If you can support two families, you can have two wives. And the materiality and the financial support and the responsibility comes first as a condition for whatever feelings you may have. So you had a good choice of words.

I'd like to add something from my own life. I, throughout my whole dating history, typically I'd been in some monogamous relationships, mostly polyamorous relationships where there was sort of a core two people involved. And when I began this relationship with my threeple, that to me was so much bigger of a difference than to be in a polyamorous relationship with, you know, me and one other person in a monogamous relationship. And I feel like the rest of society views the whole polyamorous camp as this thing that is so, you know, separate from monogamy. But for me, the bigger difference was actually stepping up from polyamory with two people to polyamory with a three-person core relationship. Right, which then you can't sort

of pass as a couple in other situations as easily as well. And also there isn't that assumption of couples privilege that there's a core couple that's the most important. Yeah. Was that why it was the biggest difference? Was it you felt like you couldn't pass as a couple anymore? That was definitely... You couldn't pass as? A couple.

That was definitely a big change, for sure. We're a family, and we've already done this conversation. We can spend a long time on semantics to the extent that it's helpful, or we can all collectively agree that it's all garbage and it doesn't matter. But I think I've adopted this term recently of we're in a family system. We're in a poly-family system. We have really of we're in a family system. We're in a poly family system. We have really committed to being in a family together. We own a house together.

We own 150 acre farm together. We share our finances and we are trying to have children together. We are creating a family together. And to come back to some of your comments about the externalities or how people see these different pieces of financial stability I think like a popular joke that came about in particular during the pandemic for people in our age group for millennials and for those younger is monogamy in this economy like for us too I think there's also like much less of a taboo around this like I've shared finances with with my best friends in deeply intimate ways that I guarantee my parents would be horrified by. You know, that felt secure and stable to us.

And for us to intermingle our finances to create a strong family system, to me, just makes sense. Why would I not want to invite in the greatest stability with our combined emotional and intellectual and financial assets at this moment in time. But also we came together at a time in our lives where we already had a lot of experience collectively with different forms of polyamory, with different forms of relationship security that I think enabled us to say, yes, we all feel qualified and excited about the potential of making that type of commitment. More structure, less freedom. More clarity, more certainty. Less structure, more choice, more freedom,

more self-doubt, more uncertainty. Esther, would you mind if I, I just wanted to address, I feel like your comment about how all this is about navigating isolation really spoke to me. As single person navigating these multiple relationships that I'm in. And I must say that moving from monogamy where I felt like I was truly clinging to one other person, maybe not the healthiest monogamous relationship to be fair like begging them to help alleviate my feelings of isolation to now truly a single person like in relationships of various kinds with multiple different people what I have learned from non-monogamy has been how to, I've found a comfort with other people and also with myself that this, that being alone

is truly a posture and from it can come a feeling of sad isolation and from it can also come this feeling of peaceful solitude. And I feel much more of that peaceful solitude when i'm alone now i don't know if that i feel like it's directly connected to this and then i will invite you you've learned the switch from thinking about being monogamous to being ethically non-monogamous or polyamorous at what point do you make the choice from thinking of yourself as single? Because single, and I know I'm a stickle for the words, but because they mean so much. They carry entire cultural systems.

And once you think of yourself as single, it's in contrast to being in a relationship with one person. And you're single until you're no longer single, married or at least committed. And that in itself, you know, if you have two couples that you are in a relationship with, I don't know at what point you stop being single. I sleep alone in my bed every night. To me, that feels very much like I'm single. The idea of being solo poly, which some people will use that phrase.

And if I could add on to that, I think I agree with that definition. And I think another one might be that some people do have multi-year dating relationships when they're solo poly. They might have what we would call a partner and have partners. But maybe they want to continue living alone. And what they're declaring by saying that is that they're not necessarily on a relationship escalator, which is one of the things I loved about going from, as I talked about at the talk 10 years ago, of like going from this sort of like young professional woman, like I'm supposed to be husband hunting. I only have time to go on dates with somebody

that's got like a graduate degree, right? And sort of something that's like, we could just like have dinner and make love once every few months for the rest of our lives. And this is great. We don't, there's no like getting more serious. There's no, maybe we're going to move in together. There could be emotional connection, right? And so I think for a lot of people, solo poly can really resonate. And there's an overlap between that and the solos movement, which is single people who are reclaiming the term single and changing it to solo to convey, I'm not looking. I'm not like, oh, I'm single right now. It's like, nope, I'm solo. And some of them are forming their family kind of relationships with people that are not their lovers. The lovers are not the people that they want to make family with. They might have co-parents, they might have their best friends, but their sexual and romantic relationships are not

going to be the core of their lives. As non-monogamy becomes something that's more socially acceptable and more talked about, and as different kinds of family forms and same-sex couples are proliferating, it's interesting to and refreshing to have children in my life who don't necessarily have the same preconceived notions. So recently my eight-year-old was asking, what is monogamy again? And I explained it. I explained it. And my kid said, wow, that sounds kind of controlling. Is that common? It is actually really common. But not necessarily having a presumption that families look a certain way because just being exposed to other options is kind of interesting to think about,

like, what will this next generation do with the ideas of family and relationship? Let's take a quick break. There's so much more we need to talk about. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that you can use to build a website and help people find your ventures. Whether you're seeking a location for your podcast, teaching language courses or selling handcrafted ceramics, Squarespace has all the tools you need to create a home on the web. You can create a polished, professional place that connects people with whatever you are excited about. Squarespace also supports all forms

of connecting with those people, whether you're selling products online or in person or offering memberships. You can make your website look exactly how you want it to be. They even have tools that help you create a custom logo and they make it easy to create a place where people can schedule an appointment with you, browse your services, or learn more about why you do what you do. Visit squarespace.com slash Esther for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Esther to save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. Would it be too much? Can we now like dig into this gritty moment of talking about

jealousy jealousy feels like this this point it's it's something to do with i think the difference between your relationship with this this relationship that maybe can survive like you two were partners and now you're chosen family. Whereas maybe most monogamous relationships could never survive a split like that. It's like atomic bomb versus like, it feels like there's a crux there, right? Like I don't even want to say something that's like real love or like some kind of, in some way, love where like the ego has been removed in some way, where you're like truly loving the person for who they are rather than like loving them for what they can do for you. Am I, am I like going way out in left field here? Like there's, I feel like

jealousy is involved in this somehow. It's like jealousy, ego. Can you speak on this? I just want to drop in that, one, this is not a poly recruitment dinner. Yeah. And I don't think it's better for everyone. But I do want to point out a thing that the American idea of becoming evolved or in the tantra world, like becoming more self-actualized and, you know, becoming more, you know, reaching enlightenment.

I think the American ideals of self-help and achievement or overachievement have seeped in to the relationship world and also the bedroom, such that if you are not considering opening up your relationship, if you haven't already tried a female-led, like if you're not considering opening up your relationship, if you haven't already tried a female-led DL, like if you're not kinky, if you're not already squirting so hard during your orgasm,

you knock over a lamp or something, somehow you're not self-actualized. It's a new kind of competitive. Absolutely. And so like, I just like to reframe it's true and remind people like it's okay to to investigate all these things and then realize you're you like monogamy yeah right like it's okay to try tantra and you know have energetic orgasms and be like you know what? I think I just like fucking, you know? Or like, I don't like threesomes.

I like one-on-one, you know, sexual connections. Like to just check that evolvedness that's seeping in. And what really is evolved is like, you give yourself permission to explore if you want to explore, but like, like what you like and don't like and don't do what you don't like. And that should be what evolved and being self-actualized becomes.

And from there, then I'm fine. We can talk about, you know, the octopus of jealousy and things like that. But like, I think this is a part that people are struggling with because they're like, but I think I like being vanilla. Am I broken? It's a tyranny from one switching to a tyranny of the other. I have a vulnerable confessionogamous to Athena for the past four years, which is a decision that I made with all the agency in the world after being polyamorous my whole life, having the freedom to have multiple partners my whole life. That was something I very joyfully did, which is sort of an element of our DS relationship. Importantly, Athena is not monogamous

to me. And most people would kind of look at this situation and think, I think in some ways, this is kind of almost like taboo polyamory. It's almost like, you're not really supposed to do that. You know, it's kind of a mistake. How edgy. How transgressive. Yeah, get out. This is something that has worked really well for us and i think that we were able to kind of like make this choice it was right for us and and we're still very much enjoying this um and i think jealousy it's a human emotion right so of course like every person who's a human being has felt jealousy of some type but the jealousy that like i ever have is like kind of not the type that people would generally like expect like i don't

have like jealousy over her having sexual relationships with anyone at all like at times like the three of us cohabitate like i've maybe been jealous of Brandon's ability to be on top of the house management or something. It's a different kind of jealousy in ways that the average person would not be like, oh, well, that's the jealousy you must be experiencing. No, not for me. The way he loves to dishwash. Yeah, it's true.

It's an older guy. Excellent. He's really good too good. It's excellent. He's really good at it. He's a competent man. Well, I want to talk, I want to share my own vulnerable

about jealousy because for years, Brandon and I were theoretically polyamorous but in practice we were just obsessed

with each other and so in practice we were monogamous. It was like we would try to date other people and I'd be like, I just want to really be home with him. And I love him so much.

And then finally the day arrived where we both sort of within the same six-month period found other partners. And we were like, I think we're now practicing polyamory. And I remember the first time in my life that I actually felt this polyamorous jealousy. Brandon was like going on a date with his partner. They were together for many years, love her very much. And I was like, oh, here it is. People always talk about this and it's in the ethical slut and it's in all these books,

but I'm finally experiencing it for the first time. What do I do? Who can I go talk to? We're not really supposed to feel this jealousy. If you've been doing polyamory and if you've been doing it correctly, in big air quotes, of course, you're really not supposed to feel this way. I was like, oh, what do I do with this feeling? And of course, that jealousy was a desire in that moment to have a sense of closeness or reassurance that I did not necessarily need from my partner.

I just, I wanted in general. Or, in fact, in that particular case, I remember clearly, this was after I had had my concussion and I was dealing with all these traumatic brain injury fallouts. It was a very traumatic time in our lives. And I was, I really just needed to turn to my partner and say, can you just reassure me that if I was having like a medical problem that you would come home still? And, of course, instantly my partner was like, of course that's all I needed I just needed that reassurance in some moment but it can be so lonely to have these feelings of jealousy because we are supposed to move beyond somehow we're supposed to just be magically open and we're supposed to be

magically free of those concerns but the desire for reassurance and connection is always going to be there. It's a very human emotion to have. It should not be taboo as part of our conversation about non-monogamy, and I'm glad you brought it up. Well, like, if you were more evolved, you wouldn't feel it. Like, jealousy would just dissolve into the ethers

and you'd be filled with light. Good luck with that. But like, but that's, i think that's part of it like and then we don't have the tools or we feel shame or we don't we we've never we don't know what we're feeling because some people are so closed off and haven't done any kind of somatic experiencing or noticing and then like we're not talking about these things and then skill set sharing and being able to be like, hey, how did you work through jealousy or what do you do when you get jealous? Because there's so much resource out there. And for a lot of us, just talking about it is the beginning of the resource to know that you're not alone, to know that jealousy is being felt in different generations.

Jealousy is a human emotion, but it doesn't belong to the original six. It actually comes around 18 months. And it's an interesting thing because it only begins once you have enough of a sense of yourself. So you need a sense of I and thou before you can even begin to experience it. Until the 90s, there was plenty of articles in the press in the US about jealousy. And then at some point, it all disappeared.

Because the notion was that you shouldn't feel jealous and if you do there's something wrong rather than it's a part of the experience of love so it's you know the question always is is jealousy and are you know an archaic emotion that you should try to get away from is possessiveness an archaic emotion that you should try to get away from versus are they just part and parcel of the experience itself and they come up on occasion and there you know um if you there is jealousy in monogamous relationships and there is jealousy in polyamorous just jealousy in love that's that's the oh i've accepted that for me it's inescapable i'm an extremely passionate person. And I feel like with my relationships, it has become, it's like processing jealousy with me and my relationships right now.

It's become a hobby. But there's so much growth in there. Because I think what ends up happening, and I'm not trying to be woke. I would love to be enlightened that would be great but I feel like that's where a lot of this growth comes is like really being able to see that person and try to really walk in their shoes and think if I was this person would I want to have fulfilling sexual relationships? Yes. You know, with, with other people. And does it detract in any way from our connection? No, but it takes,

it's like a bridge to, it's like, I have to walk all the way across that and it's painful. As you said, absolutely. Jealousy is one of those sources of personal growth in open relationships. And when I said that I've gotten just as much out of it as therapy, oftentimes it was jealousy. It was the surprising feelings that would come up. It would be the, oh, I feel really triggered. What is that? And that would, rather than just have the knee-jerk reaction against it, it was really informative to be able to allow it in and then feel out the different kinds of nuances and feel out that there are some things I would set a boundary around. You know, it wouldn't be appropriate to hit on one of my close friends without checking with me.

Right. Or, right. Or if your partner developed a dating hobby six nights a week, it would be just as much of a problem if they have a video game or a golf hobby six nights a week, right? If they become obsessed with anything, whether they're not giving you attention or the home life attention, that's a problem. And you're allowed to set boundaries. You're allowed to have your own kinds of deciding when you're rationally setting a boundary rather than just sort of in a passionate moment being like, I don't like her in the red, you know, you know, don't talk to her and that any kind of bad behavior is excused. And so it really helped me bring up my insecurities, ask for the reassurance that I need. And sometimes notice when it was something more like parody, like you're having this special experience. I

want to have a special experience with you. And I think that's actually something that can keep the long-term relationships really vital when you're also dating other people, because you might have a realization that your partner feels jealous when they realize like, you know, you're doing the toy and lingerie shopping for some new person. There should be a toy and lingerie night for the person who's been home, you know, for 12 years, right? And I'm going to make a special moment with them, or like, I'm going to go away for the weekend with them if I go away for the weekend with somebody else, just because that feels like I want to get to have that kind of experience with you um and so I think just opening up a vocabulary has just been really nutritious for figuring out like what's where

are those little sticky points inside for me and for you and our relating well and the ability to to let that those feelings in start to identify what's going on and then like are you in have you been cultivating relationships where you can talk about these things and then co-create like some sort of more processing but like co-create the so what do we want to do with this like like what is the aha moment we're getting from this maybe it is like i would like lingerie too or then you realize like well i don't really like lingerie too. Or then you realize like, well, I don't really like lingerie. Actually, I'd like some socks, some really good wool socks would be great. And then, but like so many people never even get to that because they never let it

in. They don't have anything. They can't talk about any of it. And so jealousy never gets to be like a positive thing. Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julian Hatt. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider.

And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul.